£500 Laptop for Photoshop

RadeonHDx

New member
Next year my sister is going off to uni and wants a brand new laptop that she can use for editing and school work and the occasional session of Sims 3.

Recently she has been contemplating which laptop to get and asking me but only to get the response, "I don't do laptops". She was thinking about getting an Apple but talked herself out of it and told herself there was not justification for spending so much money on a laptop.

She said she would like it to be fast, so probably an SSD and have a touchscreen, so probably Windows 8.1 and that was about all she thought I needed to know which I suppose is right.

As always, I'm clueless so any suggestions will be met with open arms.

Joe :)
 
Next year my sister is going off to uni and wants a brand new laptop that she can use for editing and school work and the occasional session of Sims 3.

Recently she has been contemplating which laptop to get and asking me but only to get the response, "I don't do laptops". She was thinking about getting an Apple but talked herself out of it and told herself there was not justification for spending so much money on a laptop.

She said she would like it to be fast, so probably an SSD and have a touchscreen, so probably Windows 8.1 and that was about all she thought I needed to know which I suppose is right.

As always, I'm clueless so any suggestions will be met with open arms.

Joe :)

I don't think a pre built exists in that price range with an SSD and a touch screen, however I might be wrong.
I would recommend a custom laptop from PCspecialist or somewhere like that. Something with an i5, i7 if you have extra cash. GPU doesn't matter much at all if she doesn't plan on gaming (HD4000 can handle sims easy mode), high res screen will help a lot for work so aim for 1080p.
 
Inevitable lenovo post ;D . Slightly over budget but it'll do everything needed really well. Lenovo z510
specs wise it has an i5 2400m,a gt740, windows 8.1, 1tb harddrive. its £550.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-Z510...e=UTF8&qid=1393938377&sr=8-17&keywords=lenovo

Mmmm Lenovo.... :huh: I've had to return 3 Lenovo 555's for RMA because they just gave up, strangest things ever with no signs of fault or failure they just decided they didn't want to work anymore.
I'd strongly suggest you research and really do your homework before buying a particular model, while they have great customer service and RMA procedure it can be a pain living without it while it's being sorted.
 
Mmmm Lenovo.... :huh: I've had to return 3 Lenovo 555's for RMA because they just gave up, strangest things ever with no signs of fault or failure they just decided they didn't want to work anymore.
I'd strongly suggest you research and really do your homework before buying a particular model, while they have great customer service and RMA procedure it can be a pain living without it while it's being sorted.

I've never had a lenovo die on me :o. Compare that to 1 mac book air, 2 dells, a vaio and an acer. The macbook was second hand but so are all my lenovos. To be fair all of my lenovos are the business models which are bullet proof and were relatively expensive when new (until I bought a yoga pro, I'd never owned a lenovo that wasn't ex business). My trusty core 2 duo pre-ultrabook ultrabook is still alive and kicking despite being dropped by my siblings a couple of times. I'm a huge fan. I also have personal experience with that particular laptop model as its one of the ones we use at my work for visitors etc.
 
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Screen resolution and color reproduction will be essential..... a retina display on a macbook would be ideal.... the cost is in the display. If going the windows route make sure she has a 1080p+ display... The tools and menus are a pain when they take up 1/3 of your display....

Also, photoshop is pretty useless without a calibrated display or at least one capable of sRGB or Adobe RGB.

What will she be doing on photoshop? (pictures or content creation)
 
Hate to say it but, a second hand mac pro perhaps. yuk yuk yuk, i cant believe i just said that. Anyway their screens are quite nice for photoshop at least, I dont know about sims if that supports mac.
If you had a bigger budget or rob a bank then these:
Lenovo ThinkPad W530
Toshiba Qosmio X70
Asus Zenbook UX42VS
 
Hate to say it but, a second hand mac pro perhaps. yuk yuk yuk, i cant believe i just said that. Anyway their screens are quite nice for photoshop at least, I dont know about sims if that supports mac.
If you had a bigger budget or rob a bank then these:
Lenovo ThinkPad W530
Toshiba Qosmio X70
Asus Zenbook UX42VS

sims is support on mac

Discrete graphics are useful for photoshop, though.

you would need to go for AMD for openGL not sure which mobile GPU/APU support it.
 
I am not sure about how Photoshop works with AMD but I am certain that it supports nvidia gpus for hardware acceleration.
 
Though in terms of laptop GPUs there aren't many options. Still, if PS is important, it's probably worth it to shoot for those. I know that lenovo ideapads with 750ms are quite decent.
 
Adobe software tends to like CUDA, or at least up until CS6.

@OP; Have you had a look at sites such as PCSpecialist where you can configure your own laptop barebones?

I've looked at PCS but it tends to be too expensive to keep in her price range if she gets a discrete card.

I have, however, taken the recommendation of the Lenovo Z510. I'm ignoring the bad reviews because I'm not convinced either were about the actual product shown. Thanks for all the recommendations and help guys :).

Joe
 
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