Advice on Laptop for Photoshop/Gaming!!!

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rash219

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Aug 3, 2007
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Hey Everyone........Im looking into buying a new laptop and kind of having a hard time. I live in the US......

1_What is your budget? -----------looking at spending $1000 or less....less preferred
2_How large is the screen size you need/ want?--------14" or higher
3_Size/Weight of the Laptop?-------Thin or Ultra (weight is important anything less than five lbs) as I will be carrying it a lot.
4_How much battery life do you need? ----------at least 5+ hrs of full load use
5_What kind of Optical drive do you need? ---------DVD Writer but not a necessity
6_What tasks do you want to do with your laptop? ------Mainly Photoshop and HD video viewing (video editing optional). I multitask a LOT between PS, Itunes, and FireFox. Occasional gaming (med-low settings) like Far Cry2

I plan on using the laptop for at least 3-5yrs. I was looking at the Acer Timeline AS4810TZ-4508 but I am still a bit conflicted herd Acer quality is not up to mark plus the GPU. Is there any other laptop you would recommend. Also looked at the Dell Studio 14z. Am I crazy for looking for something like the Studio 14z with energy star rating.

Was hoping i could find a C2D of 2.XGHz with ATI / NVIDIA GeForce Card and with the other spec as the Timeline.....dont know if thats even possible......

Thanks,
 
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CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
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ASUS UL80Vt. It's 14.1", thin, light, has decent specs, around 7 hours of real-life battery usage, and switchable graphics. It won't play many games, but it should at least play some.

The Acer you listed is decent, but IIRC it only comes with an X4500MHD (Intel integrated) graphics chip, which sucks at gaming. Last I read, you can't even reliably play World of Warcraft at 800x600...
 
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Skott

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2005
5,730
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As far as the graphic/gaming needs go you will want a lappy with a 230m or the 4750 GPU for FC2. You are looking for a 4570 at the very least and I'm not sure if that will run FC2 or not. Forget getting 5 hours battery time though with a dedicated gaming card in laptops. You'd be lucky to get 2 hours. You either need to scale down your expectations or increase your budget. Problem is with even more money you will never get 5 hours of battery time so I would scale down the expectations on the battery time. Long battery times in a laptop with a dedicated GPU just don't exist IMHO.

Toshiba makes some models with a 12 cell battery so that would certainly help you but it does add weight to the unit when carrying it. It also props the back end up a little but from a use standpoint many people like that while typing on it.
 
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rash219

Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Well looking at the Asus UL80Vt and its switchable graphics....Im very happy with its performance in gaming I really dont mind scaling down the settings while playing.....but then the laptops mainly for photoshop more than gaming.......I use the desktop for gaming in high.........Also found the Asus UL50Vt.....for the same price and larger screen and non glossed.....now the only issue I read was the screen not being effective on the UL80Vt.....is it really that bad ??
 
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CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
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"...the screen not being effective..."

What do you mean by that? If you mean a review said the screen isn't the best - well, I don't have a UL80 (14.1") or UL50 (15.4"), but I do have a UL30 (13.3"). The color accuracy is meh at best, but what else can you expect from a TN panel? The screen's viewing angels (how far you can rotate yourself around the screen before it looks too dark or completely washed out and unreadable) are poor compared too a good monitor or a high-end laptop, but they're not as bad as some make it out to be. Coming from a Macbook Pro, you might be disappointed, but compared to my girlfriends XPS M1530 (more expensive and more "high-end") the screen actually has BETTER viewing angels and much cleaner colors. LED-backlit for the win. If you want something with really good color accuracy (for Photoshop), I'd do a Google search for "best photoshop laptop" and see if you can find some screen comparisons.

They're solid laptops, and the battery life is very impressive. If you're looking for something more gaming oriented and don't mind going with a bigger, heavier laptop with worse battery life (2-4 hours tops), look into something with a dedicated GTX 260M or similar graphics card. My previous laptop, which had a dedicated 9650M GT (1GB) graphics card on a 1280x800 screen was decent (played Fallout 3 on medium settings no problem), but definitely not enough for hardcore gaming.
 
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rash219

Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Thanks a lot for your views....I just got a few more questions.....have you personally installed photoshop on yours and is the picture rendering fast enough...and lags whats so ever.......also have you tried using programs like "Monitor Calibration" on the screen to see if the colors turn out better......and is this laptop available in any retail store so I can ckeck it out.....Thanks


p.s. how do you handle your laptop.....
 
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Tom

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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The Dell Studio 14z with 8 cell battery lasts for 3-3.5 hours and weighs less than 5 lbs. Plays lots of games well. I don't have Photoshop so can't help you there but I don't see why it wouldn't work well.
 
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CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
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I have Photoshop CS2, but since the computer doesn't have a CD / DVD drive (and because I haven't had enough time to look for a way around it), I've stuck to downloadable solutions for my needs so far. Right now I'm using Paint.NET for my basic photo needs, and GIMP for anything a bit more extensive. I do miss Photoshop's interface, though.

Based on how the UL30A performs with other tasks, I'd say that it'll be slower than a "regular" Core 2 Duo by a good amount in heavy-CPU intensive applications (since it's only 1.3GHz, compared to a P8600 or something similar at 2-2.4 GHz), but it's certainly no slouch. I cannot tell the difference between the SU7300 and my desktop E6600 or E8400 in every-day tasks. Let's put it this way - if a desktop E6300, E2180, E4300, or something similar is too slow for your needs, then stay away from the Core 2 Duo CULV processors (which includes the ASUS UL series and Acer Timeline series).

The graphics card is another issue altogether. For anything even mildly GPU accelerated, I'd avoid the X4500MHD like the plague. The GT210M (UL80Vt / UL50Vt) will fair much better, but I can't speak for it's capabilities (last I heard, it's roughly equivilent to a desktop 9400 GT).

Finally, I haven't tried calibrating the monitor at all, but I may give it a shot in the future. I rarely do photo work on it, since that's what my desktop is for (2408WFP). It's almost certainly a TN panel, so even calibrated, it won't rival a good desktop MVA, PVA, or IPS panel.

The bottom line is, the ASUS UL series, Acer Timeline series, and many similar CULV notebooks aren't made for intensive tasks; they're made to be thin, light, and have excellent battery life. They bridge the gap between small, anemic, long-battery-life netbooks (which I have no use for) and large, powerful, short-battery-life notebooks. Think of them sort of like a less elegant Macbook Air.

Being strictly a Windows / PC user, I feel a bit weird suggesting it, and it may be out of your price range, but: have you considered a Macbook? It seems to be right up your alley for what you're looking to do. Capable of photo work, good battery life, and excellent build quality. The biggest complaint being the price.
 
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rash219

Member
Aug 3, 2007
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CTSky regarding the part about installing PS you should just copy the installation files from the CD/DVD onto a large thumb drive and install it from there......that has worked for me with some software.....could probably help.......

Back to topic I work in retail part time and I find a 13" screen to be toooo small 14" I can handle.....I know what you mean about mac.......to be honest i would get one if it did not cost me an arm and the mac that was close to screen size i want cost roughly $1700 and up.......its very hard to cough up a $1000 to begin with

I found this review on PCMag about AcerTimeline that had C2D.....

That said, the Acer is still no screamer—perky enough for productivity tasks, but not built for heavy-duty multimedia, and with its Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics, certainly not for games. The Pentium CPU helped yield a passable PCMark Vantage score, but the system's Photoshop CS4 and Windows Media Encoder times trailed those of other 14-inchers with Core 2 Duo processors like the HP Pavilion dv4-1543sb and the Lenovo IdeaPad Y450, as well as Acer's 13.3-inch Aspire 3935. Of course, this doesn't mean that the AS4810TZ can't perform image editing or video encoding, just that you'll need to be patient when tackling such jobs.
Click to expand...

According to PCMag Acer took 1:05s to render an image in PS4 compared to 0:32s by Dell's Studio 14z with 2.4C2D and 9400G Card......and when I compared it to Mac Book Pro 13" it scored about the same in almost all test like PCMark, 3DMark, Gaming,......Encoding was FAST on OS X but same as the rest in Windows......so im guessing here as the 1.3GHz SU7300 runs in Turbo33 mode, the chip will run at 1.73GHz, it will make it more or less equal to a mac pro....I guess the only way to really know is if some one writes a review with PS in mind.......

Maybe if you get PS running you could let us know ;-)......I will probably wait till the end of the year to see what happens.....
 
AndroidVageta

AndroidVageta

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Mar 22, 2008
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I don't know if this is a bit out of your price range...but that doesn't matter, you can save some more $ and get THE BEST laptop for what you need.

Look here and remember to pick your jaw off the ground:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...cer%206865

Hows a 18.2inch 1080p screen, Intel i7 CPU, Blu-ray, Nvidia GTS 250m 1GB sound for $1350?

Unbeatable...excellent laptop, easily the best buy Ive ever done!
 
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