On 10/23/06, Marilyn Dalrymple <marilyn160@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello, I am ready to buy a lap top or notebook (what's the difference?) computer to use for general work and to display PowerPoint presentations on photography and nonphotography related projects. I'd like to start with items some of you have had experience with. If some of you would be willing to name some pros and cons of this type of computer you are familiar with it would be helpful to me.
While certainly arguments can be made for more expensive, "name-brand" laptops, my recent experience is mostly with cheap, low-end systems (an e-machines and an Acer). These cost $600 in January of 2005, and about $900 sometime last spring, respectively. I'm also using a Thinkpad T42, definitely a "name-brand" model, for work for the last year. I have found the cheap systems surprisingly satisfactory. There really hasn't been anything wrong with any of them that wasn't obvious from the specification (for example my e-machines laptop has only 512MB of ram; I believe I could expand it, and may some day). They both include optical disk writers (the Acer even writes DVDs), which is one of the primary uses for a laptop in the field for photography. I don't actually find 512MB inadequate for D200 images in CS2, though I imagine layering could rapidly render it inadequate. I don't do that level of complexity in the field too much. Essentially every laptop I see in the store has "plenty" of hard disk, for a weekend or a week. Maybe not for a month of professional full-time work, but with the disk writer stuff can be archived off-line (in multiple copies!); and of course the hard drives can be upgraded, or you can use an external drive. One of the questions today is size and weight. You can get quite large screens, but of course the whole computer is then that big. And quite small ones, 12-inch models. These days the 15" seem to be the default, with significantly larger or smaller models costing extra. Pick what you want, and pay accordingly :-). There don't seem to be good specifications for LCD screens, and I haven't yet learned what to look for even. I see it commonly stated that cheap LCD monitors are often 6 bits per color (18 bits total) rather than 8 bits per color, but that's not a specification published about most of the monitors. And with carefully chosen demonstration photos, it's hard to tell by looking. Generally speaking, laptop screens will calibrate with units that support LCD monitors. If you didn't already know, the Adobe license for Photoshop allows you to install your copy on *two* computers you use and own, so it's easy and legal even with CS[2] with its "phone home" activation to have a copy on your desktop and a copy on your laptop. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
