MHalloran

Thank you Brian.....send me your bill ! :-)

Well Brian, I hate to overstep my bounds in this forum. I know with the photography forum that's where the learning is geared. You folks do an excellent job of coaching people to get where they need to be to actually learn the great things Damien and all of you do with photography. That's the key, and I know it's just human nature for us users, to over simplify and ask every little minutia of problems. I will say, since I started this inquiry, at Damien's suggestion. I have purchased a new dell Monitor at a great price. I got it from BEST BUY, so I have 45 days on it....which I rarely return things. U2518D Dell anti glare. I have also purchased a Dell which had a price drop since last week to the low 1700.00's XPS 8930 XPS 8930 Base Processor 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8700 6-Core Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.6 GHz) Operating System Windows 10 Home 64bit English Monitor If accessories are purchased, they may ship separately Memory 32GB, 2666MHz, DDR4 up to 64GB (Additional memory sold separately) Chassis Options XPS 8930, Mainstream Chassis (460W) Hard Drive 1TB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray Load DVD-RW Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD) Sound Integrated 5.1 with WAVE MAXX Audio® Pro Wireless 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1 Keyboard Dell KB216 Wired Multi-Media Keyboard English Black Mouse 6 Button Laser Mouse So you folks have tutored me, in the direction that I have been planning to go for 8 months.......it's not money I wasn't going to spend ! I used you as part of my research, and for that I appreciate you being there......your whole group. Now by the second week of May I can get back to doing what I do well. I just have to use you one more time......I can't seem to get the research on up grading my HDD to an SSD correct.... I would prefer to find somewhere a step by step instructional on how to upgrade with a CLEAN install, but I keep getting all these things that people jumped in and didn't disable the RAID....and windows 7 did something or other because it allocated....blah blah. Then Crucial has this thing, that makes everything look so easy.......but then again is the RAID thing....which no one tells you about. I'm keen on upgrading from an HDD to an SSD....even more so, since I performed the complete DELL SYSTEM check related to this laptop, and twice it told me your laptop hard drive is doomed, it isn't passing all of the tests, and get things off of it now. I'm para-phrasing of course. I'm up to the task of installing.........but I cannot find a decent tutorial on a clean install, on the DELL. Here is the Crucial instructions; https://assets.microncpg.com/content/dam/crucial/campaigns/c18/documents/c18-ssd-install-guide-en.pdf In which I'll inherit a few things that PC's get over 8 years of usage. What to you think of those instructions, and do you know of any guide that will give one a clean install of Windows 7 on an SSD? No more long questions....I give you my word.

I’ve been researching this...and nearly all sources recommend cloning the old HD because of the way Dell partitions some of its help and automatic systems....do you favor a clone or a clean install ?

I saw on some reviews, that everyone on the BENQ monitor was complaining about light bleed. The brightness on the edges on monitors.....and on this link it says that is normal for IPS monitors....do you have an opinion ? If I'm getting to picky, and it's pretty common on monitors just let me know......

That's a great idea ! I think I found compatibles at Crucial at a reasonable price. Thank you again. I might run a tower configuration by you on this forum if that is permitted.

Thank you Brian...those recommendations are a big help! So I intend to keep my old 7i core laptop as it is...and use a a communication device and standard computing of business and household. I intend to purchase a stand alone PC for editing, with the correct ports for monitor. Are there any other pc configurations you might recommend I look at while I’m putting the pc together? I’ve always purchased Dell...and I see you recommend them mostly in your advise. I think I’ll skip the monitor I was looking at because I noticed in the comments the calibration problems as well. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

Brian, I see many of these questions have been answered here and there, so please forgive me for being redundant. I have an 8 year old Dell XPS L 702 X laptop. It is finally getting too slow for me to enjoy editing photo's. I has 500 gb hardrive, 8gb memory RAM, 64 bit windows 7 operating system....it is not a SSD drive, and doesn't have a great video card with it's own memory. If someone somewhere could record or write a tutorial on the perfect editing station....I am sure that would sell well. Thus the redundancy of some of the questions in this forum. I perform all the required maintenance on my PC. In fact I still have my old Windows 95, and XP towers that work well ! Well mostly well, they are outdated on many things once you connect to the internet. I've been told defragging a SSD HD is NOT something that should be performed. This laptop is actually still very functional on most things, it is just the opening of Bridge and Photoshop at the same time is murder....and it doesn't take very long until one of the program freezes, and it is too the point now that I dread editing my photography. It takes a few minutes to turn on now, and I keep the loading programs to a minimum. So you can tell I'm not a pro, I'm a hobbyist, with some future aspirations. I would like your opinion and guidance on setting up a new station....that a pro would like and be comfortable using. When I look over the site I see many recommendations....but it's difficult for me to pull it all together. I've always done my computing on PC's, and I am comfortable with that. I do most of my editing in my office, and the current laptop is good enough for a few photo's on the road. I plan on upgrading to a really good monitor, with HD connections, and a great computer of some kind.....but I want to do it right.....I keep my computing clean, organized, and fast. In the landscape business that I manage, I have been taking care of the Windows 7 linked tower PC's for about 10 years, with many users that like to download crap....and they still run like a charm, and start up twice a fast as my giant laptop with the 17" monitor. Just a couple of questions to point me in the right direction on the computing and monitor end, I realize there is alot of experience and detail in setting up an editing office.....and that one thing, opens the door to another thing....and I have perused the soft proofing, lighting, wide gamut, color profile, calibration articles.....which is just the tip of the iceberg....but slow lumbering equipment is just killin me....and I don't want to purchase something that might become slow and lumbering when I open Bridge, Raw, Photoshop....all while having some tutorials and learning programs in the background. 1. Would you do another laptop, or a PC Tower, will a decent tower with a solid state hard drive perform better than a laptop? 2. Do you recommend an Solid State hard drive? 3. I see that in Damiens articles on monitors no one ever recommends this one link posted below.....I've digested the articles on soft proofing, lighting in a room, and gamut. It's still difficult, Do you have a recommended preference? https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-Photographer-SW2700PT-Calibration-Controller/dp/B012UNOCJY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524241566&sr=8-3&keywords=photography+monitor I appreciate your guidance and opinions, thank you. Michael Halloran