I am a Mac user, and have been for quite some time. However, it's getting to the point where the cost of upgrading my Macbook Pro just doesn't make sense anymore. I am considering switching to PC. I have some general, and maybe some more specific questions to hope to point me in the right direction. I am looking into PC laptops that will perform or outperform the new i7 Macbook Pro's. What I need the laptop to be capable of is doing some great video editing speed wise (no 3D stuff, just typical video stuff similar to what I would do in Final Cut Pro). I need it to be stellar with Photoshop CS5, and hopefully just generally whoop ass at anything design/photo/video oriented. I was wondering if anyone had ANY kind of suggestions, either specific models, specific brands to stick to/avoid or specific components that will make my life easier. As I said, I'm thinking i7, probably at least 4Gig RAM, video card with at the very least 512 RAM and anything else that might make my decision a bit easier. As I'm definitely not as familiar with PC stuff, any suggestions would be great!
Alienware is probably your best choice; they are built well and very powerful. Video editing is mostly in the cpu, but photoshop can make use of video cards to get extra performance, so you will want a dedicated GPU, even if it isn't top-end or SLI/crossfire.
alienware is a good choice but your looking at mega bucks for them.. i have an alienware laptop... m9750 and yes its great.. but £1.500 and 12 month later its out of date... hard to upgrade and alienware themselves have stopped making parts for it... i suggest getting a decent desktop pc... something in a large case that you can upgrade for years to come... parts are always cheap and if you get a decent video card you can use them nowadays to encode video too.... ati catalyst has this function built in for its hd range of cards i can help you select the parts you need if you want.. just let me know
Apologies for this thread slipping under the radar, dunno what happened. If you're still interested: I think Photoshop can actually use any desktop graphics card, so it really comes down to a question of budget. You could spend more and get more performance, but how much you want to go for is really down to you. I could specify a $450 system that would run photoshop fine but have very modest graphics power, or I could specify a $1200 system that would run photoshop with considerable performance, and everything in between, it's your decision really.
