Thread: What are the most important features in a laptop for a photographer running adobe photoshop?

My wife is looking to start getting into photography. She is starting to take classes and will be hopefully capable of running the best software from adobe. What are my most important features? Ram? Video Card? Processing Speed? Not too worried about hard drive because we can always get an external. Please advise, thanks.

All of these items are important. Buy the best you can comfortably afford. I highly recommend this company for RAM - www.mushkin.com They are performance based and very economical and enjoy the highest rankings (look for rebates) on New Egg. RAM has come down quite drastically in the past year and it would behoove you to max out your machine when you start using Adobe Photoshop and other RAM pounding applications

Also, if you can score a Solid State Drive you will notice your machine "spring to life" as the read and write times will increase greatly.

And save a little mint for that camera -- those things aren't cheap!
Check dpreview.com for unbiased reviews...

ram and cpu are two big factors for photo editing for pro's. another thing you might want to look for is a laptop that comes with a media card reader built in. one less thing to buy and carry around.

have at least 4gb ram and make sure its DDR3, make sure the prossesor is intel, and if you are going to play games then get and ATI or nVida graphics card with at least 512 dedicated memory, with windows 7, if you travle alot try to make it from 14 to 15.6in and try to get it ultra portable, and thats all the basics i think and if you have all the adobe prgrams and everything you will be ok here are 2 good laptops that i think are good for you http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Laptop+with+Intel%26%23174;+Core%26%2315 3;2+Duo+Processor+-+Black/9553985.p?id=1218123211141&skuId=9553985
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Dell+-+Inspiron+Laptop+with+Intel%26%23174;+Core%26%2315 3;2+Duo+Processor+-+Cherry+Red/9539243.p?id=1218120536811&skuId=9539243

i hope you would like them {:0)

If you are going to be working with pictures, the video card probably isn't as important as the RAM or processor. But that doesn't mean you want a terrible video card either.

It also depends on what operating system is installed on the laptop. Here's a little bit from my experience with RAM:

Windows XP: Minimum 512mb, Recommended 1gb or more
Windows Vista: Minimum 1gb, Recommended 2gb or more
Windows 7: http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements

For a processor I would recommend multi-core at 2.0ghz or higher. Processor manufacturers make low-end processors (such as Intel's Celeron and AMD's Sempron), it's not always clear how well they will work so make sure you go for the nicer makes like the Intel Core series, or AMD's Athlon series.

Other than that, others have mentioned some nice add-on features like multi-card readers. If you really want to get fancy, get a laptop with built in Bluetooth.