Budget Laptop for Lightroom / Photoshop use

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Hi,

My 5 year old Vaio is giving up the ghost with random blue screens of death and struggles with anything resource heavy with its 512mb RAM and a 1.4Gh processor.

So my intention is to buy a laptop for general use, but that can run Lightroom and basic Photoshop (as I'm a processing noob) tasks. My budget is restricted to around £350ish. I'm thinking of buying this Acer laptop tonight:

http://www.cdiscount.co.uk/Computing/laptops/laptopsbysize/from15to16/acer-aspire-5735---lx-au50x-018-/f-1077-177978.html

It's 399, but you get £80 (20%) vouchers back to spend on their site, which I could put down to external harddrive or something else, I'm sure I could find something to spend the money on.

How do you think this laptop will manage for my needs? The basic spec are: Core 2 Duo T5800 2Gh processor, 4GB ram & onboard Intel graphics card.

I am also tempted by this Toshiba: http://www.cdiscount.co.uk/Computing/laptops/laptopsbysize/17andabove/toshiba-satellite-l350-171-notebook/f-1078-182480.html as it's 17" compared to the first one, but only has 2Gb RAM and is £20 more expensive, but same processor, video card and hard drive as far as I can tell.

Really need to make my decision tonight as this 20% voucher spend ends tonight. Many thanks for the advice.
 
I have the Toshiba. Had it for a while and it's been great. Plenty fast enough. I run Lightroom, CS4 etc on mine with no problems. IT's been knocked off the sofa a couple of times and still keeps going. The 17" screen is great, very sharp and the colours are very good.
 
My Son has been using an Acer laptop for about 1 yr now.He does quite alot of photoshop and auto-cad and can't fault it.Good value for money
 
You can add ram to the Toshiba I'm sure, if you decide to go for the smaller screen size head to Tesco and buy the £349 Dell 1520, I reckon it will be a better built machine than the Acer..

/Edit actually Tesco are doing a 17" Dell for £429 http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.205-3557.aspx
 
Thanks for your comments, i had a quick look and it's about £20 to get an extra 2gb of ram for the Toshiba, so that's nice and cheap.

Just worried whether the £420(minus £85) is a good deal. I was after a good spec deal for £349 from Dell from their small business website, but they stopped the deal/loophole an hour before I was going to order. Thanks for those links to the Tesco Dells, but if I understand correctly, those processors are rather slower than the T5800 in the Acer / Toshiba.
 
True, but they will still fly compared to your old vaio :)

That said the Toshiba does look better specced all round and if you're not carrying it around too much 17" is a good size..
 
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