What hardware are you using for editing?

I'm wondering what hardware you guys and gals are using for editing your pictures. Rather than shut myself away in my 'office room' I tend to be a bit more sociable and use my laptop. My laptop is a tough lightweight Thinkpad aimed at business and travelling use and although powerful enough it's proven it's not the best screen for photo-editing. The screen is matt and suited more to documents.

So, what are you using? Particularly what screen and what resolution are you using, if a laptop what model and screen etc. Any other hardware like a tablet?

Laptop, Dual Core 3 Gig, 2 Gig Ram, loads of HD Space.

19" Screen @ 1900x1200, Pure Glass Black screen thing.

Works well using Lightroom 2 and CS3.

Have a wacom tablet but can't get away with it.

Things to look out for when getting a PC for photography or print work

For photographers (and any other print professionals), the most important item is the monitor. Always get a matt screen (not glossy).

If it's a flatscreen, make sure the monitor does not contain a cheap 'TN' panel (they just don't have enough colour depth - and viewing angles are poor). S-IPS or S-PVA are good panel choices.

The next things you might want to pay attention to is, video ram (more the better), overal system ram (the more the better) and hard disk speed (faster the better, say at least 7,200 rpm).

Usually all the above go against getting a laptop, because they generally don't meet the specs above (or have a TN or glossy panel)

Anyway, what are my specs?

My main desktop PC:

Vista 64bit
4GB ram (Geil Performance)
320GB Seagate Hard Disk - 7,200 rpm 16mb cache
256MB Ati Graphics card, dual DVI so I can output in 2560 x 1600
Monitor: Dell 3008, 30" monitor, usually set to 1920 x 1200 as I push it right to the back of my desk.

I don't really use any of my laptops for photography work tbh, because of all the reasons I mentioned above.

Vista 32bit
3GB ram
Quad Core

My Screen is 22" Acer TFT set at 1680 x 1050

I just bought a 24" S-IPS (HP LP2475W) a few weeks before Christmas. I had been using a 16" Eizo monitor for about 4 or 5 year, it was long overdue an upgrade. I was hoping to buy either an NEC or EIZO S-IPS or S-PVA but they were beyond my price range for the size I wanted. I soon discovered the HP LP2475W and for being a s-ips monitor, size and features/connections the price was unbeatable, just under £400 with a discount. The reviews were excellent as well and various discussion boards raved about it as well.

As Azz says, don't get a TN = (too naff) panel if you are serious about your photography/image processing.







And my PC specs

Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherbord (fanless)
Intel Core 2 duo E6850 3.0GHZ (zalman CNPS9500A heatsink and fan)
Gigabyte Radeon x1600 pci express graphics card (fanless)
1TB (2X500GB) western digital sata II HDD (RAID 0)
3GB Geil 800mhz pc6400 ddr2 memory (4.4.4.12)
Creative X-FI platinum fatality sound card
Zalman silent 600w psu
Asus quiet track dvd re-writer (lightscribe)
Akasa internal (CF -SD-MS PRO,DUO etc USB connector) card reader
Antek case
24" HP LP2475W S-IPS monitor
Vista 32bit

1TB Western digital external SATA II HDD (connected via e-sata)
500GB Western digital external SATA II HDD (connected via firewire 800)
400GB Maxtor connected vie firewire 400

Nice rig there DJ!

I use an iMac:



and for a laptop i use a macbook pro:


I also use a wacom tablet which i switch between the 2 computers.

Thanks for the responses so far, my upstairs 'office' pc remains powerful enough but I was already aware the 17in TN panel was due an upgrade for photo work. It's 3-4 years old bought before I went to work abroad but times have moved on. Was considering a 20 or 22 in HP, Dell or Samsung panel. My Thinkpad laptop has the matt screen and is great for documents and powerpoints but despite the advice above it isn't as a photo friendly as any of the glossy screen laptops I see in the shops. The advice is to buy a matt screen but this one definately isn't helping. I'll consider my options...

Most laptop screens have TN panels. The only exception I've seen is a Sony Vaio that my sister owns that has an S-PVA panel (best screen I've seen on any laptop) but mostly, laptops have tn panels.

You can tell whether the screen is a TN or not by moving your head down towards the bottom of the screen whilst looking at the top - if it begins to go dark or colours go weird it is prob a TN panel.

I use a dual core P4 with 3Gb Ram and Windows XP. Your wasting your time putting more than about 3.5GB ram in Windows XP as it won't use it.

I use 2x20" Samsung monitors as I like all the PS tools and bridge on one panel, and just the photo I am editing on the other panel, I use an nVidia dual head graphics card with 512Mb RAM for running the monitors. I have an internal 200Mb hard disk, and 2x500Mb drives for backups, I also have a 750MB external Hard Disk that I keep at work (in case the worst happens).

I only use the PC for videos and photos, everything else I do (games, music etc) I do on other compters as I don't want too much software slowing the thing down by eating up memory.

The most important thing for me when editing photos is desktop space, that is why laptops are a bit of a pain, I have a coulpe of laptops I use when travelling, but really only use them for storing and previewing my photos until I get home. The more desktop space you have, the more of your photo you can have on the screen, and sometimes its really nice having a full screen of a shot when editing, as you see things you don't see when zoomed in (especially vignetting or luminance changes across the image)

Alan.