Your Photography

Conners · *by **Conners** on Thu 25/Feb/10 4:22pm*

I haven't been looking recently, but Dell generally seem to have some pretty sharp prices on their laptops. No idea how they compare with iApples though.

toominator · *by **toominator** on Thu 25/Feb/10 4:43pm*

JohnnyC wrote:
pinkmaggit wrote:you prob want a backup drive also.
Macbook Pro + Lightroom + external 2.5" drive =

Yeah I have a backup drive but at the moment thats the only place I can store my photos. A Macbook is the first thing I've looked at and they seem pretty cool, are there any other brands worth looking at?

You'll pay alot for the mac badge. I'd buy something else and put the savings toward software, i.e. Photoshop and Lightroom

Fango · *by **Fango** on Thu 25/Feb/10 4:52pm*

toominator wrote:You'll pay alot for the mac badge. I'd buy something else and put the savings toward software, i.e. Photoshop and Lightroom

Actually with a Mac you are paying for more than a "badge" - I like the way my Mac runs just as fast today as when I bought it 18 months ago. My (work) PC however just gets slower and slower... I love my Macbook!

JohnnyC · *by **JohnnyC** on Thu 25/Feb/10 7:50pm*

Fango wrote:
toominator wrote:You'll pay alot for the mac badge. I'd buy something else and put the savings toward software, i.e. Photoshop and Lightroom

Actually with a Mac you are paying for more than a "badge" - I like the way my Mac runs just as fast today as when I bought it 18 months ago. My (work) PC however just gets slower and slower... I love my Macbook!

I like the sound of this! Every PC I've used just slooowly grinds to a halt and becomes pretty useless after a few years

RJD · *by **RJD** on Thu 25/Feb/10 9:11pm*

Macbooks came 4th or 5th in a reliability survey in the US, Acer came 1st. There decent machines but you pay for the apple experience.

Which I hate. I just dont get on with OSX in any shape or form, no matter how much I use it. And IMO windows 7 kicks the crap out of it for usbility.

Also remember OSX only has a 32bit Photoshop for now until CS5 comes out, this makes a huge difference in perfomance.

toominator · *by **toominator** on Thu 25/Feb/10 9:58pm*

lol lets not start a mac vs ps war...
there isn't one 'better' computer. It comes down to individual needs. Don't listen to people who have macs and tell you they're better than pcs and don't listen to people who have pcs and tell you they're better than macs.

Macs and PCs will both break and get slower. Apple is probably slightly better at dealing with warrenty issues than PC manufacturers, but again - thats factored into the price.

Basically you should be looking at something that has a good processor (also 64bit), alot of ram, a decent graphics card and a dececnt sized hdd.

The processor can't really be upgraded in a laptop so make sure you have a legit one to start with.

Be wary of places like DSE that will offer you 1gb free ram upgrade. It's not worth that much and you generally get better performance if you have two idendical sticks of ram. Not one 2gb stick of type a and one 1gb stick of type b. So thats an upgrade you can do yourself for not much after you have it home. (Apple stores rip you off for upgrading ram).

You won't need a massive graphics card unless you're gaming but it does make a bit of a difference.

HDD size isn't that important.. you'll idealy have two other drives keeping identical copies of everything anyway. It's also easy and cheap to upgrade your HDD to something larger later if you find the need to.

I've had an acer in the past and while it wasn't anything flash it kept on trucking on and didn't get any of this 'slowing down' that everyone hates on pcs for. Currently got an asus thats 2 years old and I recently upped the ram and hdd together for less than $200 and now it flys (get firefox and go easy on the dodgier porn sites!). My gf has a macbook a year older than my laptop, its slower than mine and cost more, but for what she uses it for (browsing, a bit of photo editing in iPhoto and word processing) it's absolutely fine and she loves it.

Other option is to get a MBP and then dual boot windows if you need too.. they're one nice looking laptop!

Anyway i'm just rambling.. probably best to ignore what i just wrote

znomit · *by **znomit** on Thu 25/Feb/10 10:01pm*

RJD wrote:Macbooks came 4th or 5th in a reliability survey in the US, Acer came 1st. There decent machines but you pay for the apple experience.

Apple 4th, Acer 7th. And not much between the first 5.
http://theappleblog.com/2009/11/17/appl ... ity-study/

WH · *by WH on Fri 26/Feb/10 7:43am*

Sunrise at Mt Maunganui this morning.

RJD · *by **RJD** on Fri 26/Feb/10 8:16am*

znomit wrote:
RJD wrote:Macbooks came 4th or 5th in a reliability survey in the US, Acer came 1st. There decent machines but you pay for the apple experience.

Apple 4th, Acer 7th. And not much between the first 5.
http://theappleblog.com/2009/11/17/appl ... ity-study/

Ah Asus 1st lol well almost got it right

JohnnyC · *by **JohnnyC** on Fri 26/Feb/10 10:17am*

toominator wrote: Basically you should be looking at something that has a good processor (also 64bit), alot of ram, a decent graphics card and a dececnt sized hdd.

The processor can't really be upgraded in a laptop so make sure you have a legit one to start with.

Sweet what processors should I be looking for/steering clear of?

elpalmo · *by **elpalmo** on Fri 26/Feb/10 10:48pm*

Another vote for Macbook/pro + CS4/lightroom + ext HDD. just make sure you get a good reliable laptop with a lot of room. You may spend a bit more now but it will be useful for a lot longer if you buy a quality machine.

Bigfoot · *by **Bigfoot** on Sat 27/Feb/10 8:23am*

I used to have an acer - it was nice, and then it died (had a good run though)

My new acer is annoying and cheap - its a year on and I can't wait to replace it... Metal body FTW.