Lunar Threads

Hey everyone. So, I'm in my third quarter of school going for my degree in graphic design and would really like to get an excellent laptop for when I get out of school to help further my career. I have a $1200 dollar limit and wanna get the best for my buck. Here's what I have so far.

Going with a Dell, prefer PC over Mac despite the heavy influence in the field. I've learned on both in case it comes up, but for my personal setup, PC is ideal. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 Ghz processor, 4GB RAM, 320 GB memory, 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS video card, and a custom skin design. This is what I have chosen so far, but for those of you who are graphic artists professionally or maybe delve into it for a hobby, is there anything I'm missing or should fix out of my current stats? I want a good system that can stand to have multiple programs open simultaneously. I use Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Flash, and plan on using 3dsmax in the near future as well. Also, really enjoy video editing using Sony Vegas. Any sort of info you have for me would be appreciated. Thanks.

I don't have too much advice at the moment, but do try to get a laptop that has a dedicated video card. Integrated works, but dedicated is smoother.

You'll want a laptop with a nVidia Quadro GPU versus the 8400M GS. A laptop with a quad-core processor may possibly help, depending on whether or not the graphical programs you run are programmed to take advantage of multiple cores. Since you do graphical work, RAM may be a huge help, so laptops with 8GBs of RAM may help a great deal, depending on your work. Saddly, what I speak of costs well over $3K. May as well as go with some Intel SSDs too, those things are blazing fast. Rawr.

Does size matter?

http://www.sagernotebook.com/product_cu ... ?pid=51114
-or-
http://www.sagernotebook.com/product_cu ... ?pid=91133 <---- seriously, customize this one , its nice and in your budgetish.
-or-
http://www.dell.com/content/products/pr ... 1530_anav2~~
-or-
http://www.newegg.com

When ever you customize, always select the most RAM you possibly can. For most people, you won't need more than 4GBs, but when photoediting, the more the better. Skimp on the processor if you have to, trust me, the processor won't make as much a difference. Also be sure to get the best GPU you possibly can. Again, skimp on the extras. My advice? Find a $1200 laptop, pick the absolute best graphics and processor, but pick the cheapest RAM and Harddrive. You can typically buy that stuff cheaper at http://www.newegg.com.

Also, educate yourself on nVidia's mobile GPUs. nVidia has been rebranding a lot of their stuff lately...

I got an amazing laptop for an amazing price.

4GB RAM
280 GB internal memory
2.4 GHz Duo Core Processor
Top notch Radeon graphics card.
Blue Tooth compatible.
100% awesome...

And I got it all for.... -Drumroll- ...$750. Awesome.

Jesus Christ that's a steal! Where?

You got a link to the laptop? I wanna look.

I dont have a link because it was a store model in Best Buy. But yeah, I installed World of Warcraft on it and am amazed. All the RAM makes it impossible for me to like. It's wonderful.