Laptop recommendations for Photoshop?

[Kermit power]

Evening all,

My desktop is pretty much on its last legs... Takes forever to load and process photos, if I'm also using it to play music, the music stutters when it's processing the photos, and it has an alarming habit of randomly turning itself off from time to time. At the moment, it's such a chore to use that it's putting me off taking photos

I'm thinking laptop to replace it, so that I can also plug it into my plasma in the lounge when I want to, but I don't really know what constitutes "decent" in terms of performance for processing photos, so I'm hoping you chaps can advise.

I've got a budget of around £1,000. I've got tablets and my work laptop with which to be mobile, so it doesnt' matter if it's big. The loathing I have for my work iPad (sooo stunted and restrictive when compared to Android) is such that I really don't think I could bring myself to contemplate a Mac, so Windows only, please.

Mods, I deliberately put this in here rather than the computers and gadgets section, as other than web browsing and other things which could be done on the most basic of machines, all my workload is going to be processing photos, so thought I'd get more specifically relevant recommendations in here.

[Kermit power]

covmutley said:

£500 laptop and a decent monitor

Would it have sufficient grunt, do you think? I've already got a decent external monitor, and I'm happy enough with the photos I get from processing. It's just the vast amount of time I spend looking at the hour glass which makes me feel like throwing it out of the window!!!

[Kermit power]

Craikeybaby said:

Why a laptop if it doesn't have to be mobile and you already have a good monitor? You get much more for your money with a desktop, plus it is easier to add extra memory/storage/up the graphics capability. A new power supply (random switch offs will probably be due to this overheating, maybe even give it a clean with an air duster) and an SSD drive for Windows/Photoshop scratch file will make a big difference.

It would be better to say it doesn't have to be easily mobile, I suppose. It will generally live in my study up in the loft conversion, but there are times when I'll want to use it to watch internet only programmes (thinks like the Mountain Bike Enduro World Cup before people get too many smutty ideas!) on my plasma in the comfort of my lounge, plus if I go for something with a 17" screen, I'd probably take that one on holiday for the kids to watch DVDs in the evening. Lastly, on a full summer holiday, I'm likely to want to at least transfer photos off my memory cards even if I don't choose to process them there and then, so wouldn't want to lug a desktop along.

What I'm not going to do is bung it in a backpack and cycle 15 miles to work with it. I've got my small work laptop for that.

[Kermit power]

Craikeybaby said:

For TV stuff an Apple TV, or chrome cast is a more elegant solution & pretty cheap.

I loathe Apple stuff, due to it being so inflexible and horrible to use (thinking iTunes, iPad and App Store here compared to the Android equivalents), but what does the Chrome Cast offer? I'd still need the laptop - or be prepared to fiddle around entering everything on my phone - wouldn't I?

[Kermit power]

Foliage said:

What's your current PCs spec?

It's an Evesham Solar Quattro 500 SLI. It was pretty decent spec - and almost £1,400!! - when I bought it in 2007, shortly before the bloody company went bust!

The processor is an Intel® Core?2 Extreme Processor QX6700 (Quad Core 2x 4MB cache, 1066MHz), with 8Gb of (fairly slow old DDR2) RAM and a Novatech GeForce GTX260 Sonic SLI 896MB DDR3 graphics card.

Edited by Kermit power on Tuesday 2nd June 16:21

[Kermit power]

Craikeybaby said:

I've not used a chrome cast, but from what I can tell you select what you want to watch on your phone and send it to the chrome cast. No wires & no need to leave the sofa.

But presumably that means you can't play Flash content that won't play on your mobile? I can't see it being a viable alternative to a laptop plugged in via HDMI, really...