Laptop for my friend. Need Suggestions.

So my friend wants to get a laptop and I was wondering if the SeC PC gurus could give me some suggestions as to what would be good for her.

All she wants it for is for internet browsing, watching TV/movies, music probably and Photoshop since she does graphic design work from time to time.

She said she was looking at maybe getting a mac but that would be pretty overpriced for her needs I think.

So what would be some good suggestions I could give her? I don't really know much about laptop components and how CPU/GPU intensive Photoshop can be so I defer you to oh wise ones.

Budget should be around what a mac costs or less.

Well if she has a budget to get a mac, then she should be able to get a pretty sweet PC.


If she's using photoshop a lot, an SSD would greatly benefit her. Same with having plenty of RAM. Not sure how CPU intensive photoshop is but I know those two things would help everything load faster.

Any old thing will be able to handle the rest of what she is doing.

16 GB of RAM for Photoshop would be good, it uses as much as it can

and SSD would be a good bet as Chewy said, just to make loading and saving faster

well she's probably gonna get a pre-built so what are some good brands to be looking at?

Asus is pretty much the bet laptop brand IMO

any other good brands besides Asus? The only other one I could think of is maybe Acer...how would you rate their laptops?

I dont know much about Acer TBH

Heard good things as well though.

I think Id wait for Storm on this one, or Tom. They both have far more knowledge on laptops that I do. Im a desktop guy haha

xoticpc.com is good for custom laptops.

They pretty much have all the laptop brands there, or at least all the ones that matter.

I don't really see why she'd need to go full custom for her needs. I'm just trying to save her some money as she's not really a techy kind of person.

Well you can just change a few options on an existing model.

http://www.amazon.com/N56VM-AB71-Full-HD-15-6-Inch-1080P-Laptop/dp/B008HDOEG8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1349815828&sr=8-6&keywords=asus+laptops

Hydra if she's set on a prebuilt, then Asus or Lenovo would be the place to look. For graphics work, Photoshop is definitely intensive on memory, and Lenovo is pretty good with their computers, I can say I've never had a problem using GIMP on my laptop. If she wants something that's all around durable, can hold a decent charge and is pretty good for all-around stuff, then I'd urge a lenovo laptop. Mine is an X220, it came standard with an i5 processor, and it's video card, even though it's a lenovo generic, can still run pretty much any game I play. I can max out Killing Floor, along with quite a few other games.

Though it may sound really sarcastic and mean, if she can afford mac and is computer illiterate & is very much an exhibitionist, then she should stick with mac.

Most girls don't care much about computer and they need something to show off to other girls and look "cool", and for them PC is not "cool".

If she is not that type, and are actually practical, and does not play games or are planning to, then she should go with any of the ultrabook types that just look good for her eyes, and has a keyboard layout that she prefers (this is very important for a lot of people).

Sym wrote:http://www.amazon.com/N56VM-AB71-Full-HD-15-6-Inch-1080P-Laptop/dp/B008HDOEG8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1349815828&sr=8-6&keywords=asus+laptops

would that thing run games good? I think my old laptop sucky ass single core AMG 1.9ghz cpu and sucky ass ati hd4200 mobility gpu are about to die......this thing gets boiling hot even just using facebook/youtube and here

JrTapia1991 wrote:

Sym wrote:http://www.amazon.com/N56VM-AB71-Full-HD-15-6-Inch-1080P-Laptop/dp/B008HDOEG8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1349815828&sr=8-6&keywords=asus+laptops

would that thing run games good? I think my old laptop sucky ass single core AMG 1.9ghz cpu and sucky ass ati hd4200 mobility gpu are about to die......this thing gets boiling hot even just using facebook/youtube and here

Its got NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M, which is low end graphics for laptops. However, since it is a current gen, you can play most non-current games (even if it requires high graphics performance) fine. You can even play some graphics intensive current games, with some tweaking to the settings.

StormEye wrote:Though it may sound really sarcastic and mean, if she can afford mac and is computer illiterate & is very much an exhibitionist, then she should stick with mac.

Most girls don't care much about computer and they need something to show off to other girls and look "cool", and for them PC is not "cool".

If she is not that type, and are actually practical, and does not play games or are planning to, then she should go with any of the ultrabook types that just look good for her eyes, and has a keyboard layout that she prefers (this is very important for a lot of people).

Well she doesn't exactly have money to burn. I'm just trying to do her a solid by pointing her in a more bang for your buck direction. She's not really computer illiterate either just ignorant of hardware. She studied graphic design at college so I'm sure she knows her way around Photoshop quite well and she's a fairly serious photographer as well.

Apple likes to tote Macs as being "ideal" for artists, graphic type work, musicians, etc. and that's probably why she was thinking of going that road. If I can save her some money I feel like I should.

sue me I care haha.

If she's looking for more value to the dollar, Thinkpads. They're the best Lenovo laptops if you ask me, and some can go for less than 400$

cool I'll look at some Asus, Acer and Lenovo options for her.

Now how many of you guys are fairly experienced with photoshop? Is performance more due to CPU? or GPU?

I'm guessing probably GPU? Would there be an advantage going i7 over i5 for Photoshop?

Photoshop functions off of the CPU in versions CS3 or lower. With CS4, they introduced the ability to go on the GPU, so if she has a good graphics card, or even a halfway decent one, it'll go for the GPU. Fun fact, Photoshop will gut your RAM though. It can be set to use as much RAM as you want, and it has no limits on it. I'm reading a blog about a guy, he's a graphic artist. His system includes 32 gigs of total RAM, and his photoshop missives are ridiculous. It will literally take up any amount of Free RAM you assign it, without regards to other programs.


but since I rarely use PS at all, I'll tell Siren to post here tomorrow. She's a photoshop fan, and she knows a TON more than I do.

cool thanks pariah

HydrasBreath wrote:Well she doesn't exactly have money to burn. I'm just trying to do her a solid by pointing her in a more bang for your buck direction. She's not really computer illiterate either just ignorant of hardware. She studied graphic design at college so I'm sure she knows her way around Photoshop quite well and she's a fairly serious photographer as well.

Apple likes to tote Macs as being "ideal" for artists, graphic type work, musicians, etc. and that's probably why she was thinking of going that road. If I can save her some money I feel like I should.

sue me I care haha.

Well, then she is not completely computer illiterate. But I can say that graphics designers are not necessarily computer savvy, as my younger sister is a graphics designer and she is horribad with general computer usage. At least she LISTENS to my advice, unlike my father who has painted our family business's factory and office with horribad PCs with horribad cost-performance ratio (even from a business stand point of view). He blames me now that I did not give him the right advice, but he never listened to me in the first place. I'm gonna have to do IT overhaul once I take over the business in the future.

A really good place that can really help is http://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop