Photoshop CS5 Laptop for £1500

[DaKid]

Hiya all

I'm looking for a laptop that will be good for doing Photoshop work on (without needing an external monitor), for less than £1500, and I was hoping you guys might be able to help, please?

I've discounted the Apple as too expensive, and am currently considering a Dell XPS Studio 16, with RGBLED, Core i7 and 6GB RAM (although without a SSD). This is even more tempting because I can use the Dell EPP and get 10% off.

However; I'm well aware of how little I know about the current PC market in general, let alone laptops, and so I would welcome guidance. I need it to be - without compromise - a superb screen, and I need the performance and hardware to take advantage of the Photoshop CS5 PhysX engine (although does that rule out a Dell???). I'd very much like it to be sexy-looking, but primary consideration is most definitely the ability to do heavy photographic work (on 21 megapixel RAW files) of an almost-comparable performance to my desktop PC (Core i7 920, 6GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 285 with 24" Dell 1920x1200 screen).

Help and guidance would be much appreciated!

Oh, and comments on the Dell support plans would be welcome too (or pointers to more info!)

Cheers,

Martin

[Skulltrail]

The XPS are nice, but this VIAO F Series may be worth a look:

https://www.sonystyle.co.uk:443/Sony...tive=true)/.do

16.4" 1920x1080
Core i7-740QM 1.73GHz 4 core / 8 thread
6GB 1333MHz DDR3
128GB SSD
1GB nVidia 330M

£1,429

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would probably try to find a notebook with a decent screen first and then think about the specifications later. Most of the screens will be ones with TN panels and will be orientated towards games and watching videos. Responses times will be what these panels will be more optimised for rather than still image quality.
Some notebooks however will have screens which are more orientated towards image editing(even if they use TN panels). I would probably try to avoid glossy screens for image editing TBH.

Anandtech seems to testing their colour accuracy of notebooks screens in many of their more recent reviews so I would check them out. Notebookcheck also test colour accuracy of notebook screens so I would also check their reviews too.

I would look at the Lenovo W series workstations.

The W701 is meant to have a matt screen which is quite decent for notebook and has a mobile Core i7 and a Quadro card:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-...-692759/review

However it is quite expensive.

Another alternative is the W510 which has a matt screen too:

http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...+thinkpad+w510

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/i...viewid=3223373

It also has a mobile Core i7 and a Quadro graphics card. It even has a built in calibration sensor for the screen.

It will be slightly above your budget:

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...LAID=533835188

Also remember that the mobile Core i7 processors are clocked lower than a desktop Core i7 920.

[Guy]

Well in the past few weeks I picked up a new Thinkpad W500 (older model, on clearance) from Lenovo. Its an older Core 2 Duo, 2.8Ghz, 4GB DDR3 Ram, 15.4 Screen (1920x1200) Fire GL Graphics, with ISV certification, I havent tried CS5 on it yet, but CS4 absolutely flies. So I would say the 'W' Thinkpad series is perfect for your needs. If its slightly too expensive then the 'T' series Thinkpads are pretty much just as good, and just as customisable, but slightly less on the wallet.

[DaKid]

Thanks guys. Some really good information there. I appreciate very much your time in answering! Will be looking a lot more closely at these Thinkpad models especially.