The Gun Counter

As an outgrowth of Dawn's re-occurrence of cancer, we are seriously re-evaluating our entire lives and life track.

One of her key cancer triggers is stress. Her boss and chosen marketing career (while working for others) is nothing but stress and she does not handle stress, she eats it.

We are looking to become self employed, which may well lower our monetary standard of living but will get her off the hamster wheel and help her health remain better. To this end, she is likely quitting her job and hanging out a part time shingle as an independent marketer as well as writing a few books she has been half ass working on for the past few years.

To the laptop part.

For her marketing endeavors she will be using the programs of Adobe In Design Suite. Adobe Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Fireworks, and Acrobat Pro

http://www.technetmicro.com/Adobe-Desig ... _p_28.html

This is version 5.5. We will likely buy version 5 if available as that is what she has been using.

I am wondering if the computer build savvy among you could tell me if this is a good system to run these programs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 2PF1XT3658

Thanks

Processor benchmarks fairly even with the flavor of Core-i7 in my Sony VAIO (mine is the 3632), which does basic video processing, reasonably heavy-duty photoshop, and lots of Lightroom work without complaint from me. 4GB of ram is pretty light, but it comes with 4 slots, which I'd imagine half of which are empty out of the box, so that's a reasonably cheap upgrade and something I'd do with the purchase. Only major thing I'd look into is what resolution the screen is. Quick intarwebz research shows they put out HD (1366x768), HD+ (1600x900) and full HD (1920x1080) resolutions with the same nomenclature. HD+ or full HD would be fine for photoshop work, but 'HD' is pretty weak, and she'll run out of screen real estate in very short order using any Adobe products. Also, machine comes with Win7 Pro 64-bit vs Win8, which is A Good Thing™, but that's just my opinion.

Bottom line, not a bad machine, but make sure it's at least their HD+ or FHD version and I'd add another 4-8gb of RAM to call it good.

I'm too lazy to follow the link, but I like what g-man said. Always load up on ram, and look at the ratings for the ram itself. Buy good ram.

Also, I can't recommend highly enough a good second monitor. Get a great big, good-resolution one and configure it as the home screen. In no time, she'll wonder how she ever did without two screens. Beauty part is you can add the monitor later when finances permit. Make sure the machine can accommodate it to start so you're not going back in the guts later. Laptops will do it, but I think you have to check if you're doing your own build.

g-man wrote:Processor benchmarks fairly even with the flavor of Core-i7 in my Sony VAIO (mine is the 3632), which does basic video processing, reasonably heavy-duty photoshop, and lots of Lightroom work without complaint from me. 4GB of ram is pretty light, but it comes with 4 slots, which I'd imagine half of which are empty out of the box, so that's a reasonably cheap upgrade and something I'd do with the purchase. Only major thing I'd look into is what resolution the screen is. Quick intarwebz research shows they put out HD (1366x768), HD+ (1600x900) and full HD (1920x1080) resolutions with the same nomenclature. HD+ or full HD would be fine for photoshop work, but 'HD' is pretty weak, and she'll run out of screen real estate in very short order using any Adobe products. Also, machine comes with Win7 Pro 64-bit vs Win8, which is A Good Thing™, but that's just my opinion.

Bottom line, not a bad machine, but make sure it's at least their HD+ or FHD version and I'd add another 4-8gb of RAM to call it good.

Thank you.

She will not likely do much serious video editing, but will be doing lots of photoshop equivalent stuff. So that is all good to know. Thanks for the heads up on the screen check. I will do so, if we try to purchase.

Weetabix wrote:I'm too lazy to follow the link, but I like what g-man said. Always load up on ram, and look at the ratings for the ram itself. Buy good ram.

Also, I can't recommend highly enough a good second monitor. Get a great big, good-resolution one and configure it as the home screen. In no time, she'll wonder how she ever did without two screens. Beauty part is you can add the monitor later when finances permit. Make sure the machine can accommodate it to start so you're not going back in the guts later. Laptops will do it, but I think you have to check if you're doing your own build.

She did that with her work laptop. We will likely do the same with this. She can work with the laptop and as revenue allows, can step up to a 24" -42" home based second monitor. Good call on making sure that will function.

Precision wrote:She did that with her work laptop. We will likely do the same with this. She can work with the laptop and as revenue allows, can step up to a 24" -42" home based second monitor. Good call on making sure that will function.

Dunno about your video setup, but my 32" Sceptre HDTV insists it can double as a large monitor if needed. Could save some bucks to apply elsewhere.

Of course, as always, YMMV.

What is max budget and wil this be used as a laptop or as a portable desktop?

Yogimus wrote:What is max budget and wil this be used as a laptop or as a portable desktop?

Not sure if I know the difference. But there will be no stationary desktop - at least to start.

our max budget for a word processor is $300.
Our max budget for a marketing workhorse is likely around $1000 but would LIKE to stay a fair amount below. We also need to buy a $5-600 Adobe suite. We can get that price by buying an older suite. I would really like to be < $1500 for the computer, OS, microsoft office and the Adobe suite.

700 bucks will get you a very good laptop

Need to know if the laptop screen will be the primary display or if it will be hooked into an external monitor.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834152586


Has a dedicated video card, 8gb ram and 750gb hard drive

Small enough to be portable


Video card is useful if you need to hook that thing up to a large display.