Powerful netbook for basic lightroom?

[farrance]

Hey all!

I'm a mac user primarily and I can't justify dropping £1k on a macbook air, so I'm wanting to look at a netbook.

I haven't been in the world of PC's for a while, I build and repair them so I have spare SSD's and various RAM modules that I can put it, if they are of the right fitment of course.

The things I know I'll need;
Dual core preferably
4GB+ of RAM, not bothered about DDR2 or DDR3.
Minimum of 1024x768 (for lightroom). Ideally 1366x768.
No soldered modules, as I'd like to be able to put an SSD in it.
USB 3 is a definite need.

Looked at Lenovo X200's, rather see who has personal preference with whichever netbook

Any help?

 

[Spuriousfish]

Alex.....

I guess it depends on what you mean by Basic Lightroom.

Personally, I think most netbooks/laptops will be let down by the quality of the display. They just aren't good enough for processing images - specifically the image colour/contrast/brightness can be variable depending on the viewing angle.

Also it depends in what your expectations are in terms of performance.

I run LR on an Acer D270 netbook with Win7. It only has 2G of ram and a dual core 1.6GHz processor. I only use it to download images onto during field trips and then keyword and geo-tag them. I process them once back on a workstation. The performance isn't great and the screen is limited to 1024 x 600 but it works for me.

Battery life is good at between 4-8hrs

Colin

 

[rowey2507]

As above, performance wouldn't be great from any NetBook. What's the reason for wanting/needing it? Just to download and tag while out and about or to actually process?

 

[farrance]

As above, performance wouldn't be great from any NetBook. What's the reason for wanting/needing it? Just to download and tag while out and about or to actually process?

I've seen a couple of 11.6" netbooks which have better specs than the 10" netbooks.
It's to load photos onto drives, very minor editing and then sending it to the appropriate sources. Battery life would be more important than power.

 

[rowey2507]

I've seen a couple of 11.6" netbooks which have better specs than the 10" netbooks.
It's to load photos onto drives, very minor editing and then sending it to the appropriate sources. Battery life would be more important than power.

True, I had the 10" jobs in my mind. The 11" versions are a little more powerful. They may have enough grunt for your basic processing. Where you will struggle is with screen quality and seeing colours etc accurately while out and about. Should be fine for basic stuff tho. To aid battery life I would aim for one with a solid state disk, or even upgrade to an SSD later on. Helps the power no end.