Hi,

I'm hoping some of you guys can make some laptop recommendations. After searching the Open Talk forum I couldn't find anything recent about good laptops for photography.

My Dell XPS M1530 laptop's motherboard recently broke after having it only 14 months. Since that's out of warranty I need to buy a replacement that's comparable.

I'm looking for a laptop that works well for photo editing and photography. I want to make sure it has at least a 2.5 Ghz Intel processor, 4GB RAM, a video graphics card that's either 512MB or 1GB and 15" to 17" screen.

I'm looking at the following models.
Sony Vaio FW - At the top of my list seems to be the Sony Vaio FW, but I don't know much about Sony's laptops. It has gotten good reviews on several websites and seems to be a slightly better value so I like what it has to offer.
Toshiba Satellite A500 - I don't know all that much about Toshiba but it meets my specs.
Macbook Pro 15" - If price wasn't an issue I'd buy the the 15" Macbook Pro, but $1700 is a lot.
I'm skeptical of Dell given my recent laptop failure, but still considering the Studio 15 or Studio 16 XPS.

In the end I don't really want to pay more than $1300 for the laptop. If anyone has any additional suggestions please let me know. Thanks in advance.

--
Jeff
http://www.jefflevyphoto.com
http://www.isofusion.com