My illustrator/painter friend is looking for a laptop so she can work on the go. Any help would be grateful! She's even filled out a Q/A. thank you
1) What is your budget?
max around $2000
2) What size notebook would you prefer?
15" to 17"+
3) USA
4) Are there any brands that you prefer or any you really don't like?
not a big fan of Dell
5) Would you consider laptops that are refurbished/redistributed?
no
6) What are the primary tasks will you be performing with this notebook?
using corel painter, adobe photoshop, web browsing, movies, music, possibly lightroom in the future.
7) Will you be taking the notebook with you to different places, leaving it on your desk or both?
rarely to travel, otherwise at home
8) Will you be playing games on your notebook? If so, please state which games or types of games?
probably not
9) How many hours of battery life do you need?
this isn't a huge issue for me at least 3 hrs?
10) Would you prefer to see the notebooks you're considering before purchasing it or buying a notebook on-line without seeing it is OK? online is ok
11) What OS do you prefer?
windows 7 or mac os
Screen Specifics
12) From the choices below, what screen resolution(s) would you prefer?
I think this is what I need:
* Maximum Resolutions: WSXGA+, WUXGA, FHD, 1080p
* Actual resolutions: 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 1920x1080
13) Do you want a glossy/reflective screen or a matte/non-glossy screen?
prefer glossy for color
Build Quality and Design
14) Are the notebook's looks and stylishness important to you?
not very important
15) When are you buying this laptop?
as soon as possible
16) How long do you want this laptop to last?
3 years at least
Notebook Components
17) How much hard drive space do you need; 80GB to 640GB? Do you want a SSD drive? I believe i need at least 500GB to run Painter, the ssd drive sounds sweet if i can afford it sure...I added in specs below for painter/photoshop. using those programs sometimes the files get very big
the problem with my pc now is that i like to run photoshop and painter simultaneously and it cannot handle tha presha! Also I tend to fill it up with photos, music etc..
18) Do you need an optical drive? If yes, a CDRW/DVD-ROM, DVD Burner or Blu-Ray drive?
yes i think i need the dvd for photoshop....
I guess I am average with computers? whatever that means haha...I've been eyeing the macs but worry about transfering data from mac to current pc and back. I've had issues in the past with that.
I thought it would be helpful to add in the requirements for Painter and Photoshop.
System Requirements
Windows®
* Pentium® IV, 700 MHz or greater
* 1 GB of RAM
* 500 MB of hard disk space for installation
* 24-bit color display
* 1024 x 768 screen resolution
* CD-ROM
Mac OS®
* Power Mac® G5, 700 MHz or greater
* 1 GB of RAM
* 500 MB of hard disk space for installation
* 24-bit color display
* 1024 x 768 screen resolution
* CD-ROM
Photoshop
Windows
* Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
* or Windows 7
* 1GB of RAM
* 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash-based storage devices)
* 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit color, and 256MB of VRAM
* Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
* DVD-ROM drive
Mac OS
* Multicore Intel processor
* Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6
* 1GB of RAM
* 2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
* 1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 16-bit color, and 256MB of VRAM
* Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
* DVD-ROM drive
