Need Mac Help

[mooshu2]

Hi All:

I decided to buy a used Macbook Pro but don't know if the specs below are good enough for photography. I will mainly run photo editing software. I am trying to take advantage of the used Macbook Pros as people are selling them for the one. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Apple MacBook Pro 17" screen
1920x1200 WUXGA high resolution screen (glossy)
Core2 Duo 2.4 Ghz processor with Santa Rosa chipset
upgraded to 500GB hard drive
6GB RAM installed (max for this model)
late 2007 model - MacBookPro3,1 code
Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 installed

[Mosephus]

Not a Mac expert but it looks great to me, plenty of memory dual core processor, looks like it should handle most of what you can throw at it.

[PeteQ]

You should have no problem with your set-up for MOST work. What are you doing primarily? Some images, lots of images (1000+ at a time) or video?

Mine system is roughly equivalent and I run Lightroom 2 and Adobe CS4 (soon to be upgraded to CS5 after the bugs get shook out) with no problems. When traveling, I do rough wedding edits via Lightroom and also a fair amount of Photoshop work on the laptop.

My next upgrade in a year or so will see me go to 100% laptop workflow as now I am splitting things between my laptop for travel and my iMac for office. Mainly I just miss my dual monitors with the laptop, not so much a speed issue as to why I am still working with the iMac for now.

I do all my image editing on an external hard drive and then dump over to my office system and Drobo when I get home. That's the only drawback to most laptops, hard drive space, of course that depends on what your storage requirements are, but if you get a couple of good external drives you will be set. When traveling I dump my cards to an external so I have two copies before I leave a site. YMMV

[Mosephus]

I'll go ahead and ask since I plan on getting a MBP in the near future. Is it possible to "dock" the laptop next to an external monitor and have a "dual" monitor setup with a MAC.

I sort of do that now with my wifes dell just set the laptop on a stand and plug the second monitor in and edit on that monitor. Is it just as easy with a mac laptop?

[PeteQ]

Sure, it's easy to add a Mac or aftermarket second monitor to a MBPro. The Apple monitors now have a special plug that takes care of most of the docking needs which is really slick. See this link: Apple - LED Cinema Display - Features

You can also hook most generic brands to the computer via an adapter plug.