Hi I wondered if anyone can help me with ideas for a laptop that will run LR3, I need a laptop as I am gonna be travelling and I would rather not go down the mac route, can't really afford it and I know how to make a PC work when it gets dodgy, no idea what to do with a mac. I have looked at several acers (5742/5551), HPs ((Dv6/G62) and Dells (Inspiron/XPS) I have a rough budget of 500-600 but is bendable. I know that I need a decent screen and batt life, but is the i5 ok or do I really need the i7 and how important is a graphics card for LR3??
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Need a Laptop to run LR3
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swanseamale47
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Pretty much any modern laptop should have enough spec to run LR, my years old Dell runs it fine, a bigger issue is can you calibrate the screen? if theres little or no ajustment your going to have problems getting the colours or exposures right.
Chappers
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Lightroom doesn't put too much demand on the processor so the i5 should be fine. I would think about increasing the memory to 4Gb though.
A lot of laptop screens don't calibrate that well, however the beauty of using a program such as Lightroom is that you are only making adjustments to meta data not the original image. So you can always re process the image without any quality loss when you return.
As the video card will be integrated on the main board then you really don't have too much choice. With Lightroom you are only doing 2D rendering anyway, not high frame rate 3D video
I would add a decent back up drive to your budget,
A lot of laptop screens don't calibrate that well, however the beauty of using a program such as Lightroom is that you are only making adjustments to meta data not the original image. So you can always re process the image without any quality loss when you return.
As the video card will be integrated on the main board then you really don't have too much choice. With Lightroom you are only doing 2D rendering anyway, not high frame rate 3D video
I would add a decent back up drive to your budget,
tdodd
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I've been running Lightroom 1, 2 and 3 on a now 4 year old Dell XPS M1710 laptop with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 3.2GB of usable RAM. LR3 runs OK but big raw files such as those from a 5D2 or 7D take a little while to render fully, but I get by. The point is that even a creaky old machine like that will do the job.
If you want a well specified modern machine at a fair price then you might like to look at the stuff on offer from the eBay trader who supplied my machine. Some are brand new and some are warranted refurbs or customer returns. Many come with three years on site warranty and offer great value. He has mega positive feedback. Here's the link....
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/eComputers-LTD
If you want a well specified modern machine at a fair price then you might like to look at the stuff on offer from the eBay trader who supplied my machine. Some are brand new and some are warranted refurbs or customer returns. Many come with three years on site warranty and offer great value. He has mega positive feedback. Here's the link....
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/eComputers-LTD
Thanks for that, I just presumed you could calibrate any screen, up to the best the hardware can do at least anyway. I use a spyder 2 express on my desktop and it just tells you to reset the settings to factory and then calibrates from there. I think would need different calibration profiles for different lighting conditions just to get the best out of a laptop screen. I thought I might be able to get away with a dual core, but I have a 2.0GHz Core 2 duo in my desktop with only 2Gb DDR2 and LR3 is too slow now, sort of got away with it for LR2 but thought I would need much faster processor and more RAM for properly running LR3. Thanks for that link I will have a look.