Recommend a laptop?

The Shaggy D.A. · Super Spammer Joined: 12 Sep 2008 Karma :

Wotcha

I've a friend who has just become wheelchair bound, so until his house is made more cripple friendly, he's hospitalised during the week and limited to the ground floor at weekends. Since his PC is upstairs, he wants a laptop to keep himself occupied between bouts of radiotherapy and surgery.

His main hobby is photography; as he's not going to be out and about for the next few months he'd like something that can handle Photoshop/Adobe Lightroom comfortably, so I'm guessing something with at least 4GB RAM and a screen that's better than the standard 1366x768, CD drive (rules out Netbooks), preferably not the aircraft carrieresque desktop replacement size.

Budget is around £400. A lot of the laptops I've seen recently have pretty crappy screen quality when looking at the larger screens, as they still only go up to 1366x768. I was spoiled by my old laptop (bought in 2003) that had 1600x1200 in a 15" package - the display was very crisp and bright, but not seen anything like it since.

Any recommendations?
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G · The Voice of Reason Joined: 02 Feb 2002 Karma :

You can still get hi-res in a small package, but generally do have to pay a chunk more - sadly 720p now seems to be the standard on 15", despite that when I had a 11.6" it seemed about right for that.
I got my current laptop from dell outlet and am very happy with it.
Mine was a bit more, but I got 8gb RAM with 3gb graphics, i7 proc, big battery, 17" screen but alas not 1080p (1600*900, but finding that fine so far). It's quite heavy, but so am I, so not an issue. Very pleased with it for £641 delivered as a 'scratch and dent' (spent ages to find the tiny dent that can only be seen in the right light.)
Of course you can't choose the spec, but you get a warranty from a 'big company' along with a reasonable price.

Handles lightroom, photoshop and premier very nicely. Oh and the display's pretty nice on mine, I'd say. Decent speakers for watching films/listening to music too.

Quick look on there they have an i5 Dell XPS 15 (mine is the XPS 17) for £440 with 8gb/1gb/640gb.

oldpink · World Chat Champion Joined: 02 Aug 2006 Karma :

I use an Acer I3 with 4gb ram on a 15" screen
it has HDMI output, and very sharp & crisp picture watching HD movies in 1080
but the res is only 1366x768 onboard the external HDMI runs full rez 1920 x 1080

very sturdy construction, I have the travel mate model with 8hr battery life
which I can get about 5 hrs of watching movies via my external HD which draws its power form the laptop so pretty good there

I have Adobe CS3 installed and it runs it easily

you can get the non travel / longlife battery ones for about your budget

this is the one my daughter uses for £399

karoshi · Brolly Dolly Joined: 28 Jun 2006 Karma :

My work laptop is a Dell e6400 Latitude, it's a couple of years old but the 14inch internal screen is 1440x990 native res.

the newer 15inch screen ones in the line, the e6510 or e6520 can be specced up to have nVidia nvs300 graphics cards and some very nice 1920x1080 "FHD" anti-glare screens.

they are a bit pricey though, especially for the nice high-res screen and fast processor options Smile

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