Need advice: Laptop for my Uzi

I'm going to Lake Powell next month, and I think a used laptop would make a much better investment than plenty of Smartmedia cards or a digital wallet.

On the road, it will be an image bank, and let me quickly review photos, find the keepers, see which ones have potential in Photoshop, et cetera. At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as "regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger, better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100 MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos, and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Forrest,

I'd choose the IBM Thinkpad if it were me. I don't think the 100mhz speed difference is significant and the larger HDD would be nice to have.

At home, I use a 2-1/2 year old 400mhz Dell Inspiron 3500 with a 4gb drive. I plan to replace it soon with a Dell laptop with the largest drive they come with. The IBM Thinkpads have a good reputation though and it should be a solid unit.

My screen is smaller than either of those you're looking at. I'm wondering whether the extra cost for a 15" screen would be worth it on a new Dell. My pics look ok on this laptop but when I transfer them through http://www.fototime.com to my computer at work with it's 21" NEC monitor, they really knock my eyes out.

TM

Forrest said:

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig
hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix
screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger,
better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home
and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100
MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos,
and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Click to expand...

I disagree, for less than half of any laptop cost, you can get a 30GB storage system that makes much more sense . See the thread:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&page=1&message=1577295

John

Forrest said:

I'm going to Lake Powell next month, and I think a used laptop
would make a much better investment than plenty of Smartmedia
cards or a digital wallet.

On the road, it will be an image bank, and let me quickly review
photos, find the keepers, see which ones have potential in
Photoshop, et cetera. At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as
"regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig
hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix
screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger,
better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home
and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100
MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos,
and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Click to expand...

John,

I'm an ImageBank advocate but I think you misread the thread. Edwin mentioned that the 3gb version is $299. You can buy the shell for $199 though and add a 20gb drive for another $125 shipped from newegg.com (that's what I've got).

Forrest's needs are different though. He doesn't have a problem bringing the laptop along on his trip and he wants to use it at home for multiple applications. The IB is good but it won't run Access, Excel, etc.. ;-)

TM

John Davis said:

I disagree, for less than half of any laptop cost, you can get a
30GB storage system that makes much more sense . See the thread:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&page=1&message=1577295

John

Click to expand...

Forrest,

I would too lean towards the IBM. More RAM and higher storage
space sure would be more important as compared to the little
bump up in CPU speed. It would probably not be really all that
noticable.

In fact, the specs of either one is already way ahead compared
to the notebook I have for work which I carry around for overseas
trip.

I guess to each their own. I sort of looked at my Simacorp Image
bank or additional Smartmedia as something you carry along
in the field. Where you do your field work and so on. The notebook
is usually left at homebase and in this case, the hotel. Because of
the shorter battery left and the weight, it does not quite may sense,
at least for me, to carry around in the field.

It is only after a day of snapping pictures that I would get back
to the room, have a nice warm soak in the tub, before proceeding
to the notebook with a can of coke next to me while I download
and preview my images.

Of course, I would not disagree that the notebook would definitely
be a great tool. It is versatile as you said, it is a image bank and also
a workhorse. Incidentally, with the modem or LAN card built-in, you
would also be able to check up on this forum and probably posted
some of your images online and we could enjoy them with you too.

As for me, I will still carry my 2x128mb + 2x64mb smartmedia with
me when I shoot. Carry my Image Bank to unload the smartmedia
when they come fill. Use the notebook in the room to preview the
shots of the day and check on my emails.

Edwin

Forrest said:

I'm going to Lake Powell next month, and I think a used laptop
would make a much better investment than plenty of Smartmedia
cards or a digital wallet.

On the road, it will be an image bank, and let me quickly review
photos, find the keepers, see which ones have potential in
Photoshop, et cetera. At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as
"regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig
hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix
screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger,
better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home
and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100
MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos,
and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Click to expand...

Wildcat47074 said:

Forrest's needs are different though. He doesn't have a problem
bringing the laptop along on his trip and he wants to use it at
home for multiple applications. The IB is good but it won't run
Access, Excel, etc.. ;-)

Click to expand...

Right ... and having a better screen than the one on my camera to find the keepers, or figure out what I'm doing wrong so I can take a keeper, are important needs. Besides, paying San Francisco rent, the desk space this will free up is a pretty big deal.

Thanks for the advice.

The laptop PC solution has been great for us. For many years I had desktop PCs which I had to setup in the basement. My wife would never touch them.

Now I keep the Laptop in our living room connected to the cable modem. My wife is now addicted to her own discussion groups on quilting, migraines, etc., keeps a rolling average of over 400 emails in her inbox and loves using the web. She uses computer terms in dinner conversation that make me pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming. I even get to keep a laser printer and scanner in the living room. Times have really changed!

Our 12 year old also get's a lot of use out of it for homework and listening to her music, etc. in a setting where we can keep an eye on things.

Laptop, internet, cable modem and digicam (Uzi) technologies make a dynamite combination.

TM

Forrest said:

Forrest41926 said:

Forrest's needs are different though. He doesn't have a problem
bringing the laptop along on his trip and he wants to use it at
home for multiple applications. The IB is good but it won't run
Access, Excel, etc.. ;-)

Click to expand...

Right ... and having a better screen than the one on my camera to
find the keepers, or figure out what I'm doing wrong so I can take
a keeper, are important needs. Besides, paying San Francisco rent,
the desk space this will free up is a pretty big deal.

Thanks for the advice.

Click to expand...

Edwin57917 said:

Of course, I would not disagree that the notebook would definitely
be a great tool. It is versatile as you said, it is a image bank
and also
a workhorse. Incidentally, with the modem or LAN card built-in, you
would also be able to check up on this forum and probably posted
some of your images online and we could enjoy them with you too.

Click to expand...

Could you elaborate? I'm trying to decide whether I want to buy an NIC card with it, for an extra $50. I can't attach it to my company's network for security reasons, so I'm inclined to just take the modem. I could only use the network card where someone already has a network established, and is willing to let me on?

Forrest

The laptop is a great idea. I did that recently on a trip to Montreal. I would even keep the laptop in the car with us so we could use a street map program to find our way around. At night or even during the day I'd download pictures from both our digicams ( my UZI and a Kodak DC3200) and be ready to shoot the next day.

The only problem I had was transferring the pictures from the laptop to my desktop computer. The laptop doesnt have a cd-rw and my zip drive is broken . I found I could transfer the pictures from the laptop back to the SM card and then to the desktop. A bit time consuming but effective.

Forrest said:

I'm going to Lake Powell next month, and I think a used laptop
would make a much better investment than plenty of Smartmedia
cards or a digital wallet.

On the road, it will be an image bank, and let me quickly review
photos, find the keepers, see which ones have potential in
Photoshop, et cetera. At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as
"regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig
hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix
screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger,
better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home
and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100
MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos,
and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Click to expand...

I agree. A laptop networked from a router off our cable modem allows me to browse these forums and edit my photos comfortable in my EZ chair in the living room while watching TV while my wife plays her online bingo games and browses the web in our computer room. I was originally gonna get a digital wallet or image bank but at a recent balloon festival where we couldn't wait to get home to view our images ( my wife has a C3000 and I have a C2100), she suggested a laptop to bring with us on trips so we could view and edit in the evenings. Well, we went to Sears and bought a Sony Viao pcg-fx240 800Mhz with a 14.1" screen, 15gig HD, 128mb memory and a CD-RW/DVD combo drive. They price matched from the internet and we paid $1439. I installed my Epson printer along with Qimage and Photoshop 6 from my desktop pc so now when we go on weekend or weeklong photo trips we can burn cd's and print on the road. It doesn't get any better than this! I'm considering trying to make my investment back by selling photo CD's and/or prints at events. I just got a LCD hood from Hoodman for viewing outdoors and it works great. No more being chained to the desktop. I can't believe it was my wifes idea!...Bob

TM said:

Now I keep the Laptop in our living room connected to the cable
modem. My wife is now addicted to her own discussion groups on
quilting, migraines, etc., keeps a rolling average of over 400
emails in her inbox and loves using the web. She uses computer
terms in dinner conversation that make me pinch myself to see if
I'm dreaming. I even get to keep a laser printer and scanner in the
living room. Times have really changed!

Our 12 year old also get's a lot of use out of it for homework and
listening to her music, etc. in a setting where we can keep an eye
on things.

Laptop, internet, cable modem and digicam (Uzi) technologies make a
dynamite combination.

TM

Forrest said:

Wildcat47074 said:

Forrest's needs are different though. He doesn't have a problem
bringing the laptop along on his trip and he wants to use it at
home for multiple applications. The IB is good but it won't run
Access, Excel, etc.. ;-)

Click to expand...

Right ... and having a better screen than the one on my camera to
find the keepers, or figure out what I'm doing wrong so I can take
a keeper, are important needs. Besides, paying San Francisco rent,
the desk space this will free up is a pretty big deal.

Thanks for the advice.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

What type of editing do you do on your laptop? Cropping and resizing, or do you make tonal adjustments? If you do, how does the LCD screen match the prints?

Mofongo said:

I agree. A laptop networked from a router off our cable modem
allows me to browse these forums and edit my photos comfortable in
my EZ chair in the living room while watching TV while my wife
plays her online bingo games and browses the web in our computer
room. I was originally gonna get a digital wallet or image bank but
at a recent balloon festival where we couldn't wait to get home to
view our images ( my wife has a C3000 and I have a C2100), she
suggested a laptop to bring with us on trips so we could view and
edit in the evenings. Well, we went to Sears and bought a Sony Viao
pcg-fx240 800Mhz with a 14.1" screen, 15gig HD, 128mb memory and a
CD-RW/DVD combo drive. They price matched from the internet and we
paid $1439. I installed my Epson printer along with Qimage and
Photoshop 6 from my desktop pc so now when we go on weekend or
weeklong photo trips we can burn cd's and print on the road. It
doesn't get any better than this! I'm considering trying to make my
investment back by selling photo CD's and/or prints at events. I
just got a LCD hood from Hoodman for viewing outdoors and it works
great. No more being chained to the desktop. I can't believe it was
my wifes idea!...Bob

Click to expand...

Forrest,

During my travels, I found that some hotels have internet ready
rooms which has a LAN outlet enabling you to hook on your
notebook to their broadband network. Then there are some
cybercafe which allows you to do that too (for a fee).

Of course, in a home situation, like in mine, there are 5 computers
in the house with at least two being used at any one time. I had
the computers all hooked up to an internet router sharing the same
cable modem connection. So in my case, it definitely make sense
in a long run.

I am sure that a modem can be use in more locations and situations
as compared to a NIC card and is a great choice for travel. But before
you use them in a hotel, motel or whatever, ask if it is safe to do so.
Some phone systems in hotels uses the digital network or the switchboard
network which uses a different voltage compared to the normal phone.
If the modem is plugged directly to them, they might fry.

Edwin

Forrest said:

Could you elaborate? I'm trying to decide whether I want to buy an
NIC card with it, for an extra $50. I can't attach it to my
company's network for security reasons, so I'm inclined to just
take the modem. I could only use the network card where someone
already has a network established, and is willing to let me on?

Click to expand...

Forrest,

I don't have much experience with the IBM's, but do have a Dell Latitude C600 (600/750 mhz), with a cdrw. I take my ZIO! along to move the pictures to the laptop, then burn them w/o ANY editing. This way I have a permanent archive of the originals, (I am not a pro, and have accidently opened a jpg, then resaved it as a jpg, thus applying more compression, and spoiling the image). I find this works well. I do "play" with the images on the laptop, while on vacation, etc., but do all real manipulation on the home PC, in spare time. I love my Dell, the display is a beauty, and I would not be afraid to do some deeper image manipulation on it. I am actually a corporate customer, and am resposible for about 200 of these units, and I must say the support from Dell is the best I have dealt with. I agree that a laptop is the best "portable" solution, if you have the travelling space.

Good Luck!

DW

When it comes to notebook computers, the IBM Thinkpad series has a long history of innovation and quality that is hard to beat. As far as the 100 Mhz bump in speed, that's only a 20% difference, which isn't night and day. The additional RAM will probably go a long ways towards minimizing the actual performance difference (photo editing is RAM-intensive) and the additional drive space will come in handy. You can never have too much drive space.

My reservations have more to do with notebook computers in general than with either model you mention. I personally hate the built-in pointing devices on notebook computers, so I'd for sure recommend getting a decent mouse (preferably USB rather than PS2 connection so that you can also use a full-size keyboard with the PC if you desire since most notebook computers only have a single PS2 connection for either a mouse or a keyboard; not both). I'd also recommend getting a decent CRT monitor, 17" or larger. While LCD-based displays (whether built-in to a PC or as an outboard "flat" display) are pretty neat, I've never found their colors to be terribly accurate. You're more likely to be able to set up a CRT to color-match with your printer for any tonal adjustments you might do in PhotoShop or other image editing software.

I would also recommend a USB-connected external CD burner. If you get serious about digital photography, you'll gobble up any and all drive space before you know it. Burning the images onto CD allows you to have a backup in case your drive fails or your PC is stolen (which is probably more likely with a notebook than a desktop PC), frees up lots of disk space and allows you to burn copies for friends. One bit of advice: burn copies of the ORIGINAL image files as well as the retouched copies. If you really screw up an image in the editing software, it's nice to be able to go back to the original.

Forrest, I manually adjust levels, contrast, moderate color saturation, crop for aspect ratio of prints and sharpen with NIK Sharpening Pro. I'm very pleased with the output I'm getting. By the way, I like to read your posts. You are really knowledgeable on digital photography and I always look for your name in threads when I don't have time to read all the posts.

Happy shooting,
Bob

Forrest said:

Forrest41926 said:

I agree. A laptop networked from a router off our cable modem
allows me to browse these forums and edit my photos comfortable in
my EZ chair in the living room while watching TV while my wife
plays her online bingo games and browses the web in our computer
room. I was originally gonna get a digital wallet or image bank but
at a recent balloon festival where we couldn't wait to get home to
view our images ( my wife has a C3000 and I have a C2100), she
suggested a laptop to bring with us on trips so we could view and
edit in the evenings. Well, we went to Sears and bought a Sony Viao
pcg-fx240 800Mhz with a 14.1" screen, 15gig HD, 128mb memory and a
CD-RW/DVD combo drive. They price matched from the internet and we
paid $1439. I installed my Epson printer along with Qimage and
Photoshop 6 from my desktop pc so now when we go on weekend or
weeklong photo trips we can burn cd's and print on the road. It
doesn't get any better than this! I'm considering trying to make my
investment back by selling photo CD's and/or prints at events. I
just got a LCD hood from Hoodman for viewing outdoors and it works
great. No more being chained to the desktop. I can't believe it was
my wifes idea!...Bob

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

You can replace the hard drive with an ibm harddrive 20 gig from newegg for 115 bucks. Took me about 5 minutes and loaded the os after that... If the screen is better go with the dell..

Tony

To really be free get a wireless ethernet card with a wireless router for your home network. Then you really will be free. That's what I am typing on in my bedroom and my cable modem is in my office across the house. Just wonderful.....

Tony

Forrest said:

At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as
"regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

Click to expand...

If you are serious ... the operative word here is SERIOUS ... about Photoshop then you don't run it on a laptop. Among the most critical reasons ... you need another monitor and you also need an additional hard drive. Photoshop runs best when it has a dedicated hard drive as it's scratch disk and the monitor on a laptop just does not measure up to it's capabilities. They don't call them laptops for nothing ... Cheers ...

Forrest,

For what it's worth, here's my story.

I first bought a used Compaq Presario 1270 (12" tft screeen, AMD K6-2 350MHz, 64M RAM, 4G HD 7.3 lb) on eBay as my portable storage unit, along with a Targus backpack made for laptops. I only used it for storing/reviewing pictures with a little tweaking now and then with PSP6 and panorama stitching, and occasional internet access. I still used my desktop at home for power applications so it was just fine.

But dang, it was heavy. The spec says 7.3 lbs but once you add an AC adapter, mouse, card readers, cables and so forth it really seemed to weigh a ton. Doesn't sound like much but hauling all that from one end of Denver International to the other to try and make a flight connection got old.

So I went on eBay again and wound up with a new-in-the-box Compaq Armada M300 for $800. Specs are 11.3" tft screen, P3 500MHz, 128M RAM, 6G HD and a more managable 3.5 lb weight. The AC adapter is lighter too. Drawback is that there are no floppy or CD drives incorporated into it - that's why it's so light. It comes with an external floppy drive which isn't much use these days, but just enough for what I needed it for.

To transfer files back and forth from my laptop to my desktop I use a cable called a USBLink. $30 from buy.com. ( http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10254766 ) It has a male USB A plug on each end and some kind of internal electronics so that you can plug your units directly together and use the provided program to drag and drop from one to the other. And the program fits on a floppy so it was easy to load onto my laptop. Once I had that I could copy programs from CDs onto my desktop's hard drive, then use the USBLink to copy them to my laptop's hard drive and install them from there.

So on a trip, I carry in my pocket (in plastic clamshell cases, two cards per case) 2x128 and 2x64 Smartmedia cards plus a 64M in my 2100 for a total of about 315 pictures at 1600x1200, SHQ setting. That's usually enough for me for one day but in case it isn't, I carry the laptop in my backpack. Usually it's in the car but if I'm going to be away from the car for long I take all the accessories out and just have the laptop in the backpack, along with my regular day-hike stuff.

By the way, I keep two sets of NiMH batteries in an elastic ammo bandolier made to go on the buttstock of a rifle. Handy, and I can stick it in my hip pocket.

Just about every company now makes ultralight laptops in the 3-4 lb range. So I'd recommend the smallest, lightest laptop you can get (although the nifty Sony PCG Picturebooks are maybe just a little too small - and really expensive). That's only if the laptop is a supplement to your home desktop computer. IF it's going to be your primary machine however, go for the biggest, most powerful thing you can carry because then huge is not enough.

Forrest said:

I'm going to Lake Powell next month, and I think a used laptop
would make a much better investment than plenty of Smartmedia
cards or a digital wallet.

On the road, it will be an image bank, and let me quickly review
photos, find the keepers, see which ones have potential in
Photoshop, et cetera. At home, it will run Photoshop, as well as
"regular" software ( Access, Excel, Oracle, et cetera ).

For about the same price ( $900 ), I've narrowed it down to:

Dell Inspiron 5000: P3/600, 256 megs RAM, 15 inch TFT screen, 6 gig
hard disc, about eight pounds.

IBM Thinkpad 600X: P3/500, 320 megs RAM, 14 inch Active Matrix
screen, 12 gig hard disc, about five pounds.

Pretty similar, with a few trade-offs. The Dell has a bigger,
better screen, but less room to hold photos until I can get home
and burn them. The IBM has a slower processor ( will I notice 100
MHz? ), but more RAM for Photoshop, much more space for my photos,
and easier to carry.

Which would you suggest, and why?

Click to expand...

Oops. You are right, I did not realize Forrest's interest in using the laptop as a PC at home. I note though that a laptop screen for photo editing is far from ideal and very difficult to calibrate. So a good monitor to connect the laptop to at home might be required.

John

TM said:

Forrest's needs are different though. He doesn't have a problem
bringing the laptop along on his trip and he wants to use it at
home for multiple applications. The IB is good but it won't run
Access, Excel, etc.. ;-)

TM

John Davis said:

I disagree, for less than half of any laptop cost, you can get a
30GB storage system that makes much more sense . See the thread:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1008&page=1&message=1577295

John

Click to expand...

Click to expand...