You can get a i5 CPU with 4 GB for under $500 on sale - saw one earlier today at Office Max ad. Here it is. The i5 is a great chip, but this is teh previous generation i5. Current generation is Ivy Bringe:
You might want to buy a slightly higher quality laptop then these two, but it shows you what kind of current processor you can get at those price points.
With jeraldCook's i3 post, you have an example of the three current Intel processors, at $350, $450, and $550. Now tell us what else you will use it for, how much you will use it at home, etc.
In case you want read some general recommendations for Photoshop and Lightroom build: imagescience_web
Processor speed is not indicator of total performance in Lightroom. Great jump up in performance is to have more than one hdd (ideally ssd for OS), and classical hdd for storage.
Hotspur wrote:
Thanks, guys, very thorough and very informative. I did not realize prices were that low for so much performance.
Great posts all.
There are also some better build quality computers, especially the newer thin "ultrabooks." There are also the last generation, higher build quality thin computers, like the Dell 14Z and similar if you check Techbargains.com
