Thinkpads Forum

i am a photographer and i need a laptop that is small, light, and has good battery life. i need it to run adobe photoshop cs2/illustrator, hold lots of photos and music. would an x60s thinkpad be good for my needs?

i own a thinkpad t43 and love it, just need something smaller/lighter when im in the city.

jamse wrote:i am a photographer and i need a laptop that is small, light, and has good battery life. i need it to run adobe photoshop cs2/illustrator, hold lots of photos and music. would an x60s thinkpad be good for my needs?

I do all my photo editing on my X31. The portability is fabulous -- I don't need a big laptop to carry in addition to the camera gear -- and with the extra memory (1.3 GB) and hard disk (100 GB 7200 rpm) the X31 does a great job with Photoshop -- within the constraints of the XGA display.

So as long as you are OK with the XGA display resolution, I believe that you would be very happy with an X60 or X60s (personally I would choose an X60 with Core 2 Duo -- extra CPU is never bad with Photoshop).

As long as you feel that the built-in graphics would be fast enough I'd go with an X60 which you can get with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo (with 4 MB Cache instead of 2 MB Cache), 2 GB RAM, 100 GB 7200 Hard Drive.

dfumento wrote:As long as you feel that the built-in graphics would be fast enough I'd go with an X60 which you can get with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo (with 4 MB Cache instead of 2 MB Cache), 2 GB RAM, 100 GB 7200 Hard Drive.

The graphics speed isn't really an issue with Photoshop -- not even with an X31. CPU, memory, disk make more difference.

I am a semi-photographer. I do a lot of editing. And I AM USING X60S now. I think the idea of more CPUs may not make too much sense. As one application will only use one CPU at time (I believe). More L2 cache might not make too much difference too (again, my guess).

so, get more memory and you are good.

A caution though, I think my X60S is sort of noisy. I have used X24, X31. They are all very quiet. Battery performance on them is at least as good as X60S.

bigtiger wrote:I am a semi-photographer. I do a lot of editing. And I AM USING X60S now. I think the idea of more CPUs may not make too much sense. As one application will only use one CPU at time (I believe). More L2 cache might not make too much difference too (again, my guess).

so, get more memory and you are good.

A caution though, I think my X60S is sort of noisy. I have used X24, X31. They are all very quiet. Battery performance on them is at least as good as X60S.

One app can use multiple CPUs if it's multithreaded, but I suspect that current Photoshop is not. However, having the second CPU core would be very nice when you have PS running some heavy-duty scripts in the background.

What kind of noise do you have on the X60s? Fan, disk, something else?

And do you mean "battery life" or "performance while on batteries"?

I see few softwares that are multi-threaded in the market that I can think of. I use Photoshop 7 and it is not.

Well, the noise is from the hard drive, unless there is a second fan near the hard drive.

I am talking about battery "life".

bigtiger wrote:I see few softwares that are multi-threaded in the market that I can think of. I use Photoshop 7 and it is not.

well, for example Ableton Live 6 *can* use both cores (audio production software).
Im running it on an X60s, L2400. Believe me, this tiny laptop beats some quite fast desktop systems, using that software.

Concerning the noise: My x60s is NOT noisy at all. The HD is not really quiet, thats true. But, all in all, the computer is NOT noisy. In fact, ive never had such a quiet laptop. Specially when you compare em on full cpu load...

bigtiger wrote:Well, the noise is from the hard drive, unless there is a second fan near the hard drive.

I am talking about battery "life".

Hmm, could be that there is a problem with your disk?

How long do your X60s and X31 batteries last? You said your X31 battery lasts as long (or longer?) than the X60s? Are you using 4-cell or 8-cell batteries on the X60s?

tomh009 wrote:

bigtiger wrote:Well, the noise is from the hard drive, unless there is a second fan near the hard drive.

I am talking about battery "life".

Hmm, could be that there is a problem with your disk?

How long do your X60s and X31 batteries last? You said your X31 battery lasts as long (or longer?) than the X60s? Are you using 4-cell or 8-cell batteries on the X60s?

I will call Lenovo after Thanksgiving.

The X31 got a 6 cell and my X60S got a 4 Cell. X31 can last about 3 hours (battery is about 1 year old) and my X60S can only get about 2 hours for the spanking new battery.

jamse, the X60s is a good choice but get it with at least 1 GB RAM.

alrighty, im thinking about the x60s right now im using this t43 that ive had for ayear and a half, but i still love it. for some odd reason the fan makes noise, and its larger than what i want when i lug it around when i go photoing.

i dont know if i should wait for vista to come out before i buy a new thinkpad. does annyone think they will put out a new series when vista is out? thx for all the input guys

jamse wrote:i am a photographer and i need a laptop that is small, light, and has good battery life. i need it to run adobe photoshop cs2/illustrator, hold lots of photos and music. would an x60s thinkpad be good for my needs?

Would the X60's XGA display (1024x768 pixels) provide enough room for Photoshop? If you don't mind that, then it should be a good choice..