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[clav]

No, it isn't. A car is one of the biggest purchases that most people make in their lives.

Reminds me of this thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1147337

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As for the OP, just buy a really expensive laptop that has a decent screen since you mentioned photo editing unless you don't really care about colors.

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. Some of you make good points to save up and get something better, but if put off doing what I want to do and I don't want to wait any longer. I probably would go up to $700 but it depends on what I see. I'm on my way to Best Buy later so we'll see what I find.

So if I understand this correctly, if I select a laptop with a dedicated GPU, it will take the load off the processor?

What about a situation where i have an i5 with 2.5 ghz that can turbo up to 3+ versus a quad core i7 with 2.2 ghz? Is the i7 inherently slower or does the quad core make a difference?

Yes and no. Buying a dedicated GPU will increase heat in your laptop and make it sound like a hair dryer when under load.

 

[sssstententen]

Get one of the older thinkpads.

Asus also makes okay laptops sometimes.

If not that, save up for a nice Dell/Mac/Surface Book.

 

[squallmx]

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. Some of you make good points to save up and get something better, but if put off doing what I want to do and I don't want to wait any longer. I probably would go up to $700 but it depends on what I see. I'm on my way to Best Buy later so we'll see what I find.

So if I understand this correctly, if I select a laptop with a dedicated GPU, it will take the load off the processor?

What about a situation where i have an i5 with 2.5 ghz that can turbo up to 3+ versus a quad core i7 with 2.2 ghz? Is the i7 inherently slower or does the quad core make a difference?

For video encoding/editing the more cores the better, plus turbo speeds are only for shorts amounts of time, and all the i7 have turbo too.

 

[Prez]

Buying a car is stressful, buying a MacBook Pro isn't.

The guilt of spending a lot of money that I could have spent on other things like travel while a $500 laptop does everything I need just as well is very stressful.

 

[Erasus]

1. So if I understand this correctly, if I select a laptop with a dedicated GPU, it will take the load off the processor?

2. What about a situation where i have an i5 with 2.5 ghz that can turbo up to 3+ versus a quad core i7 with 2.2 ghz? Is the i7 inherently slower or does the quad core make a difference?

1. No. CPUs have built in graphics ex intel hd 4000 and a dedicated graphics ex nvidia 940m card is going to perform better in games.
But the CPU will still need to do cpu stuff with a dedicated gpu, the cpu cannot use the gpu for its own tasks.
SOME editing programs can use the GPU to compute tasks

2. IF the i5 and i7 belong to the same generation, they have the same cores, just the i5 is clocked higher and the i7 is a quad core.
I would get the i7 despite the lower clock speed. Most games and programs want multiple threads, and its not like the single thread performance of the i7 is bad just because its clocked lower.
The i7 can probably turbo boost too, its just not listed?
You need go check http://ark.intel.com/ and http://www.notebookcheck.net/ for the cpu specs. Notebookcheck also has info on gpus.
Dont just go into best buy and get whatever without checking

As others have said, AMD is basically out of the game now. Do not buy a laptop with an AMD CPU, they are not bad at all, but intel cpus are generally much better.

Also you CANNOT compare GHZ between AMD/Intel and even between AMD/Intels own processor generations. The newer the cpu, the more "instructions per clock" it can do. So less ghz is needed for the same or better performance.
A 1st gen i7 @ 3.0GHZ is going to be slower than a new skylake based i7 @ 2.5GHZ because of the architecture improvements.

Of the ones you listed, Acer has the best specs on paper.
Just get and SSD and slap in there too. HDDs are dog slow.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Buying a laptop is pretty easy. I just go with off-lease business class Dell Latitude from dellrefurbished.com. They have like 40-50% off codes nearly every month. Last month I got 2 i5s with 8GB RAM for about $180 a piece. For like $100 more you can buy an SSD to throw into them to make them even zippier. I gave one to a family member for the holidays and sold the other for $300. I can easily get 3-5 years out of such a device, longer if I upgrade the memory down the line.

Edit: Also I advise avoiding all consumer level equipment. It's always hot garbage. Business lines are so much easier to work with, or at least that's been my experience ever since starting with Dell's latitude line. Granted this is sort of part of my job.

 

[sikkinixx]

Op in most cases a $500 laptop is gonna last you a couple years at most so don't fret too much. Plus the little bit of extra speed from one isn't going to be a deal breaker since it's not like you'll be ripping through exporting videos super fast on that class of computer anyway. As others have said I would spend less on the laptop and buy an ssd to cram in there anyway.