Looking for a new laptop for my GF. Her work wants to put her through a graphic design course.

What would be some decent minimum specs for a laptop (it must be a laptop)?

Will be used to run Photoshop, do photo manipulation (using high rez/RAW images), graphic design and desktop publishing.

No video work expected.

Any recomendations for minumum specs on:
RAM
Graphic card
Processor

Thanks,

http://www.alienware.com/product_det...de=SKU-DEFAULT

;)

Why dont you try asking her teacher, or other people that went thru the course and used laptops also. That might be your best bet, anyone can post a Alienware comp, cuase they are supposidly the best, and well you pay for the lil green guy on it also

Because she hasn't yet signed up for the course and part of the process is budgeting a new laptop so her work can figure out if it is feasable or not.

Thanks for the link D-Mac - those are decent looking machines.

More specific questions:
Is 512mb ram enough?
Are there any processors to avoid (IE centrino)?
What is a decent vidoe card for a laptop?

Graphic design? ... step 1... buy a Mac [img]graemlins/thumb.gif[/img]

(and I'm a hardcore PC guy!)

If you want a Wintel system then I really suggest you get more than 512mb of RAM. Go for at LEAST 1GB.

Basically get the very best of everything you can afford. Graphics are killer on a systems resources ;)

Can you run a mac networked to windows machines?
All the other machines in her office are windows...

Keep in mind all they want is to set her up with a new laptop and not change anything else with their computer network...

for graphics. get yourelf a newer pentium with a gig of ram and lots of hard drive space. as photo shop files get big fast. lol

Those are nice machines...

In reality, I would also suggest checking with the instructor. Memory, screen resolution and colour accuracy will be most important. At least a gig of RAM, 40-60GB of hard drive and then as much size as she wants to carry in terms of weight. If you have budget left, then go for more processing power.

Something that Jordy can attest to will also be to look for service guidelines. Should something happen, how fast can the company turn around a replacement or repair.