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I'm looking for a laptop, but I still want to export my images to CD's. Is there any laptop's with internal CD writers? Will I be able to build my normal writer into the laptop?

Any info about this topic would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Danie,
There are plenty of laptops available with CD writer drives, also known as CDRW drives. In fact, most new laptops will come with one of these nowadays, or with a "combo" drive, which combines cd writing with DVD playback.
A standard desktop cd writer (if it's fitted internally into your desktop PC) cannot easily be fitted to work with a laptop and definitely cannot be fitted internally to a laptop.
If you have an external CD writer, eg USB or similar, you can make this work with a laptop assuming it has the appropriate connection - ie if it's a USB CD writer, the laptop must have USB. Similarly, if you have an existing laptop you could by an external writer for it.
However, from the sounds of it you plan to get a new laptop - so unless you buy one at the absolute bottom of the market you will find they pretty much all come with CDRW drives built in.
HTH
Chris

Thanks Chris.

Is there any laptop/s that you would advise?

Hi Danie,
Happy to help. However I can't really advise on specific machines - this will depend on what you're willing to spend and what you plan to do with the machine. Also on where you are in the world, whether you prefer Apple Mac or PC, etc etc. I am afraid I'm not a laptop expert, so consider that when reading this advice.

I suggest you make a list of your minimum needs then browse around for the best deal that fits at least your minimum. As with any computer purchase, the specification you can buy with a given sum of money changes at a disturbing rate - it's important therefore to simply set a pricepoint and a minimum specification that will do what you need it to do now with some room for future increases if necessary.

For image use I would recommend you get as much RAM as you can. This is especially the case if you want to do any photoshop manipulation on high resolution images. It's even more the case if you want to do any video editing work.

A fast processor is always good of course, but be aware that there can be a big additional cost for a small gain if you go after the cutting edge. In many ways it's not worth going after the most up to date items, because you will pay a lot for them and they will be out of date soon enough anyway. You should be able to get a suitable machine without going for the most expensive.

A big screen is nice for image work of course, but this also dictates the physical size of the laptop - some of the latest machines even have 17 inch screens, which makes the machine big (and presumably heavy). I do not know whether there are issues with laptop screens and how they display images, whether there are colour matching issues for example - anyone advise?

With a CD writer, you do not necessarily need an enormous hard disk drive, though this will depend on whether you plan to store large amounts of music on the machine, or do video work for example. High resolution scans could be 100Mb in size - 10 images per gigabyte of hard drive (though of course you can compress these).

I'd suggest you might look for a machine with at least the following:
20Gb Hard Drive
256Mb RAM
15" screen
1.3Ghz Processor - though you will probably get a lot more
CDRW Drive (or DVD/CDRW combo)
32Mb Graphics card
56Kbps Modem
Network/LAN adapter
USB/USB2 Connectivity
PCMCIA Slot

If you have a bit more cash to throw in, you could increase Hard Drive to 30Gb, RAM to 512. You might also get firewire connectivity, TV Out (eg for presentations), (or VIVO - video in video out, for video editing if you want to do that). If you have a decent number of USB slots you can add future devices very easily (Firewire is similar, even more advanced)

If you want to play games on the machine, the graphics card will need a bit more power and memory - perhaps something like a 64Mb Geforce 2 card, though I don't really know about the available laptop graphics cards.

A word about processors - their speed is measured in Gigahertz (GHz). However, all processors are not equal in their efficiency. Intel Pentium processors have higher speeds, but AMD processors of lower speed are reputed to be their equal in performance. AMD therefor list processors giving their equivalent intel speed (for example 1800XP - which means equivalent to a 1.8GHz intel processor, though the AMD processor is only actually at perhaps 1.4Ghz real speed).

I think that's about all the help I can come up with - recruit a knowledgable local friend and go shopping! :)

Good luck!
Chris

Hi,

I was looking for exactly the same thing last year, and found Dell has by far the best value for money offers. I'm not sure what your budget is, but in October (so the price should have come down now) I got a Pentium 4, 512 RAM, CD-Rewriter / DVD player combo internal drive, floppy drive, 15" monitor with 32Mb RAM graphics card, 40GB hard drive for £1300. It handles graphics well, writes quickly to cd, and is generally a pleasure to work on. In general the high st shops over charge immensly and give poor advice. Hope that helps :)

I can't really comment on every laptop out there, but I can comment on mine. I have one of the Fujitsu P-series laptops, and I love it. I bought it to use for doing presentaions in the classroom, but have found it to be an excellent companion to my Sony F717. The thing that is great about the Fukitsu P-series lifebook is its size. It is just over 3 lbs. with a DVD/CDRW drive in place. Its screen is small, but very clear, with 1280 x 768 wide format resolution. When carrying around a bunch of photo equipment, it's really nice to be able to toss a small 3 pound laptop over my shoulder instead of a huge 7 or 8 pound monster with an enormous screen.
For more info see:
http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P2

All just my opinion of course.

Alfons R.	Di Ciuccio M.	Bea F.	Michele C.	Barbara S.	Nigel W.	Jean-Francois B.	Avi .

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