Notebook for digital painting?

[Timmi-o-Tool]

Hi there!
I won a prize of 1000€ (1200$) and now I am looking for a notebook, which should live for some years without getting broken. I'm not very into PC hardware stuff, so I wanna ask you :yayca:
Please help me, before I buy some crap :D

[Not Pink]

if your looking for a tablet for 1200 or less I suggest nothing other than the HP tx series. the newest tx2500 can be found for 800 or less, and I've seen it on woot.com* every couple of weeks for $650 that's a crazy good deal.

the other route you could go is getting a really small, thin and cheap net book and a cheap wacom tablet. I don't suggest this route as most small netbooks don't have good enough specs to run painter or ps well. that, and you would have to carry around both a tablet and the laptop... I've seen it done, but hey, I don't suggest it.

also note: if you buy a laptop with vista installed in june, you'll get a free (or nearly free, they haven't said yet) upgrade to windows 7, who's resources are amazing compared to vista (I'm beta testing)

*woot.com is a site that shows one deal a day, and they're pretty good deals. I'd suggest waiting for the laptop to come up until you can't wait anymore

[B_in_3D]

Timmi's got some really good tips, here is mine:
if you want a cheap computer go to tigerdirect.com
they have stuff for insanely cheap... I'm running a desktop right now that I've had for about 3-4 years and its still running good. Like he said, netbooks are cool, but not really feasible as of right now for artists.

[mickeymao]

There have been several threads about tablet PCs if you do some searching. In short, the best brands are Fujitsu and Lenovo, followed by HP, Gateway and Toshiba, with Gateways being cheap and having the only 14" screen available, but also being the heaviest machines.

For extensive reviews and opinions, check out this site: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/

[FranciscoShreds]

I definitely don't recommend buying a netbook. You'll need every bit of the screen rez you can get for painting. I recommend that whatever you get have a screen size of 17 inches or more. most notebooks at that size will also be equipped with the hardware you'll need to run all the big painting and 3d programs out there (excluding CS4 apparently... >.>) And then just using a tablet with it will work just fine. As far as lugging the two around, well most notebook bags have inner pockets that will accommodate the 6x8 and 6x11 wacoms intuos's just fine. Hell, my bookbag has a mesh net stitched to the notebook pocket and that holds my tablet just fine.

[Maidith]

I am used to painting using a CRT screen which shows all the tiny subtle hues in the very dark and very light colors. My notebook screen does not show these, and even after adjusting colors until they seemed perfect, my digital paintings still turn out slightly too saturated. Furthermore, the top of my screen is always darker and higher in contrast than the bottom, NO MATTER how I sit, what angle I look from, or how I adjust the screen angle. In short: I use a notebook for digital painting, and the screen sucks ass. For digital painting at least. Other than that, it's a very fine 17" screen. And a very fine notebook (Samsung, 4 GB ram, awesome performance)
And don't get Vista, it's bloody annoying.

[mickeymao]

You can turn off most of the annoying features in Vista, and I've been told it has better driver support for the pressure sensitivity in Photoshop. At any rate I use it on my Gateway tablet PC and have had very few problems with it.

I wouldn't use a notebook as my only machine, both for screen real estate as Vato Loco says and for LCD viewing angle/color accuracy issues as Maidith says. However if you can afford both a desktop and a tablet PC, it is pretty nice to be able to take your digital work with you and not have to wrestle with a separate tablet.

[Arshes Nei]

I generally don't spend over 500 for any notebook. It's due to the fact that ...

1. Notebooks aren't that customizable.

2. The prices of notebooks drop down significantly. By the time you buy it at 1200, it goes down quite a bit the next year. Remember 1. You can't customize them much, so they're constantly coming out with updated notebooks.

I could advise buying a small notebook, and just buying a small intuos tablet for travel. You could also save the money and go for a Cintiq. http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/cintiq-12wx.php

The cintiq will have better pressure sensitivity than about any notebook I know of at this time for the money you're going to spend.

Want a cheapo touch portable touch screen sensitive drawing pad?

You could also buy a DS Lite for 130, get a supercard and 4gb of memory for about 40 bucks and install colors.

[Timmi-o-Tool]

Thank you guys for all your replies OO
But I didn't wanted a Tablet PC. I searched for a normal one, which i can use with my wacom intuos3 for painting and for watching movies and playing some games. I already bought a Dell XPSM1530 yesterday and I think this one will work fine (i hope, lol)

[juczpen]

There have been several threads about tablet PCs if you do some searching. In short, the best brands are Fujitsu and Lenovo, followed by HP, Gateway and Toshiba, with Gateways being cheap and having the only 14" screen available, but also being the heaviest machines.

For extensive reviews and opinions, check out this site: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/http://seoagora.com/img/3026/c08o1024tpai/puzzle.gifhttp://seoagora.com/img/2539/p09j0129bnvn/livin.gif

I agree, Fujitsu and Lenovo are the best, I'd say Lenovo makes the best notebooks and tabletPCs but that's my personal opinion. Their build quality is very very good (you get what you pay for) :donk:

[Giorge]

But how is the sensitivity of the tablet screen compared to the one of the tablet for example?

[mickeymao]

For the most part you will not notice the difference in pressure sensitivity. More of an issue (for most people, on most machines) is the calibration, which tends not to be perfect, and the vertical offset (the cursor is on the other side of a piece of plexi from the tip of your pen. Also there's no tilt sensitivity.

[Giorge]

well there you have it :)).

I was looking to buy me another notebook two , now i have a Fujitsu- Siemens 15" with is pretty good , and can handle small and medium works , but i was looking for something more aesthetic, light and efficient . I was looking at a MacBook Aluminum or a DELL XPS M1330 ( this tow are 13").

so...? what say ye?

[VulgarDragon]

make sure it's got about 4GB of ram, otherwise it will run like molasses with Vista. Also make sure it's got a decent graphics card...you are stuck with whatever graphics card comes with it.

my notebook is a hp and i am quite pleased with its performance.