Best laptop for astrophotography

[gregbradley]

Its my 60th birthday today and I am in the market for a new laptop.

It would be used for business but also image processing.

As such I would need an SSD drive for rapid file retrieval, an excellent screen, perhaps 4K and overall fast speed from an i7.

I have been using a HP i7 laptop but its becoming a bit worn and the keypad is not always responding and it overheats a lot. Otherwise its been a good laptop.

Also of course the laptop would need 4 c usb ports and perhaps an RS232 port (not essential) though.

Any suggestions or links to a good review site?

Greg.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Saw a nice HP "Omen" laptop in store today, you can configure the keyboard and ports to glow whatever colour you want, including red

[britgc (Bret)]

I hope this reply isn't too late.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ is a great site for laptop reviews.

There are links to various "top 10" lists on the right of the page if you scroll down a bit.

Something with an Intel "Broadwell" CPU in it will probably be your best bet for the latest in performance and power efficiency.

Hope that helps.

Bret

[skysurfer]

Get a Macbook Pro.
A bit more pricy, but very good hardware as well with SSD, retina screen, etc.
But when you get 60 (I got 60 last week !) you deserve a premium laptop !

OSX is way better than Windows and when using VMware or Virual Box it runs Windows flawlessly (for me using Deepskystacker).

Post processing apps like Pixinsight, darktable (not available on Windows), GIMP, Photoshop, Nebulosity all run natively on OSX.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Get an XPS 15.
Great screen with excellent colour, higher res than a 15" retina, and it's a touch screen which is actually useful occasionally.
Awesome build quality, aluminium and the bottom shell is carbon fibre so it's very light and doesn't cook your lap, like some aluminuim laptops...
Same processor, ram, SSD, and yes even build quality as top of the line MBP 15 but over $500 cheaper, and you don't have to run your astro software in vmware.

[netwolf]

i got the sp3 i7 over the xps the tablet mode means i can get rid of the ipad.

[Nortilus (Josh)]

Look at the alienware gear...the A17 can have a 17inch 1080p IPS monitor panel in them...

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by netwolf

i got the sp3 i7 over the xps the tablet mode means i can get rid of the ipad.

Good call, I've got an sp3 too and I love it, and although it's only an i5 I've found myself doing all my photo and astro processing stuff on it and I haven't really used the xps15 since I got it

[Somnium (Aidan)]

i also have a SP3 i5, i love it so much that i got one for my wife as well. the only issue i have with it is the lack of USB ports. other than that it handles all AP jobs extremely well.

Originally Posted by pluto

Good call, I've got an sp3 too and I love it, and although it's only an i5 I've found myself doing all my photo and astro processing stuff on it and I haven't really used the xps15 since I got it