More than anything RAM is the best thing to have for photo work. 3GB is the maximum in Windows XP and Vista 32-bit. In the x64 editions you gan get a hell of a lot more but most machines are limited to between 4GB and 32GB by hardware.

DDR is more expensive than DDR2 and will set you back about £70 for 2GB of basic DDR333 (PC2700).

Well, at least your machine is working again.

Am am still trying to speed Vista up a little here and there as it is a bit inconsistent with performance.

Well, if you are looking for a notebook with an amazing screen:

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3540&p=12

118.2% Adobe RGB!!!

Erm... it is only 45.6% of Adobe RGB, so not a very big improvement at all. I guess the LCD panel is still the cheapest available. 66.3% of sRGB, I guess laptops have not come far at all in four years as my old machine is almost the same.

My advice, get an external display such as a 2408WFP which has just over 100% of Adobe RGB colour range.

Well, I should find out sooner than I expected. Due to land next Monday so hopefully I'll have something by then.

Just did a better test of the screens we have, one is 41.5% and the other is 40.5% of Adobe RGB which is rather poor. Both display some blues that don't exist in sRGB because of the CCFL backlight.

I am hoping the WLED and new display at least match sRGB and come close to 70% of Adobe RGB. I'll have to wait and see.

I still have my eye on a Dell 2408WFP as that displays 105% of Adobe RGB Perfect for photo work.

That is a real pain, save yourself some money and put it towards something better. Lead times are long on the Studio 13 though which is a little annoying.

I have 1200 purple pixels running in a line down my notebook's screen which happened a few weeks back. It is really irritating as it was all working so well till that happened.

Big problem!

The screen is polarised, the brightness is variable not only because of real time continuous changes but each display will be different. This means that what is picked up by different cameras under different light will be highly variable and the tone would definitely deviate largely from 18% gray and may not even be close to gray as the screen is not calibrated to white. The backlight is blue to boot so that will not be good.

They are very reflective and that again will change the perceived tone.

Colour and tonal accuracy on the screens is not going to be good, again each device will be a little different and cannot be calibrated.

Basically a nice idea but absolutely useless compared to a small piece of printed paper. Whoever wrote the application really doesn't have a clue about accuracy.

I'll be able to tell you how good the WLED screen is and what percentage of sRGB and AdobeRGB it coveres come the 16th of April.

Recently placed an order for a Studio XPS 13 for my better half. It should be loads better than my current notebook screen which displays quite a low percentage of even sRGB.

My current one is about 60% of sRGB and 40% AdobeRGB.

To me the images do have focus where I'd expect the AF sensors to pick up detail. Remember the cross sensors are VERY big!

1st one the tree is in focus.

2nd one there isn't a lot to focus on and it seems to be focused behind, look at the tail.

3rd one seems to be spot on.

4th again the tail is in focus, all those branches will bugger up the focusing.

The pots seem to be in focus and have a defined line to focus on. Again, the AF point is not actually a point but a cross area so focus may vary. It may have a bit of back focus but you can't always tell without a good chart.

I use the 'leather' case for my pens, etc. Makes a great little pencil case. The box is stupid though, I don't even know what I did with that.