I've been out of the game, so to speak, for a while now. I'm typing this from a Dell Latitude 6410 with a 1st gen i5, in a cafe in Italy where I currently work for a major UK tour operator. My side job is as a photographer and this laptop was the cheapest (£220 eBay) thing I could find with a 1600x900 screen that wasn't terrible and JUST ENOUGH grunt to run Lightroom, as well as cope with all the usual office tasks, browsing and 1080p watching. In the winter, I take photos of skiers and riders on the mountain and I would love to be able to take a better machine with me. However, I'm limited to flights as I sold my car last year. So: 1) Is it now possible to build a PC that is carry on sized and will run Photoshop? 2) Is it safe/wise to put my 24" Dell IPS screen in my checked in luggage surrounded by a mountain of clothes? I also want to do this on the cheap. Second-hand parts is fine, just wanting people's thoughts on whether or not it's possible. Discrete GPU is irrelevant as long as the CPU can run 1080p mkvs smoothly. Open to all ideas....!
I have one of these it should fit the carry-on requirements. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-437-LL&groupid=2362&catid=2279 It could be possible to mod one panel of this to bolt on a small 1080p VESA mount monitor Ok so none of this fits your cheap requirements but I guess its what I would do given the carry on requirements
Way things are at the moment good luck getting on a plane with that think customs would have a fit with it as they have hard time understanding a laptop.
Yeah, to be honest, that's a little big. What I'm thinking, is that if a laptop can fit a discrete GPU and up to an i7 in every smaller boxes, surely I can build something tiny, just without a screen. Also the customs thing is not to be underestimated. Maybe I could check the system as well as the monitor? Is there a Paspberry Pi sized project anywhere I can reference for ideas?
Whilst I know Lightroom does utilise a GPU, I would have thought it would be better just to have an i7 and a **** load of RAM if you need to sacrifice something or compromise. Something like this with an i5/7 and 8-16GB of RAM in an M-ITX board? Don't know man, that's a tough one.
And then one of these with a monitor, the above and keyboard/mouse in it? The cost of all that would probably be about the same as selling your laptop and buying a better one though. :/
Thanks guys. That widescreen monitor bag looks like a good plan. Hmmm... having done more reading on here and elsewhere I loved the idea of NUC, especially with the 4th gen i5. Given the (admittedly full fat) 1st gen i5 in this laptop can cope with LR in a slow fashion, I would imagine that a 4th gen ULV with twice as much RAM (8gig) would be pretty good. On the other hand, the Streamcom box prompted me to look at other things and there are some BT reviews of the Akasa cases with the Euler, in particular, garnering widespread attention elsewhere. It would appear to offer full fat CPUs, but the case alone weighs 2.2kg, where the NUC equivalent is just 1kg. A quick look at CPU Boss shows that an i3 4010U just slightly loses to the 1st gen i5 520M. Which is somewhat worrying, given the advancement in process and architecture in the last 3 years. Clearly, the Euler style box with a thin mini-ITX is the most powerful, but also quite large. Hmmm....
However, this... http://www.fanlesstech.com/2014/07/building-small-akasa-euler-s-review.html seems tempting!
Ok, if ULV is out (although the 4th gen i5 compares favourably to my 1st gen full fat), I think I'd still stick to the Euler for the silence and lack of moving parts. Then it can go in checked luggage if needs be. I already have a 24" IPS Dell doing nothing back in the uk, as well as a mouse and keyboard. Seems to me, there's a giant chasm in the market for a a reasonably powered machine, maybe with a physical disk for cost saving, that has a decent IPS panel for less than £800. It's all cheap **** laptops, then £800 for ULV powered, but nice panelled machines. If you can indeed build a mini-ITX machine for less than £500 that is passively cooled and beats the ass out of a Macbook Air, why can't huge international OEMs make a laptop for the same??
As an alternative - any chance you can beef up your current laptop? CPU upgrade, more RAM, SSD (if it doesn't have one)?
If you have any friends in the US they could get you something like this: http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-g750jsds71-p-6978.html (Translates to about £1075 - if you import you would need to pay the 20% VAT on this price) These laptops do have a good resale value too. Also I brought my Dell 24 inch IPS to Brazil in my checked in luggage but it was still in its box, properly packed and then surrounded by clothes but I wouldn't do it again unless I really had too. 2-3 journeys like that and it wouldn't last long, definitely would recommend against it.
No friends in the US, but no budget for something like that either. Thanks for this though. I guess the laptop thing is what it is. If a ULV is too slow, then a laptop is too slow. I'm not paying for a full fat Core laptop, as a desktop (however large) can be had for way less and utilizes the screen I already paid a load for. Back to the drawing board...
