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04/12/2013 08:14:22 PM · #1 |
Okay, not really, but...
In the beginning, I had a laptop, which shall remain nameless and blameless, as we will soon see...
I bought it at Costco about 18 months ago. I put no thought into the purchase, other than sh*t! I'm leaving on a trip tomorrow! I need a laptop! Sh*t! So I went to Costco, and bought the one they had on sale.
It has served me fine. It runs Lightroom, Photoshop, and a bunch of software I use for work. It's a little heavy, but it was cheap, so I can't complain.
Then I bought the D800, and started working with 50MB RAW images. It was still okay-ish. Good enough that it wasn't worth worrying about, anyway.
Then I bought the Nik plugins. That's when the trouble started. When I edit something in Color Efex and use Smart Objects in Photoshop, it can take several minutes to render when going from Color Efex to PS. Longer if I use more than one filter in Color Efex.
Being a techie who knows how to do this kind of thing, I spent an hour this afternoon running diagnostics and figuring out what the problem is. I found that it could use a bit more RAM (it has 8GB), but the *real* problem is the hard drive. The hard drive is utterly choking. It's not fragmented or full, it's just too damn slow.
So, if I were operating in a vacuum, I'd just replace the HD with a new, fast 512GB SSD drive. $500 + an hour's work, problem solved. But I'm not in a vacuum. It's a heavy, slow beast of a laptop, and I'm planning a major photography trip later this summer, so I should probably get a new laptop anyway.
What would you suggest?
Criteria -
- Light weight. This is a relative term, a 13" MacBook Pro with an SSD is on the heavy side of what I'm willing to consider, but given my need for speed, I may not be able to do any better.
- Ability to run PS + Lightroom + Nik on D800 files without choking. This probably means fast SSD and at least 8GB RAM (probably more).
- Need to be able to do basic editing using the laptop screen. I have a good monitor, though, so screen size/quality is interesting, but not critically important.
- Price. I believe that a MacBook pro that will do what I want is going to run a couple grand (USD). I think Windows laptops with similar weight and performance are priced similarly. A windows laptop would be easier because all of my work stuff runs on Windows, but there are workarounds if a Mac is the right choice.
Another option would be to either get a new SSD, or get a desktop, then get a travel laptop which wouldn't need to be able to handle PS and Nik, just Lightroom. |
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04/12/2013 08:42:37 PM · #2 |
Originally posted by Ann:
... then get a travel laptop which wouldn't need to be able to handle PS and Nik, just Lightroom. |
My Lenovo is close to its end. New camera, LR, Nik - painfully slow.
Strongly considering a desktop.
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04/12/2013 08:49:47 PM · #3 |
If you really want a new laptop, problem solved. I'd get a touchscreen (Win8 really, really wants a touchscreen - and, my personal experience is that Win8 is a smaller footprint, more efficient op sys than previous Windows versions. I keep hearing negative reports about Windows 8, but haven't been able to nail down anything specific, and my experience has been generally positive.)
If you want to make what you have work, I suggest you get a 128G SSD (I have the M4 from Crucial) and move your op sys and apps to it. In addition, pick up a small sized 1T external USB drive, and keep all your documents & pictures on the removable drive. As long as you are not keeping your image library on the 128G SSD, it should be mostly adequate for general use.
I paid around $110 for the SSD, so they won't break the bank - I think they're running around $135 currently, and the 1T or larger external will run about the same ($100 +/-).
It feels to me that we're about 6-18 months away from some really cool new PCs & I'm wondering who will get there first, but basically a tablet with 8-10 hrs battery life running full-blown Windows 8 (or Blue, depending on the rumors) and a 10 - 17 inch diagonal touchscreen display, and an auxiliary keyboard.
I'm trying to be patient...
The Mac airbook is a great pc - just don't know how it would stack up with your needs for work / personal / photography. Not touch-screen yet, and I think that is going to become an essential feature in the future. I sure know I miss the pinch / spread touch to enlarge / shrink web pages. |
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04/12/2013 09:02:59 PM · #4 |
Originally posted by dtremain:
If you want to make what you have work, I suggest you get a 128G SSD (I have the M4 from Crucial) and move your op sys and apps to it. In addition, pick up a small sized 1T external USB drive, and keep all your documents & pictures on the removable drive. As long as you are not keeping your image library on the 128G SSD, it should be mostly adequate for general use.
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That's an interesting idea that I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure it would work with my current laptop, because the fastest IO port I have is USB 2.0, and I'm concerned about the ability to transfer data to and from the external drive. But it could be a solution to keep the price down on a different laptop. |
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04/12/2013 09:18:36 PM · #5 |
Originally posted by Tiberius:
My Lenovo is close to its end. New camera, LR, Nik - painfully slow.
Strongly considering a desktop. |
A desktop sure has an advantage in having a larger, fixed monitor. The laptop I put the SSD, Windows 8, and memory upgrade on is a HP business laptop with Centrino Dual processor and 17" screen that I picked up for $50. I upgraded memory to 4G, op sys to Win8 Pro 64 bit, and the hard drive swapped out for the 128G SSD. The PC is still clunky & heavy, no camera, but I am more than happy with the speed. Using Office 2013, I can click on a spreadsheet and it is almost as fast as a screen refresh to get the spreadsheet from the internet (drop box), and display it. I'm guessing you could get another 6-18 months out of your Lenovo with some relatively minor upgrades - if you want to. Like I said in the earlier post, I'm guessing that PCs have got to do some catching up with the tablets, and will eventually be truly portable while having all the power and capability of today's pc's combined with the easier interface and touch screen capability of the tablets.
HP has made some steps in the right direction with their no system box large touch screen systems, but they are still too heavy and too power hungry. |
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04/12/2013 09:24:18 PM · #6 |
So you are spending all this money to edit pics on a laptop screen?
Desktop.
Message edited by author 2013-04-12 21:24:34. |
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04/12/2013 09:59:36 PM · #7 |
I'm not as familiar with Windows, but I can certainly steer you through the Mac world. If I understand your situation, the laptop is mainly for portability (photo trips), but you'll usually be editing at home on a large screen, correct? If that's the case, any laptop will require some compromises. If it were me, I'd use your current laptop for portability on trips and get an iMac or other desktop computer for regular work. Store your photos on a 2.5" mirrored RAID with USB3 and Thunderbolt interface so you can easily move them between systems. That will give you more processing power and likely much more RAM to speed through your normal workload while retaining portability when you need it.
If you're set on a laptop only, the MacBook Air is the most portable solution. You can get a refurb 13" MacBook Pro from Apple (same warranty as new) with dual core 2.0GHz i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for $1599. A 13" MacBook Pro with faster 2.9GHz dual i7 and high resolution Retina display is about $200 more. You can also step that down to a regular display and 750GB hard drive for $1269. Bear in mind that since Macs have Thunderbolt, an external drive on that interface will move data at over 100MB/s even with regular hard disks while a RAID will approach SSD speeds.
Message edited by author 2013-04-13 00:54:31. |
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04/12/2013 11:59:40 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by scalvert:
I'm not as familiar with Windows, but I can certainly steer you through the Mac world. If I understand your situation, the laptop is mainly for portability (photo trips), but you'll usually be editing at home on a large screen, correct? If that's the case, any laptop will require some compromises. If it were me, I'd use your current laptop for portability on trips and get an iMac or other desktop computer for regular work. Store your photos on a 2.5" mirrored RAID with USB3 and Thunderbolt interface so you can easily move them between systems. That will give you more processing power and likely much more RAM to speed through your normal workload while retaining portability when you need it.
If you're set on a laptop only, the MacBook Air is the most portable solution. You can get a refurb 13" MacBook Pro from Apple (same warranty as new) with dual core 2.0GHz i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for $1599. A 13" MacBook Pro with faster 2.9GHz dual i7 and high resolution Retina display is about $200 more. You can also step down to a regular display and 750GB hard drive processor, 8GB of RAM and 750GB hard drive for $1269. Bear in mind that since Macs have Thunderbolt, an external drive on that interface will move data at over 100MB/s even with regular hard disks while a RAID will approach SSD speeds. |
I agree! I have Macbook pro for all travel and review purpose and I have iMac at home for all editing purpose. Macbook pro does not have any original files, what all I carry is edited and selected. |
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04/13/2013 12:52:34 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by pgirish007:
I agree! I have Macbook pro for all travel and review purpose and I have iMac at home for all editing purpose. |
Same here. A laptop is terrible for daily photo editing and a desktop is terrible for portability. |
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04/13/2013 01:22:59 AM · #10 |
| I just got an inexpensive 23" IPS monitor that seems to do a good job at stepping in as the bridge between portability and large screen/color calibration. So far my laptop has handled the processing. I probably just jinxed that... |
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04/13/2013 01:35:40 AM · #11 |
| How hard or feasible is it to port over licenses? Can somebody hold dual licenses on platforms without having to get two separate licenses? I've somewhat thought about perhaps a Mac desktop, but I'm not sold. I have an outdated but high performing pc laptop that gets things done but is not compatible with new software due to being 32 bit xp. I'd keep the laptop for portable stuff but use the desktop for most activities. I'm not a big fan of the hyper contrast I've seen in a lot of Apple monitors, either... |
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04/13/2013 01:51:34 AM · #12 |
Originally posted by spiritualspatula:
Can somebody hold dual licenses on platforms without having to get two separate licenses? |
Good question. Most licenses allow two installs (laptop/desktop), so what, really, is the difference? |
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04/13/2013 01:58:19 AM · #13 |
Originally posted by bohemka:
I just got an inexpensive 23" IPS monitor that seems to do a good job at stepping in as the bridge between portability and large screen/color calibration. So far my laptop has handled the processing. I probably just jinxed that... |
That's what I've been doing. I have a laptop and a very nice 24" IPS monitor. It was fine until the D800 and Color Efex.
After reading what people have written, I'm thinking maybe a Mac mini. In the field I don't do any heavy editing, I just use lightroom to pick winners, then do the editing when I get home, so I could continue to use the laptop for travel. Still thinking.... |
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04/13/2013 02:18:13 AM · #14 |
Originally posted by bohemka:
Originally posted by spiritualspatula:
Can somebody hold dual licenses on platforms without having to get two separate licenses? |
Good question. Most licenses allow two installs (laptop/desktop), so what, really, is the difference? |
I could have sworn I had read folks not being able to hold two simultaneous licenses without paying... but perhaps my memory is failing me. I was hoping to find a solution, since, as I had understood things, it's typically two iterations of the SAME program, and dual licensing was not applicable. |
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04/13/2013 09:18:37 AM · #15 |
| Just a thought about the hardware... a Mac is really just another brand of PC, with a different OS. Hell, you can go ahead and load Windows on a Mac, and you can, with a little fiddling, get MacOs to load on a PC. Now, Mac hardware is, no doubt about it, really good hardware. Apple pays attention to build quality and performance. So if the switch of OS does not bother you, it's a good choice. It's just not an inherently better (or worse) choice than an equivalently good "PC" laptop. |
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04/13/2013 10:43:50 AM · #16 |
Guys, you're being really helpful, thanks. Kirbic is absolutely right. The hardware is the same. Why I was veering towards a mac is because I'm having trouble finding any PC's that are appropriately spec'd for photo editing without having to build one myself. I've built PC's before, but I just don't have time To do a ground up build right now. Although if it's cost effective, I could buy something already built, then swap a couple of parts to get better performance where it counts.
Any suggestions from that perspective? |
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04/13/2013 11:01:44 AM · #17 |
| Ann, I know what you're facing, it's not an easy choice. Higher-spec's business PCs come close, but they can have some frustrating limitations (my Dell 6530 "work" laptop is limted to 8G of RAM, for instance) and often are relatively heavy. The Mac hardware does, IMO, provide a very good performance-to-weight metric. You pay a premium price, but you know you are getting quality hardware. I'm not so much a fan of the Mac OS, though. Granted, it's been years since I used it regularly, and FWIW, it beats the heck out of Win8 in the interface department ;-) |
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04/13/2013 11:31:04 AM · #18 |
Exactly. The macs are sweet hardware, but I don't care much for the Mac os.
Looking on the web, I'm actually having trouble figuring out what I'm looking at on the PC manufacturer websites. They all seem to intentionally hide the actual hardware specs. It's frustrating.
I may run to Frys and do some showrooming this morning. |
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04/13/2013 11:53:41 AM · #19 |
Originally posted by Ann:
Exactly. The macs are sweet hardware, but I don't care much for the Mac os.
Looking on the web, I'm actually having trouble figuring out what I'm looking at on the PC manufacturer websites. They all seem to intentionally hide the actual hardware specs. It's frustrating.
I may run to Frys and do some showrooming this morning. |
I used to buy only high end Dells...the Precision series. They were good computers but expensive. Before that I always custom spec'd PCs from great companies like JoEY computers, KC Computers, etc.
Two PCs and a laptop ago (I buy one of each every two years, though lately been stretching laptops to 3 or more) I decided to try something less expensive...I switched to HP.
Their prices are great, especially when you find sales and coupons. And I've never had any hardware problems. My son's HP laptop works well but I would watch out for their "touch sensitive" function strip. Generally, I'd say they're safer for desktop than laptop purchases, though I haven't really had any problems with my HP TM2 laptop (even was able to upgrade it to Win8, and get full tablet functionality).
I can certainly recommend their higher end desktops -- I spend about $1200 instead of the $3000 I use to spend. And that's loaded to the max (including 16GB RAM, which was max at that time).
The only downside is their cases are limited to three HD bays...whereas if you go to a custom shop like iBuyPower.com, you can get a lot of bays and a full tower or bigger mid tower case.
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04/13/2013 01:25:37 PM · #20 |
Originally posted by Ann:
I'm thinking maybe a Mac mini. |
Not a bad choice, although an iMac would give you a dedicated graphics card (important for some PS filters) and additional RAM capacity, not to mention an excellent monitor. A quad-core i7 Mac Mini with a 1TB Fusion drive (nearly as fast as SSD) runs slightly over $1000 new. You'll also have Thunderbolt capability, but no CD/DVD burner. 16GB of RAM is about $149 from NewEgg, and you may need a keyboard and monitor adapter depending on your existing hardware. |
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04/14/2013 11:43:22 PM · #21 |
Ok Being a hardware guy since 1990 in the pc world and having supported PC's and Mac's for over 20 years I have to say Price is the only issue when it comes to what you want the computer to do. Either will do exactly what the other will do depending on how much you are willing to spend. Life expectancy is the same since the same hardware is used in both Mac's and PC's today. OS's are colaborations between Apple and Microsoft. My suggestion is if you are looking for a Laptop HP elitebook's are the most dependable and you can custom configure every aspect of these units. Downside is price. Lenovo's tend to be the lightest weight but again small light = more money. If for home build it. If you can turn a phillips head number 2 screwdriver and place a lego block together you can build a custom pc. If you need someone to spec out a unit I can and I'm sure many others here can help to. I ask three questions for anyone I build a pc for.
1. What do you want it to do?
2. How long do you expect it to last before you need to upgrade it?
3. How much are you willing to spend?
Answer these three and be realistic and I can spec out a PC in five mins. E-mail you a link to purchase the parts and talk you thru the build. It really takes about 30 minutes to build a pc and if you want a mac there are ways to build them too but you violate macs TOS n their os. |
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04/15/2013 09:14:25 AM · #22 |
Originally posted by Ann:
Exactly. The macs are sweet hardware, but I don't care much for the Mac os.
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I have Win7, OSX and Linux installed on my old 13" MacBook. They all run well, considering the vintage of the hardware. OSX also gives you the opportunity to discard Aqua and use most any Unix GUI you wish with little effort. |
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04/15/2013 10:23:24 AM · #23 |
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04/15/2013 01:51:53 PM · #24 |
Originally posted by gcoulson:
+1 for building a tower. |
That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to as well. I could get a very nice, future proof tower for about $2k if I buy it already built, or about $1500 if I build it myself. I'm perfectly capable of doing the build, but won't have the time until June or July. Depending on my level of desperation, I may need to break down and buy something before then.
Thanks for all your help, guys. |
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04/15/2013 03:31:17 PM · #25 |
Originally posted by Ann:
Originally posted by gcoulson:
+1 for building a tower. |
That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to as well. I could get a very nice, future proof tower for about $2k if I buy it already built, or about $1500 if I build it myself. I'm perfectly capable of doing the build, but won't have the time until June or July. Depending on my level of desperation, I may need to break down and buy something before then.
Thanks for all your help, guys. |
NewEgg
Two days later(shipping) and 30 minutes time you are up and running!!!! |
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