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Your photo thing is the issue here. Otherwise, one of the cheapest laptops from BestBuy would be just fine, given enough memory. The speed of any of them is more than enough for all business items, especially if your hard drive is at least 5400 RPM (that stands for Revolutions Per Minute).

For photo editing, you ideally need more pixels than standard screens offer. Standard laptop screens typically offer 1280 x 800. The higher-end ones offer 1600 x 1200 or 1920 x 1200 (widescreen). These can be hard to find, but well worth it for large amounts of detail on a laptop screen. I wouldn't want to be without my 1600 x 1200 for Photoshop.

If you base your decision on my photo-editing suggestion, then you need to consider if you want a glossy screen or a anti-glare matte-type screen. Most screens are glossy now, with more saturation and brightness, but much more glare.

You can look at the higher-end Dell Inspiron for the high-resolution glossy screens of those resolutions and the Dell Latitudes (from the Dell Outlet, as you need a special business account to qualify to purchase them otherwise) for the high-resolution matte screens (it seems that business people don't like glare on their screens). I have a Latitude, in part, for this reason.

Other manufacturers have high-resolution screens, too. Look at your needs and determine your comfort level. On the Dells, you can purchase onsite service even with an onsite insurance policy such that even if you drop the computer and break it, it is still covered and replaced in a day or so. You are even covered world-wide with that policy. The cost is minimal, too, and you can get a very similar set of policies with the Latitudes.

Regardless, you havbe many options. Enjoy!

So, everyone, if I decide I have to buy a new laptop, what do you recommend? Not too expensive

I just purchased a new laptop yesterday. I also do Photo editing. There was an article I read in either Popular Photography or Shutterbug that descrbed the ideal laptop for this type of work and they recommended these parameters:

Dual Core processor: Either Intel or AMD Turion
At least 1 GB of memory
At least 100GB hard drive
At least 128 MB Video memory
At least a CD burner (a DVD burner would be optimum)

Display size is up to you.

Hope that helps
FReegards!
Pete

What laptop? That question keeps coming up here.

From In the market for a laptop. Post 9 of 9:

I made a couple of posts in response to a similar question, on the thread COMPUTER HELP-Looking to buy a laptop computer..

Here's copies of what I posted. See this thread for more discussion.

I'd recommend first choosing the retailer, not the laptop. In particular, I recommend DiscountLaptops.com. They have consistently had extremely high ratings from ResellerRatings.com over the years.

The brand that DiscountLaptops sells the most of is Sager, which is little known. They are a major manufacturer of high end gaming laptops under other brand names, such as Alienware.

So I'd go to the DiscountLaptops site and choose based on features and price.

Dell gets a rating of 4.37 on ResellerRatings.com, on a scale of 10. DiscountLaptops gets a lifetime rating of 9.98. Dell works by driving down their parts and manufacturing costs, and covering for the resulting lower quality with a good replacement warranty. Better to have quality hardware to start with, and still get a good warranty, as Sager Notebook, the primary laptop manufacturer supplying to DiscountLaptops, does.

Bump on the memory recommendation. Not even 512 Mb is enough. I've got a Toshiba laptop, and its got 768 Mb, and it is barely enough. If I open more than a couple of apps, it gets dog slow, terribly slow. I'd go for 1 Gb for any Windows XP or Mac OS laptop (or desktop for that matter), at a minimum.

Newegg is the only way to go

Yes - I am a big fan of Newegg.com. Anytime I know what I want, I buy there.

But in cases like this, where I don't know just what I want, a place such as DiscountLaptops.com is better, since it guides one to good choices.

From Vanity: FReeper TechnoGeeks-Computer Advice Needed! Post 19 of 19:

The other supplier of pre-built PC's that has long had, and still has, an excellent ResellerRatings.com rating is

ECS Envision Computer Systems, with a current rating of 9.90

The two top rated laptop vendors for a long time now have been and continue to be

PowerNotebooks.com, with a perfect 10.00 rating, and
DiscountLaptops.com, with an excellent 9.86 rating.