Uh, maybe like $4k in USD?

Maybe more for all that RAM and VRAM.

spam account: superuser.com/users/1690398/vajraglobal

ditto: superuser.com/users/1690401/izend

@barlop $5,000+ for a mobile workstation in that class.

(e.g. Dell Precision 7760, like this configuration)

Or the highest prebuilt configuration of the Lenovo ThinkPad P17 Gen 2.

I've run Capture One Pro (a professional photo-editing program) on my main laptop Malphas. It works, but it does not like not having a GPU for hardware acceleration. Astaroth, which has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, shrugs it off.

Photo editing can be surprisingly demanding on hardware. With newer professional software using GPU acceleration (Capture One supports OpenCL on Windows as well as Metal on Mac), you do need beefy hardware for the best performance.

Video editing? Forget about it.

If the system is going to be used primarily for workstation applications, I'd strongly recommend a Xeon processor and ECC memory.

(Since I'm both a gamer and a photographer, Astaroth was always envisioned as a dual-purpose gaming and creative workstation)

It's very hard to get a laptop that can do what a high-end desktop can do.

And yes, the specs do matter.

(for context, Astaroth is my custom-built desktop and the oldest of my PCs at 54 months; it's seen multiple upgrades over the years and currently runs Windows 11 Pro)

out of curiosity, what would you say are the special requirements for photography, beefy hardware wise?

I'm currently using i7 work lappy with 16GB, which seems to be doing fine with Bridge, and I got a Colorvision Spyder myself for screen calibration

Gotta go now, but see this: support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/…

@bwDraco That's what confuses me, the thing I'm using right now fits the 'recommended' description - and if I hadn't gone for a touchscreen option it would probably have been ~€1500 or so - not nearly €6k :)

exactly

the requirements are whatever your tolerance is

(unless you're a professional where time is money, pros can do their own calculations)

I suppose I don't spend every single day editing RAW into jpgs, that does take considerable time for hundreds of photos

aye, but the time is in the editing

and if you're doing it "every day" x "hundreds", you're into pro territory

but an SSD is pretty much standard these days (unless you're on an extremely tight budget), and from a good screen and fast CPU you benefit in many more ways than just photo editing

aye, but people shouldn't go overboard unnecessarily

I do video editing (with blender) and basic photography stuff (darktable etc) on a computer that's, what, eight ish years old?

@bertieb I suppose Bridge is a bit less millisecond type snappy than I would like with edits

see: tolerance :P

yeah, got a now 10 year old HP graphical workstation type laptop that's still in service as a desktop now :x

If you told me I could have a slightly quicker render / transcode / etc time or 6 grand in my pocket, I'd go for the latter every time

@bertieb okay, you've convinced me... take my €6k damn you!

:D

but that's partly down to my own circumstances

for me dropping several k on a computer isn't feasible

comes from a long history of gaming FPS / RTS type gaming, if something is 100ms off I tend to notice

it's about annual costs for me - if I use something for a very long time it's justifiable

I don't do Adobe products anymore, but can't you work on a reduced-scale image ?

seems like that would be fine for all but the finest detail level tweaks

I don't think I've ever bought a phone below €500 ever since smartphones for example, but they also last 5+ years most of the time

that's fine, I just... can't afford it

so for me it's moot

ah ok

but I'll still give my opinions

yeah, then it's different

since they're worth at least 2 cents :D

will be a while before those multiply to make you a millionaire though :)

I'm all for prioritising things used on a frequent basis, but I think sometimes folks chase the shiny, or the numbers in the spects

but on the other hand, it's their money to spend how they like

and if pumping up the numbers makes 'em happy, more power to them

most people probably do, and also dump their shiny new toy after a year for the next slightly shinier one... I spend a lot of time doing my homework before buying something though, and especially with laptops and smartphones I'll squeeze every ounce of performance out of it on a daily basis

but then other folks get "you NEED X, Y or Z to do any work in <field>", and it... feels a bit reductive

or a weird form of hardware gatekeeping

yeah, fair enough

probably a lot of loud people saying those things tbh... You can tell how much you can trust their advice if they provide constraints for their statements - i.e. "this thing gives you a boost, but it's only 25% extra performance"

I generally distrust people who do bold statements without any backing arguments :)

you can usually draw a price/performance curve for hardware, so the best you can do is decide where on that curve you feel comfortable - some people just buy whatever is absolutely top of the line without considering if spending twice as much gives maybe 10% more performance, whereas others have a budget ceiling, or somewhere in between - decide if it's worth spending a little extra

all true

I especially liked the "don't trust loud people" bit

good advice

Does make me dread picking the next laptop tbh... the decade old behemoth will not last infinitely (battery already gave out, so it's not left its place in years), so I'll have to spend a lot of time comparing hardware again

same for the phone, dropped it yesterday :( and even though the screen is intact, there are sharp shards from the glass on the back which already cut me once... ordered a silicone cover, but as it's getting dreadfully slow as well I better start the search for its successor now

Microsoft sells small laptops for ~$500. They even have 8 GB of RAM. Then I noticed the CPU speed: 1 GHz

What is this, the year 2000?

if it is the year 2000 someone should tell them... tell them... tell them to enjoy it while it lasts

could be a celeron or atom in a chromebook

my chromebook runs at 1.5GHz

Chromebooks are glorified web browsers, so 1.5 celeron is Good Enough (tm)

i'd rather have an atom in there, it does struggle

and after july it will be literal e-waste because there won't be any more updates for it

is it not a chromebook that'd take Linux?

I think some of em you can install Linux on, not sure if they all will or if they got too locked down

@bertieb ah yes, back when Y2K was still a thing