unique question...best laptop for a radiologist?

here's the deal. i bought a TZ a few weeks ago (LOVE it btw). when my sister found out what kind of discount i could get, she wanted an FZ. so i did that.

now, my dad wants a new laptop. the catch is, he's a radiologist and will be using it when he's on call. it's not like he'll be carrying it around everyday so weight is not a huge issue. he'll just take it if he goes to a friend's for dinner while he's on call or something like that.

just wondering if there are any radiologists (or anyone that looks at x-ray/mri/ct images) on their laptop and if they can point me in the right direction. i'd like to stick with sony because i get the best discount with them.

i know, this is a weird question, so if i don't get any responses, i totally understand.

 

what size price etc is he looking for
fill out this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=29271

 

i'm not really sure on what exactly to be looking at for this kind of use. but here's my best shot:

budget: $1000-2000

screen: 15-17" screen, as high a resolution as possible (don't want to miss that hairline fracture )

use: Mainly used for viewing x-ray/mri/ct scans while on call. no gaming.

portability: not too big an issue. will only be taken places when on call.

OS: unknown at this time. not sure what OS the radiology app works on.

other than that, i'm open to suggestions. my main reason for posting this question was that hopefully another forum member has used their laptop for something similar and could offer some advice.

 

One thing is certain, he can only get one resoultiuon with the FZ, but has a high res choice on the 17". IMHO, the 17" with the high res would probably suit his needs better. And the AR is a sweet laptop - I was REALLY looking at it hard and decided on the FZ with an external 19" for the additional real estate.

 

if you want to move from sony
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220334
it has 1920*1080 full 1080p for x-rays
2.2ghz c2d and a 8600m gt to render those pics faster

the big con is the hdd spins at 4200rpm i would swap it out

 

I worked for a radiology company before. One radiologist got a $3000 high-end laptop from a high-end graphic/gaming PC company (forgot the name, it was bought by the Dell, it has a bird with wing spread out kind of logo, red in color). I don't know if SONY has high-end notebooks like that?

Even though you don't plan to play game with it, you need to look for the laptop with the highest graphic performance (which means you're looking at gaming PCs).

Your dad need to ensure that the medical imaging programs he uses are Vista compatible. If not, he needs to find a laptop with XP instead of Vista.

A lot of radiologists use 24" monitor to view images with 6 to 8 window panes (for different body views), so the support for 1920 x 1200 external monitor may be important.

I would get the fastest notebook with 3GB of RAM, biggest HD (these medical images are 20-50MB and sometimes over 100MB per case), with fastest, highest resolution graphic support. I won't buy one with graphic card that uses system memory.

Maybe performance is too big a issue for your dad, then most notebook are good enough. I was able to view these medical images with a 1.8GB Pentium-based (before these Duo Core CPUs) notebook on a 14.5" monitor. The speed wasn't too bad.

The asus posted above looks pretty nice at a lower price than the SONY I bought a year ago.

 

thanks for the advice. i'm not sure exactly what size monitor they use at the hospital, but they are pretty big. looks like sony may not be the most price effective option here (even with my discount). i'll check out that asus and see if it has the right specs.

 

Carl - I am a radiologist with some idea of what your dad may need but not enough to guide you as far as specifications. What I do know is that most laptop displays will be adequate for CT and MR images (spatial resolution is not high enough to be a problem and contrast resolution issues can be circumvented by windowing). Meanwhile, radiograph interpretation will be suboptimal no matter what you choose because of the high spatial resolution (keep in mind that the PACS monitors that your dad uses during the day each cost 10+k a pop).

Waterfallzen has posted some good information.
If you need more advice, I would do a search and / or post on auntminnie, which is the most frequented message board in the radiology community.

here's a link
http://www.auntminnie.com/forum/tt.aspx?forumid=2

Good luck and please post your findings when you arrive at a decision.