Looking to purchase a laptop

[MikeHopps]

So, I am getting back into Website Development. Which basically will be a little blogging here and there. I will be using Photoshop, just light use. Also, I may do a little video editing here in there of home videos. My thing is, I am always trying to purchase the hottest and the nicest looking items out. I don't want to overspend here.

I want a nice laptop, but nothing overkill. What do you guys recommend here? 2 Cores, i5, i7, etc??



Thanks in advance.

 

[BDS23]

I'll keep it simple. For your needs, get something with 4 real cores, no need for a powerful GPU but a mid-range class would help and anything less than 4 GB would be a pain. Hard drive space would be your choice. Also, make sure the screen display covers AT LEAST the sRGB colour spectrum. Other factors such as keyboard and touchpad input, speakers and battery life are minor things. For what I've just described, Asus covers those well but don't let that stop you from checking other brands. My personal all-round favourite would be the M14x.

 

[MikeHopps]

Awesome advice, thanks!

 

[j-dawg]

It sounds like your primary use will be for web development, which is not a super-demanding task - you could do it on a netbook, though it might not be fun. There are a ton of ~14" laptops that will do your development work without breaking a sweat for $400; it's a question of how many hundreds of dollars more you're willing to spend to speed up your light Photoshop use and occasional video editing by a bit.

The only common things I can think of off the top of my head that really require powerful PCs are:
- Gaming
- Processing very large data sets (ie millions of entries)
- CAD/CFD/FEA/other engineering analysis software
- Large-scale media creation and editing

I'm almost certainly missing some important applications here, but I'd say 80% of users would have their needs met by the slowest 20% of computers on the market.

Basically what I'm saying is, I wouldn't buy a computer based on specifications. I'd look at the price tag and the manufacturer's reputation, and make my decision according to those two factors, knowing that the power I need is probably in it. Make sure it's not a POS, of course - get an up-to-date dual-core processor and a decent amount of RAM - but a hot rod will not serve you much better than an entry-level laptop, despite the vastly increased cost.

 

[Pylon]

Other factors such as keyboard and touchpad input, speakers and battery life are minor things.

I would actually disagree here. If you're doing web development and blogging, a good keyboard is a very nice thing to have. You can't swap out a mushy keyboard on a laptop - you could bring an external keyboard, but that's one more thing to carry with you and you can't use an external keyboard in some situations. Input is pretty important if you're using it on the go.

My recommendation would be a Thinkpad E420 with a Core i5-2410M or better CPU, though the screen on that probably isn't good enough for photo editing. If you can up your budget, something with a higher resolution screen would be nice (e.g. Thinkpad T520 w/ 1600x900 option for ~$950 or a Thinkpad L520 w/ 1600x900 option for ~$850).