Thread: I should've done this earlier!

I've been working on a Samsung netbook for the past 2 years, which pretty much coincided with my picking up photography again, and (thus?) also picking up digital post processing. I can tell you, netbooks are NOT suitable for anything heavier than GIMP! Silkypix, RawTherapee and Lightroom have all been somewhere inbetween slow and maddeningly slow, and although LR3.6 was allright, LR4 is costing me about 20 minutes to half an hour per photo, simply because every smallest adjustment needs between 1 and 30 seconds to compute. Needless to say this is a waste of life time, and when my netbook started showing its age (they're built to be as cheap as possible and have horribly short lifespans), I finally had an excuse to buy a proper laptop.

So, today I got a Toshiba C670 with 2,53GHz and 4GB RAM - and WOWWWW this thing flies! In LR4, all the adjustments I make are virtually instantaneous! I bet I can edit most photos in about 2 or 3 minutes now! Also having a (surprisingly good for the price) 17.3", 1600x900px screen really enhances the photo viewing experience, as well as the accuracy of my editing. For the money I put into it (less than € 500), I'm extremely pleased with what I got and I can't wait to put the time I'll be saving to good use!

I know nothing about computers, but when the time comes for me to replace my craptop, I'll definitely be soliciting the opinions of the peeps here. Mine runs smoothly enough, but I'm sure when I upgrade it'll be a real treat. More time spent "in the field" is always welcome. Congrats on your new ride!

I once had an old laptop that could take up to 5 minutes or more to apply a Silver Efex filter

Originally Posted by Luckypenguin

I once had an old laptop that could take up to 5 minutes or more to apply a Silver Efex filter

That's me now !!! ....frustrating to say the least, so much so that I try to avoid using SFX which is a shame because it's a really good bit of software.
I know diddly-squat about laptops and computers in general but that'll have to change now....I think an upgrade is required, especially given my LR4 should be arriving today !

M...A...C!

Or is that too controversial a topic?

I thought about it but a new one is too expensive for me (I'm still on a student budget) and buying a used laptop just isn't something I feel comfortable with...

Originally Posted by bartjeej

I thought about it but a new one is too expensive for me (I'm still on a student budget) and buying a used laptop just isn't something I feel comfortable with...

I'm predicting that a "buy a refurb Mac" reply is just around the corner.... deja vu

haha I must admit I haven't looked into that, but looking at the prices for refurbished macbooks of similar specs on the US website now, it's still way above my budget (starting around € 800 for, to me, lower specs).

I've had a series of middling desktops over the years (mostly HP and its predecessor Compaq) along with Dell laptops for work. None had the computing or graphics power to make the image processing programs perform well. With retirement just around the corner, I decided to treat myself to a system with good power, a nice monitor, and a clean(er) user interface experience. So I bought an iMac, 27-inch screen variety. I'm not going to gush about it and claim superiority for Mac over PC; only thing I know is that it's a lot more fun to run Lightroom, Photoshop, and Elements on this machine than any of my previous platforms.

Oh, and a postscript: I deferred my retirement to pay for this and other toys...

Second ps: the iMac doesn't address image storage while traveling. I use my iPad to some extent for this, but it really doesn't have the capacity for storing many RAW files. So I have a cumbersome workflow involving uploads of some images to the iPad, then all images to the iMac upon return. I'd like to get to the point where I don't need to bring along a laptop when on holiday...

Holiday? Whats that.