Laptop replacement HELP!
 

Hi,

Many years ago, I used to be quite knowledgeable with things like computers.
You know, when a 486, or a Pentium p100 was current...

Anyhow, these days I know nothing. Except my 3 1/2 year old laptop is hopelessly slow.
I use it for RAW photo editing and it's just getting to the point where life is too short to sit there waiting for it to catch up.
It's been like this since day one. I put it down to Windows 10....

So, I'm in the market for a new laptop.
I am on a budget, I certainly don't want to spend over £800. I'd be happier spending closer to £600.

Can anyone offer any recommendations as to what I should be aiming for?
I use my laptop almost exclusively for photo editing with lightroom and Photoshop.

I read that gaming laptops are a good bet, as they are geared towards performance which lends itself well to photo editing..

Would this be a good option?
https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...QaAl-oEALw_wcB

Looks ok but i would check that it's using a single 8GB memory stick rather than 2 x 4GB as it only has two slots available (another 8 GB DDR4 2600 stick is pretty cheap) and i would suggest 16GB really ought to be the minimum for photo editing and more would be better. 256GB SSD is pretty tiny these days so either budget for a larger drive or get a decent usb3 external drive for storage space.

Thankyou. Are you referring to RAM?

I thought the hard drive sounded small. My own laptop has 1tb!

Sorry ... Yes i was referring to the Ram. I'm assuming your 1tb will be a mechanical drive which will be much slower than the SSD installed in the new laptop, it will be large enough for your Windows install and editing software so that will help your productivity however you will fill it pretty quickly if you start installing other stuff so also worth checking it it has enough space to fit another SSD or even a M.2 drive for onboard storage.

Thank you.

I've no idea if my hard disc is mechanical. The laptop is a few years old.

I'm not opposed to having an external drive for saving photos, I mean, even a TB fills up eventually....

I've read some information that says I don't need a virus scanner with windows 10...
I'm currently using McAfee.
What do you think? Could that be making my computer painfully slow?

Always had very good service from ebuyer.

https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Computer/cat/Laptops

I'm just not a fan of Curry's etc.

Good Luck with your search.

Andy.

McAfee, Kaspersky and most av's take a lot of resources and really slow down the laptop Phil, try uninstalling it and see how responsive your computer gets:cool:

I personally just rely on windows defender installed with Win10 however the pc i use for browsing etc is my gaming rig and i have a disk image stored so i can reinstall windows back to where i am now within a few minutes so even in worst case scenario all i'll lose is a little bit of my time. On my media pc i use Bitdefender which reviews well and has a small footprint both in resources and disk space.





I tend to agree but at least with Pc world/Currys it does give you an opportunity to pop into your local store and actually get hands on with it and then get the best bang for your buck buying it online :)

Definitely ditch the AV and just use the built in Defender.

What processor does the current one have? If its less than an i5 its probably worth getting a newer laptop.

If it has an i5 (they've been around for a while now) I'd invest in an SSD - they are sensibly priced and will transform the performance over a standard disk. Quiet too. Personally I'd go for something around 500mb but then buy a couple of 2TB usb drives for archive & backup.

Having said all that, a dedicated tower PC with a beefy graphics card will have more grunt than a you can squeeze into a laptop - but obviously less mobile.

Thanks for the virus scanner information.

My laptop is:
AMD A9-9410 RADEON R5 5 COPUTE CORES 2C +3G 2.90GHz
8GB RAM

Is that any good??

I can't see any way of identifying what HDD I have, other than it's 1000GB.