Sorry, I forgot to mention I don't play games or watch movies on computers. But I do design image analysis software for very large images, so that's why I want a large hi-resolution screen, a powerful processor, and lots of ram to hold those giant images. Also, I suspect 200GB or so of disk would be more than enough. Does this help narrow things down?
Thanks, Jim
Well, the best kind of computing will be achieved using a desktop. What are your reasons for wanting a laptop? I can assure you, with a 17" screen, you'll be cringing everytime you want to lug that monster around. Personally, I found it hard to
want to bring around anything over a nice 13.3" Macbook.
With this in mind, that leaves only the advantage of being able to tote around your 17" for non-routine affairs -- if, for example, you need to bring it to the office once in a while, or if you need to make a presentation. How often do these things come up.
But nevermind that, suppose you're looking at a laptop.
IMO, for the 200 GB, hard drive, why not just buy yourself an external? It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper and I assume, much more convenient if you ever need to transfer huge gobs of images between places. For the screen, it sounds to me like you simply need a secondary monitor. This will get you more desktop space, and all the resolution your wallet (and GPU) can handle.
All this leaves is the processor.
Anyways, for me, I use a 13.3" Macbook, nearly permanently plugged in at home, hooked up to a 19" widescreen and a 500 GB external. It's a very effective setup. In retrospect, I should have gone with the Macbook Pro for computing power, plus because I rarely take the Macbook anywhere, I would have liked a 15" or 17" in conjuction with my 19".
