Best laptop for location shoots/edits?

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pjamedia

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I'm looking for a new laptop for a variety of reasons, but my main requirement is a decent display, as it would allow me to get started with post-prod whilst I'm away - I want one therefore that I can calibrate to render reasonably accurate results, and one which gives a decent luminance output. My current HP laptop is pretty poor in this regard - and I don't use it for editing as a result. I reckon if I spend money on a laptop with a top quality display, then the other components should follow suit. My other stipulation is that it needs to be a 15" or so display - so its a laptop rather than a luggable desktop in disguise! It needs to fit in the back of my camera bag afterall.

Now I have always been a Windows user, but I am open to suggestions as I read that the new Macbook Pro has one of the best laptop displays around with its LCD rear illuminated display. To be honest though for the cost of one of these babies I can buy a pretty impressive PC based laptop, but wondering if one exists with a display as good as the Mac? A PC based laptop would allow me to install 64bit Vista, the upcoming 64bit version of LR 2.' once the final version is released, and CS4 64bit once that appears (I believe that won't be available for the Mac in its initial releases).

Now I don't want this to be a PC vs Mac discussion as its the monitor I'm mainly interested in discussing here, and so anyone who has recently bought a new PC based laptop for editing on, and calibrates their screen with reasonable results I would really appreciate hearing from.

Thanks, Paul A
 
Yes, they look really nice bits of kit, but more interested in anyone's personal experience of a PC based laptop for pro photo editing work - or even anyone who uses laptops on set for shooting tethered - my idea behind this being that great quality display would be a pre-requisite for using a laptop for this purpose.

I checked out the Macs and the only one that meets the screen requirement is the Macbook Pro at £1479 in the UK - double this for US dollars! That's a lot of cash for a laptop these days, but saying this the Dell XPS series are expensive also.

Cheers, Paul
 
pjamedia said:
I'm looking for a new laptop for a variety of reasons, but my main requirement is a decent display, as it would allow me to get started with post-prod whilst I'm away - I want one therefore that I can calibrate to render reasonably accurate results, and one which gives a decent luminance output.
Thanks, Paul A
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With the exception of older Thinkpads with IPS panels, I think that a laptop with a decent display for PP is close to an oxymoron. You can color calibrate a TN display, but it is still going to have all of the limitations of TN panels (e.g. limited angle of view). And some panels are not really 8-bit, but actually 6-bit. You might have somewhat better luck with an LED backlit display. I know that Sony and several other manufactuers are now starting to put them in some of their higer-end machines. They are supposed to have better color fidelity, but I believe they are still TN technology.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
Next Generation Laptop Display - HP Dream Color

Well laptop display technology has finally caught up with, (and exceeded most) desktop displays available today. Not sure if you've read about HP/Dreamworks latest development, the 3'bit color desktop monitor known as the DreamColor? Well this 1'bit/pixel display has now been bolted on the soon to be released HP laptop which can be seen here:
http://h1''1'.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF'5a/321957-321957-64295-374'645-3329741-37842'2.html
So forget your 6bit laptop panels, or dragging around a desktop monitor to location shoots - HP seem to have developed the ultimate photography solution PC based laptop, and ultimate desktop monitor technology providing over a billion renderable colours.

Just wonder what the laptop price will be? The 24" desktop monitor is $23'' (US) just now! Yikes!

Cheers, Paul

Cheers,
Paul
 
I saw that too... very impressive. I'm all Mac, now, so hopefully this will become a concept that Apple works with in the future, but that Lenovo is really nice.
 
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