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Laptop for photo editing

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gary stepic

gary stepic

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The newly announced Lenovo has me thinking of replacing my Gateway laptop. I shoot a lot of sports which means there are many times when I need to edit right after an event or on the road.

Are there any other laptops more geared to photo editing in addition to the Lenovo? Would it be wise to wait a bit as it appears the monitors of laptops may be improving.

What I have has been working so I don't have to go out and get the lastest and greatest right away. I do like the increased resolution of the Lenovo as well, not sure how many laptops can support 1900x1200.

The built in calibration of the Lenovo is nice, but maybe there are many laptops that are pretty easy to calibrate (I have not been able to fiigure out how to use my Monico Optix on my laptop).

As far as having two drives I use a portable hard drive as a back up, but if I am not mistaken I can custom order the Lenovo upgrading to the features according to the features I want. It seems to me the biggest feature of the Lenovo for photographers is the screen, and of course no one has really been able to comment on how good the screen is as the computer was just introduced.

I am debating about how important battery life is. Nearly all the time after an event I can find an outlet, but there are times when it is tough to find a good working area. The weight of the Lenovo can be a factor, especially if I take it on vacations (I always like to do some photo editing of vacation pics while on vacation).

Maybe I may even consider a Mac if it is superior to most PCs for photo editing. I am not sure how tough it would be to get the software I already have, especially photoshop, for Mac and a PC. Would most software licensing allow me to have mac and pc versions? I prefer not to go this route.

Gary

--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
 
Gary... long time no talk!

The Lenovo announcement caught my eye too. If you decide to explore this route, let me know. I work for IBM and can get you the employee price through the friends/family program. I have used Thinkpads as long as they have been made and only had one out of about 12 of them that was a lemon, and that was about six years ago. The rest have been stellar. This new one has some very compelling features that would make it a kick-butt photo editing station.

I also recently moved to a Mac for my desktop machine... after a lifetime running Windows. I didn't like what I saw with Vista and had held out as long as I could. I actually bought a used Power Mac (Dual PowerPC) on Craigslist for about $1000, and it has been a pleasure to use.

Its too bad that Jobs doesn't endorse other vendors running OSX on their hardware, as this Lenovo box running OSX would be the bomb!

--
Regards, Mike - Lot's of Canon Stuff

Photographer in the Northeast? NorthEastFoto.com
 
gary stepic said:
I do like the increased resolution
of the Lenovo as well, not sure how many laptops can support
1900x1200.
Click to expand...
I have been using a rather pedestrian 17” laptop (Dell I9300) for photo work the last couple years. It supports 1920x1200 just fine. Most all vendors that offer 17” laptops (and a lot of them that offer 15” laptops) offer the 1920x1200 res.

If you are just looking for a solid 17” laptop with higher res. Most any current laptop will work nicely. They won’t have the super-fancy screens, but they can get the job done.

Dell will be releasing a pretty top end workstation laptop for media usage in the coming weeks/months. There was a post about it a few days ago. Looks to be another option in addition to this Lenovo.

-Suntan
 
I had been thinking of emailing to see how you are doing, in fact I will soon. Our office is unbelievably busy since school is about to start, so i will touch base in a few weeks. We are seeing 25% more students then we did three years ago, our staff is down 30% since then, and our turnover rate for staff is greater than 50% (gee, wonder why!). You have no idea how much I am looking forward to retirement, if my health can hold out!

Is this a new job for you?

As you know for sports the demands are really not that great as far as having a fancy screen, but color accuracy is a big deal because of often shooting sports under different lighting conditions.

I very well may take you up on your offer, just when I convinced myself I really do not need anything that well equiped.

Gary
--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
 
To me, any laptop with the following specs can do a decent job on photo-editing:
  • At least 4GB RAM
  • At least 500GB hard drive
  • Uses a T8000+ series Core 2 Duo processor
  • Has dedicated GPU (preferably with at least 512mb capacity)
  • Anti-glare LCD display
-Windows XP or Vista 64-bit

I have one with these specs, it's a Sony Vaio, and I run both Elements and CS2, aside from PaintShop and I get the job done fast enough for me to still keep my decent sleeping hours :-)
gary stepic said:
The newly announced Lenovo has me thinking of replacing my Gateway
laptop. I shoot a lot of sports which means there are many times when
I need to edit right after an event or on the road.

Are there any other laptops more geared to photo editing in addition
to the Lenovo? Would it be wise to wait a bit as it appears the
monitors of laptops may be improving.

What I have has been working so I don't have to go out and get the
lastest and greatest right away. I do like the increased resolution
of the Lenovo as well, not sure how many laptops can support
1900x1200.

The built in calibration of the Lenovo is nice, but maybe there are
many laptops that are pretty easy to calibrate (I have not been able
to fiigure out how to use my Monico Optix on my laptop).

As far as having two drives I use a portable hard drive as a back up,
but if I am not mistaken I can custom order the Lenovo upgrading to
the features according to the features I want. It seems to me the
biggest feature of the Lenovo for photographers is the screen, and of
course no one has really been able to comment on how good the screen
is as the computer was just introduced.

I am debating about how important battery life is. Nearly all the
time after an event I can find an outlet, but there are times when it
is tough to find a good working area. The weight of the Lenovo can be
a factor, especially if I take it on vacations (I always like to do
some photo editing of vacation pics while on vacation).

Maybe I may even consider a Mac if it is superior to most PCs for
photo editing. I am not sure how tough it would be to get the
software I already have, especially photoshop, for Mac and a PC.
Would most software licensing allow me to have mac and pc versions? I
prefer not to go this route.

Gary

--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
Click to expand...
--
Noogy
 
Thanks. Let us hope that Lenovo will use a good screen. That is the only reason I have not upgraded my Thinkpad with a Flexview screen.
 
That is what I am banking on. Lenovo is making some strong claims concerning the screen quality, let's hope it is true.

There are so many times I prefer to use my laptop and there are few times when I have no choice. I know the Lenova will have way more power than my current desktop or laptop so I am looking forward to receiving mine.

Gary
--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
 
gary stepic said:
Maybe I may even consider a Mac if it is superior to most PCs for
photo editing. I am not sure how tough it would be to get the
software I already have, especially photoshop, for Mac and a PC.
Would most software licensing allow me to have mac and pc versions? I
prefer not to go this route.
Click to expand...
I'm told that Adobe, at least, won't let you do this -- you can change a Mac license to PC, or vice versa, but no "combo" is allowed.

A better solution might be to run Parallels or Fusion on a Mac laptop, which will let you run it as a PC -- that way, you won't have to get any new software. My understanding is that even with the 10--15% performance hit of running Photoshop in XP under the Mac OS, your PS operations will still be considerably faster than most PC laptops.

I'm not trying to start a war here -- this is just what I've been told by a few people whom I think know what they're talking about (not rabid Mac fundamentalists). I'm all PC right now, but am considering doing this myself.

--
Steve Green
 
Well Adobe is inconsistent on this. I just went from PC to Mac and have been wrapped up in a knot with Adobe now for several weeks. Lightroom licenses are good on either Mac or PC, but Photoshop CS2/CS3 are not. I bought Mac upgrades to both. Lightroom installed fine. My Mac came with CS2 installed on it (bought used) and I also had a full license of CS2 for Windows. I bought a Mac upgrade to CS3. It wouldn't install, and when I called them I was told that I needed to get a "cross platform upgrade" which is in fact a full license for the Mac (in my case). So they did sell me that and now I've spent 2 weeks faxing and emailing them "Letters of Destruction" trying to get things straight so they can ship me CS3. If you are doing a cross license, I HIGHLY suggest that you call them to do it and don't try to order it online. I am sure I'll eventually get this and have not paid any extra to get it... but its been a nightmare to get straight. But the long answer to your question is that you can NOT use a single license on both Mac and Windows for CS3, but for Lightroom it seems like you can (not sure if that's legal... I just reinstalled on Mac and stopped using the PC).

--
Regards, Mike - Lot's of Canon Stuff
Victory Photo - http://victoryphoto.com
Photographer in the Northeast? NorthEastFoto.com
 
Steve Green65835 said:
My understanding is that even with the
10--15% performance hit of running Photoshop in XP under the Mac OS,
your PS operations will still be considerably faster than most PC
laptops.
Click to expand...
If you're running the same hardware, why would PS running on Xp running on MAC be faster?

-Suntan
 
I said:
Suntan said:
My understanding is that even with the
10--15% performance hit of running Photoshop in XP under the Mac OS,
your PS operations will still be considerably faster than most PC
laptops.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Suntan replied:
Suntan said:
If you're running the same hardware, why would PS running on Xp
running on MAC be faster?
Click to expand...
Not the same hardware -- PC laptop vs Mac laptop. Both Intel-based, but different architecture, as I understand it.

--
Steve Green
 
Steve Green65835 said:
Both Intel-based,
but different architecture, as I understand it.
Click to expand...
Looking at the apple site, they show Core 2 Duo chips of 2.4 or so Ghz, with 2 to 4 Gig of 667 Mhz memory chips. What would be different to give significant performance differences? You can get all that stuff on a regular laptop too. It’s not like Intel offers apple a faster chipset than it offers everybody else.

I don’t understand what would make an apple faster especially given the added hassle of running XP on top of OSX.

-Suntan
 
Even if Mac was faster with the same processor, I wonder of just how much time it would save me and if that time would be worth the headaches of using two different systems. If I had an hours worth of processing and the Mac cut 20 minutes because of just waiting on the computer, than that could make me consider switching. If it only saves about 5 minutes or so, and keep in mind much of my processing time is not computer speed related, then it would not be worth switching.

My guess is there are other factors that would have more of an impact like the type of hard drives, memory, programs automatically starting up when computer is on, processors, etc. I will be going from a 2 GB ram to 3 GB, I will be going from a 2.0 processor to a 2.8. The Lenovo will have some extra memory that is supposed to help in start up time, I will be going from one 160 gb 5200 rpm hard drive to two 7200 rpm 160 gb hard drives, and I will limit programs such as yahoo messenger that are always running. I am hoping this will make a difference.

Both my laptop and desktop have outdated processors so I am anxious for my new Lenova W700 to arrive. The screen is what interests me the most, especially the fact I can automatically color calibrate it and the fact that the color gamut is much better then typical laptops. I also like the idea of DVI connection because I still can use my large destop monitor.

Gary
--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
 
The current Mac hardware is not any special different architecture... it it was, then you wouldn't be able to run Windows on it. If anything, the W700 hardware is higher end than the Mac, depending on how many of its optional features you invested in. I'm running an older dual G5 Power PC based Mac, and the hardware is totally different than Intel.

--
Regards, Mike - Lot's of Canon Stuff
Victory Photo - http://victoryphoto.com
Photographer in the Northeast? NorthEastFoto.com
 
I noticed the delivery date is not promissed and my order said something about 4 weeks. The tech I talked to said something about needing the time to configure the computer but it does not take four weeks, my guess is they are just rolling off the production line and maybe they are not at that point yet.

Hopefully Lenova underpromises and over delivers. Of course I have done without a good computer for sometime and a little longer will not kill me, BUT I WANT IT NOW!

Seriously, I am pretty excited about it.

Gary
--
http://www.expecttowinphotos.com
 
Suntan said:
Looking at the apple site, they show Core 2 Duo chips of 2.4 or so
Ghz, with 2 to 4 Gig of 667 Mhz memory chips. What would be different
to give significant performance differences?
Click to expand...
You underestimate the placebo effect.
 
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