Laptop PC Question

I'm in serious need of an upgrade to my computer. I'm thinking about switching over from a desktop to a laptop. I understand I can plug my monitor in to the laptop and still use it. But, it is possible to calibrate the desktop monitor (an older Lacie CRT) AND the laptop screen as well? Wondering if this would require two graphics cards? If I can't do this, I may have to rethink the laptop move. Any suggestions for laptops with decent displays? Thanks!

A laptop has a video card. The card has muliple monitor outputs, one of them to the local desplay, but you can calibrate them differently.

http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/110/Calibrating%20Dual%20Or%20Multiple%20Monitors

LD58 said:

I'm in serious need of an upgrade to my computer. I'm thinking about switching over from a desktop to a laptop.

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Do you really need the portability? If not, better to go with a desktop which will generally:

1. Offer more bang for the buck
2. Be much easier to enhance/expand
3. Be much easier to repair/maintain

Thank you! I'm looking at an ASUS laptop, pretty recent with an Intel 3rd generation i5 processor, so I assume it's a fairly new release. Even if I can't calibrate the local monitor, as long as I can manage the other, I'm happy. Thanks for the link. That was a big help.

LD58

Good points. I have a tablet to travel with for e-mail and such, so portability isn't a big issue, just a "nice to have". I'm going to give it serious thought over the weekend. I had thought about the fact that a desktop is easy to repair/replace parts on.

LD58 said:

Good points. I have a tablet to travel with for e-mail and such, so portability isn't a big issue, just a "nice to have". I'm going to give it serious thought over the weekend. I had thought about the fact that a desktop is easy to repair/replace parts on.

Click to expand...

If you don't need portability then a desktop, better yet, a build your own desktop is the way to go, performance increases that are supported by, overclocking, Raid0, or redundancy raid1 or even the ability to add more drives are limited on a laptop. Laptops run hot because of the small space, you can add a bigger fan and overclock with some motherboards. Desktops often come with ports like Firewire, esata and card slots that laptops do not have. Options for Dual DVD or BluRay drives, and other customizations are just not included.

Laptops are generally more expensive because you are paying for size and performance in a small package which always costs more. Gool luck

I agree. If you don't need the portability of a laptop for your editing, then stick with a desktop. Not only is the price/performance of a desktop better than a laptop, the screens on the laptops are not ideal for photo editing. You would be much better served in purchasing a better monitor to edit on if you need two calibrated monitors.

You know your needs better than I do, but the sheer difficulty of calibrating a laptop screen OR an external screen with the non up-gradable display card built into an LT was one of the reasons. No external display controls, limited speed and memory of the display card, all served to make getting the sort of image I want more of a battle on my LT than it was worth.

I have found the flexibility and up-gradability of the desktop to be extremely liberating.

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