BYOD capable of running Photoshop and Illustrator CC2014

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StarBlazer

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#171599 24-Apr-2015 14:57

My daughter is being "encouraged" by school to provide a BYOD to help with access to learning material. The problem is that she requires the use at the moment of both Photoshop and Illustrator on CC2014 in Fashion and Digital Technology.

As with any BYOD the requirements are light and good battery - my requirements are around $400-500 whereas Adobe's requirements are at the bottom of the post (I've not included the Mac requirements as they will be out of reach).

Have any of you had similar requirements and if so what do you use? Would you buy the same again or have you seen something work better?

Adobe Requirements for Windows on Photoshop CC2014

Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor (2 GHz or faster)
Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1
2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
2 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with 16-bit color and 512 MB of VRAM (1 GB recommended)**
OpenGL 2.0–capable system
Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*

We have a 3 year old laptop but it is not only bulky and heavy but the battery has passed it's best - so we are looking at new or nearly new. SSD would be great but I suspect it is not in the budget!

Thanks

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#1290866 24-Apr-2015 15:04

Ideally you would have 4-8GB ram, Photoshop with a few layers on a 20MP image is ram intensive. I would also recommend a HDD with significant space/high performance as Photoshop uses the HDD as a scratch disk when ram is full.

I feel like you might need to spend more money that you hoped.

CutCutCut

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#1290871 24-Apr-2015 15:07

The Surface Pro 3 comes to mind in terms of portability but that will be way over stated budget.

StarBlazer

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#1290872 24-Apr-2015 15:08

macuser: I feel like you might need to spend more money that you hoped.

Sigh - I thought so

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Lias

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#1290874 24-Apr-2015 15:13

You're going to need to bite the bullet and spend more if you want it to run Photoshop _well_

If you can find the $$ (or put it on interest free?) one of the new Surface 3 (not Pro's) at $800 would probably be ideal.

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Lias

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#1290876 24-Apr-2015 15:16

Just had a look, Harvey Norman have 12 months interest free on anything over $250, and have Surface 3's for $800, Preoder with early may delivery.

http://www.harveynorman.co.nz/computers/tablet-and-accessories/tablets/surface-3-64gb.html

toyonut

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#1290880 24-Apr-2015 15:17

Was just looking at this laptop this morning. It is probably stretching the budget a bit at $850, but it ticks all the boxes and should handle everything fine: Asus Transformer Book Flip.
It is small and quite light, can be a tablet or laptop due to the funky form factor. The i3 is surprisingly grunty, it has 4GB RAM and a large HDD and it has a touchscreen. It is also metal construction so should be durable for school use.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

StarBlazer

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#1290883 24-Apr-2015 15:22

All great ideas, but well over budget. The Surface 3 look fantastic, but I never buy bleeding edge kit based on cost and the unknown...

Some of the Adobe forums say you can get away with less in the way of RAM/HDD if you are only using it for creative work and not photo editing.

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sidefx

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#1290886 24-Apr-2015 15:24

I'm currently running Photoshop CC2014 on a surface pro gen 1 without any issues (though not heavily) - could look for one second hand.

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gzt

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#1290957 24-Apr-2015 16:25

Iirc new s2's appear on trademe still.

nathan

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#1290977 24-Apr-2015 16:43

gzt: Iirc new s2's appear on trademe still.

You don't want that you :)

you won't be able to run said Win32 apps

gzt

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#1290988 24-Apr-2015 16:59

Quite right : ). Intended S2Pro

StarBlazer

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#1291096 24-Apr-2015 20:29

They are great looking kit but still over what I can afford

Procrastination eventually pays off.

toyonut

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#1291126 24-Apr-2015 21:09

If you can live with second hand, something like this could be the go: Ativ smart PC.
Otherwise something like this little Asus at $540 could be a good buy too. Battery life is merely ok, not great though according to reviews.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

nathan

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#1291221 25-Apr-2015 09:48

StarBlazer: They are great looking kit but still over what I can afford

I've seen Surface Pro 1 2nd hand as low as NZ$400, not the 8GB model, but still 4GB, wicked nice screen and Wacom digitiser

Hammerer

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#1291259 25-Apr-2015 11:32

StarBlazer:
Adobe Requirements for Windows on Photoshop CC2014

Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor (2 GHz or faster)
Microsoft® Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1
2 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
2 GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on removable flash storage devices)
1024x768 display (1280x800 recommended) with 16-bit color and 512 MB of VRAM (1 GB recommended)**
OpenGL 2.0–capable system
Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*
We have a 3 year old laptop but it is not only bulky and heavy but the battery has passed it's best - so we are looking at new or nearly new. SSD would be great but I suspect it is not in the budget!

We had a similar situation and had to upgrade from 4GB to the recommended 8GB to make it usable. That 2GB is a minimum and even 4GB may not be enough if there are scanned textiles and images with other layers added. An SSD would ameliorate some memory issues by speeding up paging.

Low screen resolution or small size are also issues.

If the laptop has the necessary specs then I would get a new battery and try that. If it's only needed for one course then it won't have to be carried everyday.

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