I’ve been asked by club members a couple of times about advice for buying laptops that you can use for photography when travelling. A lot of photographers use a desktop as their main digital darkroom because of their power, the ability to add extra hard drives and to accurately calibrate their screens among other reasons. However, when we’re travelling we want a PC to take with us. So what should you look for?
To begin with, if the laptop is not going to be your primary machine I don’t recommend that you spend too much. You don’t need to buy a top of the line business or gaming laptop if you just need it for your vacations, browsing the Photochrome website in front of the TV, or doing your email away from your home office. Laptops take a beating from being carried around and I’d much rather buy a cheap, new laptop every 3 or 4 years than an expensive one less often than that.
Secondly don’t buy a larger machine than you need. Some laptops have monster 17″+ screen which are great for editing photos on but you won’t want to carry them very far and their battery lives are generally worse than their smaller siblings. That said, I would recommend a 10″ netbook. Netbooks are small, cheap laptops that have become very popular but I would avoid them for photography because they don’t have the hourse power or real estate needed for editing photos even casually.
My preferred laptop screen size is about 12″. At this size the screen is usable if a little small but the machine is small enough to carry without breaking your back. If you’re going to travel with it I wouldn’t recommend a machine with a screen bigger than 15″.
