Build Advice Laptop for minor photo editing £550 budget

Hey guys. So a friend of mine wants a laptop to manage her business. She will be doing light editing in Photoshop but main use will be storing images, creating spreadsheets and documents etc . Preferably it will have a CD drive for her music. So far I've suggested the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 with i7 cpu and the Lenovo G5070 The dell doesn't have a CD drive though. Do you guys have any better suggestions? Cheers

 

I don't have any strong feelings about laptops in general, but just be aware that the ULV (ultra low voltage) i7s are barely as powerful as the standard mid-range mobile i5s, and the same goes for ULV i5s versus standard i3s.

I would recommend getting a laptop with a standard 37W CPU, or possibly even going second hand for an Ivy Bridge based i7-3XXXQM for some proper Photoshop grunt.

Also I'd be looking to improve upon 1366 x 768 on a big screen like this, the pixels could have your eye out!

 

Is this possible with a £550 budget though?

 

Have a butchers.

Something like this would provide epic bang per buck.

 

Cheers for that. Not sure she will be willing to go second hand though. How would warranty work for example?

 

If warranty is important then I'd definitely recommend either buying new or through a shop that offers its own warranty on second hand items.

For example that Lenovo I linked to would be out of warranty by default as it had an aftermarket SSD installed.

So you'll be limited to reasonably low-end laptops. It's worth taking her into PC World or similar to let her get a feel for the types of things she's looking at budget-wise. Hateful as they are, the Dixons Retail Group are fairly price competitive a lot of the time, particularly on laptops.

That said, avoid cheaper brands like Acer & Toshiba and look towards Lenovo, HP or Dell. Sony laptops are usually nice but overpriced.

 

Cheers for that. Yeah if something went wrong she'd like to know she could call up and get it fixed for free. She seems keen on the dell I linked earlier. Not sure if there is actually anything better for the price point she's looking at brand new

 

Got to agree spending that amount on a laptop with no warranty would be a baaaaaaad idea.

£50 over budget but this is a true quad core 8 thread i7.

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Leno...ows_8.1_Laptop_in_Black__59406131/version.asp

 

Thank you for this. True i7 and I've found it on Amazon for £550

 

Good stuff bud, is a bit of a minefield with those stupid dual core i7's oO

 

I just purchased a Clevo W550SU with 250gb ssd,an i5 and of course FHD IPS panel, I bought it for the exact same reasons. Its for my business, creating documents and some photo work.

Awesome upgradeability and great bang for the buck.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Nexoc-B509II-Ultra-Clevo-W550SU-Notebook.107396.0.html

 

Yeah most definitely mate. She's just bought the Lenovo with a case