Laptop spec for photo editing

I am looking at buying a new laptop for storing & editing my photo's, I am looking at the "Dell Latitude D630 & D830" as these also have the HSDPA mobile broadband built in, Does anyone have any experience of these models or any other advise/recommendations also what sort of spec ideally should I be looking at for processors, memory, graphics cards etc etc

MANY THANKS

Paul

Hi Paul,

I have the D630. The display seems decent and I was able to get a good calibration. If you use WinXP you should max out at 3 gigs of RAM and if you use Vista I think the OS can use more. For photo editing, you need as much ram as you can get. Also make sure to get a 7200rpm HD. You'll also want to buy a Cardbus or Expresscard reader for copying your photos onto the laptop.

Cheers

James

Thanks for the info James,

What about screen resolution, the D630 has two options 1280 x 800 resolution or 1440 x 900 resolution @ £14 extra, as for operating system I get the impression it is better sticking with XP rather than Vista.

Thanks again

Paul

I use a compal 1fl90 that I bought from powernotebooks.com There is a newer model that has the latest intel cpus and chipsets. very reasonably priced. 15.4" 168x1050 matte screen, 4 GB ram mine has a 120 GB 7200 rpm hard drive and an intel T7700 CPU, runs great no complaints, about a year old. weighs 7 pounds.

I would configure with a larger hard drive.

I use a compal 1fl90 that I bought from powernotebooks.com There is a newer model that has the latest intel cpus and chipsets. very reasonably priced. 15.4" 168x1050 matte screen, 4 GB ram mine has a 120 GB 7200 rpm hard drive and an intel T7700 CPU, runs great no complaints, about a year old. weighs 7 pounds.

I would configure with a larger hard drive.

I'm using the model from the year before Hel 80 bought through Voodoo PC with 2 gb ram, 2.33 core2duo, 80 gb 7200 HDD and a 1680x1050 display.

I'm not overly impressed with the display and I plan on buying an Apple monitor to help me with ediiting.

Otherwise this laptop is really fast.

If you use WinXP you should max out at 3 gigs of RAM and if you use Vista I think the OS can use more. For photo editing, you need as much ram as you can get. Also make sure to get a 7200rpm HD. You'll also want to buy a Cardbus or Expresscard reader for copying your photos onto the laptop.

James is right.

Yes, if you use 64-bit Vista you can use as much ram as it'll hold. And yeah, if you want to edit on a laptop, fast drives are a must. Can't wait for SSD drives to come down in price.....

Hey Paul

I'm using a two year old Sony VAIO laptop with 1GB RAM running XP Pro and can edit using Photoshop CS2, Lightroom, Elements 6.0 or Capture NX without a problem.

The video card is only 1260x800 though and I'm just trying to work out if I can use an external high resolution monitor rather than the 13" screen. So maybe worth checking on the video card angle if you want to use a larger monitor at some stage.

Hi!

I use a Macbook (Core2Duo, 2.2ghz) with 4 gb ram. Runs Lightroom without a hitch, and sometimes I plug my Iiyama 19" CRT as secondary display for photo editing. But I find the 13,3" display to be enough for most of the time.

zook