New Laptop or net book?

[Robt]

I want a travel computer.  I will use it mostly for email and Lightroom. I guess that means I'll be downloading what I shoot onto it as well.  I may do some Lightroom processing but not a lot or anything critical for production-  rather go to my home base PC.

I do not wish to get into the Mac PC argument about this so I will say that my wife uses a Mac book Pro and I lack the intelligence to understand Apple's GUI.  I will stay with a Windows machine.

While I won't use this machine a lot except as above, I think I would like it equipped to last a few years and maybe to be able to take on more tasks if any come up in the future.  I could see that I might want to add Photoshop to it on some trips, for instance.

Battery and reliability are also issues.  I saw last month that Digitaldog, Andrew Rodney needed a PC and chose  a Lenovo, if I had those specs, would that be a good choice for me?  Would or should I add any more to that machine.

Thanks for any help you can give.

If it matters, I do mostly Landscape and am striclty an amateur.

[Steve Weldon]

A little over a year ago I wanted a PC for the same purpose and a bit more.  I wanted the longest battery life, most power, fastest performance, lightest weight, and a usable screen.  I found this 2.4 pound milspec version, i7, x201s Lenovo, dropped a 256gb fast SSD in it, and have been happy since.  The x220 has since replaced it, and when/if they come out with the carbon fiber lightweight higher rez display version I'll replace it.

[neile]

If you want to run Lightroom then don't look anywhere near netbooks. I have a netbook and thought it would work fine for a little device to review images on the road. It's unusable. Lightroom just isn't designed to run on that spec machine.

You'll need a real laptop. I just went through the whole process of trying to find one for photography work and here's a couple of quick thoughts:

Lenovos have rock solid reliability. I've had them through work several times and they're excellent (with the exception of the recent W510, I have no idea what they did to make the trackpad on it so awful, but it's awful).

Dells are cheap but variable reliability. My experience (and those of others) is Dell's initial product quality is highly variable. You may open the box and have a lovely laptop. Or you'll open the box and have a non-working wireless card and a chip in the screen (as my wife's did). But Dell will fix it fast, and then the laptop screams. Oh, and they're *cheap*.

I just bought a Dell XPS 17" (way bigger than a netbook!) with 8GB of RAM, Intel Core i7-2720QM processor, 500GB drive (really irrelevant since I'll be swapping out an SSD and drive from my existing laptop), 1GB NVidia video card, Blue-Ray DVD reader, DVD/CD writer, 9-cell battery, and 17.3in 1920x1080 display. Total cost, including tax and shipping? $1360.77. You can spec out a similar Dell XPS 15" machine that won't be so gigantic in size for less.

!!!

A comparable Lenovo will be right around $2000, based on my research.

Neil

[Lloyd Mayeda]

A comparable Lenovo will be right around $2000, based on my research.

Yes, but I recently spec'd a Lenovo X220 that listed at $2544 but at the time offered sale discounts of $999.12 that brought the check out price to $1544.88 (before taxes).

[neile]

Makes sense, Lloyd. Lenovo or Dell (or any other company for that matter) it pays to check sites like fatwallet.com and slickdeals.net for the latest coupon codes and whatnot.

Neil

[kiefers]

If you want something with more portable value, then you would obviously go for the netbook. But there already are some notebooks with comparable sizes but with better specs.  The thing with netbooks, apart from having a slower rated processor, is the lack in hard drive space. You would then end up getting a new external hard drive to handle your files. which would then add to your cost.  There are notebooks with comparable prices and you might want to check them out.