New Laptop

I need to purchase a new laptop computer for travel.  I am a PC user but am looking at the Apple 15" with Retina display.  Everyone I discuss this with recommends switching from the PC platform to Apple but I am not sure how much of a learning curve there is and all my business programs are PC based.  I know if I make the switch to Apple I can install a program to run in parallel and provide the PC programs, I will have to switch all my software licenses to Apple based and will need to see if all plug ins can be used on an Apple system.  My next choice would be to remain on the PC platform and look at a Dell laptop.  Is there any significant difference in the 2 platforms?  This laptop will be used primarily for travel so I want to go light.  I looking for a clear screen, high horsepower and light set up.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks  

Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 or 3.  I got one for travel and it is great!

Hi Calvin, I recently acquired a 13" Mac Book Pro with Retina Display and 256GB SSD as my Photo Travel Laptop.  I love it. I have installed Light Room 5 on it and use it as a way to quickly view, rate, cull, keyword, raw process, email and FB post. Just finished a three week photo trip with it and it operated flawlessly. Using LR on the MBP, I download my images to two USB3 External Hard Drives. Once home I make a LR Export Catalog File on the MBP and save it to the EHD, then plug the EHD into the PC, and import the new file to the PC based LR Catalog. Once there you can jump into Photoshop. There are a few YouTube videos that show you how to do it. LR is compatible across the two platforms. No 3rd party software is required. I am not sure about your other software requirements, and that may be of bigger issue, but based on photography the MBP excels. I am very happy with the transition to the MBP and have no regrets. It's super fast, a brilliant screen, and just seems to work all the time. No crashes or weird error codes... LR makes it super easy for travel. Apple has wonderful support too-I used the Genius Bar once, and I was on my way. I also love the way their products interface so seemlessly. Hope this helps you and good luck !

Thanks for the update. I really like the 13" model for its overall size. The gentleman I was speaking with told me I could update the processing memory for a little more money but was steering me to the larger 15" model with a quad core processor. I told him I was going to load LR, PS and some plug in software and he informed me the quad core with the additional memory of the 15" model was the way to go. I looked at upgrading the 13" but in the end I was just a couple of hundred bucks under the 15". I am leaning toward the 15" model but want to give the 13" another look, just because of its size for travel.

Calvin,
If you are a long time windows user, you may not find the mac interface intuitive. I've known several people who have tried to switch to a mac and did not like the interface and switched back. So give it a good try before buying into it.

If you are going to run parallels, that is running a virtual machine, so having a hunkier laptop is the way to go.

I currently have a several year old 12 inch asus laptop with a 1 TB hard drive, 6gb ram, i7 cpus and usb 3 ports. Quite light and portable. But I would like a new machine for travel with at least these specs, and under about 3.5 pounds, so I'll be interested in what people recommend.

I also run windows in a virtual machine so I can run a few windows programs, but I run linux mint as the main OS.

Roger

flygirl wrote:Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 or 3.  I got one for travel and it is great!

What is great about it?
Can you download and view 40mb raw files?  With what speed?
Is a net connection required to do such things? If so, what type.
How does the screen compare with a Mac retina?

STEVENMAJOR wrote:

flygirl wrote:Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 or 3.  I got one for travel and it is great!

What is great about it?
Can you download and view 40mb raw files?  With what speed?
Is a net connection required to do such things? If so, what type.
How does the screen compare with a Mac retina?

It has a lovely screen, which I have calibrated.  It has the full Windows 8.1 environment and yes I viewed all my D800 files on my last trip.  I have CS6, NX2, ViewNX and PhotoMechanic loaded on it. Also, fast Intel Core i5 processor AND usb 3.0 port.  I have a 128 GB microSD card loaded in its microSD slot and carry a small portable 1 TB harddrive for backups.  


http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msu ... D.66734700

I would highly recommend the new Haswell based 13" Mac Book Pro with Retina. I was a UNIX user prior to my Windows world experience (and other variants of Unix before that) and switched to Mac 5 years ago in 2009 and *never* once looked back. The interface is different but not *that* different. In fact, under the hood, MacOS is more like Unix and several command line commands I used in grad school work as well. I forgot most of "awk" but the basic stuff still works the same. The weight is pretty good (< 3lb) and the (unfortunately) the storage is PCIe based (not upgradable). I just got the 15" version with the least amount of Flash (256GB) and maxed out DRAM (16GB). Been using it for several months and I love it! For more storage, get a USB3.0 based HDD - I assembled one from MacSales.com and it is fast enough for me.

Oh and I forgot to mention, the Retina screen is absolutely gorgeous!