Digital BW, The Print

There are lots of deals out there. Just replaced my machine with a Dell 
laptop. If you buy one of their E series (the 6400 looks good to me) you 
can get a machine with the ability to revert from Vista to XP. If you're 
using external drives, the internal hard drive can be 160-250 GIG. 
Definitely get a Core 2 Duo processor and 4GIG of memory max. I assume 
you'll use an external monitor for critical work. I actually got a 
Studio XPS 16 machine with their RGBLED display--I hear it's garish at 
the factory setting, but it can be adjusted to meet color calibration 
standards. This machine is well within your budget at the sale prices 
Dell is quoting, but you can't downgrade to XP on it.

Roger

Louis Dina wrote:
>
> I need some advice. My 6 year old computer (WinXP) just crashed ... I 
> have a limited budget (like to keep it under $2000 if possible. I have 
> monitors and external USB hard drives for backup). I don't need a 
> "state of the art screamer" but I do need a faster, more powerful 
> machine to comfortably process 21 MB RAW 5DmkII files and one that 
> works well with my Canon 6100 printer. I figure 200-300 MB files will 
> be a routine thing in Photoshop (currenty using PSCS2 and LR2.3) Color 
> management MUST work properly.
>
> I've never used Vista and am a bit gun shy. I have heard there are 
> problems with its ability to retain monitor calibration data, etc, and 
> that color management may be an issue. I have also read about problems 
> getting the Canon drivers and plugins working. A new machine will have 
> some flavor of Vista, but which one? And is XP compatibility mode part 
> of the standard Vista system? Does Vista require any new software or 
> can I use my old Windows XP software?
>


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