Photo laptop options - suggestions

Dunn

Dunn

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I'm looking to get a new laptop almost entirely dedicated to photo work. I need something small, maybe 13", but powerful and durable. But I also don't have an unlimited budget.
My thing is I really like the Mac OS, but I feel like Macs are a little expensive. I'm wondering if anyone has used a Mac OS on another brand computer. I'm not sure what model but I was thinking of Lenovo. Or should I just buy a Mac?

I'm really not sure so any help or suggestions to get what I mentioned at the best price.
 
Mac Os "dosn't" run on anything but a mac...
it can be done with some research, but legally, it is only licensed to be installed on a mac....
 
would not consider Hackintosh if you plan to do something else with computer besides tinkering it working after every update. I'd go with Mac, its more expensive one-time cost than PC, but you probably be happier with it in longer run.
 
If you like the Mac, go with the Mac, Apple does refurb models on their website and there can be good deals there. They still have warranty etc.

No question you can get better pricing on a Lenovo or something, but value is subjective, and if you want a Mac, it's not good value at all.

You can run Mac OS on non-Mac hardware, but you have to ask yourself is it worth the hassle?
 
I agree with the others. If you want Mac software then getting a Mac notebook is by far and away the best solution. And the displays on the latest Macbooks are very nice indeed.

I have a Hackintosh setup on my Sony laptop but it's really just for toying around with.
It took years for the community to come up with working drivers to get the webcam and memory card reader (mostly) functional on my particular model, and don't get me started about standby/closing the lid.
There -are- some laptops out there which will work 99% out of the box with a Mac OS, and a few Chinese ones which were even built around Mac driver support, but none of these are very good options for photo editing and it's a license breach anyhow.
 
The new Samsung series 9 laptops are swell, comes with matte displays, so you can actually use them during daytime to. Then there are the Asus Zenbooks, which are well built and powerful.

Unfortunately a well built AND powerful laptop will always cost more than the average plastic crap.
 
I've used MacOS on a Thinkpad, it works, but you have to ask yourself "why"; it looks fancy, but I felt no productivity advantage.

To be honest I wouldn't go the Mac route; I don't like the glossy displays; the new high-resolution displays are glossy and are available only in 15" which is too big; matte displays are available only on a few large low-resolution models; and they're practically not user-serviceable anymore, which I have found a big advantage with the Thinkpads.
 
Mac Book Air's are the go, the SSD's make a huge difference in boot speed & for apps. Can open up lightroom and Photoshop in about 3-6 seconds usually. The newest ones also have USB 3, so you can store all your extra photo's quite quickly and easily onto a little portable drive. Not a fan of normal macbooks because they're heavy and traditional HDD's are slow. If the laptop is planned to be your only computer maybe consider a macbook, if you already have a desktop at home then go the air.
 
finguanzo said:
Mac Os "dosn't" run on anything but a mac...
it can be done with some research, but legally, it is only licensed to be installed on a mac....
Click to expand...

It says that only in the EULA, and the legality of such after-purchase license agreements is questionable already in the USA and is void in many places outside the USA ("I bought it, I own it").

In most places, when you buy a retail copy of MacOS X, you can install it anywhere you like, no matter whether Apple approves of it or not - if they don't want you to install it, they shouldn't sell it to you.
 
Yes I agree Mac would be a great option for you. One advantage of the 13" MacBook Air is that it uses an SSD drive so there are *no* moving parts. It is also extremely light and small. The disadvantage is it's a sealed system...you need to get exactly what you need when you purchase it as there are no upgrades.An advantage of the MacBook pro is it, since it uses traditional laptop drives will give you more storage space, 750gb vs 250gb on the air, however that means there are moving parts and it is heavier. However, it is not a sealed system (except the retina but I believe that's 15") and it includes a DVD drive.
If you go Air get the fastest chipspeed (2gz I believe) and the most ram. I took a workshop and the instructor used an air. LR4 worked but it wasn't quick on his model (I don't know what specs he had..but more ram, faster chip => faster performance)
Hope this helps.
 
I have a 13" macbook pro, and have for about half a year, when it replaced a Dell Latitude.

It feels so much nicer, and can be cleaned really easily. It performs much faster, has MUCH better battery life (~5 hours), and it works really well with photoshop and aperture.
I feel so satisfied with this that I have no incentive to upgrade to anything for a very long time.
Mine doesn't have the high-res display, however I prefer the body shape of the non-retina models. If you were to do photo work (and have good eyes), one with the new screen would be quite helpful. I think the retina displays have a wider gamut, too.

The retina macbook's are almost the same size as the air's, I think. Have a play around with them at an apple store to see what you think.
 
I felt I had to follow up by saying that if you can live without the Mac OS, some of the above mentioned laptops such as the Samsung Series 9 and Asus Zenbook are very good value with decent build quality.

At the risk of inviting debate, Dell gives you a world of customization at very good prices. Many people feel Dell computers are unreliable though, so YMMV.

As mentioned above, the latest Macbook Pros might as well be sealed since you can't even take out the battery, and the Macbook Airs do not have user upgradable memory since it is soldered onto the logic board to save space. Also already mentioned is how none of their flagship models have matte displays, although this may not matter to you.
 
Been doing photos on ThinkPads for a decade now. Excellent build, reliable, tough (I backed a truck over one in front of my house -- don't ask -- and was able to recover all the data). Excellent selection of options and generally affordable.

Whatever you use, backup, backup backup. I'm using a USB drive plus an always-on wireless hard drive. I've read on some computer forums that, despite their lack of moving parts, SSD drives seem to fail at about twice the rate of SATA drives with moving parts inside.
 
Shutterspark said:
At the risk of inviting debate, Dell gives you a world of customization at very good prices. Many people feel Dell computers are unreliable though, so YMMV.
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, my work laptop is a Dell Latitude E4200. I work in Central Asia and spend a lot of time traveling on dirt roads and in Soviet turboprop aircraft on badly-maintained airstrips. I've been lugging around the Dell for two years now and it has never let me down. I wouldn't have bought it myself, but it was standard issue; it's certainly no Toughbook, but then neither are the Macs, and the Dell in practice isn't flimsy or unreliable either. It depends a lot on which model line you buy into, and if it's one of the business models they are pretty decent.
 
rxmd said:
For what it's worth, my work laptop is a Dell Latitude E4200. I work in Central Asia and spend a lot of time traveling on dirt roads and in Soviet turboprop aircraft on badly-maintained airstrips. I've been lugging around the Dell for two years now and it has never let me down. I wouldn't have bought it myself, but it was standard issue; it's certainly no Toughbook, but then neither are the Macs, and the Dell in practice isn't flimsy or unreliable either. It depends a lot on which model line you buy into, and if it's one of the business models they are pretty decent.
Click to expand...

I agree. Over the years I have maintained or owned many Dell servers, workstations and laptops and while I can't say I've had zero issues, on the whole I think reliability has been well above average and service has always been top notch.
One of my main workstations is a Dell (it offered cutting edge hardware for prices considerably lower than what it would have cost to source the parts separately) and it's been on since 2005, with routine 48hr+ periods of 100% CPU load. Aside from the crap memory card reader in the front which I removed because the SD card slot stopped working after a month, it's given me less trouble (well, none actually) than my much more expensive and similarly spec'ed Mac Pro from 2006 which sees somewhat less intensive usage cycles.

...but tell that to the Dell haters :D
 
Well, I currently use Dell Inspiron, Lenovo Thinkpad, HP something or other, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air on a daily basis - I have that sort of job.

Of the Windows machines, the Dell, which is the oldest, is also the fastest, has the best display and cost 30% less than the others. Build quality is so-so but it hasn't broken yet and is in its third year. The Lenovo is OK but I wouldn't spend my own money on it and the less said about the HP, the better. This is odd, by the way, because I also work with large servers where the analysis is completely reversed: the HP kit is superb and the Dell kit takes, shall we say, a little more effort.

The Apple kit is simply far better made, the keyboards are nicer and the screens much better, especially for imaging.

So my advice would be Dell if you're on a tight budget and a small MacBook Pro if you can stretch to it.
 
For that matter, I used to do plenty of photo editing on a 1996 vintage Compag 486 machine that still works just fine running Windows 95. That thing's truly a tank. A decade ago, a heavy lawbook fell four feet onto it from a high bookshelf in the House of Representatives press gallery -- it separated some of the amazingly thick plastic on the lid, but everything just keeps working like it always did. I still sometimes pull it out to look up some old files. It's pre-USB but files can be retrieved using an old PC-card adapter and removable media. I think it has 200 MB hard drive.
 
Perhaps not a reaction but an additional question: I will soon need to replace my laptop. I am looking at the ultra books. Right now, the top of the line models have combined hard drives / solid state drives. Is the expectation that all high end ultra books will be SSD, only in the future? Thanks for your advice.
 
SSD seems to be the direction for high end, high performance. They are noticeably faster in processing and consume much less power.
 
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