portable laptop for travel office and photo editing

[ik9000]

As the title - been asked to suggest a portable laptop that will do office, photoediting, and ability to play DVDs on the go would also be nice. They state decent screen for picture editing + battery life desirable.

Size 13" or thereabouts (person wants to be able to fly with it/use on lap on train journeys)

Re DVDs - am thinking portable DVD players presumably adequate for this? Most smaller laptops look to be ditching in-built DVD drives - though it adds to the bulk they would have to carry round.

I'm not entirely sure what to recommend so thought I would put this to the hexites to advise. Budget tbc, but they're not on a shoe string. My thinking was find a good IPS screen, presumably colour calibrated where possible, big battery + SSD machine, but I don't really know what CPU spec is good for photo editing. They want to be able to load pics off their camera and review/edit shots on their travels.... RAM and a quad core? I guess if they're backpacking then battery life between charges prob important. And I'm guessing on-board GPU will suffice for this, doesn't sound like gaming grunt will be important. Or does PhotoShop use CUDA or similar GPU acceleration?

Like I say, out of my sphere of knowledge on this one - any advice appreciated.

[kompukare]

I would say it's more just an IPS screen but rather an IPS screen with a reasonable colour gamut (IPS guarantees good viewing angles but while the colour range tends to be better that is not guaranteed).

So you are probably looking at a business class laptop. In general that means Thinkpad X230/X240 (12.1"), the similar HP Elitebooks and also similar Dell Latitudes all of which tend to have an IPS option.

Not sure what the exact models names are for the Elitebook and Latitude equivalents. The NBC review of the X240 mentions a rather poor colour gamut though:
"65 % of sRGB and 41 % of AdobeRGB isn't much."
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....106883.0.html

Not sure if there are any 12"/13" notebooks with an i7 QM processor though as most are i5 M or U processors.

Photoshop and GPU acceleration: I think the older versions used to be CUDA but Adobe have now/are now moving to OpenCL. But I guess that only applies to some internal Photoshop filters, I have no idea what third-part plug-ins use.

But having had bad experience with the Nvidia solder defects on both laptops and video cards, I have personally decided that laptops and dGPU are probably never a good idea.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at this:

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-13/

Clevo is the OEM and it uses an IPS panel,with a higher resolution option which is also available.

[ik9000]

I would look at this:

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusV-13/

Clevo is the OEM and it uses an IPS panel,with a higher resolution option which is also available.

doesn't seem to offer an option for no dGPU?

[kompukare]

NBC reviewed CAT's suggestion (well AFAI Can Tell):
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....113676.0.html
"The available color space is underwhelming with just 62% sRGB and 42% AdobeRGB"
but unfortunately only the crazy 3200x1800 resolution version (magnifying glass needed to log in...), so no idea what the more reasonable 1600x900 res screen is capable of.

I imagine only workstation-class laptops will come anywhere near 100% AdobRGB but AFAIK those only start at 14"/15" or so.

[TheAnimus]

They a photoshop or lightroom person? Photoshop will offload to a GPU, lightroom sits there like a fatty on an economy flight, spilling out slightly into the nearby seats whilst failing to be remotely decent to others.

It also really depends how much the colour fidelity matters, AnandTech is one of the few who bother to review that, for instance I remember being impressed by this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7838/d...fined-design/3

But I'm guessing it's too big, and out of budget. However it does show what a screen giveth in one aspect, it taketh with the other.