Laptop Spec and Photoshop/LR advice

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 Mal Grey 24 Apr 2017
Hi folks,

Looking to upgrade my laptop (6 yr old running Windows 7), primarily as the old one is very slow at processing my photos. I take quite a lot of photos, which means editing them. I don't major on post-editing, just make minor tweaks in the inbuilt Windows Live Photo Gallery - tweak exposure and saturation small amounts, adjust highlights/shadows sometimes, small sharpness adjustment, cropping. This is now taking ages to load/save each image on the current laptop, meaning that working through photos is now so tedious I avoid bothering to even take them. I've previously used GIMP but as I wasn't doing anything more than the above, stopped as it was even slower.

I want to start using RAW so bigger files, and may soon have some spare time to learn a bit more about photo editing generally, and so wish to upgrade laptop and consider software.
Other than photography, its just standard web browsing, occasional Excel/Word work.
If not on Wifi, normally used with a mobile dongle, not that this particularly matters I think.
Needs to be a laptop, gets used on the go a lot. Needs to have numeric pad built in and 15".
May get used for small video edits too, but not currently in my plans.
It is possible that I'd like to get a bit more serious with my writing and photography, so want to ensure the new set up is going to be up to this for a few years.

Considering a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 series with i7, 8gb RAM, 1TB hard drive, as it seems from reading up on the interweb that this should be able to handle my needs fairly easily.

Do these specs seem reasonable to folks? Any other brands/models offering close to the value this will be, with a current 12% offer on Dell making it about £641, but only for another day or so.

What software would you recommend for photo editing for someone like myself? Was thinking Lightroom, though somewhat sceptical about the whole Creative Cloud thing, just wanted to buy some software off the shelf really, not to subscribe. Could also go back to GIMP, but always found this a bit hard work. Any other recommendations?

My photography is mostly landscapes when walking or especially canoeing, you can see some in my gallery; https://www.ukhillwalking.com/photos/author.html?id=11256.
Camera is a Canon 700D, which is excellent for my needs, supplemented with a waterproof Olympus TG2.
I use photos to tell stories in blogs/reports on various forums etc, so there are a ridiculous amount of other photos on my Flickr page which I link to; https://www.flickr.com/photos/77080486@N05/sets/. I intend to start my own blog if I ever get round to it too...

It would be great to hear others' thoughts, and whether I'm heading in the right direction, particularly with the spec of the laptop - processor and RAM etc.

Many thanks in advance!

P.S. Am I going to hate Windows 10?
 Sam W 24 Apr 2017
In reply to Mal Grey:

I've been using a Dell laptop (Inspiron 7559) for photo editing over the past 12 months and have been very happy with it. It was sold as a gaming laptop, but the extra oomph also seems to work well for photo editing. Specs are similar to the one you're looking at, although I have 16GB of RAM. It also has a standalone graphics card, which I think does speed things up, check if the one you're looking at has this option.

I use Lightroom, originally I used a pirate copy, found I liked it and moved to the paid for version a few years ago. Although there are things I don't like about the Creative Cloud setup, mainly the subscription model, in practice £10/month doesn't seem unreasonable for access to Lightroom and Photoshop. I do occasionally look round at the other options, particularly open source software, but haven't found anything to tempt me away yet.

OP Mal Grey 24 Apr 2017
In reply to Sam W:

Thanks Sam.
 MrRiley 24 Apr 2017
In reply to Mal Grey:

Hi Mal,

You can get LR as a standalone piece of software without the creative cloud subscription. This is what I went for and have no regrets as a lot of what CC offers I have no use for and I can live without the tiny incremental LR updates. I think it was about £65. Shooting RAW and processing in LR is a great way to go and you'll hopefully get loads more out of your images as a result - think of it more as developing your digital negatives (RAW) rather than editing.

With regards to laptop spec, you'll be fine with 8GB RAM but 16GB will be better and future proofs you somewhat if you ever upgrade your camera and end up needing to handle and process 50MP RAW files for example. I have a smaller hard drive in my laptop (256GB) but its solid state and I use an external 1TB USB HDD for backups (along with cloud storage). I noticed a great improvement going to a solid state drive over the conventional HDD so this is maybe something else to consider when you spec your machine. Finally, the laptop screen is a worthwhile consideration too and if you can get a 4K/retina-equivalent thats definitely money well spent IMHO.

All the best,
Dave
OP Mal Grey 25 Apr 2017
In reply to MrRiley:

Thanks Dave, very helpful.
 kevin stephens 25 Apr 2017
In reply to MrRiley:
I agree on most of this, but rather than spend out on an expensive laptop display I think it is better to go for a standard display, keep to a small portable form factor (say 13 inch) and spend some of the savings on a 21 inch desktop monitor - much easier for using Lightroom, especially the controls when you are at home. It's amazing what you can get for not much more than £100 these days

And Windows 10 is briliant
Post edited at 16:38
 Toerag 25 Apr 2017
In reply to Mal Grey:

Where is the bottleneck in your current machine? Are you maxing out your RAM, or is it processor or disk (flatlining activity graphs at 100%)?
OP Mal Grey 25 Apr 2017
In reply to kevin stephens:

Thanks Kevin, but did the did earlier, mouse finger twitched on "add to basket". Basically followed Dave's advice having been given the same by an IT colleague.
OP Mal Grey 25 Apr 2017
In reply to Toerag:
Thanks. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure, I'm no expert on these, but think its only 4gb RAM. Have had it looked at, cleaned up, empty out as much crud as possible etc, but not really helped. There are also a number of other little things (slightly dubious USB connections, no mic, couple of sticky keys, rubbish battery, heavy, battered etc etc). Basically, fancied a new one!
Post edited at 21:30

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