Learning

The Right Computer For the Job (Not a Netbook)

By D. Travis North ⋅ October 15, 2009 ⋅ Print This Post Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment
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In a recent discussion here at Shutter Photo, long-time reader Lisa Newton – owner/operator of the Travelin’ Local website (a travel site  geocentric to Southern California) – mentioned that she was considering getting a Netbook for her photographic work.  It’s a natural thought progression:  Lisa’s work with the site takes her to places away from home, and having a traveling photo lab would be a benefit.  But myself and other readers – for reasons I’ll discuss shortly – advised that a Netbook is perhaps not the best tool for photography work.

Fast forward to this week.  I have a few friends (several, in fact) that I am trying to drag into – or back into – the photography world.  One of them recently came into a sum of money and is looking to set himself up with some new digital equipment and has been asking for some advice.  He also brought up the question of the Netbook because he is planning to do a lot of traveling abroad – and figured it would serve a dual purpose:  In Field Backup coupled with a Workflow Studio.  Again, I advised against the Netbook, at least not for the Workflow aspect.

There are many reasons why a Netbook should not be used for photo editing and workflow – it is not a viable photo studio.  Such reasons include (but are certainly not limited to) the following:

  • Picture Quality – To clarify, I’m speaking of the quality of the Netbook’s screen, not your photographic works.  A Netbook’s screen is usually in the 8-10″ range with a maximum resolution of 1024×600.  To view any of your photos at 50% or even 100%, you’re going to need to pan around a lot.  You will just not be able to get a good idea of the picture quality.
  • Performance – Netbooks are not designed as primary machines.  They are really intended to be used for light applicaitons:  E-mail, Internet Browsing, Chat and maybe some light word processing (though the form factor is too small to be comfortable for even that).  Photoshop and other photo editing software is demanding, and the Netbooks just can’t handle it well.  The processor speed is no longer a measure of system performance.  Many of these Netbooks have 1.3 Ghz processors, but they just don’t have the faster BUS systems and faster memory to back it up.  For that matter, they don’t have much memory – 1 GB on average, which is about a third of what I’d recommend.
  • Storage – Hard Drives on these things aren’t nearly as large as you should have.  Most are 160 gigabytes, which seems like a lot until you install all the software you need and start downloading RAW files at 10-15 MB a pop.  And there’s no room for expansion.  To boot, the hard drive response times are pretty slow.
  • Comfort – It’s hard enough to edit photos with a touch pad – I prefer to use a mouse – but the pads on these things are small and notoriously difficult to use.  The keyboards are small too, making them hard to use for serious typing.  Comfort is important when working on your photos.  Discomfort breeds impatience.

So I think the case is stated quite well as to why Netbooks aren’t good for your photography.  But that’s not to say that they don’t have their place.  As my one friend indicated…it may not be a bad as a companion.  You can use it to back up photos while in the field, and proofing on the Netbook is  an improvement over your camera’s 2″ LCD.  But I still wouldn’t recommend wiping your camera’s cards, and I wouldn’t recommend any workflow (not even deleting of photos) until you get back to a good computer.  So that all begs the question:  If it isn’t ideal for your needs – why get one at all?  Wouldn’t you rather have a new lens, or contribute that money towards a better laptop?

What are your thoughts?

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Discussion

Comments for “The Right Computer For the Job (Not a Netbook)”

  • Touche. Though my caveat is that poor color inaccuracy and poor contrast ratios are more common on Netbooks than full-sized Notebooks or desktop monitors. But there is - as you point out - always the likelihood that your monitor may not be up to the task.

    If nothing else, a key takeaway of this discussion is that you should be fully aware of your monitor's capabilities
  • I have to agree with some of these points and disagree with others having recently bought a netbook to take with me to help with my photography on a rather big multi-country vacation. My conclusion? If you travel a lot for your photography, a netbook is a practical must. I wish that I had had one all the years before!

    For about the size and weight of a hardbound book (plus a small portable mouse and a very small powerbrick), you have a great and very portable photo organizing workstation. Granted, the heavy photo editing work will have to happen back home, but I didn't have time to do any heavy photo editing while traveling anyways! I was far too busy taking photos.

    My workflow consisted pretty much of 1)getting up in the morning 2)taking as many pictures as I could point my camera at 3)moving the photos for that day onto the netbook 4)spot check the photos, delete ones with a thumb in it 4)rinse and repeat

    160GB is pretty small by today's standards, but even with Windows XP, Office, Gimp, and some various other odds and ends (including a bunch of old games that run on such minimal hardware) and a bunch of e-books and a few movies, I still had about 100GB left. Which works out to storage for about 6,000 15MB RAW photos. 500GB Passport USB drives can be had for another $110 on Newegg. I didn't bring one, but even then, I never felt crunched for space till about near the end of week 2.

    Using a netbook had many advantages during my trip then did having a regular laptop.
    1) It was small enough to fit into every room safe I encountered. My laptop wouldn't have fit into most of them.
    2) It was small enough to work on the pull down tray on the plane....in coach. And space left for a mouse.
    3) It was small enough to fit on the mini-desk in the stateroom on a ship I was on. The desk was so small I couldn't have fit a magazine or a newspaper on it.
    3) It was light enough (<3lbs) that I could lug it around (with mouse and power cord and universal adapter) without it being tiring.
    3) It has SD ports on it so I could transfer direct off the card, this saved me from having to drag around more USB adapter cables to transfer from my camera, and was way faster.
    4) The battery life is stupid ridiculous. If I turn off the wi-fi I get a bit over 5 hours. On the transatlantic plane trips this was invaluable time for me to sort the thousands of pictures I took on the trip.
    5) It was cheap enough that if it was stolen, broken or lost I wouldn't be too heart broken over it (except for the pictures, but I'd have lost those if the same happened to a laptop anyways).
    6) It was *just* fast enough to do some basic editing with gimp. And I mean *basic*, like crop, or rotate, adjust some contrast or brightness. But it was clearly not the fastest PC I ever used. I managed to assemble a few panoramas with AutoStitch but it was painfully slow.

    I agree about the low resolution, I really wish the screen was higher res. There were a few cases that if I had brought along a VGA cable I could have used the hotel TV as a monitor (or a real monitor in the business center) and gotten better resolution.

    I also agree about the low power, it is slow. But fast enough for transfer and review of the day's take.

    The trackpad is terrible, but I don't like the trackpad on my main laptop either, so I simply brought a $10 mouse along same as I would have with my laptop anyway.

    Even given these downsides, I can't see bringing a regular laptop with me on future trips, the advantages are just too great over a regular laptop.
    .-= elblanco´s last blog ..Hiding Bovines =-.
  • It depends on how many megapixels you want to process. I have a 6Mpix camera (Canon 300D) and I occassionaly use Asus EEE for image processing. When you want to work with a few files only (develop RAW, do some adjustments), it is quite ok. Poor performance of netbooks is more noticeable in applications which need to work in realtime (like Renoise).
    .-= VojtechT´s last blog ..Kaple sv. Cyrila a Metoděje na Radhošti =-.
  • Let's not forget image quality, though. My problem with the Asus EEE is that its monitor is really not designed for graphics. Aside from pure pixel depth, contrast ratio and color accuracy are very important. As I said...not opposed to using it for a preview. But I would still recommend processing on a better screen.
  • That's true, but you can say that about most notebooks...
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About the Author:

D. Travis North

http://dtnorth.shutterphoto.net
D. Travis North is a professional Landscape Architect, a semi-pro Photographer and founder of Shutter Photo. Travis likes to photograph urban environments, architectural details and has a new-found interest in close-up photography. His work can be found at D. Travis North Photography. Follow Travis on twitter: @dtnorth.