leeegglestone

Hey all. I decided to register and post here because it seems the most relevant place to get help in my case. I currently own a Sony Vaio NV series that's about 4-years old and have loved it. However, getting into photography and post processing, 1.7ghz Pentium 4m on 512mb ran just isn't enough. Photoshop CS lags when I am doing routine dodge/burn, but granted this is to a 45mb tif file.

So, my question is, how much of an upgrade is enough? I'm looking at getting another Sony, preferably a fully loaded FJ series for around $2000. 2.0ghz, 1 gig of ram, and a 100gig hard drive should free things up a bit. Or, as I am suspecting, will it take more like 2gig of ram to get through what I am looking to do with the machine?

Thanks for your help in advance, and sorry if this isn't the right part of the boards for this topic.

retired_paddza

The difference between the two machines you listed is almost nothing, especially from a photoshop standpoint.... and $2000 is way too much to pay for that setup. You could get a faster machine for under $500 these days. That's assuming you want to stick with a Windows machine. 1 GB of ram should be enough to get through what you are doing, in fact, the 512 MB should be able to handle things. I'm guessing something else is going on with the machine. Anything over 1GB, unless you're doing 3D or video, is a tad overkill.

You might want to check out a few of the online resellers to see what's available:

http://www.tigerdirect.com
http://www.newegg.com

ronmatt

You may want to consider something with 2 hd's. as well,? the possibility that you may upgrade to cs2 or 3 (how far away can that be?) CS2 needs a gig of ram to run reasonably well and it works better with a dedicated scratch disk. You could have your Sony rebuilt for under 1k with a new motherboard (that could handle up to 4gigs ram), a faster processor and better graphics card and a few other upgrades like USB 2.0. Keep your eye on USB technology, there are some amazing things in store for us. If you're getting into photography, don't even consider a LCD monitor yet. think about a more sophisticated cooling system as well. All this for under 1K

Gaussian

Rebuilt a laptop? \:/

ronmatt

OOPS, NEVERMIND. I'm not familiar with laptops, just assumed it was a desktop. Still, $2,000????

Gaussian

That one runs on a Pentium M 760 which is outdated technology. Do yourself a great favor buy not buying it. What you need is at least a Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz. Don?t be fooled by its clock speed; yes, it's the same clock speed as the M 760, but performance is almost doubled in every area. Here's a comparison to give you an idea:
http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...505+Core+2+Duo

Core 2 Duo is two processors in one. Not only does this give more performance, but it also allows for much smoother multitasking. Let's be honest, haven?t we all been in that situation so often with single core processors that we wonder what?s slowing down the system this time.? [stuned] That situation improves immensely when running Core 2 Duo.

Not only does the Core 2 Duo T7200 almost run twice as fast, it also runs cooler and uses 50% less power that the old Pentium M. The price is about the same as far as I know, but I could be wrong about that, but probably not far off.

Personally I think the VGN-SZ340 with a T7200 is much better choice and even with a 100GB hard drive stays within the target price range. As for memory; buy what you think you?ll need in the short term, don't buy what you think you need after a year. The reason is that memory is in general getting cheaper over time, so you save yourself some money. It's also easier to upgrade memory than to find out once you run a new OS for example (like Vista in a few months, that is if you run Windows or Photoshop CS3) that you should have bought a faster processor? and (quite often) a new motherboard, especially with core2duo.

Now you might say ?I?m not interested in Vista?, but didn?t we say the same about Windows XP several years ago. Often we don?t have a choice, whether we like it or not.?

leeegglestone

Gaussian, thanks for the info. I've been hearing a ton of buzz about the Core 2 Duo but was having a hard time completely making sense of it's true performance. I've seen the SZ series in person and it's just too small at 13.3".

Looks like I may try to wait for Sony's next release of Core 2 then. It can't be too long before they upgrade that Pentium D sporting RC Series desktop, and I hear that another 15" laptop with it is on the way by the end of October.

I doubt I can wait for Vista or CS3, and probably wouldn't want Vista for the first year to let Microsoft get the rest of the bugs out and wait for software such as Noise Ninja to catch up.

jsplice

If you are planning on doing alot of photo and grahpics editing I would reccomend an Apple.

Gaussian

The Windows and Mac of Photoshop are pretty much the same so it doesn't make any difference.

retired_paddza

There's more to it than just the application interface and features though. There won't be a difference in the application functioning, but there will in the performance and the workflow options. You can do most thinks on windows that you can on mac, but since mac's have always been designed with graphics and design in mind, they are more streamlined for graphics work. Plus, with the new macs... if you really wanted to... you could run windows on them as a dual boot. heh For about $600 (USD) you could have a solid starting mac. For $1000 you could get a laptop that would run things pretty well too.

$0.02