Advice/opinions needed on new laptop for post processing

[Pascal]

I am in the market for a Mac laptop ... portable of course, light weight, all the positive features.... for post processing needs.... among other things

I was considering a macbook. I have been using Bibble, Breezebrowser, and PS on my Windows desktop so far to process Canon and Olympus RAW files. So the minimum setup should be able to handle this.

Can someone offer any opinions on what is the minimum requirements I should look for in a macbook to process images.

[srwatters]

I wouldn't suggest a notebook/laptop for editing unless you're using an external display. Even the best notebook displays do not have very good off axis viewing performance. Go to an Apple store and bring an image up on the display. Now move your head up and down, left and right. Watch for the color and brightness shifts. Do the same thing on an iMac or Mac Pro desktop and you'll immediately see what I mean. If you want consistent results, you'll do much better with an external LCD panel on the notebook.

I have a 15" MacBook Pro with the glossy screen that looks wonderful, but I don't edit images on it. I hook it up to an external panel which gives me more screen real estate for editing also.

Good luck!

[JPalmer]

I'll second Scott on that one.

I will use a lappy when I'm out on location (sports, etc) and edit down the photos to send back to the office...but when I want to actually color correct them, I wait until I'm back in town and on one of the calibrated flat screens.

[srwatters]

As far as performance goes, it depends on how much batch processing or heavy filter usage you do. PhotoShop startup is only a few seconds difference between the slowest and fastest models, but I'd concentrate on a fast disk and as much RAM as you can afford. I have 4GB in my Mac Pro and it works great. Only 2GB in the MacBook Pro so as soon as prices for the 2GB modules drop, it will go to 4GB also. 7200RPM drives are also nice to have when saving 16bit multi-layer PSD files...