Laptop suggestions - cost not a factor!

[Billy White]

I would like to buy (or have built) a laptop mainly for using LR3 to download photos from my SanDisk extreme Pro cards taken with my D3x and simultaneously writing to two separate USB3 Buffalo Mini Stations - with the idea of adding a USB3 card reader as soon as I can find one - I need a fast machine as I trend to shoot HRD mostly with 5-7 exposures per shoot - I only do minimal sorting on the laptop as I have a dual Cintique setup on my workstation

thanks

Billy

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Mac or PC? If Mac, then I would get a MacBook Pro with i7 processor, 8GB RAM and SSD hard drive.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

I like my more-than-an-yr-old Sony Vaio f-series screen a lot. The new ones, esp. the top-of-the-line, should be very good. 16.4 led-backlit screen with 1920X1080 res. i7 processor. 8GB ram. You can configure it to your needs as well. In the PC world, I really like Sony screens.

[Doug Brown]

Unfortunately, you can't get USB 3.0 on a MacBook Pro.

[Roger Clark]

Billy,
How about some more constraints? Is weight a factor. For travel I want the lightest laptop I can get. But some people are fine carrying a 17-inch laptop that weighs 10+ pounds. I also wanted maximum disk space (e.g. have a 640 GByte drive in mine now--put that in a laptop myself).

USB3 is pretty new (and still rare), but in a year or so we probably can't live without it. The increased speed will be nice.

Roger

[Charles Glatzer]

Billy,

USB3 is pretty new (and still rare), but in a year or so we probably can't live without it. The increased speed will be nice.

Roger

Roger,

Check this out

Intel Light Peak

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/adapters ... -40089748/

Best,

Chas

[Billy White]

Roger - weight is a consideration - I carry a top of the line 15" Sony Vaio at present -- I use a pc workstation and need a fast pc laptop - internal hard drive space is not really a major consideration as I use LR3 to copy my files to two USB3 500g Buffalo Ministrations - A and B - I use the A copy to edit and transfer to my main workstation - the B copy is saved as an archive - when one is near capacity - I just switch to another A-B pair - I am up to A06 and B06 at present -

the Intel optic system sounds great but I wonder when it will arrive - waiting at present for a USB3 card reader

thanks
Billy

[Roger Clark]

Billy,
Take a look at panasonic business toughbooks. One model is about 3.5 pounds with a 14-inch screen. Some of the reviews are low because the graphics card(s) don't do games well. But they are plenty fast for photos. Good if weight is a factor. You will need to evaluate if speed is fast enough for you.

Roger

[Sandra Nykerk]

Most important for me is the screen quality. Does the Sony have a matte screen? Besides the Macbook Pro, is there anything else with a matte screen?

[Roger Clark]

Dandra,
Many laptops have matte screens. But laptop screens are almost always TN type LCD panels and they change color and contrast with viewing angle. That is not good for photo editing. My impression is that the newer LED backlit displays are a little better, but they are still not as good as IPS-type displays found in better desktop screens.

Roger

[Charlie Woodrich]

Check this out!

http://www.falcon-nw.com/laptops

[Stephen Feingold]

The few laptops with USB 3.0 only have one port, the rest are USB2.0. Look for a machine with a PCI-e slot. This will allow you to add a 2 port PCI-e USB 3.0 adapter.
There are no USB 3.0 card readers available. Back in June Pretec announced their P240 USB 3.0 card reader, but it has not been released. For now, a good card reader would be a PCI-e expresscard reader such as the Lexar Pro or Sonnet dual card expresscard reader. These will give you read/write speeds close to the capability of todays CF cards. Check out the Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop.