Digital BW, The Print

The Inspiron Daniel has is on my short list of laptops which I think 
could both displace my aging desktop and travel with the digital SLR 
I also don't have yet.

But I was thinking - I can't tell whether Daniel is - of having a 
larger "image display" at home. There a laptop's screen could, if 
it's big enough, become a (Photoshop) "palette display". But when the 
image display is in use, presumably with one of the profiles made for 
it, I think I know that any palette display would have to use the 
same, image-display profile? In its role as a traveling companion for 
a digital camera, the laptop would instead, I assume, use a profile 
made for the laptop. And, again if it's big enough, do Photoshop work 
as well as store images downloaded from the digital camera's memory 
card/disk.

If the operating systems do restrict us, as I think I've been told, 
to one profile at a time, then I'm wondering how this might affect 
our display choices and our colorimeter+software choices. For 
example, is the video on the Apple PowerBooks enough like that on the 
Apple Cinema displays for a combination of the two to have a 
strategic advantage over a mix-and-match system? Or: does a need for 
a LCD-capable colorimeter for the laptop make the Sony Artisan, which 
comes with its own CRT colorimeter, less of a bargain as an image 
display due to LCD-capable colorimeters being (I think) also 
CRT-capable?

Life might be simpler with a laptop large enough and robust enough to 
do everything on. And I'm curious to know whether Daniel and others 
think the new wide-screen 15-inch or 17-inch laptops are big enough 
and otherwise appropriate for that. For large images, I suppose not, 
but I can't print large anyway, for lack of room for mounting and 
matting and framing prints larger than about 8x12 or 11x14.
--
Sam


>I recently aquired a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop with a 1920x1200
>widescreen LCD. I've sold my CRT only Spyder and plan to find an LCD
>compatible calibration tool for around $300 that I can use instead.
>Another Spyder is an option of course, but I see that Gretag Macbeth and
>Monacosys both have offerings that are in the same price range.
>
>Do any of you have experience with any of these? I'm interested in both
>BW and color performance. The LCD screen shows BW pictures very blue,
>and with blown highlights, so it's not very usable for precision work in
>its current state.
>
>--
>Daniel Staver
>http://daniel.staver.no