Silverrails

Is this Computer listed above a good one for Photo-Editing programs.
Please respond A.S.A.P. if you have any information on this Computer.
How much RAM & Storage is adequate for a Photo Editing Computer.?

Robg

My partner had a Lenovo ThinkPad for general purpose use, that needed way too many repairs. When the extended warranty ran out we happily went back to a dell.

Others may have had more positive experiences, but I will never purchase another Lenovo product.

Silverrails

Very Interesting, I saw a Refurbished Lenovo for $355.00, sounded like it might work for my First Photo-Editing Laptop, but now,?????
Would you recommend A Dell? How much Memory, etc.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Don’t ever say “never”. My daughter had a Dell laptop as a college student {nearly 20 years ago}, which died as a result of a lousy power connector. I ‘swore’ “never again” then, but my laptop today is a Dell - power is transferred in via a USB-C connector.

Silverrails

So, would you recommend a Dell for Photo-Editing RAW Images from my Nikon D3300 camera on a 32 or 64 Gb card?

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

I got my Dell pre-loaded with Linux.

I gave up on Microsoft when they tried to force everyone to use Win10, so I don’t know which computer with how much memory would be needed to meet your needs.

Silverrails

I just mainly want to be able to Process and Edit RAW images, then Store them easily so I know where they are and how to retrieve them.

Red6

I am not sure there is much difference in the major brands of laptops. There are examples of good and not so good in all of them. I think quality assurance being what it is in electronics today, your chances of getting a good one is pretty good, but problems do occur. Almost all of them are made in Asia and there is a good chance many brands are made at the same plant. Some of these plants are huge with 20,000 to 40,000 workers and they take in work from many different customers. Unless a company has the resources to fully utilize a factory's capacity, like Apple, they need the work to keep their lines going. So you will often see competitors products built side by side.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T520 that I have hauled all over the US and it has never failed me. It is tough, easy to use and I like the layout and ergonomics more than the HP's amd Dell's. I have also owned Dell computers and had good experiences from them.

However, the company I worked for for many years had an agreement with Dell for computers and they purchased quite a few over the years. Of these new Dell computers between 8-10% failed for various reasons and had to be returned and exchanged in the first few weeks of use. However, those that did not fail seemed to work reliably for many years.

Not much experience with HP's but again, I have heard good and bad about them also. As an electronics manufacturing engineer, statistics indicate, and I have usually found this to be true, that a machine, electronic or mechanical is most likely to fail in the first days or weeks of its operation. This even has a name, infant mortality. There are many graphs and statistics to illustrate this.

I try to use any new purchase, electronics especially, heavily during the first few weeks. If it is going to fail, then you want it to fail either in the return period or at least before the warranty period. Usually if it lasts the first few months, it will last. But of course, not always. There are always outliers.

Best advice, find some reliability statistics of all the brands. Anecdotal evidence or what one person says about a particular brand is usually near worthless. One person's great experience is another's piece of junk. Much like the Ford vs Chevy, Nikon vs Canon arguments.

Red6

Once you decide on which brand of computer to purchase, I would look at the editing software you intend to use and see what they recommend. They will have a list of specifications on what it takes to run their software efficiently. As a general rule, you want the fastest processor, the most RAM, and the best video processor that you can afford. A relatively large solid state hard drive is also desirable.

But again, most important, check your software's specs and match or exceed those.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

These websites have good, solid specs for computers for Lightroom and Photoshop, and are a great place to start.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Lightroom-Classic-141/Hardware-Recommendations

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Photoshop-139/Hardware-Recommendations

As far as the The Lenovo ThinkPad T520 is concerned, it is very light duty, only supports 8 gb ram, no discrete graphics card, which means that the 8 gb is shared with the OS and used for program execution, it has a really small SSD system/boot drive, and while it may accept a second SSD drive, the cost of adding something substantial will negate any initial savings. I wouldn't get it for photo editing. The 8 gb max ram is a real deal killer.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

For what it's worth, I have and older t540p with 16Gig and an internal T-byte SSI drive and a 2 t-byte external for my pics. Have not had an issue since I bought it. By today's standards the speed is slow as the technology keeps changing. Been using this Laptop to do all my photo processing for years. I use LR/PS and only work with 320 meg raw files. Will I get another, in heartbeat as long as it's architect-ed 32g or possibly more and fast processor.

An opinion of one.

Howard5252 Loc: New York / Florida (now)

My comments are for a desktop computer.
I can recommend Dell. I have had 3 top of the line Dells. They are not cheap but they are good. If it comes with something wrong there is help available; they may ask you to replace a card if they send you another card, but overall, my experiences with Dell were good. One other point - the prices seem to change almost daily, be very careful about the tech specs that are listed (it's those spec changes that cause the price change). As I said a moment ago - my overall satisfaction for a Dell is high.

flasfill Loc: Sandy Springs GA

Get a Mac Book Pro. You will never look back.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

I'm using a Lenovo Flex for a travel computer, no editing, works great, great screen, was very reasonably priced, just what I needed for travel.

Robg

I have a Dell XPS 15 9550 laptop with 16GB memory, 1TB internal SSD and a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) touchscreen display with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (2GB GDDR5) GPU. Costing more than $2,000, that's a very expensive configuration if photography were my only interest. But I'm a software developer and can justify that cost entirely for business reasons.

I use LightRoom classic as both photo organizer and editor. I have Photoshop (it's part of the subscription) but have not used it.

At $355 you are not risking much, and maybe it's a good way to get started, but if that computer is missing some important features for photo editing, you risk getting frustrated because of performance issues. If you are willing to spend more, here is what to look for, pretty much in line with what others have said:

1. Sufficient memory. I would recommend 16 GB. More memory allows your computer to work faster for you.
2. A large enough disk drive with room for expansion. The disk drive size will be driven by how many photographs and other things you want to store. But because drives are now so inexpensive, I would get something at least two or three times as big as you think you would ever need. An SSD (Solid State Drive) is more expensive, but will be more reliable, very fast and weigh less than the older technology (rotating) drives that contain mechanical components.
3. A good display. Even at 15 inches, my laptop display is not large enough, especially for photo editing purposes so at home I have it connected to a much larger 27 inch UHD display. UHD (Ultra High Density) is quite expensive, but for visual work like photography I think it is really worth it. FYI, I regret getting the touch screen for the laptop. Touch screens are great on phones and pads, but for computers their usefulness goes way down.
4. A good graphics card (GPU) with its own memory on board. Again, you are working with images and a good graphics card will speed up your work a lot.
5. Others have mentioned that a fast processor is important, but I would rank processor speed fairly low because most computers nowadays have fast enough processors.

If I were buying a new computer, I would check out so-called gaming computers because gaming usage is in some ways very similar to photo (and video) editing.

As to manufacturer, I have been purchasing almost exclusively from Dell for close to 30 years, not only for my small business, but for friends and family. They have been consistently reliable, I've never received a computer that died shortly after I got it, and their support has always been very good. While experience with one Lenovo is certainly not a reliable sample (as others in this thread have pointed out), I found the contrast to my experience with Dell remarkable. I've never had a Dell that needed so many service calls, and the service that I got from Lenovo was not up to the level that I've come to expect from Dell.