Best laptops for digi scrapping?
 

Just curious... what are the best laptops that can handle the demands of digital scrapbooking? and have a nice-size screen as well? I have tried scrapping on my dell inspiron (about 3 years old now, I think) but I find the screen small and it seems to really tax my system.

I prefer to scrap on our nice desk top, but the reality is there are 3 other people who use that computer, and it's hard for me to carve out time to use it for that purpose.

I thought it might be fun to at least look into new laptop options... :)

I'd say the Macbook Pro because I own one. Mine has a 13" screen, it was big enough for me when I bought it 5 years ago, but after checking out the 15" Macbook Pros, I find it small.

But for a really great scrapping experience, I'd say any desktop computer that has a large screen, like 21" and above. I went to an Apple Store last week and opened up the Sweet Shoppe gallery on an iMac, and found the experience to be so much more amazing! I could see the details that I wouldn't have noticed on my Macbook.

I know I'm not helping though...sorry!

The make and model isn't important. The specs are. There are SO MANY different Dell Inspirons. I'm sure there are some that are good for digiscrapping (although I can't stand Dell, but that's beside the point!) The same is true for Sony Vaios, Lenovo ThinkPads, etc. Whatever they're called, some will do you well and some won't.

You want a lot of RAM, a good video card, and a fast processor. You can get that from any number of manufacturers. It's nice to have a solid state drive, too, but that gets spendy.

I'd recommend a 17 inch screen. I don't have a specific laptop to suggest, but I've bought my last few online from HP. I like that you can customize them so you can target your money on features that make a difference for scrapping, like extra RAM and an upgrade from integrated graphics..

I loved it when I was on my 15'' macbook pro. I am currently on an imac desktop that is 27". Sometimes I miss being portable but I love my screen size that I am at now. The Pro rocked though. I was very happy with it. Now my husband has taken it over. :)

Because my 15-inch Macbook Pro is acting up, I am currently scrapping on my Macbook Air (yes, 11 inches!). I recently backed up files on my Pro and felt that the screen and size was so massive, lol. Apparently I don't miss the screen size TOO much. I have to admit the utter portability of the Air and the speed of the SSD drive has spoiled me :p I can run, LR, CS5, multiple tabs on my browser, Mail, Evernote without any slowdowns.

I will admit though that I am crushing on the new Macbook Pros--they are SO thin and SO light! I wonder how scrapping on those would be? :)

I'm watching this thread... my Dell is 4 years old and starting (well, it always had some sort of issue) to act like a diva :glare:. So, trying to figure out if upgrade the ram and hard drive of the dell for $150ish or go all Mac laptop.... I have a 17 in screen now, so going down to the 15 on the Mac doesn't seem that horrible - what is 2 inches? But when looking at them in the store, I'm like... maybe that 2 inches is a lot... haha... however, if I don't have to deal with all the annoying windows stuff... Mac is the dream - the price is not... ;)

However, agree with the others... buy the most ram and highest processor you can afford!

I'll agree that RAM is the key. You can live with a smaller screen size when it's zippy fast!

I have a business HP because it had a screen that wasn't shiny, plus RAM and a big hard drive. It's a few years old and getting ready to be replaced too!

My DH bought a solid state hard drive for his work computer. I would definitely consider looking into something like that! Photoshop runs fine on my computer, but accessing the thumbnails of all my kits is increasingly taking longer since I have so many! I think that's probably a combination of ram and hard drive...

My advice is go big on RAM, Screen, and Speed. Good graphics would be needed too! Have fun looking! I have a 17" MacBook Pro and love the screen size. Since I mostly scrap at my house, I like being able to sit on the couch and scrap, so the size is a plus for me (versus the weight).

I had a Mac desktop but got a PC laptop just for digi-scrapping. I made sure that the specs were all good for what I needed. I still preferred scrapping on my desktop, but didn't find myself doing it very often due because I didn't like being tied to one spot.

So this year I broke down and bought a Mac laptop. I got last year's model, but the difference from my (supposedly good) PC laptop is AMAZING. Faster, better color/clarity, FASTER, and did I mention FASTER? I am simply amazed at the difference in how things look and how much faster things fly.

It replaced both my laptop and my desktop (which died 2 days after ordering the laptop!) and so I paid much more than I would've for a PC laptop, but I absolutely feel it was worth it.

I'm a firm believer in HP business models. I had an EliteBook for 6 years and it was still running fine after all that time. I have another one now and it's a dream to work with. The investment was high (and by high I mean high, probably higher than the Mac, but they were as lovely as to custom-build it for me, so there), but it was worth it. These are my specs; I've never been so happy with a laptop before.

17-inch matte (yay! because I love matte) DreamColor screen
one 128 GB SSD drive
one 750 GB/7200rpm drive
one Bluray drive
8 GB memory
intel i7 @ 2,80 GH
Nvidia Quadro K4000M graphics card
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit