Monte,

That old saw "you get only what you pay for" came home to roost for Dell this week after a photo of a Dell notebook burning up on a boardroom table in a corporate office circulated around the Internet. Dell was forced, partly by the government, to recall over a million of their notebook computers to replace the battery.

I don't know what personal reasons you may have to think you need to switch to a notebook, but I am sympathetic with you're not wanting to abandon Apple Mac. However, you are correct, their top of the line notebook does not have a bargain basement price.

Personally in terms of what digital photography demands of a computer, I have always found many features of notebooks are too much of a disadvantage to use them as a primary means to doing digital image processing. However many photographers including a close friend use a Mac pro laptop in the field particularly tethered to a digital camera to some advantage. But all that I know that do, also have some kind of desktop, or at least plug in a full size desktop monitor/display at home. And that could be one solution you could consider. Get the less expensive MacBook and a good desktop display to use when you are using the computer at home.

Another solution that is quite affordable and I have found works very well to do Photoshop and other digital photo processing is a Mac Mini. Even the least expensive "solo" version of the Mac Mini with Intel processor runs faster than a G4 tower that's only 3 years old.

As to portability, the Mac Mini is so small quite a few people have installed them in their automobiles. Its pretty easy to do apparently because the MacMini uses an external power supply that is just replaced by a converter to use auto 12 volt current.

David, Just call it a moment of insanity. Even though I would like a notebook it does have limitations. I will stick with Apple. If I use Lightrooom later it is not as demanding as Aperture. Mini Mac would work fine with a good Monitor I have thought about them since you last mentioned them. Thanks for the wakeup call. Monte.

By the way if I do buy a Mini Mac what Monitor and where is a good place to buy it.

Monte,

For the moment for anyone requiring good pro-graphics performance from an LCD display and also with budget limitations, which includes yours truly, I purchased an LG Electronics L2000C 20.1 inch display. It is available from a large number of reputable on-line electronics outlets, but the most favorable deal I found for delivered price was from Amazon.com

Later in the fall I plan to replace the eMac I use for business and communications with yet another Mac Mini, this time with the faster Core Duo Intel processor. I'll use BootCamp to also install Windows on this second MacMini in addition to Apple OS X. I will then be able to eliminate a 4 year old IBM Net Vista Pro Graphics computer that just takes up valuable space in my lab.

Thanks David, I checked the L2000C prices and they are not bad. I like your set up and I believe that is the direction I will go.