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crb

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What laptop to buy for multimedia home and travel use? Primarily travel. I do a lot of amateur photography I used the search, but technology is always changing. I'm thinking 14" screen. Budget is negotiable. I've been looking at lenovo y ideapads and dell xps 14. Also considering apple, but I've never had an apple so I'm Leary.

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if you want multimedia as well... 17" screen is what I like, and a quad core, get something with 4gig of memory min, 8gig would be better. I mostly use mine for programming, I also like having the numeric keypad on the right side, with dedicated home,pageup,pagedn,end buttons. My main laptop is the aspire 7751, but they don't make it anymore. a newer version of it is out, you would probably like it.

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if you want multimedia as well... 17" screen is what I like, and a quad core, get something with 4gig of memory min, 8gig would be better. I mostly use mine for programming, I also like having the numeric keypad on the right side, with dedicated home,pageup,pagedn,end buttons. My main laptop is the aspire 7751, but they don't make it anymore. a newer version of it is out, you would probably like it.

what he said. if your going to be doing a lot of photograhpy work on it IE editing, shading, blah blah blah, your going to want some good power. i will tell you anything below a 17inch is pointless. everything below a 17" is not nearly as strong as they should be and are very dumbed down. and DO NOT buy a dell. if you buy a dell, ill smack you in the eyes with my dick.

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17" seems big to lug around in my truck. I can do my picture work on the desktop and likely would. I wasn't happy with my last dells although they did exchange under accidental damage warranty. Semi vs laptop is never good. Only reason I was considering dell is tge discount from work.

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I have a LOT of laptops, and have owned every brand, Currently my luck is with Acer, they seem to be the best bang for the buck and most reliable! Dell has always been a bad experience, parts fail often!

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Kinda like has been already said, you want as big of a screen for photo work as you can accommodate. And at least 8 GB RAM, if not more. i5 proc if you go Intel. As far as manufacturers go, my $.02 would be to avoid HP at all costs. The other guys here have had issues with Dell, however I have not both with personal and professional experience. Same with Lenovo, as they have seemed to make a dependable and durable machine. If you can swing it, and plan to store the majority of your images externally, buck up for an SSD. It will drive your price up, but will significantly help with your machine's performance. Acer has some nice stuff, and while Asus makes some nice internal hardware, I have seen a rather disproportionate amount of their laptops fail to the rest of their products.

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Kinda like has been already said, you want as big of a screen for photo work as you can accommodate. And at least 8 GB RAM, if not more. i5 proc if you go Intel. As far as manufacturers go, my $.02 would be to avoid HP at all costs. The other guys here have had issues with Dell, however I have not both with personal and professional experience. Same with Lenovo, as they have seemed to make a dependable and durable machine. If you can swing it, and plan to store the majority of your images externally, buck up for an SSD. It will drive your price up, but will significantly help with your machine's performance. Acer has some nice stuff, and while Asus makes some nice internal hardware, I have seen a rather disproportionate amount of their laptops fail to the rest of their products.

I back up all my photos multiple times. Most of the photography editing I do will probably be on the desktop. I plan to take this laptop with my in the semi for skyping, facebook, web surfing, movies. Also will take it when on travel with the family. The most I would probably do photography wise is pull pictures off the sd card, but that could change. Pictures then get offloaded at home.

I checked out a Lenovo twist or flips today at staples, and really kind of liked it even though it doesn't have a dvd player. Kind of a cross between a tablet and a laptop, may be just what I need.

Edited by crb
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Acer, Asus and Toshiba laptops are the only ones I will even consider buying. They all three come with great options, Acer and Asus have the best warranties and you can usually get a good accidental damage replacement plan with them. If you want an idea of the ones I would go with. If you want a touch screen laptop get a windows 8 system, personally I would stay away from 8 until they fix their issues and stay with a windows 7 rig. 4gb is the absolute minimum i would go with for memory, 8gb is preferred. If your going to save a lot of your pictures to it, at a minimum 500gb hard drive.

These choices are the ones I would take based on performance. The top laptop is an entry level gaming laptop so its pricey. If you dont need that kind of performance the second one is the way to go, but the bottom rig is a great choice. Ive worked on a couple for friends who cant seem to stay away from porn sites and constantly get viruses.

first choice

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/asus-g75vw-as71-core/4505-3121_7-35248863.html

Second choice

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/acer-aspire-s5/4505-3121_7-35331780.html

Third choice

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-port-g-z930/4505-3121_7-35334587.html

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That magic port worries me.

That magic port is nothing more then a mechanized door that prevents dirt and contaminants from getting into the usb ports. Its actually pretty easy to disable. Worked on several recently and never seen one fail.

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The 17" MB Pro w/retina sounds like what you are looking for. I am using one right now as a media PC since it has an HDMI out built in. It's really thin too which makes it seem smaller due to its light weight. The retina display is awesome for editing too.

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I have had 2 HP Laptops that overheat doing any type of video rendering one core i3 one core i5, the core i3 one will thermal shutdown! if I remove the battery, it gets slightly less hot where it will not thermal shutdown, core i5 intermitant, new oem battery does not resolve problem with core i3, A dell with screen problems, another with hinge problems and CD writer problems, and one that a video card died. and currently 4 acer laptops that have never gave me a single problem, so now I buy acer.

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my HP laptop overheated and melted the motherboard solder joints to the point the video wouldn't work. Did some research as to the problem and fix. Turned out there was a class action lawsuit against HP where numerous people had the same problem. They made the MB to share the same heatsink with the CPU and video chip....bad design. When I took it all apart there was the usual lint and dust build up on the inside of the heat sink fins and it gradually suffocates itself to where it won't cool and then it over heats and kills itself. My brother was able to take the MB to work and fix the solder runs and put it through the "wave" machine to reheat all the solder runs. It worked!!! There are companies that fix the problem but it didn't cost me anything except the time to take it apart and put it back together....still using it today and it's 6 years old now. Dell was making them the same way with shared heat sinks on the video and CPU units. There should be at least 2 fans cooling this off...duh!!!

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I have an older Lenovo T61 that is still operational after several years of use. I might need to freshen up my Ubuntu OS but it's otherwise still very reliable. I'd buy another Lenovo in a heartbeat.

As for my work Dell, it's a heavy POS from day one and what are they going to replace it with after multiple issues in less than a year - another Dell.

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I've been really happy with the quality and performance of my Toshiba, especially considering the price! I have a low end 17" that's about 4 or so years old, and it just works. I did have to replace the battery after a couple years, but I'm going to chalk that up to the fact that the battery doesn't get "used" much and it spends most of the time plugged in.

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