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Choosing a Computer

Monday, November 2nd 2009 @ 1:47 PM (not yet rated) post viewed 307 times

Had a member asking about what to look for in a new computer for doing image processing. This is Neil's recommendation for the features you want as of right now (January 2010).

Dual core processor (or more)
64 bit
4 GB of RAM (or more)
Separate graphics processor with separate RAM
7200 RPM hard drive
USB 2.0 and firewire 800 ports
One eSata port (or more)
Windows 7 (If you are a Mac person, calm down and take a deep breath. We happen to like PC's because you get more computer for your money and we have never felt limited or held back in any way. There is no question that Apple makes great computers for graphics and if you prefer the Mac and like looking down your nose at the PC users, go right ahead and buy one.)

Laptop or Desktop?

If you can afford to have both, great! But if you are looking at just getting one, the laptops have all the capabilites that you need and portability, too! The ability to work from anywhere is becoming more important every day.

Neil bought a Toshiba Satellite in July that he loves.

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Comments

rNeil Haugen
Apprentice

rNeil said on Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 @ 12:07 AM:

Miriam didn't harp on it, but these specs are ... well, not necessarily minimal, but still ... if you can get more of anything, go for it. While many programs don't really know how to "scale" themselves to really use the capabilities of a "quad core" processor (a chip that runs four separate processing streams at the same time), rest assured that most of the major pixel-editors like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, and Elements can.

SATA is the "new" type of hard-drive, faster in moving data on and off the disks of the drive. "eSATA" stands for external SATA, and means an external port on the computer that is wired for SATA-type data streams, something like a hundred times faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire. So it means that if you've got say a MyBook drive with USB, Firewire, and eSATA connections, if you can choose to use the eSATA from your computer to the drive, that connection is just as fast as if the drive were an internal drive connected to your computer's motherboard. For the large files we photographers create, this is incredibly good news!

So ... one eSATA port would be good, two would be even better ... but alas, most laptops still only sport one eSATA port.

If your computer can handle more than 4 gigs of RAM, go for it too. Some now can handle 16 gigs. Anyway, if you can meet these specs in this list, you'll do fine!