Netbooks for photographers

[mastertrinity]

Hey all just an idea,

I want to be able to do some basic work when I'm out and about without having to carry my 15.6" Dell Inspiron 1545 which while it's not the biggest it just doesn't fit in my small(ish) shoulder bag and so I was wondering what a netbook would be like. I did consider a 13" sony Vaio or similar but I think it wouldn't be worth justifying purely for 2.6" size difference.

I want to be able to:

Use word or similar
upload images
Access internet (Wifi as I don't like 3G)
Good keyboard and mouse response
do basic image edits (levels, check exposure, crops, resize etc)
possibly support GIMP I presume for the editing.
Good battery life

Cheers for any suggestions guys. Budget is around £300 max

 

[EdBray]

A Netbook is good for all that you want provided that you don't want to do too in-depth photo manipulation.

I used Lightroom 3 and CS5 on mine before I reset the Netbook to get it ready to sell (gone over to Macbook Pro and Ipad as I need the powered firewire connection to run my PhaseOne digital back).

Depending on the model you can get higher powered batteries for the Netbook, I bought one that gives me 10 hours use playing films (DivX)/internet WiFi without recharging.

 

[chrism_scotland]

I bought an Acer Timeline 8371 just before Christmas as I wanted something a bit more powerful than a netbook, its got an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and a proper graphics card, however its only 13" and its very small and light, I'd reccomend one of you can find one or its equivalent the Acer 3810, I'm considering swapping or selling mine for an iPad/tablet as I travel a lot and with this and my work laptop its a lot of hassle for basically just browsing the web and using Spotify when I'm away!

 

[amjad175]

Lenovo Thinkpad X60 / X61 models are cracking little machines as well. 12" 4:3 display, 5+ hours with a 8 cell battery, 1024 * 768 resolution. Check the individual specs for cpu, they did single and dual core models. You can usually find a few refurbished models cheaply on a well known auction site. Good KB and well spec'd with BT, IR, WiFi etc.

All new netbooks are widescreen which put me off, some 11.6" models have a resolution of 1366 * 768 which will be more useful than 1024 * 600 found on most of them.

 

[adamgasson]

I got a Compaq Mini free with a phone a few weeks ago and I'm pretty impressed. It runs XNView and GIMP on a Windows 7 Starter OS. It's not blindingly quick but it'll handle 5D II jpegs ok and allows me to do basic editing and FTPing on the road. Battery life seems good and it's light weight and small.

It also comes with a 120Gb hard drive, two USB ports, SD reader and a webcam (if that floats your Skype boat!).

 

[JCoquillon]

I'd say that anything beyond beyond just checking a few pics, browsing and word processing needs more than a netbook. The 13" sub-notebooks are the way forward in my experience.

The screens are slightly larger so you can actually view the images properly They tend to have i3 and above processors so can actually process a raw image if required without grinding to a halt.

In particular Samsung and Lenovos have impressed me.

You also tend to get the added bonus of a DVD-RW. Generally they have nearly all the strengths of netbooks (compact, light, good battery, etc.) without the downsides (low performance, small screens). The only issue is you pay more accordingly.

 

[mastertrinity]

I'd say that anything beyond beyond just checking a few pics, browsing and word processing needs more than a netbook. The 13" sub-notebooks are the way forward in my experience.

The screens are slightly larger so you can actually view the images properly They tend to have i3 and above processors so can actually process a raw image if required without grinding to a halt.

In particular Samsung and Lenovos have impressed me.

You also tend to get the added bonus of a DVD-RW. Generally they have nearly all the strengths of netbooks (compact, light, good battery, etc.) without the downsides (low performance, small screens). The only issue is you pay more accordingly.

yeah I have looked at 13" but I'm not too sure because it doesn't seem that much of a space saver shaving off a couple of inches, I don't think it will fit in my bag either. The other thing that annoys me severely with them is that they cost more than my 15.6" Dell (£429 back in Dec '09) and so really I'd rather just upgrade my laptop than buy a smaller one to go alongside it. Like I say it's really just for the basics so that I'm not stuck, I would have opted for the iPad which is £300 for a 1st gen now because everything about it is perfect for me but the type is a bit of a put off and also I don't know how they handle for editing, do they have anything like iPhoto on there that can help do basic edits? my type of work is usually done perfectly in camera and only ever requires small adjustments in PP, I don't tend to over artify my images like some I've seen.

 

[Nod]

I use my netbook (10" IIRC) for very basic editting while on holiday - pretty muchjust cropping and adding captions. I use PSE2 for this - transferred onto a USB key then installed from that. I use a Canon Selphy dye-sub printer to print the results and send them as postcards.

 

[ptdborth]

Dell Mini 10 is a good option, reasonably quick and decently priced.. make sure you format it and stick a vanilla W7 on it, as dell fill them with cack.