Suggestions for laptop with good color

[David TM]

I'm looking to replace a laptop - 5yr old Sony Viao - that has good color rendition. While the Sony is a decent enough machine, it's color is pretty bad and, while traveling,  I wouldn't  try to use it to do any color work. I have a good monitor at home to do that. In general I assume that LED backlighting is a preferred choice. Prowling the stores isn't very helpful because the images on display there are so vivid. No store would allow me to plug in my flash drive that has a selection of color cal images on it.

By the way, I live in the windows world.

Thanks for your suggestions and opinions.

Thanks

[graeme]

I find that I get a quite useable screen to print match with my 13" retina macbook. ( I print from Lightroom & use soft proofing. I use a DTP94 puck & BasiCColor Display 5 to calibrate the screen ).

I believe that the macbook will run Windows.

Graeme

[RobSaecker]

I can’t recall the last time I visited a store selling computers that didn’t have working internet access for their display models, which allows you to visit any website you like (your own, perhaps?) to see how the colors are displayed.

[Rhossydd]

I recently bought a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X220. The important aspect to this is that you can get good IPS screens for them and they're dead easy to swap over.
For about £350 I've ended up with a small, fast laptop with a great screen and battery life.

[Erland]

I have a Retina 13, and is very satisfied with the colors and the gamut. The X220 has a nice panel, though the gamut is very small even compared with sRGB. I'd say you should decide between Mac or PC first, and then narrow down your choices.

[Rhossydd]

The X220 has a nice panel, though the gamut is very small even compared with sRGB.

Wide gamuts may not be important to everyone. For me I prefer to have good colour and tonal accuracy across a small gamut, rather than trying to work with screen that shift tones whenever viewing angle shifts at all.
Crucially, it's excellent value for money.

I'd say you should decide between Mac or PC first, and then narrow down your choices.

The OP asks for a Windows machine. Running Windows on a Mac seems to be the worst of both worlds with the advantages of neither.

[AlterEgo]

Thanks for your suggestions and opinions.

you will be better served by visiting forums like :

http://forum.techinferno.com or http://forum.notebookreview.com

[digitaldog]

Running Windows on a Mac seems to be the worst of both worlds with the advantages of neither.

How? It runs Windows natively doesn't it (as well as OS X)? Seems like the best of both worlds...

[Rhossydd]

How?

All the expense of a Mac, none of the economies of a PC.
Don't get me wrong, Macs are fine if to you want to use OSX, but it makes no sense to me to spend that premium and then use another OS.

[Jimbo57]

All the expense of a Mac, none of the economies of a PC.
Don't get me wrong, Macs are fine if to you want to use OSX, but it makes no sense to me to spend that premium and then use another OS.

It certainly makes no sense at all.

Our Photographic Society, for some reason best known to the President at the time, spent an inordinate amount of money on a Macbook Pro.

Then discovered that it would not run the .exe files that all our AVs are run from after compilation in Pictures-to-Exe or ProShow Gold.

So we had to install a Windows partition. So now we have a "Windows Mac" with a third of the power at three times the price of a proper Windows laptop.

[digitaldog]

All the expense of a Mac, none of the economies of a PC.

Ah, OK.

My first Mac (1st computer) was an SE-30 in 1988. I got my first Windows machine probably about 3-4 years ago (a Laptop) running Windows 7 on a Core i5. I could have installed that OS on my Mac running a dual boot and my understating was, due to the Intel chip and such, I'd have an PC (Windows) machine. I use the PC maybe twice a year for maybe 8 hours. Because I hate using it for a number of reasons, many totally subjective. In hindsight, for the storage used for another OS, I could have saved far more money not buying that Lenovo. For the so called expenses of the Mac, I get one machine that can run both OS's (which I should have done) and then some, plus a free OS I vastly prefer.

[Czornyj]

All the expense of a Mac, none of the economies of a PC.
Don't get me wrong, Macs are fine if to you want to use OSX, but it makes no sense to me to spend that premium and then use another OS.

IMO there's nothing fine about Macs - the mini has only 2 core CPUs, the iMac has a display that will eventually fail, and the MP has a lot of overkill, expensive components I don't need at all.

But rMBP is a whole different story - there's virtually no Windows laptop with such decent display, build quality, ergonomy and performance combination.

[Jeremy Roussak]

It certainly makes no sense at all.

Our Photographic Society, for some reason best known to the President at the time, spent an inordinate amount of money on a Macbook Pro.

Then discovered that it would not run the .exe files that all our AVs are run from after compilation in Pictures-to-Exe or ProShow Gold.

Your society bought a Mac and then discovered it wouldn't run Windows software without having Windows installed? That's about as sensible as buying a Hasselblad and then discovering you can't fit your collection of Canon lenses to it.

Jeremy

[D Fosse]

there's virtually no Windows laptop with such decent display, build quality, ergonomy and performance combination.

I agree and even as a Windows guy, MBP is what I usually recommend for laptop. It's just a very sensible machine.

I've been trying to find a good Windows laptop for my wife, and almost gave up. They all have some idiotic "features" that I refuse to pay for. In the end I settled for a Sony Vaio as the closest thing, but it has its shortcomings.

Desktop is a different matter. There I still believe a custom built Windows machine is both economy and performance in one go. If it was only possible to find a decent case that didn't look like something out of "Alien"... <sigh>

[kers]

....
Desktop is a different matter. There I still believe a custom built Windows machine is both economy and performance in one go. If it was only possible to find a decent case that didn't look like something out of "Alien"... <sigh>

I do not like Apples latest Macpro's were everthing is external... It looks only nice as long you have nothing attached. ( so one minute after buying it)
So i like better the old big ones..
But everytime i look at a windows system i just find the whole look of the system so ugly... its design...just awful... Matter of taste no doubt...
I am sure it works well and at lower cost.  Must say i do not like Apples policy at all when it comes to serving a professional market... You just cannot trust them.
they start something and then on a clear day they stop it...
They are more and more consumer focust.

[AlterEgo]

They all have some idiotic "features" that I refuse to pay for.

like what for example ?

[digitaldog]

So i like better the old big ones..

OWC has a few at amazing prices:
Used Apple Mac Pro Quad 3.33GHz Xeon Workstation for $829 (pictured, $3,367 off)
used Apple Mac Pro 8-Core Xeon 2.93GHz Workstation w/ 16GB RAM for $1,429 ($4,719 off))

[Hans Kruse]

Wide gamuts may not be important to everyone. For me I prefer to have good colour and tonal accuracy across a small gamut, rather than trying to work with screen that shift tones whenever viewing angle shifts at all.
Crucially, it's excellent value for money.The OP asks for a Windows machine. Running Windows on a Mac seems to be the worst of both worlds with the advantages of neither.

Using a MacBook Pro you can use an external monitor to your choice and you can choose to run OSX or Windows. Windows can run in two ways, either as a guest in a virtual machine like VMware or natively where you run Windows only and not at the same time as OSX. I would say that as soon as you would run OSX you would pretty quickly forget Windows, but that's just my opinion having used both for extended periods of time. Windows runs really well on the MBP.

[Bearmann]

According to this, the Surface Pro III has a nice (color accurate) screen:

http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_Pro_ShootOut_1.htm

[Rhossydd]

The Surface Pro III is indeed a great machine, but it's expensive, unrepairable and impossible to upgrade.