Lightweight laptop for photography?

[andrewj]

Hi,

Does anybody have a good recommendation for a lightweight, Windows-based laptop for digital photo processing?

Over the last few years my regular laptops have been Toshiba tablets (the M200 and M400) which are great general-purpose business devices, but as I have become more aware of colour and colour management I'm no longer satisfied with their screens for photo work. The two main problems are limited brightness and contrast adjustment (which makes profiling them with the HueyPro almost impossible), and perceived colour which varies wildly with even minor changes in screen angle, incident light and viewing position.

At the other end of the scale I've just brought my wife a large 15" Toshiba with a great screen, but it's enormous, and certainly not suitable as a "field" device.

So I suppose I'm looking for something with the following spec:
- Lightweight, ideally <1.5kg
- Windows based
- Good screen colour fidelity, with a reasonable tolerance to viewing angle
- Screen probably about 12" on the diagonal, ideally 4x3 as I shoot a lot in portrait format and widescreen just means that those images are effectively smaller
- Core duo processor, 2GB RAM and a reasonably fast disk.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Andrew

[mcbroomf]

I just bought a refurbed T61 Lenovo on ebay.  12" screen (4:3), 3GB ram, 2.2GB Core2 Duo.  I've not yet tried to calibrate the screen, I use it for quick jpg conversions while traveling and keep the serious work for a desktop.

Mike

[daethon]

If you can wait a little bit...

The Lenovo X300 is probably your best bet...in my opinion...

Check it out...

[soboyle]

Try a used Dell 700M, nice 12 inch screen, light laptop, not huge horsepower, but then you dont really need it for a portable, I works well for me for reviewing and archiving on the road, and save the real processing for when I get home.

[Don Libby]

I use a Dell XPS M1330 w/13" screen, dual core 4gb RAM and external drives for my road machine.  I shoot medium format and wife uses Canon 1Ds III both of which produce huge files.  The Dell seems to handle all this and the internet as well.  You can kiss any new machine goodby that might have a non Vista OS - that said I just upgraded my studio computer from Win XP Pro 64 to Vista Ultimate 64 a couple months ago and have been very pleased.  The laptop is a replacement that I just got from Best Buy came loaded with Vista Ultimate 32 and seems to be okay as well.

In either case find a machine that is upgradable (RAM, drives, etc) and get one with a good screen.  The laptop this one replaced was a 12" and just too small surprised what one inch extra in screen will do for you.  

Best of luck

don

Forgot to add that I had no problems calibrating the screen w/my Spyder

[Jeremy Roussak]

Hi,

Does anybody have a good recommendation for a lightweight, Windows-based laptop for digital photo processing?

Over the last few years my regular laptops have been Toshiba tablets (the M200 and M400) which are great general-purpose business devices, but as I have become more aware of colour and colour management I'm no longer satisfied with their screens for photo work. The two main problems are limited brightness and contrast adjustment (which makes profiling them with the HueyPro almost impossible), and perceived colour which varies wildly with even minor changes in screen angle, incident light and viewing position.

At the other end of the scale I've just brought my wife a large 15" Toshiba with a great screen, but it's enormous, and certainly not suitable as a "field" device.

So I suppose I'm looking for something with the following spec:
- Lightweight, ideally <1.5kg
- Windows based
- Good screen colour fidelity, with a reasonable tolerance to viewing angle
- Screen probably about 12" on the diagonal, ideally 4x3 as I shoot a lot in portrait format and widescreen just means that those images are effectively smaller
- Core duo processor, 2GB RAM and a reasonably fast disk.

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Andrew
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=179234\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Get a MacBook Air, and install Windows?

It meets all your criteria and is as light and slim as you'll find anywhere.

Jeremy

[Morgan_Moore]

Any suggestions?
Thanks
Andrew
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

These probably dont meet any of your creiteria but IF I was a windoze user I would be very interested in [a href=\"http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/products.asp]Toughbooks[/url]

Of course they might actually be light V a regular with a case

S

[geesbert]

i used sony's tz for a while, just perfect fpr on-the-road, small, excellent screen, dvd-burner, long battery life, all the connections you need as a photographer. expensive though...