P-7811 FX for photographer?

The P-7811 FX is on sale here until closing tomorrow ($200 off!), so pardon my subtle cross-posting, but I have to decided asap. I make a living doing digital photography. I shoot alot of images, then edit and Photoshop them on the road, burn a DVD+R and send to client.

How do you think the P-7811 FX will work for me? Display quality is VERY important to me - how does this screen compare to say, an ASUS (Im looking at the Asus G50V-X1 ...and -A2 (smaller, I know...)

Tell me about the display!

 

As long as you get one without massive ghosting and bleed, the screen is gorgeous. See if you can open and test the one you wanna buy before walking out. I would also suggest a colorimeter such as the Huey Pro, or Spyder to calibrate the colors. I've used both and both work well.

 

The ability to edit digital images is the main reason I went with the P-7811FX. The screen is awesome and has plenty of real estate. I have one dead pixel near the top center, and the only reason I noticed it was because of some dead pixel software. The screen is as good or better than anything else I compared it to. I have had no problem installing and running Nikon Capture NX2 on Vista64. A few people have reported problems with ghosting and/or bleed, but I have seen nothing of the sort on mine. The P8400 processor is more than adequate. I have a Thinkpad for work (I am not a pro photog) with a T7700 which should be faster, but I can't tell the difference, possibly due to the faster memory in the 7811. See http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html for processor comparisons.

There is CD/DVD burning software with the system (Cyberlink Power2Go) but if you get a system that was "optimized" by Geek Squad, it will have been removed and you'll have to use the Gateway Recovery Management to reinstall it.

There have been some systems that have experienced GPU overheating issues, but only when running 3D games like Crysis. Later models (serial number starting with 2888) seem to be better than older models. Also, the newer models supposedly have the RAID BIOS, but you can download that, possibly even from Gateway's website by now. Only helps you if you have two hard drives, though. I just ordered a couple of these from NewEgg... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336

As always, shop around. I looked at Toshiba Qosmio, Lenovo Ideapad Y710 and Y730 (they didn't offer a 1920x1200 screen until after I bought my 7811) and Thinkpad W700 ($3K !?!?), Sony and Dell.

-fizzie

 

You can buy another hard drive for a scratch disk, which is great for Photoshop. There in an extra hard drive slot on the 7811FX. The 1920x1200 resolution is GREAT for any type of photo-work. The 7811FX is basically one of the cheapest laptops you can get with such great features.

Only problem I would see is that it's heavy and lugging it around everywhere with you could get tiresome. I would suggest getting a backpack made for 17" laptops so that you can take some of the strain off, because I have a laptop bag with just a shoulder strap and I stuff my 6831FX and an external hard drive in there, and it gets heavy after just a couple minutes....

 

I recomend it, because the resolution is great, I to do edition in photoshop and now with this resolution I can deal with 1080p pictures with no problem and Photoshop runs with no slow downs.

Still the problem is that you might get max 2 hrs of your laptop when you use it on the go, so it's not the best option for editing in the road, is a big laptop, so it's not "on the go" friendly IMO.

 

Since photoshop in this iteration is still 2d not 3d, he can probably get more battery time by going into control panel and choosing the power profiles that are less battery draining though, right? That should be a nice boost. But still, this is no six-hour laptop.

Have to agree that this is a very pretty laptop screen and the resolution is great.

Note that the drive is 200 megs and comes partitioned as a C and a D drive of about 80 megs and change a piece. I can see someone filling this up pretty fast. You can always add another drive though and the price differential between 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm laptop drives is not too much either.

Dook, I'm tempted to give you a rep point just for your avatar! Very funny!

 

great info re: second HD ..didn't know that!!!

...ok about battery life - mostly work in hotel n starbucks lol

 

personally I think the stock screen isn't that great.. anything white appears grainy and brightness is uneven on whiter/light backgrounds

 

Although the quality of the screen doesn't bother me, Malignant is right about the "grainy" thing. I described it as a light blue haze, but grainy is probably an acceptable description.

Like I said, that part doesn't bother me, but some of them are more uneven than others - one of mine was so uneven white looked like two slightly different colors in one section of the screen vs another.

On dark backgrounds or when playing games, not even noticeable. If you're doing a lot of graphic design that involve detailed light colors or white, it might be annoying.

 

I agree that there is graininess, but you are going to get that on anything if you look close enough, even glossy photo paper. On mine, I don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. It certainly isn't anything that has interfered with image editing. The nvidia Control panel lets you adjust brightness, contrast, gamma and digital vibrance (think of it as saturation) on all channels collectively or for each individual color channel (red, blue, green). And you can easily find color calibration utilities elsewhere on the web. My system was pretty much spot-on right out of the box.

 

Anandtech reviewed the 7811 and did complain that color accuracy was not quite as good as for some other systems. I have not yet profiled my 7811 since I do all my photo work at home on a calibrated Dell monitor. You might want to ask if anyone here has done a profile and what the delta e readings looked like.

Ira

 

Ira,

Thank you for that critical information. I appreciate it!

 

Digital Vibrance did seem to fix the colors for me on the screen. As far as battery life, I can get around 3 hours of battery life with Wi-Fi on and 40% screen brightness.