The Laptop Bug... I has it.
Soooo... I'm seeing so many deals right now on computers and... I'm trying to decide if it's time to crack and buy a laptop.
I think I can pretty easily swing $400, so I'm trying to find the best deal for my money. I don't mind refurbished machines or open-box items, as long as everything's there and someone's still there in case it fries shortly after I get it--I won't mind a scratch on the outside here or there.
I'm looking to do web-stuff (videos, browsing, maybe some Open Canvasing), Photoshop and CorelDraw vectoring, maybe watching movies and listening to music.
I guess if I get into Photoshopping on the go, the CPU and memory will be very important--not so much the video rendering, from what I've heard. So I guess dual-core and at least 2GB memory would be prefered.
Screen-size seems like it would be important too.. no smaller than 15".
VGA ports, S-video, or some way of using my or other larger monitors with it would be good too.
A brand, or even a model that folks use and have had good luck with (reliability) would be prefered too.
... I'm guessing that I'd probably want XP on it for now, unless Windows 7's "XP Environment" means that my Photoshop and other programs work on it just fine."
I don't actually NEED a laptop. It's much more of a "want". It'd be nice to think that with a laptop, I'd find myself with my Wacom tablet out at some WiFi place, logged into OpenCanvas and finally drawing with other artists as drawing with folks locally just isn't going to work. I'd like to think that I could do graphic design on the fly, have my files with me and be productive wherever I went.
Past history tells me that very likely, my laptop would be under-utilized as I found other reasons why it just wouldn't work the way my fantasy-brain would like it to.
I think I can pretty easily swing $400, so I'm trying to find the best deal for my money. I don't mind refurbished machines or open-box items, as long as everything's there and someone's still there in case it fries shortly after I get it--I won't mind a scratch on the outside here or there.
I'm looking to do web-stuff (videos, browsing, maybe some Open Canvasing), Photoshop and CorelDraw vectoring, maybe watching movies and listening to music.
I guess if I get into Photoshopping on the go, the CPU and memory will be very important--not so much the video rendering, from what I've heard. So I guess dual-core and at least 2GB memory would be prefered.
Screen-size seems like it would be important too.. no smaller than 15".
VGA ports, S-video, or some way of using my or other larger monitors with it would be good too.
A brand, or even a model that folks use and have had good luck with (reliability) would be prefered too.
... I'm guessing that I'd probably want XP on it for now, unless Windows 7's "XP Environment" means that my Photoshop and other programs work on it just fine."
I don't actually NEED a laptop. It's much more of a "want". It'd be nice to think that with a laptop, I'd find myself with my Wacom tablet out at some WiFi place, logged into OpenCanvas and finally drawing with other artists as drawing with folks locally just isn't going to work. I'd like to think that I could do graphic design on the fly, have my files with me and be productive wherever I went.
Past history tells me that very likely, my laptop would be under-utilized as I found other reasons why it just wouldn't work the way my fantasy-brain would like it to.