Brian

With laptop models, it used to be like what Apple does, a "Spring" line and a "Fall" line. It's not that way these days. A current model that I would recommend and link to would only be around for about 3 months, possibly much less...like 6 weeks. Combine that with the fact that laptops only last about 3 years or so, it can get confusing on just "What do I buy, Brian?" My advice then is the same as now and these specs apply to BOTH desktops and laptops: Intel i5 or i7 CPU 8GB of RAM Minimum - 16GB or more preferred. Or the ability to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB/32GB 1TB Hard drive A separate and dedicated Video Card that has its own video memory of at least 2GB A IPS-based screen that is matte, non-glossy or has anti-glare properties / coatings Windows 7 Pro or Windows 10 For laptops, it really boils down to what display panel it has and the hard drive configuration. There are a lot of laptops that have a SSD and traditional HD configuration. The benefit is the laptop runs a lot faster doing normal tasks, due to the SSD being the "C" drive, the downside to this configuration is that it will make you think. "Huh?" Since the "C" SSD drives are usually pretty small, or microscopic by today's standards, (i.e. 128GB or 256GB,) you can't just click "Next-Next-Next...OK-Next-Next...Finish" any longer. You will have to be ANAL about what goes where, because I don't care how fast that new SSD drive is, if it's full...it won't help you at all and could crash. We have had a few members here have all sorts of weird problems and it's due to a small C: drive on their laptop that is almost completely full because they never do a "custom" install with software and tell ____________________ to install on the much larger D: drive. Heck, most of the time people have no idea that they have a 2nd hard drive in their laptop. IPS-based screens have a much better viewing angle 170o (170 Degree) and are consistent from edge to edge color-wise, which is good for editing photos. That said, you still have an angle of view change each and every time you open the display lid or move the laptop, which changes how you perceive things like shadows or highlights. Even if it's a little bit. If you are serious about editing photos, I would purchase an external monitor that is easy to calibrate and doesn't move. If you must edit on a laptop screen, please buy this Acratech Viewing Gauge for $14.95: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/650472-REG ----- Here is how you use it. For the other items, you can't ever have too much RAM and 16GB seems to be the new normal these days. Between a i5 or i7 CPU, when it comes to PS, it really doesn't matter. In order to take advantage of the features that make a i7 so fast, the software needs to be programmed to take advantage of those features. Adobe Photoshop is not one of those programs that takes advantage of a i7 CPU's architecture. Conversationally speaking, there is only about a 5-7% performance boost with a i7 over a i5 when it comes to PS. Now if you are editing video and playing video games on this thing, then definitely get a i7.

It really boils down to the level of control that you want while editing your images. If you are constantly zooming in and cloning out stray hairs or doing restoration work, tablets are extremely useful to have. I know Damien loves his Wacom, and I've been meaning to get one for awhile. Here is the thing with the Surface Pros and the like: They can be a real pain to calibrate. Like have a bottle of Tequila and Aspirin at the ready, because after the 80th time trying to calibrate, it still doesn't match your prints. Though my information is probably dated, and they could have gotten better. Since the bulk of the members here rarely post in my section or give me a heads up, it's hard to say. That said, you might want to give this article to read: https://www.damiensymonds.net/what2buy_tab.html Any thoughts @Damien Symonds? What say you?

Nope. RAM is pretty straightforward to install on the 27" iMacs, there are YouTube Videos demonstrating the process. G-Drives are already Mac Formatted, so you are good there. With this 16GB kit, you will have 24GB to play with, which is "fine" for most folks. Unless you would want to max it out to 32GB, in which case you'd purchase two of the 16GB kits, but in reality, 24GB is fine.

Copying and pasting is fine. Cutting or Moving and pasting has risks. If something goes wrong during a copy and paste, just simply start over. If you are moving files and something goes wrong, it could result in lost files. Trust me. It happened once in my last 24+ years as a IT a professional. Of course the files that were lost, couldn't be recovered or duplicated. Learned a valuable lesson that day.

Look at the part numbers. Amazon is different. They aren't the same. The Crucial Scan Results typically pick the best RAM to match the specs of the current RAM that's installed in your computer, which results in better performance, though most people probably wouldn't notice. While the Amazon RAM would probably work, I personally would purchase the RAM from Crucial, the 16GB Kit for $123.99. Spend the extra $20.

I would purchased this 4TB G Drive with Thunderbolt and copy all of your files on your Main EHD to it. Then reformat the current main EHD and when the Mac OS asks, "Use for Time Machine?" tell it yes. So we are replacing the main EHD with something that is MUCH faster (has a 7200 RPM and is Thunderbolt based,) and is a little larger. It is possible that the current TM drive went into a "Sleep State" and didn't wake up, or it could be failing. Hard to say. Fantastic!! You probably are still at 8GB with two slots occupied by 4GB sticks. YES, I WOULD UPGRADE YOUR RAM. Though, I would purchase two 8GB sticks, upgrading you from 8GB to 24GB. There are multiple editions of your iMac for 2015, so I would head to crucial.com and download & run their scanning tool. (It's harmless.) After it completes, it will take you to a web page with your options, You are looking for a 16GB KIT, which consists of two 8GB sticks. It should be around $125, plus shipping and applicable tax. Before you buy, take a screenshot and post it here in this thread. Please do not ask about the SSD drives offerings, we are talking about RAM.

Head to settings, then look for Time Machine. From there click the Options button and make sure your main EHD that you use for backups is in the EXCLUDED list.

I'd use a G-Drive for your important stuff, like client images and such. I'd use a regular EHD for Time Machine. One thing you need to do is to make sure your Main Backup EHD (Where your photos are) is disabled from being backed up. You really don't want a 4TB EHD, and your Main Mac HD being backed up to say a 2TB Time Machine EHD. LOL!! That would be bad. But in your case, you seem to be fine. You have 2TB free on your main external and your time machine backup seems to be happy. So unless you are looking to upgrade to a 4TB or larger EHD (aka: spend/blow money,) then I'd hold off for now. For the RAM, do you have a 27" iMac or 21.5"?

Unfortunately, Canon is extremely sensitive about revealing this sort of thing, I don't think you can find the Shutter Count on a 70D. Some models you can, and others there isn't a clear path in finding the shutter count. I'd try uploading a photo to this website, it could be a photo of a wall or even taken with the lens cap on. Hopefully it works. http://www.shuttercounter.com/

This has nothing to do with an update to a new computer, this is basic computer maintenance. It's like not changing your car's oil for 100,000 miles and blaming the engine for failing. This will happen on your new computer as well over time.

Just the partition. You pay more for having it pre-formatted for a Mac, which by the way, you can do yourself for free and it takes less than 5 min. Also the HD inside might be slightly different, but the main thing is the the partition and format for the Mac. Bottom Line: Save yourself the extra $30, buy the Windows edition and reformat it. There isn't anything special or magical, it's just the manufacturers know that the Mac Users are used to paying more, and are banking on this. Fun, eh?

@Damien Symonds: My record: 8.95GB free out of 120GB on a Windows Server C Drive. When you scale things up, this one is pretty damn close.

The reason why it's so full: Windows 10. You see, Microsoft is going to stay at "Windows 10" for quite some time. There won't be a Windows 11 or 12. There is Windows 10 - Anniversary Edition, plus a few editions in between and the next one will be Windows 10 - Creators Edition, which will be released in a few weeks. Basically, without getting too geeky, these major updates re-install the whole friggin' Windows and put your old version in a Windows.old directory on the HD. Combine that with the other update patches and system recovery points, AND your Windows Swap File (pagefile.sys) and Adobe Scratch Disk and you can run out of room pretty quickly. Especially if you are the type to "next-next-next...ok.nextnextnext...ok...finish" when installing stuff. It's getting to the point where people either need to have 4TB C Drives or must learn to pay attention. The days of, "I don't know nothin' about computers" needs to come to an end. If you don't want to install any software, you can right-click on the C Drive and select "Properties." From there you should see a button called Disk Cleanup. Click it and choose all the check boxes and run it. Warning: this will delete the backup files for windows updates plus other things, so if you need to uninstall a Windows Update, you won't be able to. If you need to go back to your old version of Windows, you won't be able to. That said, you probably have no need to do this at this point so it really doesn't matter. I'm more concerned about that HD only having a 106GB left. That's not good. At all.

I've even seen bad USB cables and flaky USB ports cause issues. So it could be: 1. Slot in Camera 2. Bad Card 3. Card Reader 4. USB Cable 5. Bad USB Port 6. Transfer Software Those items are not in order. Honestly, I never use special software to copy images, I always use a card reader and manually copy over images from a CF card to my HD. Then those cards are pulled out of rotation until the images are delivered to the client. Multiple cards too expensive? Can't pull them from out of rotataion? Don't want to hear it. Lawsuits are expensive. Unhappy clients and bad word of mouth is expensive. If you are charging people money, you need to cover your arse and spend the money on quality cards. Period.

Your card reader could be the culprit. It's plausible. I've recommended both Sandisk and Lexar Readers in the past. Here is the Sandisk: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/810152-REG

As far as software recovery, Sandisk uses the ORIGINAL SOFTWARE that was used for image recovery. In addition, it's Sandisk that owns the rights (and came up with the idea) for CF media. Lexar has to license it. So Sandisk is using the original stuff. As for which is better? Personally, I've never used Lexar; friends of mine have, but not me. They seem to have more failures, but then again this could be just a personal experience and not a hard & fast rule. But to answer your question: Sandisk Extreme for me, and their software recovery.

I personally like the Sandisk Extreme line of cards. I will write the month and year on the back and cycle them out around 18 months or so, depending on the cards usage. Here is the 16GB 2-Pack that I recently purchased and am thinking about getting a few more, possibly the 32GB version. It seems that the cards I used to buy are no longer available.

The SD slot in the 5D Mark III sucks Monkey-Ballz. So it's the SD slot in the camera body I have issues with, not SD cards themselves. Though I would NEVER purchase and use a "Ultra" card. You NEVER cheap out on your media, whether it's a CF Card, SD card or another interface. Spend the extra $10-$20.

You picked a good one. Enjoy your purchase.

Oh, I forgot to mention: AVOID AMD CPU CHIPS ON LAPTOPS. They aren't as efficient and usually run hot. Intel's laptop CPUs run circles around AMD these days. Now if this was a desktop, that's a different story.

There are multiple options with your links. RAID0 - This type of technology is great for when you need a FAST Drive, such as when editing video. RAID0 takes the data blocks and divides them in half. One half goes to one drive, the other goes to the 2nd drive, but the two disks act as one large HD. As I've stated, the upside to this is SPEED. A RAID0 running on 7200RPM Hard Drives is much faster overall than using a single hard drive. There is no difference in speed when using SSD drives, the performance gains are only when you are using traditional hard drives with spinning platters. Major Downside to RAID0 - If one hard drive fails, the whole thing fails, meaning you lose everything. Benefits to RAID0, two 500GB Hard Drives become a single TB, so you get a "boost" in storage capacity, and of course speed. RAID1 - Drive Mirroring. This will cut your total advertised storage space by 1/2. So that 8TB HD will becom a 4TB Hard Drive, with around 3.6GB available for usage after formatting, give or take a little. The benefit to RAID1 is when you right to one drive, it automatically copies to the other drive in real time. Benefits: If one hard drive fails, you still have your files on the other hard drive. Downsides: If you screw up and accidentally delete a file, a RAID1 will not save you, because when that file is deleted on one hard drive, it's automatically deleted on the second hard drive. In addition, if the data is corrupted on one hard drive, it's going to be corrupted on the 2nd hard drive. RAID1 is preferred for today's home-user looking for a bit of redunancy in real-time, but it has it's limitations. JBOD - Stands for "Just a Bunch Of Disks." I do NOT recommend using this mode for anything critical. It's almost as bad as using RAID0 for backups. Basically, for lack of a better term, hard drives are "Daisy-Chained." Both Hard Drives are linked together and when Hard Drive A fills up to capacity, things start writing to Hard Drive B and C and so forth. The reason people use this method is they are in a bind and need extra space quickly and have a Hard Drive laying around. The downside to this is stability, this JBOD method is really meant for the days of hard drives being small, like 10MB or 20MB or even 40MB. (That's megabytes, not gigabytes or terabytes) Today's drives are so much larger and cheaper than their 1980's counterparts, so JBOD really isn't needed these days. In fact, the only people that use this method that I personally know of are techie-guys like myself that use JBOD just to do it or "Just because..." with no real reason. A JBOD setup is fun for Nerds. LOL!! So back to the two drives you linked to. Both are fine. The 8TB Drive will turn into a 4TB before formatting, and a 12TB drive will turn into 6TB when using RAID1. The downside is that it's one unit and if you really are paranoid about keeping data, it's best to purchase two units and keep one off-site in case of fire, floods, earthquakes, etc. Oh, floods don't always come from the creek next to your yard, they can come from a busted water-pipe that fills a room, etc. So that's the biggest thing that I can see with those models. As for which one? The silver aluminum case one. A fast 7200RPM drive tends to generate a lot of heat, and I like having the extra heat dispersion. Heat Dispersion makes fast Hard Drives last longer.

Two ways to do it. You can go through the Shooting Menu (Camera Icon) and select "White Balance." Once in the White Balance Menu, arrow down from "Auto" to where it says "K Choose Color Temp" then right arrow over until you get to the range that you want. Nikon doesn't have a "5600K" setting, but has one that is close, 5560K. The second way is to hold the WB on the back of the camera, rotate the rear dial and look at the top LCD. You want to change it from Auto to K and then rotate the front dial to get the value that you want. Are you shooting with lights, like Alien Bees?

If you have a Thunderbolt port, I'd get this version instead.

Current 5D Mark III Firmware Version: 1.3.4

That SD slot in the 5DM3...I'm not a big fan of. I usually tell people to avoid using it like the Plague. In addition, while I use Sandisk media, I NEVER use the "Ultra" line and prefer the "Extreme" line. The difference is one is consumer grade (ultra) and then other is professional grade. (Extreme). If you use both slots with a 5DM3, the writing time slows down to 30Mb/s, so expect longer times when the buffer is dumping stuff to the cards.