planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

My old Gateway laptop is too slow (Intel i3 processor) - seems like it takes 15-20 min for PSE12 to stitch together an 8 or 9 shot pano, my battery only lasts about 20 min on full charge and while some internet sites seem to be fast enough (You-Tube) some keep freezing up (Double down casino from Facebook). I paid around $650 five years ago last month for this one and really don't want to spend more than a grand on a new one. Both of my brothers and their families use Macs, but I'm not sure how many programs I would have to buy new (PS is the big one and I have Flight Sim and X-plane (although I haven't used them in a while), and what would happen to my old files, (mostly pics and docs) if I changed. I don't have a desk (or room to put one at this time) so it would probably need to be a laptop. Suggestions?

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Whatever you get, documents are documents and pictures are pictures. For Photoshop, do the Creative Cloud thing and it won't matter. MacBooks start around $1000 to $1200 or pretty close. A Dell XPS15 with a 4k display, 8 Gb RAM, 1 Tb drive is $1200.

Look for refurbished machines if your budget can't go above $1000.

Billy Bob

You need a game macron a dell's the fastest. they cost but worth it. Or this is a good deal http://www.ebay.com/itm/111929941397?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT I have 3.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

Laptops today are priced reasonably compared to past years. For $1000+ you can get an excellent laptop. And $900 will get you a very good one. None refurbished but brand new. Gateway laptops are no longer produced. I think Acer bought them out a few years ago. Dell and Asus have good reviews. The new ones are pre-loaded with Windows 10. Or you may want to go Mac. I would keep the Gateway laptop and update it later on with a new replacement hard drive and memory. A backup laptop. Your Intel i3 processor is a still active today. But if you buy a new one, I suggest you get an Intel i5 or i7 processor with 8gb of memory and 1TB hard drive. Costco has good deals on computers sometimes. Look at them on display at Best Buy Store. You can at least look at them there, just like cameras, without buying. Then see if you can get a better bargain elsewhere online. Good luck.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I gave up on those overheating LapTop heaps, especially HP. Your issue may more likely be RAM than a i3. And the top of the line at the time HP I had was a 2009 vintage 18" $2,000 Vista beast. At 4 GB RAM is barely ran Ps CS6, upped it to 6 GB and then later yet 8GB, much better and cut stitching down to a minute or two. My first try at a Panorama was unreasonable though. I was working with 32 bit PSD files (from RAW). Might have worked with 8-bit files. I 99% of the time left the Laptop on the A/C charger power supply. The batteries are only interesting if traveling or if the power goes out suddenly. In any case, the Laptop died this last Winter.

I now have a Dell XPS 8900 i7 (8 thread) Desktop with 32GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, 8GB VRAM video card, using Windows 10, and would never look back. It was about $839 at Costco. Mine was a special order though, not in the store at the time. Since, they've had models in the store with more or less for $700-$900. Dell desktops are probably a bit higher priced at Best Buy. My wife and I also previously bought her a Dell Inspiron 3847 Desktop i5 w/8GB RAM (Win 7, now 10) and it runs Microsoft Office fast and is fine on the WEB. I plan to double the RAM at some point. It has PSE 9 on it but I rarely use it. Mainly for a few simple things I have not figured out how to do with full Photoshop. Can't say about stitching with PSE 9. Not sure you can even do that. Should update to PSE 14, but again I rarely use elements, instead using full Ps CS6 on my PC. You should be able to find a i5 desktop for less than $650.

If you must have a Laptop, it will cost considerably more and not likely be as well made, they are basically considered disposable technology today. Hard to upgrade and expensive to repair, and are obsolete by the time you get it out of the box. And prone to heat damage. Though I hear some of the latest models (not HP) overheat less.

Apple Macs have been great and ever pricey, but I have been hearing from some customers that they are less happy with the newest Macs and recent versions of the OS. I only have experience using Macs with an older stable OS. So who knows about that. A few of your programs may have both Windows & Mac versions on the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. And you might even have a license or two that allow you to switch systems, just like a replacement from a HDD crash. PSE13 or PSE14 are not all that expensive, and you can get both Ps CC & Lr CC together for $10/Mo. I still have a stand a lone version of Ps, CS6. I got it just before Adobe went cloud subscription only for Photoshop, and yes it was expensive. You can still buy a PSE disk version new for about $80. Buy a table, you need it for a Laptop too so you don't burn your lap.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

Even though I am a life long Mac user, I suggest you stay in the PC world because of budget, learning curve and the desire to be able to access files you currently have.

planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

My current HD is 640 GB and I have 6GB of RAM. It's a 17" screen. Unless I get a separate monitor or can find a way to use my TV, I'd rather not go smaller, but it seems most of the ones I see have a 15" anymore. I upgraded to Windows 10 and now it won't recognize that I have Adobe Flash installed, so I can't watch any videos that use it!

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

I do all my post processing work on a Toshiba - Satellite 14" Touch-Screen Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive. $750 at Best Buy included an external CD drive. Purchased one year ago. I've never regretted it...

planepics Loc: St. Louis burbs, but originally Chicago burbs

So you don't think 14" is too small to edit on? I5 is fast enough? (I know my i3 is too slow). I will probably wait a few months at least until I start getting a normal income again. My Israel trip was my birthday present to myself...maybe a new laptop can be a Christmas present. I'm not even sure yet if our union and the shop ironed out a new contract yet...I may not be getting a raise if they didn't. One of the other bus lots rejected 5 or 6 contract offers! PS I've never used a touchscreen computer. I've seen some people use some kind of plate that looks like an oversized mouse pad that uses a stylus, but I don't think they're cheap.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

They all come with some sort of video port that allows you to connect to external monitor(s).

tomglass Loc: Yorktown, VA

Regardless of whether you go mac or pc, I would strongly recommend your computer include a (large) solid state drive. They are becoming much more affordable (just bought a 1TB SSD for a little over $300) and will dramatically increase the speed of everything your computer does...

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

if you have the $$$ to spend, buy an Apple anything. Just make sure it has a graphics card that has it's own memory, at least 16 gb ram unless you have 24 mp or greater camera, and lots and lots of fast storage. I just described a pretty high end Macbook Pro or iMac, somewhere in the range of about $3000. If you care about your money and want to get the same or better performance, a Windows machine with similar specs can be had for about $2000 or less. I just configured a desktop with 32 gb ram, a 2 gb vram workstation graphics card, i7 quad core unlocked (for mild overclocking), 1 tb m.2 SSD (as fast as ram and 4x faster than any SSD drive running on SATA or Thunderbolt), and 12 gb spinning storage - (3) 4 tb Western digital Black drives with 5 yr warranty. Total price with OS (Win7 or Win10) was around $1900. Like I said, if money is important there are really good options for not a lot of money that will totally outperform anything from Apple at the same price point. Nothing at all wrong with Apple products, but by the same token there is no magic in the box either. At the end of the day, it's another off-the-shelf computer assembled with decent, but not robust, components, with a decent warranty and customer service policy. It's a machine (regardless of which one you get) intended for general purpose usage. If you are a power user, then you can and should get better. I think photo editing qualifies you as a power user.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Try a Sager/CLevo, from http://www.xoticpc.com/ You can do the build yourself if you don't find one that suits your needs or they will configure it for you after you tell them your needs.
I purchased a custom built 17" laptop for $3,000 with 2-SS drives that will do rings around a Mac book,Dell or even an iMAC....mine is built for Cad and hi end renderings, over built for PS. So you should be able to do better price wise.

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

Correction for a couple of typos:

Shared system ram is to be avoided. A system with 16gb ram is ok as long as it is not shared with graphics, but you will have quite a bit of scratch disk usage (it will slow the machine down considerably) when doing some memory intensive stuff in Photoshop. With 32 gb ram, you rarely utilize the scratch disk, and things will boogie along quite quickly.

The storage on the system I configured for one of my students had 12 TB, not GB of spinning storage.

There is no clear advantage these days from getting a Mac - they are not "better" - only different, and in some cases, like photography, lack the wide gamut display support enjoyed by photo editing professionals. If sRGB is "good enough" for your eyes, then either platform will do. If you want more colors with greater precision, then a 30 bit display card with 2 gb of vram will give you that in Photoshop, provided you have a display that can show that many colors. Resolution is not an indication of quality for photo editing. Gamut and color accuracy are, however.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'll throw out a few ideas. I've used Dells for years, and I like them. I get Core i7 and the basic RAM. It's much cheaper to buy more RAM from someone like Crucial than from Dell. I got a Samsung 500GB SSD for use as my C drive with OS and programs. All my data is on a second internal drive. It's a very fast setup. You can buy the computer from Dell with a larger C drive and then use that as your D drive after cloning it onto the Samsung.

A Mac is a good alternative, although it will be more expensive, and you will have to get some new programs. You can also use the free Virtual Box to run Windows on your Mac. It works fine for me.