I’m looking at getting a new laptop and the 13" 2.9 i7 is looking like my choice, but before I bother I want to check and see if it will be good enough to run photoshop without making me want to kill myself. My current laptop won’t even run it, so anything is an improvement… I can’t even watch porn on this piece of shit. Still though, I don’t want to pick up a 1500 dollar laptop and then not be able to use it how I want, ya know? :skid
So, will this thing do what I want it to? Run photoshop, email, browser, itunes all at the same time or will it get lugged down easy?
Dual core i7 2.9 ghz with turbo boost, 8 gb of ram, intel hd graphics 4000.
I don’t really give a fuck about the pc vs mac debate at ALL. Every can suck my dick with their opinions. I have a macbook now and it’s been a solid laptop for the last five years. I’m impressed with it and they’ve gained a repeat customer.
I have no idea what the specs are on my iMac but it runs all of what you said with no problem. I am very close to 1 TB of photos on the hard drive which I need to remove soon. It can easy handle a Photoshop document with 60+ layers with no sweat.
Nick (AMDisthebest) has the same iMac but with upgrades and he knows what he’s talking about (I’m lost with computers).
Yeah I was hoping he’d see this but he doesn’t post much anymore so I doubt he will. I could also get a mac mini though… 2.6 ghz i7 quad core instead of the dual, same ram, bigger hd, 400 cheaper…I already have a good monitor.
Just buy the 27" iMac. Mine has worked fine, just an off the shelf set up they had in the store. My only issue is the glass screen is glossy so it’s a bitch to edit sometimes (reflections).
That’s good news. I got a little nervous when I realized the macbooks were dual instead of quad core… I don’t know if that makes any big difference but it hung me up a bit. I’ll continue as planned, thanks Nick.
You can get quad core, but only in the 15" and big money. I can guarantee you will not be disappointed with the performance. If you can swing it, I’d say go for an SSD. Between the i7 dual, SSD and 8GB of memory the laptop would blow your mind.
Also, look into the Air’s as well. They all come with an SSD out of the gate. I have the 11" model with i7 2.0ghz, 256gb SSD and 8GB of memory and it does everything I throw at it. Even the i5 Air will perform well and the battery life it ridiculous.
How intense do you use Photoshop? Are you running like hard core filters and things that really toll the processor or just normal stuff?
Also, get an educational discount. Makes a nice difference. Even if you’re not currently a student, just show a college ID. No id, I’ll purchase it for you with your payment of course. Lol
I haven’t used it yet, I want to get into it and learn it… I think it could make a mile of difference in my pictures if I learn to use it properly.
Does the ssd really make that big of a difference? I’ve never used one of those either. I haven’t been interested or involved in technology since I graduated highschool… it’s amazing how fast what I used to know became irrelevant. :rofl
Battery life isn’t very critical for me, but I would like to have a 13" screen. I also don’t really like the idea of not having an optical drive.
If ssd makes that big of a difference I could always upgrade that in the future as well.
edit- Also I appreciate the student discount offer but I have a friend who works at the store and is hooking me up with 15% off, which is more than the student discount. Thanks though!
Well in my opinion as far a photography is concerned, I lean more towards taking the picture as near perfect as possible and relying less on the post processing work (Photoshop/etc). That being said, there isn’t one image I take that isn’t tweaked in some way/shape/form. I use Lightroom personally and find that it’s the most powerful tool in image processing for me. I just try hard to expose properly, frame properly and keep and eye out for things that would require lots of post-process work and keep them out of my image. This mostly is to cover up my weak to mediocre post-processing skills.
And SSD makes a night and day difference. If there is one thing I’d say you can’t go without, it’d be that. Hell, and i5 air with 4gb of memory would “feel” easily 4 times as fast as a Pro 13" with i7, 8GB and a standard hard disk. This performance applies to application load times, boot times and anything requiring lots of disk I/O. That being said, exporting/rendering images comes down to mostly processor power and that’s where the i7 will outperform.
Battery life may not matter much, but it’s nice when you do need it. Playing on a plane or whatever. Also, my opinion but optical drives are a thing of the past. Between thumb drives, cloud services, image hosts, app store, etc they are becoming less and less beneficial. You can always pick up a cheap external writer if needed.
Upgrading a non-retina pro to SSD is an option to save money initially though sometimes it’s hard to find an SSD that will work 100% with a mac. I did it in my iMac. Worth the effort, but next time I’ll just buy with an SSD installed.
Nice having an in there. Stuff is not cheap. Worth the money though :excited
I agree with you on getting an image as close to perfect as possible, but there is always something you could change just a bit to make better as you obviously know. I’m to the point where I think making those small changes will make a major difference for me. I have a good body, good glass, I take a lot of pictures and I am constantly improving my composition but there will always be things I can make a bit better with post processing. I’ve always thought that if you were good enough with your camera you wouldn’t need post processing, and I think I’m pretty fair… but I’m coming around to seeing that it will definitely help.
I might have to look into that when I’ve got more money available. I could stick the hd in the new macbook into my old one (if they’re compatible) and put a ssd in the new one.
As much of a thing of the past they may be I feel like I use it often enough to want it.
Yeah man, I’m glad he’s setting me up. He told me if I had gotten it last year he could have made it 25%… pretty bummed I waited. haha
Haha nah, i thought it was a heat sync issue for a while… I redid that thermal paste them the other day i noticed it is running out of memory in no time flat. I’ll get some new ram for it and do a clean install of whatever os is on it and it will probably be okay. It will be my beater to take into the garage with me.
i think you should clean up/fix yours bc something is wrong with it i can do pretty much anything (except install the newest os lol) on mine and it’s older.
It just uses memory like there’s no tomorrow. Don’t know why. The hard drive is nearly full so there is no room for virtual memory. It only has 2gb of ram. I just think it can’t keep up with the Internet anymore.
