Henry Nguyen Loc: Houston, Texas

What is the best 17’ laptop for PS use only? Budget is around 2K. Thanks

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Windows?

tcthome Loc: NJ

Judy795

I have an MSI GS63 I got in 2018 for $1600 from Best Buy. When it works it’s great. Runs all Topaz, PS, and LRwith no problem. But I just replaced a swelling battery, now the keyboard is not working on the right hand side, and today, with a wireless external keyboard, the camera would not turn on for Zoom. Sometimes the sound won’t turn on. I would not buy another.

jcboy3

Windows is software.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I have a "Lenovo LEGION 5 17.3" Gaming Laptop - 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H - GeForce RTX 3050 Ti - 144Hz 1080p - Windows 11" with a 1TB drive. I got it a couple months ago at Costco for $1200. I like it for all the Adobe and other photography apps.

It replaced a similar Lenevo that I used daily for 6 years. It is still working, but a fan is failing. It was fix the fan or update and upgrade.

Henry Nguyen Loc: Houston, Texas

Thanks. How do you transfer all the softwares from the old to the new one?

r1ch Loc: Colorado

I would buy an AMD laptop with an Nvidia discrete video card gaming laptop. Amd uses the 5nm process and are much more efficient, longer battery life, quieter fans, less heat.

Much closer M1 chip in efficiency is as fast or faster in multi thread applications with 8 cores and 16 threads.

r1ch Loc: Colorado

You can reinstall each application to your new system.

First you back up your new system. Then you can backup your current system restore it to the new system. Purchase a new windows license for the new and activate it on the new system. The old windows operating systemm will still function with the old license.

gwilliams6

Dell XPS with SSD, 4K screen, 16GB ram and more.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-17-laptop/spd/xps-17-9720-laptop/smx17w11p1c1600?gacd=9646510-1024-5761040-266380031-0&dgc=st&ds_rl=1282786&gclid=CjwKCAjwzNOaBhAcEiwAD7Tb6JVZYhWuNHk1mzgJFvHhV-z_SG6Nwzm1WBg71PO0v1S9J2ThrKHG6BoCdvYQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&nclid=X3OE57ZL11fm4LNqC7gCvCKy0357_dJOHqQLm5LyqduEf95vYwOMkoFqoyzdTbQW

You can up that to 32gb Ram. The best PC's are Dell IMHO . And yes I have used both top Mac's and PC's in decades as a pro.

Cheers and best to you.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

I've also had several Lenovo laptops with excellent results; all the used units have been passed on to my grandkids and most are still running after 5-8 years.

Current using a Lenovo YOGA 730. Not as fast as my dual processor desktop PC but still excellent for on-the-road image processing.

Just get a good quality gaming laptop and you'll be happy!

bwa

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

That does not work like it used to when I learned DOS. Now I do it in two parts. Part one is all my data files, including photos and videos. I force my self to keep them in a master folder that is backed up to a large external drive. I hook up the backup to the new computer and copy using File Explorer.

The programs are harder. They need to be reinstalled one at a time. Basically, I just work through them one at a time. The Adobe programs are relatively easy because they are managed by the Adobe Creative Cloud app. A couple of clicks and they get installed. Others, like Topaz programs are more manual. Unfortunately my legacy Microsoft Word and Excel are fighting me and I may be looking for replacements.

There is transfer software that is supposed to let you hood the two computers with a wire or network and move everything. Too automatic for me so I don't trust them.

r1ch Loc: Colorado

Thing are more portable now days and they work.

You can use macrium reflect or other backup software to image the C drive. Once backed up can be restored to another computer. Window knows most of the drivers and installs them at boot time on different hardware, anything it can't figure out, you install the drivers.

You can even restore your computer to a virtual machine, then it does not matter again about the hardware, windows is aware of the virtual machine, that way your new computer keeps it's files seperate and starts out with no registry bloat and if bought a desktop with 32 proccessor 64 thread and 32 gb of ram, you can allocate half your resources to the virtual machine and it would be just as fast as any gaming laptop (assuming you have the graphics card for it.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

He probably meant Windows as opposed to Mac.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I don't know of any manufacturer who makes a 17' laptop. I would think it would really be hard to carry around and would require an extra large lap.

I got an Apple MacBook Pro M1 last year, 16" but the screen has great resolution, better than any other laptop I've used. (I am not a laptop reviewer, so I haven't used a lot of laptops). The M1 chip makes it really speedy compared to any of my Windows laptops. I believe you can get one for your budget if you don't go for the maximum RAM and disk space.

I should note that if you have been using Windows for a long time, the switch to Apple is not without pain. At my age, muscle memory is better than my brain, so my Windows habits get in the way of using Apple. The window controls are on the upper right in Windows, and on the upper left on MacOS. The taskbar icons will toggle the application on Windows but not on MacOS. There are some slight differences in the way drag and drop works which might mess you up at first (make sure EVERYTHING is backed up). Apple is much more persnickety about whether it will allow you to use an application than Windows.

All things that can be overcome, but will take time. It will take even more time if you need to be bipolar (using both Windows and MacOS on different computers).