A chance to cancel my recent laptop order, should I do it?

[GrandNagus50]

I have gone to using a laptop for my processing, as in my dotage I enjoy the portability. My five-year old Dell XPS 15 9360 was a high-end portable in its day, but now that I am using Topaz DeNoise AI and sometimes Sharpen AI, plus now DxO PureRaw, the time required for each image has increased drastically. It takes two minutes or more to run a large RAW file (from a Nikon D850 or Z7) through each of these add-ons. I decided it was time for something newer and faster so I went to the Dell Outlet and purchased an XPS 17 with highest-resolution touchscreen, 32 gb RAM, 2 TB SSD, a processor that goes to 5.1 Ghz, and NVidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card. With three years of full support and sales tax it came to just under $3000, which included a discount of over $400 for its being refurbished. Now, Dell has informed me of a delay requiring my approval, or else the deal is automatically canceled. My buyer's remorse has set in. Maybe I should buy something different, or wait? The newer, bleeding-edge model of XPS17 is now in production, though in the current microchip situation these won't be available anytime soon and will be muy expensive. Or is there a better choice? Some kind of gaming computer?

If I still commit to spending this level of money, is there a better laptop choice at this point? I have a week to decide whether to cancel my Dell purchase.
Doug Greenberg, Berkeley, California

 

[JANuser]

Tough choice honestly. It’s a terrible time to be buying a lot of computer hardware right now, but the situation isn’t expected to improve until mid-late 2022. You just have to ask yourself if you can hold off another year, or if you need it right now. There are plenty of options other than Dell, for sure. Asus and Gigabyte both make some good high end notebooks as well. The gamer systems can be a little bulkier (some, not all), but some of them do have much better cooling solutions as well, that make them a little quieter under load.

 

[Andrew Lamberson]

I would be a little worried about the graphics card. I purchased a new tower last winter and maxed out the Graphics card and I am glad I did. For the same (or less) $$ you could have a maxed out tower, that also allows to you replace parts if needed. You can use your old Dell for your travel laptop to view the images.

I use Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Helicon Remote, Focus 7, and all of the Topaz products. They all fly with the below configuration
System Model XPS 8940
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900 CPU @ 2.80GHz, 2808 Mhz, 10 Core(s), 20 Logical Processor(s)
32GB, DDR4, 2933Mhz
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) RTX 2060 SUPER(TM) 8GB GDDR6 (which I have the BenQ hooked up to)
512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive + 2TB 7200RPM Hard Drive 400-BJIU 1 32GB,
Integrated 630 which I run my 2nd monitor on. (really nice for watching "how to videos" and Steve's classes while doing it on my BenQ)

The total price was $2504



I also went with a photography editing capable display and it is A++
BenQ SW2700PT 27"
$600

So for $3100 I have a screaming system, that is repairable if something goes south (ok...when something goes south!)

I have a pretty powerful laptop from work, but that tiny display is impossible to do editing on.

 

[John Woodworth]

The upside of the Dell XPS is that it is small "for its size" and light.

The down side is that cooling for such a thin computer means throttling of the CPU during long computations.

If you don't mind two computers, I would recommend either a portable work station with an attached photo-class monitor, or a tower. Then use your current laptop for travel as recommended above.

 

[Andrew Lamberson]

And then there are the new iMacs. Probably the first truly portable Desktop! With the new M1 chip and weighing less than 10 lbs you could get a protective case with pluck foam and take it with you! And under $3000 !!! It looks like something from Star Trek (pun intended!).

 

[GrandNagus50]

I decided to stick with my Dell refurbished order, given that it is a "bird in hand" in the face of upcoming shortages, and the price is right. It has 32 gb RAM, a 2TB SSD, and a high-res touchscreen, all the bells and whistles. IF, in fact, the QC for this unit is good, it seems like a great deal. On the other hand, Dell is well-known for QC issues so I better check it out thoroughly at the outset (this is actually an advantage of buying refurbished, as the units allegedly have been checked over throughly). And on the other, other hand, my order has been "delayed" three times already, making me wonder what the heck is going on over at Dell.

 

[GrandNagus50]

Just an update here. I finally got my XPS 17 delivered and set up. Everything works, as far as I can tell, and I am enjoying the bigger screen area. Overall I am satisfied, but I confess that the processing of RAW photos via Topaz and DXO software is not as fast as I had kinda hoped. It's faster than with my older laptops, but hardly night and day. I have not perceived that the laptop labors much to perform these tasks, i.e., no increased fan action, no apparent overheating (I have one of those cooling fan units in any case). All things considered, no buyer's regret.

 

[TXSnap1]

And then there are the new iMacs. Probably the first truly portable Desktop! With the new M1 chip and weighing less than 10 lbs you could get a protective case with pluck foam and take it with you! And under $3000 !!! It looks like something from Star Trek (pun intended!).

Are you currently using the new Mac Pro? I am considering switching from PC to Mac. Your thoughts?

 

[lwan]

Just an update here. I finally got my XPS 17 delivered and set up. Everything works, as far as I can tell, and I am enjoying the bigger screen area. Overall I am satisfied, but I confess that the processing of RAW photos via Topaz and DXO software is not as fast as I had kinda hoped. It's faster than with my older laptops, but hardly night and day. I have not perceived that the laptop labors much to perform these tasks, i.e., no increased fan action, no apparent overheating (I have one of those cooling fan units in any case). All things considered, no buyer's regret.

That's because in NVIDIA terms, below xx70 series you're basically getting previous xx80 series performance, or less. If you feel like spending more you could get an external GPU enclosure large enough to fit a high end graphic card (usually 2 PCIE thick). Most GPU-accelerated softwares let you select the GPU to run on, some can even distribute the load on multiple GPUs at once. That'll set you back another 1500 at least, but well, you can change the GPU...
In any case, make sure to update your video drivers to the latest regularly. Sometimes, a simple incompatibility with some version of the compute model and the pre-installed driver and your GPU-accelerated software runs on the CPU only.

 

[Yellowboard]

Are you currently using the new Mac Pro? I am considering switching from PC to Mac. Your thoughts?

I switched to Macs from PCs many years ago and I can only say that it has been wonderful. Everything works well and the user interface is supremely easy to use and intuitive. I have an 27" iMac and a 15" MacBook Pro. Both are really great for processing photo images with just about any software you can imagine. The MacBook Pro has the new M1 chip and it is much much faster processing images in Lightroom, Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Sharpen and Photoshop than the iMac. But the advantage with the iMac is the 27" screen.

Once you go Mac you never want to go back. In fact, you wonder why you ever used a PC in the first place.

 

[tclune]

The MacBook Pro has the new M1 chip and it is much much faster processing images in ... Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Sharpen...

Just curious -- are you talking about the AI versions of these? Are they actually fast enough to use the adjustments interactively? I ask because I have stopped using Topaz AI software because it is such a pig on my computer that all I can really do is take what it does automatically or not use it at all. TIA

 

[Yellowboard]

Just curious -- are you talking about the AI versions of these? Are they actually fast enough to use the adjustments interactively? I ask because I have stopped using Topaz AI software because it is such a pig on my computer that all I can really do is take what it does automatically or not use it at all. TIA

In a word...yes... to all of your queries. Having a configuration with at least 16 GB of RAM is key.

 

[GrandNagus50]

That's because in NVIDIA terms, below xx70 series you're basically getting previous xx80 series performance, or less. If you feel like spending more you could get an external GPU enclosure large enough to fit a high end graphic card (usually 2 PCIE thick). Most GPU-accelerated softwares let you select the GPU to run on, some can even distribute the load on multiple GPUs at once. That'll set you back another 1500 at least, but well, you can change the GPU...
In any case, make sure to update your video drivers to the latest regularly. Sometimes, a simple incompatibility with some version of the compute model and the pre-installed driver and your GPU-accelerated software runs on the CPU only.

The XPS17 is fast enough for me. I did have to update the video driver in order to run the newer iterations of Topaz Sharpen and DeNoise AI.