Howdy Madcity,.

Saw your post and thought I'd chime in. I'm a PC user but don't have any passionate feelings against Mac at all. I believe Macs are great, especially when dealing with multi-media (photos, videos, etc). I think it's goign to depend on how price conscience you are. You certainly don't absolutely have to get a Mac to get good performance. Macs of course tend to run much more than your standard PC.



That being said, you can get what you need from an Intel/Windows based PC. What you are going to be looking for is a lot of RAM. Photos and photo editing software eat up a lot of RAM so you don't want to skimp here. Load up on RAM. Now with a high MP camera, you'll need more harddrive space to store all your photos. there are two approaches you can take.

These are pretty cheap. You can get a 250gig for prob $100 or so (haven't priced them in a while). They are fairly portable too so you can take it with you. Or if you have enough HD on the laptop, just leave it at home and when you come home from trips or wherever, move the photos to the external harddrive. That is up to you and your personal preference.

From personal experience, I am not a fan of Dell laptops. I like their desktops but have not had good luck with their laptops. The best laptop I've ever owned was an IBM ThinkPad. I've owned two of them and they lasted forever. I am a software engineer/consultant, so I put some serious stress on these things.

The IBM was the best performer and lasted the longest. Dell was probably the next runner up. Oh, also, I've owned a Sony VAIO. I like that one too. My wife mainly used it so I didn't get to play around with it too much (daughter dumped her OJ on it after 6 months of owning it, so it died).

In terms of OS, obviously if you go with Mac that's easy. If you go with Windows, that's a little tougher. You probably should go with Vista. I'm nto a big fan of using Microsoft products the first few years of being out. BUT, if you plan on keeping the laptop for 4-5 years, you probably would want Vista on it. I assume most of the software you will be using will be Vista compatible.

But that's b/c I'm using it for work and I don't trust that everything I use (some of it's obscure) will be Vista compatible. But mainstream stuff should be okay. So I would quietly recommend getting Vista if you go with an Intel/Windows configuration..

Photo-organizing - Since I'm new to SLR I'm still working on this one. But I do like Picasa in terms of organization. Its free too. For editing, I use Canon's packaged software (which of course would not be applicable to you) but I've used a trial of photoshop cs3 and loved it. But I didn't love the price tag so I won't be buying it. I believe I'll go with PS Elements.

Probably will be since I'm a newbie and dont' do anything too complicated..

Congrats on the retirement!!!!! I can't wait to get there myself! I'm getting close and can't wait. Only have 35 more years to go. hahahaha.Just trying to learn.

Blog: http://novicephotog.blogspot.com/Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9778447@N07/..

Thanks much Owl...I appreciate the input. (Random off topic note: good luck to your football team; too bad we can't get a home and home series going between Rice and Stanford.)..

As the previous poster said, the sort of laptop you get is just a matter of personal preference, the processors are all fast enough these days. More important are(i) A lot of RAM.

(ii) The biggest, clearest monitor you can get - this is the bit you spend your time admiring your photos on, most of the time(iii) an external hard disk (a big one) for backups of your photos..

Picasa has a great method for organising and cataloguing pictures and it's easy to find what you want even amongst thousands of pictures. It has only basic image editing tools - but it's free..

I use Photoshop Elements 5 for editing and I like it very much; it does pretty much everything I can imagine ever needing. The more recent versions of PSE have been very much geared towards digital photographers, so there are a lot of useful little tools like the ability to bring extra details out of too-dark shadow or too-bright highlights with simple sliders; and the ability to correct colour casts with a single click. You can download a free trial version (which lasts for 31 days) from the Adobe website so you can give it a thorough try out..

Another nice feature of PSE is that, if you decide to shoot RAW (a whole nother issue... try a search of 'RAW vs JPEG' and see how many threads there are!), there is a free plugin called Adobe Camera Raw which allows you to open and make the basic necessary adjustments to the RAW file before importing it directly into PSE without having to save and re-open it. Might not sound like much but it makes processing RAW files very quick and easy..

Hope this helps.Best wishesMike..

Thanks very much Mike. Re: your second point: "(ii) The biggest, clearest monitor you can get - this is the bit you spend your time admiring your photos on, most of the time"...any suggestions re: minimum resolution, brand, etc.? Thanks again...

Thanks very much Mike. Re: your second point: "(ii) The biggest,clearest monitor you can get - this is the bit you spend your timeadmiring your photos on, most of the time"...any suggestions re:minimum resolution, brand, etc.? Thanks again..

A PC magazine in the UK recently did a test of 19 inch monitors and the winner was an Iiyama E1900. Iiyama monitors are generally very well regarded. I'm going to get one to replace the rather murky cheap thing that came with my Dell. It is a mid-price monitor, resolution 1280 x 1024 (which is plenty, unless you have superhuman eyesight) that is about 160 in the UK. You can pay a lot more of course but it starts to get expensive for tiny improvements..

If you ask on the PC-Talk forum you'll probably get much more expert advice on this issue!.

Best wishesMike..

Yeah man, that would be AWESOME to get a Rice-Stanford lineup. You from the Houston area too? Yeah I wonder how our football team will do this year. Last year, they did awesome! Made it to a bowl. Unfortunately the new coach bailed. I don't have high expectations but I do like to at least see them Owls put up a fight, even if they lose every game. They are always fun to watch..

I totally forgot about the monitor. Kinda important  Mike's right, get a nice, clear monitor.Just trying to learn.

Blog: http://novicephotog.blogspot.com/Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9778447@N07/..

There's no one right answer to your question (is there ever)..

My personal gear, it works well for me..

For work I have a succession of HP laptops, currently a HP8430. This (and it's predecessors, HP8000 and HP8340) have each proved more than adequate as processors for still and video editing. They are usually inadequate in storage, 80gig at the moment, but you can (and should) rectify that with a network drive. Their screens are OK, but I also use a pair of HP1920 monitors, which are truly very good. IDouble monitors is a luxury, but nice. You can acheive this with a laptop by using the built in screen and a 19" or bigger as well.

Luckily, work buys these for me;-).

At home I use an LGL1915s monitor, which is not quite so good. Be careful with your monitor selection, it is where you see your results and there are some duds out there.william olivepana fzed5, fzed30 & s0ny doubleu7.

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