light travel laptop

Hi All

im looking for some help , im going on a dive holiday in about 6weeks and i want to get myself a laptop to store ,view , photoshop and show off my images. and perhaps watch a few dvds on the long flight over. and i want it cheap!

what i would like is a laptop with enough ram to process jpegs from a 10MP camera in photoshop so 1 gig , a reasonable processor , memory well anything 80gb or over will be fine but i will probally use a redundent hard drive as well . and mostly important weight , i would like to keep it around, or even better under 2kg, so a 12" or !3" screen would be good .

and finally the money im just about broke after paying for airfare , accom, diving ect. so around $500 US would be great , i would even buy 2nd hand , but there seem to be some good deals out there on new laptops at the moment so i thought i might be able to get one new at near to my budget.

can anyone recomend a model that might fit the bill , or can anyone recomend a online laptop shop with bargin prices. im based in Australia but i dont have a problem buying stuff from good sellers overseas.

comments or information welcome

Ps were off to the Maldives and Malaysia (Layang Layang ) for 23 days of diving and holiday fun :-)

Regards

Matt

i use a sony vaio tx1xtp for when i am travelling. from memory i think it weighs 1.1kg. it has 11" screen. i run PS fine on it and also use it for running sony vegas ( video editing ) i have had no problems with it. it wasnt a cheap piece of kit but i have had it a few years now so you might be able to pick one up on ebay. i also carry a small 80gb external hard drvie for backing up.

Light, cheap, powerful - you can have any two, not all three!

If you choose light/cheap, then you won't be able to run PS. The ASUS eee would fit the bill.

I would opt for an older second-hand 11" VAIO, if you can find one.

I second what jlyle said..... I have a Fujitsu U1010 UMPC.... It runs CS3 and lightroom fine but really slow... on a dive trip, it is not enough to process all you pics but it can do the few that you may want to show off.....

I go SO fed up with the processor speed that I went out and got a Vaio TZ298 with hybrid 60gb SSD and 250 HD drive..... I am happy now

I have a IBM T-42 Thinkpad (Screen size 14-inches), Pentium 1500 Mhz processor with 700 gb of ram, running on Windows 2000 with Photoshop CS I can unload for $300.

It's not a laptop, but why not one of the photo safe card reader/HDD combo units? You can't process, and if you're shooting RAW might not be able to even view the photos..but they are auto-downloaded from the card for safekeeping in case the camera floods, and they're way cheaper than a laptop, in your current money crunch situation.

I have a IBM T-42 Thinkpad (Screen size 14-inches), Pentium 1500 Mhz processor with 700 gb of ram, running on Windows 2000 with Photoshop CS I can unload for $300.

I have no financial stake in any of these transactions but I can vouch for the ruggedness of the T42P

I have owned 2 of them, and one of my clients recently moved from IBM to Dell and none of the T42P folks would give theirs up. Most are still being used even today.

stewsmith,

How do you find the screen on the Sony for editing images? Aren't they really over saturated, I have a Sony and love it for slideshows and watching movies, the screen is off the charts, though a little too OTT for photo editing. When I got another laptop I noticed my images were way off!

thanks for the information all

after some research it looks like i might have to extend my $ up towards $1000. i would like to get a laptop with enough power to make it enjoyable to use.

re the portable storage option . i have had 2 types in the past and found them to be unreliable , and prone to crashing at the worst time . even if they have improved im a bit shy of them. and i gues SD cards are so cheap i could just buy a few more 2gb cards .

for photo backup i can just buy a laptop hard drive in a enclosure and use a friends laptop to backup photos , but i really wanted to be able to process images in photoshop and get them ready for a photo comp ill be going in at Layang Layang resort in Malaysia .

thanks for the information

Matt

stewsmith,

How do you find the screen on the Sony for editing images? Aren't they really over saturated, I have a Sony and love it for slideshows and watching movies, the screen is off the charts, though a little too OTT for photo editing. When I got another laptop I noticed my images were way off!

i also have a t40 thinkpad for work and the same images that i edit on the sony look ok to me on the T40, none of the laptops are calibrated. i have posted a few images on here and no one has given comments regarding over saturation. but having said that the standards of my photography are not too clever to begin with. i will have a look at some of my shots on my home pc when i get home on friday and compare.

Don't bother discussing the colors on the display unless you've calibrated it w/ a colorimeter like the Spyder or Eyeone.

I personally liked my wife's old Latitude 700M. It was small and light and reliable.

Cheers

James

I bought a 15" Fujitsu - for the best screen color, but it weights a ton. If I had to do it over it would be a 10 or 12 " screen light weight. We use it for 1 st pass discarding and do major editing at home on a desk top.

Don't bother discussing the colors on the display unless you've calibrated it w/ a colorimeter like the Spyder or Eyeone.

James can you tell me more about this? I'm sure my laptop is way out... Is there a forum on calibrating laptop screens?

My old Sony didn't saturate images, it was simply that the images look really fantastic on the Sony screen and not as brilliant on other screens.

i have a 14" Acer with 2GB Ram, 80GB, and dual 2 G AMD Turion processor, cost me about $700. Its very light, probably half of my old Fujitsu.

Processes PS and HDV video pretty quickly

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Apple yet. Has Drew not seen this thread yet?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Apple yet. Has Drew not seen this thread yet?

I don't think you can get a Mac for less than about $1500...

Oops, missed that point didn't I -- der!

gotta pay for that 'style' premium. (Yet in the mac ad, the mac guy can't seem to afford a razor. go figure....)