recommend a laptop

Hi Folks,

looking for some advice.....surprisingly enough!

Am looking to buy a laptop. Primary use will be for music (itunes) and photography uses. Also want to have full office package alnong with usual email and internet use.

Can anyone offer advice on what memory capacity I will need and perhaps which would be the better machines to look at.

Thanks

Randy

By photography, do you mean simply storing images or do you plan to use something like photoshop?

Thats a how long is a string question.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...ould-i-buy-form-must-read-before-posting.html

GIMP is a free alternative to Photoshop..

iPad?

6 months ago I bought an ACER Laptop from DID Electrical for €399 - it is excellent, 15.5" screen, Windows 7 Home Premium (avoid Windows Vista at all costs) etc. The sound quality is poor but I remedied this with a pair of Logitech Speakers costing about €30 from Amazon.

tosullivan said:

iPad?

Click to expand...

Not a bad suggestion given the above listed uses. Does depend though if the individual wants it for photo editing or photo display and storage as was also asked.

If it is for photo storage and display then an iPad or pc would do the job. But if it was for photo editing then you might want to consider a mac.

I would say the 15" laptops are big enough.
Anything else almost seem too big IMHO

go for 7 lots of RAM and lots of HD space.

HDMI output is handy for connecitng to tv.

I would avoid Dell. We have had problems with 2 Dell laptops in the family.

We have had a trouble free Compaq/HP for 3 years. Also I would look at Lenovo as these where formally IBM and we have an IBM T41 Thinkpad giving good service, and a nice compact machine.

As much as the spec of the machine, pick it up and feel the weight and balance and look at the quality of the case etc.

Regarding memory, go 2GB RAM minimum. There are still machines offering 1GB RAM but I would avoid these, you want to future proof as much as you can and it will probably only be €50 more or so to get up to a better spec. Less important is disk space but minimum would me 160GB but 250GB more the norm these days. Is easier for non techy to add more disk storage than upgrade the RAM later.