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chez1980

chez1980

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Hi there, I am a newborn photographer. I haven't been going very long & still have lots to learn.

Not sure if this is the right area to post this but I need to upgrade my laptop. Although my screen is calibrated its a bad screen & it's slow.
I have 1000 to spend but what screens should I be looking for, can anyone recommend?
I have considered a mac but room is limited for a computer desk so that's why I'm looking for a new laptop x
 
macbook? New they're over your budget, but you might be able to pick one up secondhand?
 
Have a look on Apples refurbished website here

You still get a years warranty on it and the ability to do applecare, which I would recommend but you can certainly get a MacbookPro 13" for about £800.. maybe less!
 
Or, how about keeping the laptop and getting a decent i p s monitor which you can plug into any future laptop without having to shell out big bucks on a new laptop now? Look at e computers ebay shop, Dell u2410
 
My duel core i5 2.5ghz 8gig ram unit cost me £425 that's with a 17 inch wide screen. The screen has a gamut as wide as sRGB which is fine for my needs and runs CS6 no problem. The only reason for spending more is for a wider gamut screen. If only spend more if the screen was significantly better but that doesn't bother me since my printer can't do more than sRGB.
 
Okay, get a new, low budget laptop, it'll run photoshop fine, and that fab monitor I mentioned earlier, personally can't see the point in paying huge bucks for a mac
 
Macs look pretty but don't do anything special and cost a lot more. It's the software you work with rather than the machine, and that works the same on either platform.

I have a cheap Acer i5 laptop (£400 Tescos) that runs Lightroom/Photoshop well, but the screen is rubbish so it feeds a nice Dell monitor (£250 Amazon). Laptop screen is fine running as a second monitor though - makes a good cost-effective dual-screen set up :thumbs:

Edit: i5 and 8gb ram minimum really, i7 and 16gb for processing a lot of big image files. Doable for £1k, just ;)
 
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I don't get why people recommend Macs so readily? I'm not against them, I have an iphone and now an ipad mini, but for the price of a mac you'll get a beast of a laptop.

I recently bought an Acer V3-771G - Intel i7-3610QM with turbo boost, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia Geforce 640M 2GB chip, blu-ray ... and it was £800 - it'll out run any mac in that price range. For an i7 mac you're talking £1000+
 
Cagey75 said:
I don't get why people recommend Macs so readily? I'm not against them, I have an iphone and now an ipad mini, but for the price of a mac you'll get a beast of a laptop.

I recently bought an Acer V3-771G - Intel i7-3610QM with turbo boost, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia Geforce 640M 2GB chip, blu-ray ... and it was £800 - it'll out run any mac in that price range. For an i7 mac you're talking £1000+
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It's a religion. You can't fight it.
 
Cagey75 said:
I don't get why people recommend Macs so readily? I'm not against them, I have an iphone and now an ipad mini, but for the price of a mac you'll get a beast of a laptop.

I recently bought an Acer V3-771G - Intel i7-3610QM with turbo boost, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia Geforce 640M 2GB chip, blu-ray ... and it was £800 - it'll out run any mac in that price range. For an i7 mac you're talking £1000+
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HoppyUK said:
It's a religion. You can't fight it.
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:thinking: you two didn't read the OP then, where she mentioned that she has thought about a mac but thought them out of her fairly substantial budget and space restrictions? We simply pointed out that they didn't have to be. So no, not a religion, just responding to the actual post.
 
it wasn't aimed at you, just in general why people suggest macs? Op only said they thought on it, but it's no harm to guide them to something better for the money surely?
 
Cagey75 said:
I don't get why people recommend Macs so readily? I'm not against them, I have an iphone and now an ipad mini, but for the price of a mac you'll get a beast of a laptop.

I recently bought an Acer V3-771G - Intel i7-3610QM with turbo boost, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia Geforce 640M 2GB chip, blu-ray ... and it was £800 - it'll out run any mac in that price range. For an i7 mac you're talking £1000+
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HoppyUK said:
It's a religion. You can't fight it.
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Because they work :D:D

More seriously although the initial outlay is higher, the resale value will also be much higher as well, and more then negate the initial outlay.I was talking to the guy who writes Focal the other day, he was quite annoyed that the maths behind his program works faster on OSx then on Win (on a like for like system)
 
I use a Dell Studio from ecomputers, who I think are sellers of refurbed Dell equipment, they certainly had plenty of Dell laptops for sale at the time. I7 processor with 6GB of ram, it handles CS5 and LR4 well, very well bearing in mind I am processing D800 files. It also runs the laptop screen and monitor screen as either a twin display or extended screen, and cost me £675.

Add an ips screen and it suits me very nicely, and comes within your budget.
 
I blame Cagey, the BLASPHEMER :eek:
 
Cagey75 said:
it wasn't aimed at you, just in general why people suggest macs? Op only said they thought on it, but it's no harm to guide them to something better for the money surely?
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no, no harm in expressing your opinion at all, but nor is it worth having a quick dig about the mac recomendations [when they were merely answering the query and restrictions] knowing full well that you are likely to start yet another needless mac v pc debate, boring most people, winding a few up, and possibly putting off the OP from posting again. perhaps you might like to consider such things in the future.



For everyone, lets offer valuble information please, not another 'my machine is better than yours' debate. Thanks
 
Yv said:
no, no harm in expressing your opinion at all, but nor is it worth having a quick dig about the mac recomendations [when they were merely answering the query and restrictions] knowing full well that you are likely to start yet another needless mac v pc debate, boring most people, winding a few up, and possibly putting off the OP from posting again. perhaps you might like to consider such things in the future.



For everyone, lets offer valuble information please, not another 'my machine is better than yours' debate. Thanks
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Nobody was having a dig.You're reading way too much into it, even after I've explained myself! I even said in my post I have an iphone and ipad ... I'm not a bit anti-mac at all. The rest of your post is unnecessary as nobody was starting anything ... I gave the OP a very good alternative which will be better for the money. Doesn't matter what I use.

OP thanked after my reply, meaning it was helpful.
 
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mac are lovely but can you get all the software you want? do you have to buy anymore?
also you can get decent screens on a windoze laptop and get more value for money
the chassis won't be as tidy but the power behind it will be pretty good and better value for money I think.

That HP is nice but too much ram maybe? also any new laptop will have windows 8 on it :(
also HP machines (for home) have REALLY glossy screens on them which might misrepresent your colours...??
also can you squeeze a hybrid drive into there instead of a normal HDD? or maybe a dual drive setup, one ssd and one HDD
if you do though it's much cheaper to upgrade it yourself instead of buying stock
 
DizMatt said:
mac are lovely but can you get all the software you want? do you have to buy anymore?
also you can get decent screens on a windoze laptop and get more value for money
the chassis won't be as tidy but the power behind it will be pretty good and better value for money I think.

That HP is nice but too much ram maybe? also any new laptop will have windows 8 on it :(
also HP machines (for home) have REALLY glossy screens on them which might misrepresent your colours...??
also can you squeeze a hybrid drive into there instead of a normal HDD? or maybe a dual drive setup, one ssd and one HDD
if you do though it's much cheaper to upgrade it yourself instead of buying stock
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Hi there thanks for reply, I'm not very technical. Is too much ram bad? The hp I have been looking at has a Matt screen. Its so hard trying to pick something x
 
Thanks to all who replied, I appreciate everyone taking the time to reply. I could find a computer page when I was looking to post my question. I just save a good laptop, with a good screen, plenty of memory etc to run all my program's and store files. My laptop is struggling for all of the above.

Cheryl
 
chez1980 said:
Thanks for all the replies, I used been looking at apple but I am worried about leaving windows.
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Apple Macs are all PCs now, so you can wipe the disk and install Windows if you want.
 
Yv said:
no, no harm in expressing your opinion at all, but nor is it worth having a quick dig about the mac recomendations [when they were merely answering the query and restrictions] knowing full well that you are likely to start yet another needless mac v pc debate, boring most people, winding a few up, and possibly putting off the OP from posting again. perhaps you might like to consider such things in the future.

For everyone, lets offer valuble information please, not another 'my machine is better than yours' debate. Thanks
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Reading this thread and if you ask me cagey75 hasn't tried to induce some sort of row or anything of that nature.

I say fair play for actually stating you can get a technically better machine for less money. I use an iMac myself so I'm in no way anti mac. He's just offering another option!
 
Following on from a comment from DizMatt.

I haven't seen any Windows based laptop for a few years that does not have a glossy screen which I find very difficult to use for photographic work. Do Macs, or any other laptop, have matt screens?

Dave
 
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