new computer - used macbook pro, or something else?

[Erik Petersson]

Hello,

I need a new workstation, but it is hard to choose. I am not particularly interested in computers. I just want it to work. Anyway, these are my requirements.

I need a laptop that I can plug into my scanners and my monitor. I will probably rarely do photo editing elsewhere than home.

- Nikon Coolscan iv ED, which needs a firewire port (or through adapter)
- Epson V500. Needs usb port
- Eizo Flexscan S2233W LCD monitor, needs either DVI, D-Sub or DisplayPort in order to connect to the computer (or through adapter)

I scan 35mm frames and occasionally larger negatives on the Epson. Photoshop editing will rarely go beyond some curves and levels, dodge and burn, and basic colour correction. I'll also use the computer for web surfing, movies, text editing, skype etc but any computer does that.

So, I stumbled over a used Macbook Pro from 2012. i5 processor, 4GB ram. Only 13 inches, but on the other hand that's portable. It's cheap and already has most of the needed software. Should I go for it or rather buy something else? What PC laptop is comparable or better?

Thanks in ahead for any advice. I am perplexed by all the choices.
regards
Erik

 

[jd callow]

You pay for portability, but the i5 is a good cpu and if ever you wanted to you could add a monitor and (i believe) as much as 16gigs of ram.

 

[L Gebhardt]

If you want a Mac I'd look at one of the Retina display MacBook Pro's with 8GB, or better 16GB of RAM. 4GB of RAM will be tight for photo editing if you are making large scans. You can get a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter for your scanner. But the bigger issue might be whether the software will run on a newer 64 bit OS (either Mac or Windows). If you use ViewScan it should work. But I'd be concerned about the Nikon software.

 

[StoneNYC]

You haven't said how much you're paying.

Depends on what you need and the price but a used MacBookPro with i5 is a good plan.

I don't even know what I'm running but it's the first retina display MacBookPro they came out with. It runs excellent. Should be fine.

 

[tkamiya]

I'd like to leave a bit of stuff I found out recently.

I have a rather high end workstation that I use almost exclusively for photography. Using Photoshop, I've found:

1) even though this box has 2 CPU, 6 cores each, and 12 threads each, Photoshop rarely uses more than a few. Most of the times, just one or two is active and rest is just sitting there idling. So get fast clock rate, not multi-processors or a lot of cores.
2) when I had 8Gig memory, it constantly maxed out and basically spent its time just swapping. Now I have 40G, it often stays below 8 gig and I have only seen it approach 16G. So the sweet spot appears to be 16gig.

This is with Photoshop CC and Windows 7 Pro x64

 

[Erik Petersson]

Hi, I'd like to thank everyone belatedly for your replies. I got ill after having posted this, and then I moved abroad for a few months. Finally now I bought a computer, the latest MacBook Pro 13". It only has 8 gig ram, would have been to expensive otherwise. It seems to work great with ny Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED. Now I've got scanning to do!