Don:
I hate to make this a computer forum but there hasn't been much photo talk
lately so.... Emily's last post made me wonder: How many of you
PHOTOGRAPHERS - on topic now - use a laptop as your main working resource?
Will they suffice for doing PS work with a number of large files and a need
to see detail in images? How do you configure? Can one use the laptop
screen for PS tools and an external monitor for the image without a lot of
problems? Any comments on this might help me decide where my equipment
money goes next.
Don
I bought a second hand Fujitsu Lifebook T4315 not long back for $300 on ebay
since it had a Wacom tablet integrated into it
(http://www.cnet.com.au/fujitsu-lifebook-t4215-339272559.htm ) I fooled
around with it some - then I peeked at the price of a new Wacom Intuos 4 ..
The second hand laptop was cheaper.
And yes, the little laptop has become a lot more appealing as an image
editing machine - with downsides I can see being, my having become
comfortable with multiple monitors and a decent 2D video card. Mind you,
using the tabletPC as a tablet and hooking up and using the second monitor
at full res for the image viewing is certainly pleasant.
Once I had freed up the laptop of a lot of background tasks and shutoff all
the programs that previously fired off at startup, it was more than fast
enough. Having the inbuilt card reader has been very nice and having hot
swappable additional hard drive and DVDRAM drives is convenient..
but on the whole and aside from the integrated tablet, desktop component
built systems offer me a lot more versatility.
Tablet PCs have been around for ages but some of the newer ones have
multitouch if that's of any use..
http://blog.tabletpc.com.au/2010/07/24/special-offer-fujitsu-lifebook-t4310-tablet-pc-for-students/
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/notebooks/fujitsu/lifebook_t5010/328486
http://www.tegatech.com.au/resellers/products/Fujitsu-LifeBook-T900-Tablet-PC.html
the last one retails for over $3000 though, and for this sort of money you
can put togeter a very very serious image editing desktop! A secondhand
laptop might not be eveyone's cup of tea but since they've been around for
almost adecade they are appearing on the market quick enough.
there's even a modded apple available in tablet form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiotron_Modbook
k
