Esben Larsen
Forum Enthusiast
I bought the Dell Studio 16 about 2 months ago. I did a lot of research and this was my choice of main components:
Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU. Only the T9600 was faster but had a poor price/performance trade-off.
i7 was very expensive compared to the Core 2 Duo. The i7 at comparably lower clock speeds is only going to perform faster if more than 2 cores are being used. This means: never for general Windows use, rarely for games, probably always for Photoshop. I did not think it was worht the money, but my next laptop will certainly have a quad-core CPU.
8gb 800mhz DDR2 memory. 8gb was the max available, anything less I would later regret. DDR3 and 1066mhz laptop memory is expensive with very little performance boost.
Average 512mbh graphics card. I game a little so I can't use on-board, otherwise I would have chosen on-board for less heat generation, fan noise and power consumption. The graphics card is 3D and does nothing for 2D image editing.
512mb cards perform better than 1gb cards as they have faster memory. You don't need more than 512mb on a laptop for gaming.
Extended battery which also lifts the back of the laptop up for better airflow. You need a lot of good cooling and airflow when doing Photoshop on a laptop, my old LG I had to put on books for Lightroom not to crash!
HD screen - the more resolution the better, games run fine in HD resolution as well. I set DPI to 120 to make things a little larger/easy to look at, while maintaining the high actual resolution, it gives a very pleasing image.
DVD-burner. The BD-burner was very expensive to add and a DVD still holds a lot. An external BD-burner seems a better choice, will probably be cheaper and can be re-used when you buy a new laptop.
The laptop rocks with Lightroom and Photoshop and games that are not state-of-the-art.
Nice things I would have liked to have: back-lit keyboard, SSD-drive (I will upgrade to this).
Generally when buying a laptop I try to find parts with the best price/performance trade-off. If you maximize everything in performance it will be very expensive, and if you buy too cheap you will have too many bottlenecks.
Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU. Only the T9600 was faster but had a poor price/performance trade-off.
i7 was very expensive compared to the Core 2 Duo. The i7 at comparably lower clock speeds is only going to perform faster if more than 2 cores are being used. This means: never for general Windows use, rarely for games, probably always for Photoshop. I did not think it was worht the money, but my next laptop will certainly have a quad-core CPU.
8gb 800mhz DDR2 memory. 8gb was the max available, anything less I would later regret. DDR3 and 1066mhz laptop memory is expensive with very little performance boost.
Average 512mbh graphics card. I game a little so I can't use on-board, otherwise I would have chosen on-board for less heat generation, fan noise and power consumption. The graphics card is 3D and does nothing for 2D image editing.
512mb cards perform better than 1gb cards as they have faster memory. You don't need more than 512mb on a laptop for gaming.
Extended battery which also lifts the back of the laptop up for better airflow. You need a lot of good cooling and airflow when doing Photoshop on a laptop, my old LG I had to put on books for Lightroom not to crash!
HD screen - the more resolution the better, games run fine in HD resolution as well. I set DPI to 120 to make things a little larger/easy to look at, while maintaining the high actual resolution, it gives a very pleasing image.
DVD-burner. The BD-burner was very expensive to add and a DVD still holds a lot. An external BD-burner seems a better choice, will probably be cheaper and can be re-used when you buy a new laptop.
The laptop rocks with Lightroom and Photoshop and games that are not state-of-the-art.
Nice things I would have liked to have: back-lit keyboard, SSD-drive (I will upgrade to this).
Generally when buying a laptop I try to find parts with the best price/performance trade-off. If you maximize everything in performance it will be very expensive, and if you buy too cheap you will have too many bottlenecks.
