Laptop for Photography Student?

This HP would handle what you need just fine.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/pro... A8-5550M APU HD 8000 Series Graphics 6GB DDR3 750GB 5400 rpm HD Starting at $530

Brand buying advise

You get what you pay for. Systems with high end parts with low prices are to be viewed with suspicion. They have to cut corners somewhere to get the price down. What cost you less today is going to cost you more tomorrow.

Apple makes a good quality laptop. The problem comes when it requires service or minor upgrades. It is near impossible to do anything with them. They even glue the battery and hard drive down so you can not change it. They solder the ram to the logic board so you can not increase it. They lock up most of the software so your stuck with what they approve.

Lenovo has serious stand behind their product problems. They bought IBM PC division and proceeded to drive the quality of the system into the ground. Their customer service is well below par. They even makes Dell customer service look good. Lenovo will not allow people to read instruction on how to access the BIOS menu or to get info on their puters on their web site unless you connect to them thru Facebook. They do this so they can spy on their users. The last and final thing to remember about them is they are a Chinese Government own company. It is up to you if you want to trust them.

Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony should be avoided because of their heavy modification of Windows and the drivers. If you remove some of the bloat they install, you can cripple the system.

Acer, Gateway, and eMachines should be avoided period. Low end system that are driving the race to the bottom.

Dell once made a good system and fell from grace. They are now struggling to regain their place in the market. Customer service is one of many problems with this company.

Alienware are glorified Dells and are more name then product. Priced extremely high for what you get. They do perform but you can get the same for less by looking around, just not packaged to be eye candy to the gamers.

Samsung has a history of using cheap parts in critical areas. Capacitors has been one area Samsung has a known history of going cheap, causing units to fail early. For that reason I would avoid them.

ASUS and HP do not modify Windows as bad as the other manufacturers. They have excellent build quality. They might add a lot of bloat but they also makes it easy to get rid of it.

Ultrabooks are the higher end of Wintel laptops but they have some of the same concerns as Apple. They make it next to impossible to change any hardware in them. Service of them will have to be done by the manufacturers. With most of them, you can not change your own battery or hard drive. They are designed to catch your eye but they are not any more special then other laptops except for the fact that they are slim or thin. Your paying for it being thin and slim. For the money your going to spend on it you can buy a much better laptop with more power.

Chrome books are useless. They are designed by Google to make you dependent on Google. If you can not access the web then you can not do anything.

Hybrids are the worse of the worse. The flip or detachable touch screens are just a disaster waiting to happen.

Never buy an All In One. They are far worst then laptops of any kind to service and they have a higher failure rate.

Choose wisely.

:)

Congrats fellow Michigander on going to WCC, very good school. That would work fine. I assume your looking at the C710-2055 which comes with a Intel Celeron 847. The only issue you may run into is the software required for any photography courses as many use Adobe Photoshop. However, if that is not the case, you could install GIMP (free) into the Chrome OS and life is grand. There are many good books on using GIMP, check out Amazon. You can use Libra Office for all your documents and such, it will open and save MS office documents. It probably comes preloaded, if not it can be downloaded for free in a snap.

I've been a photography major for 2 years and my MacBook Pro is PERFECT and AMAZING! It has storage for all my images which is a must! It runs photoshop and other programs at lightening speed! Which is definitely a must. I can open 20 images in photoshop and work on them all at the same time. It's amazing! Trust me. Get a Mac. You will not regret it. And get a MacBook Pro if you can. There is no computer better than that. You'll love it. Good luck =)

DSLR photography doesn't need to be over-complicated. This online photography course has been developed for beginners - intermediate levels and will teach you how to make the best use of your DSLR camera. https://tr.im/8C6nM

Learning how to confidently use your DSLR will help you get full value out of this awesome camera you have already paid for!

This course has been developed after seeing many potential photographers give up far too soon, wasting good money they have spent on the purchase of their DSLR camera.

Best Laptop For Photography Student

1