I'm in the market for a new laptop. I've been using a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 for a few years now. I have the i7 model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB hard drive. It works well enough for data acquisition from my astronomy camera or my DSLR and it can run the rest of my rig using a USB hub. However, it is very lacking in the processing department. Astrophotography is very data intense and several hours of data can amount to 40-50GB+ that needs to be processed using multiple methods and programs. It is by no means a fast process, but it is being slowed down by my hardware. On top of that, while the screen is great, I don't get a very good representation of how the image will appear on other screens, social media, or in print. Since I share a lot of my images, I need something that has capability to be calibrated using color spaces, specifically sRGB. I use Photoshop and occasionally Lightroom, but have been learning PixInsight recently for processing. It seems to be much more resource intensive that PS and LR, but gives far better results. As for other requirements, I use it extensively outside so it needs to be able to withstand heat, cold and humidity fairly well. It doesn't have to be ruggedized, but would be a plus. In addition to astrophotography, I primarily use my Surface for browsing the internet, watching videos, managing social media pages and editing a newsletter. I don't do a lot of gaming, but that is more due to the limitations of my current hardware. I would probably do more on my laptop if it were capable of playing AAA games. I don't have a specific budget in mind, but would like to keep it under $2500. I would like to keep it to something that was released within the last nine months or, since I don't need it right away, something that will be released between now and Christmas.
EDIT: I should add, I'm looking for either a 15" or 17" screen. AMD or Intel processors are both acceptable. The processing software I use makes excellent use of multicore processors, the more the better.
EDIT: I should add, I'm looking for either a 15" or 17" screen. AMD or Intel processors are both acceptable. The processing software I use makes excellent use of multicore processors, the more the better.
Last edited: