Ziay!

Zealnu

...on hard drive and RAM needed? I am trying to migrate to digital photography from film
and would like to get some pointer which note book computer to buy and how much to spend. It is so confusing due to the changes in digital media and PC. Since external hard drive price has fallen so far! Do I need to order a biger internal hard drive with my note book or small one and get the external hard drive. I am
in portrait photography.

conradj213

PC or Mac, well that comes down to your personal preference, I would go with a PC despite Apple's claims that their PowerPC G4 is faster, I don't see it and you have far more options as far as software on a PC. You'll get more power for your money in a PC laptop.

You could get by with a $1,000 laptop but I'm guessing that you want something with a little more horsepower. As far as specs go you should be looking with something with at least 1GB of ram, something in the area of a 100GB hard drive and a 2.0GHz or better processor. You'll also want a 15.4" to 17" display.

That covers the hardware part, you should also consider photo editing software such as PhotoShop but most people don't want to pay for that. That's okay, a good second (and free) alternative is the GIMP (GNU image manipulation program) which is open source and free. But my personal favorite is Serif Photo Plus 6 which is also free, http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

Cnet has a list of laptops that should fit the bill, see the source link.