new laptop - help wanted

happychappy69

Want a laptop for basic photo editing (pse 10) maybe some film watching (how hard to install a blu-ray player/burner)?

found this on ebuyer

http://www.ebuyer.com/337140-asus-x53z-laptop-x53z-sx052v

Any thoughts please

m5rcc

Seems OK, but for what you want to do, a little over powered so you could find something less expensive that will do the job perfectly fine.

I think you'd be better off with this

robmar0se

Apart ftom my prejudice against Acers, I would think that this would be a good fit for what you want to do. Photo editing , and Photoshop particularly does eat resource, so the spec may well suit you. The processor write up is quoted below, and would be useful if you did any video editing too.

Storage @ 500Gb is reasonable (but please remember to include an external usb/esata external storage for backup)

AMD A4-3300M APU is a mobile microprocessor for budget and mid-class mainstream notebooks. The CPU was introduced in June 2011 together with 6 other models from Sabine mobile platform. The A4-3300M belongs to A4-Series for Notebooks family, that at the launch time was comprised of two dual-core processors.
A4-Series A4-3300M is built on 32nm Llano core, which uses tweaked "Stars" (K10) cores, paired with high-performance integrated graphics controller. This A4-Series processor comes with two CPU cores, each having 128 KB level 1 and 1 MB level 2 dedicated caches. The processor operates at 1.9 GHz, but for single-threaded applications its frequency can be boosted to 2.5 GHz with the help of new Turbo Core feature. The A4-3300M supports the same technologies as mobile 45nm Athlon II / Phenom II chips, that is AMD 64, Virtualization, and instruction set extensions up to SSE3 and SSE4A.
New feature in the Llano core is an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU), much more powerful than integrated GPUs in previous generations of AMD mobile chipsets. The graphics unit, implemented on the AMD A4-3300M, is Radeon HD 6480G, clocked at 444 MHz. The HD 6480G incorporates 240 shader units, which can be used for 3D graphics acceleration, as well as for acceleration of non-graphics applications.
In addition to CPU cores and the graphics processing unit, the A4-Series 3300M includes Universal Video Decoder (UVD) 3.0, used for acceleration of video decoding, as well as memory and PCI Express 2.0 controllers. On-chip DDR3 memory controller has two channels, and it supports standard and low-voltage memory with data rates up to 1333 MHz. AMD A4-3300M includes a number of low-level enhancements, intended to reduce processor's power consumption. For example, the chip may completely turn off power for idle CPU cores, UVD and/or graphics processing unit. Also, the chip supports several low-power states. The A4-3300M features 35 Watt Thermal Design Power, that includes the power dissipated by the cores, GPU and other chip components. The CPU is manufactured in a PGA package, compatible with Socket FS1.

tom_butcher

If you're going to be doing photo editing and film watching you want a laptop with a dedicated GPU and with at least 4GB of RAM. The one you've thought about is good and I would stay with a similar spec.

happychappy69

Would love a dedicated gpu , but funds won't run to one, have a strict £400 budget, and have been badly bitten at dell outlet so won't go back there - this seriously narrows my options.

Keep the thoughts coming though guys and gals