Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: Hayhill on December 13, 2013, 06:35:51 pm
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I am a newbie to the site, but have been a LR user for a long time. I am looking for advice from a few real "road warriors" as to what I should choose to replace my old, heavy, laptop with. I love to travel with a tablet, but photographically speaking that doesn't work. I want to back up my photos (sometime 60 gigs or more), and to at least start the editing process with deleting the misses, and doing keywording and the like while I still remember what I was shooting. A 2 in 1 laptop/tablet seems possible. Any suggestions. Thanks
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Hi Woody, welcome to LuLa.
You don't say whether you are a Windows or an Apple man.
Nonetheless, there are very usable laptops from both Apple and various manufacturers of Windows machines.
I just store my images on external hard drives.
I recently spent five weeks in Africa with a 13" MacBook Pro and several 2 terabyte external drives.
Australian customs are absolutely anally retentive about weight issues - they did not look twice at this combination as carry-on.
Lr runs well on this machine.
Interestingly enough my main imaging workstation is a Windows 7 machine so I used an application to allow my Apple MacBook Pro to recognize drives formatted for Windows machines.
All ran without a hitch.
It would not surprise me if there is an angle to your question that is yet to surface so feel free to describe your requirements in more detail.
Tony Jay
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Thanks, Tony. I am a Windows & Android type of guy. I think I agree with you - a 13 inch laptop may be the way to go.
Woody
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Hi Woody:
I was facing the exact same decision last summer. For background, I'm also a Windows / Android guy. And a dedicated Lightroomer. On previous trips, I would just use my current work laptop, which for the past few years was a Lenovo. Wonderful (for work) machine, but the display just isn't up to snuff.
So I was on the hunt for a 13" display, 1920 resolution, USB 3, lightest package possible. The Sony Duo 11 had been favorably reviewed on this site, but that size display is just too small to be effective for LR.
Enter the Sony Duo 13. If you read the many reviews, watch YouTube videos, you'll see that people were amazed that Sony seemed to actually listen to nearly all the gripes about the Duo 11 and fixed them.
It's got Windows 8, and the screen is touch enabled. You can use it like a tablet, or slide it open and voila it is a laptop. It weighs 1.8 lbs and has the smallest power supply I have ever seen for a "notebook." The display is gorgeous and quite accurate, which is what I was looking for on the road. I bought the fastest processor and biggest SSD.
It also has a built in SD card reader, which was a bonus. Touch really brings Win8 to life. Plus there is a cool stylus to use on the screen. Battery life is about 8-9 hours.
I should also say I'm relatively prejudiced against Sony for computers, because I see them more as a camera/music/tv type company. I have previously owned two Sony laptops that were pretty marginal.
But this one is a great machine and at the moment I don't see how it can be bettered for a Windows based travel photography machine.
There is one ongoing issue which is discussed in the sony forums ad nauseum. Poor wifi. There's just some issue with the Broadcom wireless adapter. But you just buy a $10 usb wifi, which barely even protrudes. Solved. I don't generally need more than one USB port at a time anyway. Some people have sent theirs back, saying they can't live with a $1500+/- computer that has crappy wifi. Whatever.
I took the Duo 13 on a 3 week trip to Europe, and it was just great. Read up on it!
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Thanks, Bob. This may be exactly what I am looking for. Inwill check it out in detail.
Woody
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Hi Woody,
I switched to a new laptop for my travelling just a few month ago. And to make a long story short: Speed is king. Buy a notebook with the fastest CPU possible. The one I bought does have an Intel Core i7 3610QM 2.3GHz which is really fun to work with with LR. Having a SSD drive (with the LR catalog on it) instead of a regular HD can improve performance additionally.
Thomas