Digital photography laptop recommendation

[TheDrake]

Hey all, I am actually starting to get sick of how slow my laptop is going when working with RAW files in lightroom, photoshop, and the like. I am debating on selling my current laptop and getting another thats obviously geared toward photography as thats what I mainly use my laptop for along with web design which is related.

I currently have a Dell XPS M1530 with the following specs:
15" LED screen
2.5Ghz core 2 duo
4GB DDR2 RAM
500GB 5400rpm HDD
Geforce 8400M 128MB
Vista 64-bit

external monitor is Dell 2709W.

Other specs arent really too important. I would like to stick with Dell as they have been very good to me over the years and its pretty easy to find some nice discounts/coupons there.

I have seen the new Studio XPS 16 that has a wide gamut screen which is pretty nice, so definitely an option.

For those that have laptop/notebooks what are your specs and what would be something you would recommend or would you not recommend anything at all?


EDIT: Oh yeah price isnt really much of an object, but I would like to to stay around $800-1200 after discounts/coupons.

 

[jpeyton]

A 2.5GHz C2D with 4GB RAM is slow in LR?

Are you editing RAW files from a Phase P65 or something?

 

[TheDrake]

haha, no. Just from a nikon D40 and D300. I just recently formatted and reinstalled on this bad boy too so I have no idea. But with my desktop system on a C2Q running at 3.5Ghz it completely smokes this thing in speed, but I use my laptop wayyyy more than my desktop. My desktop is more for Home Theater and gaming so its always in the living room and not in my office.

But yeah its slow in LR, slow is a relative term when it comes to computers and I am aware of that, but I feel that most people would agree with how my laptop performs in LR that its slow.

I dont know if its because I am running the higher resolution on the external monitor but its still only 19x12. I am wondering if a faster video card would solve alot of my issues, but I dont know.

 

[randomlinh]

err... there's like 2 quad core laptops on the market, right? I don't think you'll find anything in your price range that would be significantly faster than what you have now.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

3 words: faster hard drive.

5400rpm just ain't cuttin' it.

 

[corkyg]

Echo the Gazelle. Size helps too with large files. I use a 320 GB, 7200 rpm for processing DI in a mobile situation on a Lenovo T60. Plenty fast enough even with RAW.

 

[spikespiegal]

But with my desktop system on a C2Q running at 3.5Ghz it completely smokes this thing in speed,

That's because desktops smoke laptops in general because they aren't designed with power saving -vs- performance considerations.

A much faster HD will help though....

 

[foghorn67]

Are you running multiple Surface Blurs at once? I have a Dell Crapspiron 1525 with 3GB RAM, Intel Constipated Graphics, a C2D T5550 1.8GHz, and CS4 runs just fine.
Actually, quite the snappy laptop.
The only thing that makes it chug is Surface Blur.

 

[TheDrake]

Originally posted by: foghorn67
Are you running multiple Surface Blurs at once? I have a Dell Crapspiron 1525 with 3GB RAM, Intel Constipated Graphics, a C2D T5550 1.8GHz, and CS4 runs just fine.
Actually, quite the snappy laptop.
The only thing that makes it chug is Surface Blur.

nope, nothing fancy.

a 7200rpm drive may improve but when I got my 500GB they didnt have a 7200rpm drive in that size, if they did it was at a completely unreasonable price. Maybe when they reach 750gb or 1TB in 2.5 form factor I may switch to 7200. And here I was hoping I could get another laptop, haha.

 

[theblackbox]

so what version of photoshop and lightroom? are you running the 6 bit install from cs4?

i use a mbp with just 2 gigs of ram and i can't say i run into many performance issues. my desktop is faster too, but i guess thats what dual xeons and 16gb of ram will do to you.

i think the faster hd would help, and look and see how much memory you have when you are running photoshop and lightroom. i'm not a fan of vista 64 with less then 8gb of ram myself. but then i am a whore for ram.

 

[dnuggett]

Lot of mumbo jumbo in this thread...

First... A hard drive upgrade is very likely the wrong answer. My LR scratch drive is a WD Passport. I also keep my catalog files on it.
Second...The laptop vs. desktop argument, save that crap for the bit heads. LR runs beautifully on laptops.

I am running LR on an aluminum Macbook 2.4 Ghz with 4GB RAM, 320GB 5400RM internal drive, 320GB WD USB scratch drive, 1TB WD main file store (USB) and 1TB WD NAS backup.... then Backblaze backup nightly.

My system is not slow. Maye you need to clean up (optimize) the LR DB?

 

[TheDrake]

Originally posted by: dnuggett
Lot of mumbo jumbo in this thread...

First... A hard drive upgrade is very likely the wrong answer. My LR scratch drive is a WD Passport. I also keep my catalog files on it.
Second...The laptop vs. desktop argument, save that crap for the bit heads. LR runs beautifully on laptops.

I am running LR on a aluminum Macbook 2.4 Ghz with 4GB RAM, 320GB 5400RM internal drive, 320GB WD USB scratch drive, 1TB WD main file store (USB) and 1TB WD NAS backup.... then Backblaze backup nightly.

My system is not slow. Maye you need to clean up (optimize) the LR DB?

Like I said earlier, this is a fresh install, all my pictures were backed up before the format and have not been imported yet, only new pictures taken in the past month are in the DB. I am very computer literate so, no offense, but I am not interested in hearing much on "optimization" settings for Vista, LR, etc... I have plenty of customizations that help with speed. I seem to have already received an answer to my question and thats not to get another laptop, at least that is the consensus of everyone here so far. After hearing from you all I believe that I am being extremely picky here. Thanks for the help and the advice all!

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Are you running a lot of programs in the background? That can slow things down a lot. Like theblackbox said, check how much memory you have available.

Also, you *are* comparing a 2.5ghz C2D with a 3.5ghz C2D, and your desktop CPU likely has more cache than the lappy one. And your desktop has a faster hdd, with more cache.

A faster video card won't help.

Can you give us some idea of specific operations in LR that are slow? And maybe some stopwatch times?

edit: the Seagate Momentus 500gb 7200rpm laptop HDD is ~ $150, if you are ever so inclined.

 

[jpeyton]

I'm inclined to agree with dnuggett here, and say that 5400RPM --> 7200RPM won't make a huge difference in speed for Lightroom.

On the other hand, a fast and relatively inexpensive SSD might make a huge difference. Unfortunately, it would be quite a bit smaller than your current hard drive.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: TheDrake

Originally posted by: dnuggett
Lot of mumbo jumbo in this thread...

First... A hard drive upgrade is very likely the wrong answer. My LR scratch drive is a WD Passport. I also keep my catalog files on it.
Second...The laptop vs. desktop argument, save that crap for the bit heads. LR runs beautifully on laptops.

I am running LR on a aluminum Macbook 2.4 Ghz with 4GB RAM, 320GB 5400RM internal drive, 320GB WD USB scratch drive, 1TB WD main file store (USB) and 1TB WD NAS backup.... then Backblaze backup nightly.

My system is not slow. Maye you need to clean up (optimize) the LR DB?

Like I said earlier, this is a fresh install, all my pictures were backed up before the format and have not been imported yet, only new pictures taken in the past month are in the DB. I am very computer literate so, no offense, but I am not interested in hearing much on "optimization" settings for Vista, LR, etc... I have plenty of customizations that help with speed. I seem to have already received an answer to my question and thats not to get another laptop, at least that is the consensus of everyone here so far. After hearing from you all I believe that I am being extremely picky here. Thanks for the help and the advice all!

My fault.. didn't realize you were "very computer literate." Maybe the statement around "getting a laptop geared towards photography" threw me off. Or maybe it was the title of the thread, digital photography laptop recommendations. You are obviously wiser on the subject than I... I didn't know there was such a thing as a digital photography laptop... or that you could gear them towards photography.

 

[spikespiegal]

I didn't know there was such a thing as a digital photography laptop... or that you could gear them towards photography

You can't. You can stroke the OS a bit to be more efficient (OSX at the least feels much more responsive than Vista when dealing with image processing), but little you can do with hardware other thanp make disk I/O as lag free as possible. Not to mention he's running Vista 64 and it's perhaps bajillion potential/possible performance/driver issues with the laptop.

The laptop vs. desktop argument, save that crap for the bit heads

Sounds like Apple store brain damage to me..... I'm still waiting for Motorola to "put the death blow to Intel".

I work with state of the art Dell laptops daily in IT support, and have to explain on a regular basis to a VIP why his departmental budget got blown on $2500K laptops only to find they are less productive and bog down much faster than 2year desktops at 1/5 the cost. We then upgrade to faster drives/video cards, swap file tweaks, blah/blah/blah. When all is said and done they've blown more money and cut their battery life by 2/3, and the portable still can't sling planar bitmaps as fast as an older desktop.

I'm inclined to agree with dnuggett here, and say that 5400RPM --> 7200RPM won't make a huge difference in speed for Lightroom.

Then put a 5400rpm drive in your desktop if you feel it "won't make much difference" compared to your 7200.

 

[theblackbox]

Originally posted by: dnuggett

Originally posted by: TheDrake

Originally posted by: dnuggett
Lot of mumbo jumbo in this thread...

First... A hard drive upgrade is very likely the wrong answer. My LR scratch drive is a WD Passport. I also keep my catalog files on it.
Second...The laptop vs. desktop argument, save that crap for the bit heads. LR runs beautifully on laptops.

I am running LR on a aluminum Macbook 2.4 Ghz with 4GB RAM, 320GB 5400RM internal drive, 320GB WD USB scratch drive, 1TB WD main file store (USB) and 1TB WD NAS backup.... then Backblaze backup nightly.

My system is not slow. Maye you need to clean up (optimize) the LR DB?

Like I said earlier, this is a fresh install, all my pictures were backed up before the format and have not been imported yet, only new pictures taken in the past month are in the DB. I am very computer literate so, no offense, but I am not interested in hearing much on "optimization" settings for Vista, LR, etc... I have plenty of customizations that help with speed. I seem to have already received an answer to my question and thats not to get another laptop, at least that is the consensus of everyone here so far. After hearing from you all I believe that I am being extremely picky here. Thanks for the help and the advice all!

My fault.. didn't realize you were "very computer literate." Maybe the statement around "getting a laptop geared towards photography" threw me off. Or maybe it was the title of the thread, digital photography laptop recommendations. You are obviously wiser on the subject than I... I didn't know there was such a thing as a digital photography laptop... or that you could gear them towards photography.

well, the whole DELL thing threw me off as being "very computer literate. " i have never thought of dell and quality screens for color matching, or geared to the photographer. i guess that if you are Timothy o'Brien, you could get by with the color quality on a dell.

IBM has made some pretty good laptops for photographers, i think they even have one on the market like the W700 with a really good screen, a built in calibrator and a wacom tablet. That would be a digitial photography laptop.

I think the only dell with great color is the mini 9, but you'd be pressed to do much on it.

but back to the point, why would someone who was "VERY computer literate" need the opinion of anyone since they should know what they want to begin with.

If i was going to go with a PC, i'd choose the w700...

but, seeing i use a mac, i'll stick with a 3 year old matte screen macbook pro. i just wish apple would get off it's retarded ass and offer a nice 15" laptop with a matte screen like they used to, my macbook pro won't last forever.

 

[dnuggett]

You can't. You can stroke the OS a bit to be more efficient (OSX at the least feels much more responsive than Vista when dealing with image processing), but little you can do with hardware other thanp make disk I/O as lag free as possible. Not to mention he's running Vista 64 and it's perhaps bajillion potential/possible performance/driver issues with the laptop.

Right... my reply was umm.... let's say sarcasm.

Sounds like Apple store brain damage to me.....

Never go in there... wouldn't know. My last Mac came from Amazon.

I work with state of the art Dell laptops daily in IT support,

Rest my case on saving the argument for the bit heads. I just knew some bit head would come in here and start talking Enterprise IT when the discussion is really on a very micro level and pertains only to LR running well on a laptop.

As much as you feel your Enterprise IT support experience has something to do with this... it's totally irrelevant. Pro photogs use it in the field daily, end of story.

Then put a 5400rpm drive in your desktop if you feel it "won't make much difference" compared to your 7200.

That comment is as out of place as me suggesting you put JP4 in your Corolla! The fact remains.. I run my LR catalogs and scratch disk off a Passport USB drive. I speak from experience when I say there will be very little if any improvement. Can you say the same?

 

[TheDrake]

This thread went way off topic a long time ago and I was hoping that it would just die, but apparently not. I dont feel the need to defend myself here so can someone please close this thread? Thanks!

 

[theblackbox]

Originally posted by: TheDrake
This thread went way off topic a long time ago and I was hoping that it would just die, but apparently not. I dont feel the need to defend myself here so can someone please close this thread? Thanks!

i think it was on topic, if you want a good laptop to use for photography, look at the lenovo w700.

if you don't, buy another dell.