Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Wow! I hope they find out soon!!!

gouldopfl

I was a Intel guy for several years, but at this time, AMD processors are faster, especially when multitasking. With Windows you will have a lot of Windows services running and if you have more than one program running you are multitasking. I haven't upgraded since 2019 and hand have a top of the line 4900 processor with 64 gig ( they did a free upgrade). The video card isn't the best quality is a ti1660. I have upgraded to a 2 gig SSD using a Samsung 990 SSD. I have a 37" inch monitor which is nice.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

So do I bill. I got back to Stanford in Feb to the Beyer's eye institute. I just found out today, my right optical nerve is damaged beyond repair.


I'm right eyed, in having a hard time trying to adapt and change to the left.

Theres a new camera that might work, but my local can't get it.

The Sony DSC-HX99 RNV is made up of the HX99 compact camera and something called a QD Laser Retissa Neoviewer. The latter is a viewfinder that is able to project the image straight to the back of the eye.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Man, that su... stinks!

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

The title of the thread is: “best laptop for editing”. Since this is a photography website, I’m going to make a wild guess that means photo editing, and if so, buying a laptop without a separate graphics card without adequate VRAM is limiting today and will only get worse as more SW is written to take advantage of GPUs. So yes, if your goal is photo editing, a separate graphics card with at least 6-8GB of separate VRAM is a KEY component. It’s not “Cray” overkill, it’s just good compute advice.

mmills79 Loc: NJ

Another factor in this discussion is that many of the editing programs are going AI for some functionality. AI can be highly resource intensive. Several programs actually use web servers for some AI because of the resource requirements but even so having additional dedicated GPU horsepower sets you up for all the advances that are in the works for most editing programs. So, I would strongly consider a gaming laptop with a dedicated GPU to stay current and keep pace with your upcoming software enhancements that will likely highly rely on a GPU. I use NEO a lot and I find that having a dedicated GPU made that program work more smoothly. For example it reduced the delay I was seeing when using sliders to make adjustments. Adjustments can be seen near real-time now and I very much like that better visual performance. Move the slider and see the result quickly.

srat50 Loc: Ware, Massachusetts

I bought a Sager laptop. I9 cpu, 64G of ddr5 ram, and 8G on the 4060 video card with a 1t and 2t drives for $1799.00 It Does lightrooms AI noise in less than 5 seconds.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

"Best' may be true, but, is it really necessary?
If one simply has to have it, yes.
"Advice", most definitely. "Necessity", maybe not.
Perception, desire, and volition come into play a lot.
Not necessarily a "must have" for everyone, but many think one should have the "best", regardless.
(I was being facetious with the Cray.)

Best could be driving a Maserati to work instead of a Civic.

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Before purchasing a laptop for editing pictures, try to get a spectral graph of the output from its screen. Then compare these and buy the one that generates an output as close to sunlight as possible. If each dot uses only two LEDs, then the output often has an obvious drop at one color. It is hard to get these spectral graphs, though, so I edit with my desktop computer only. --Richard

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Nope, not gonna happen at my house.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

The best laptop is the one the editor calls for, and if you want it to last, I would go a little better. And buy a reliable brand, which today is pretty easy.


For instance, if you are using Adobe, go to their site write down, or print, what they say is needed, and go shopping.

In summary, the best one is the one the editors vendor is needed for their software, minimum system.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I'll have to really check the next time I buy/upgrade software. I won't buy it because I'm not going to get another computer to run it if necessary. If it won't run on my system and requires a special/specific graphics card/processor that I don't have, I won't buy it. That's why I like the stand-alone programs that I have, they work nicely for my needs. I don't even know what graphics processors are in our computers without researching it. I don't really care either. I suppose because I don't need/want grandiose editors.
My old laptop and desktop were 12+ years old when I finally replaced them. They lasted.
One of my editors is from 2003 and works well with whatever graphics I have.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Ok, let me be more clear (again). If you’re buying a machine for the express purpose of photo editing, it’s a mistake not to buy it with a separate graphics card with adequate VRAM - period.

I get that you’re a minimalist, and if that works for you, great, but going with integrated graphics is NOT a good general recommendation for everyone else doing photo editing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

That applies to Windows/Linux x86 PCs.

The Mac world strategy is a bit different. The new Apple Silicon Macs SHARE all the main memory with all the different processing cores in the system on a chip. So it becomes important to get enough memory when you buy the machine. 16GB is the minimum I would recommend for today's applications. The smart Mac buyer gets what he/she will use in 3 to 5 years, not the minimum specs recommended by the software vendor. Ignoring Apple's base models is a good idea for anyone rendering photos or audio or video, or doing advanced graphics.

The other part of the Mac world strategy is to recognize the need for the system to have "breathing room" on its internal SSD, for swap memory/virtual memory operations. When the system runs low on main memory (opening huge files or lots of applications), it uses the SSD as swap memory. Having sufficient empty storage on the SSD is important, to allow that swap to occur. 1TB is the minimum I recommend. Keep a third to half of it empty, and the system rarely bogs down.

I'm still running the M1 MacBook Air (8 CPU, 8 GPU, 16 Neural Engine cores, with 16 GB Unified Memory and 1 TB internal SSD storage). It has been more than adequate for everything I have thrown at it. Buying today, I would get more memory and storage and probably an M3 or M3 Pro machine.