Considering PC hardware for photo editing?  I recently upgraded my laptop, and I'm…

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• what did you go with for the laptop? i am looking to get one within the next week and am looking for options for photo editing

• Yeah I'd be very interested in hearing that too +Jeff Sullivan

• Funny. I ditched my laptop for editing and went back to a PC earlier this year. Ended up building a slightly customized Dell based on the model mentioned in the article (i7, 16Gb, win7 64-bit).

  I've been real happy with its performance with CS5 and even a little surprised how well it handled a demo D800 RAW file.

• If I was building one it would be 16 gigs of ram, ivy bridge I7, GTX 570 or 580, and as much ssd space as you can afford.  And I would think about going 32 gigs of ram, it's so cheap.

• Go Mac and you'll never go back. Just kidding, but I appreciate how well LR and PS integrate on the Mac. Apple's next big release is supposed to be the long overdue replacement for the Mac Pro.

• Well, my PC runs linux gentoo, no windows, no osx.
  For PP, i use rawstudio, rawtherapy, digikam, luminance, Gimp & G'mic. These are the softwares I use the most.
  My main PC is an old Q6600, with 16GB memory & raid-5 data disks (external controler, not built-in).
  No need to have a "gamer" graphic card, in photo editing & processing, it is just useless. GTX & GT series, and radeon HD, even if they slighty improve performance, are just useless.
  Nvidia Quadro & Ati FX are the must-have graphics cards for professionnal photo editor. They are just about 100 times faster in photo editing & manipulation than the last nvidia & ati "home cards" series. Speed is just incomparable. Try it, and you'll buy it.
  And now you can have some used Quadro FX3400 for about 200€.
  They won't make run crysis 3 or call of duty at maximum details and 200fps, it's not their purpose, but in video & photo & 3D editing, they will hugely overblast even a quad-sli of gtx680...
  If you only use adobe softwares, prefer a quadro nvs, it has been designed especially for adobe products.
  For a laptop, choose a quadcore at least, no matter the Ghz, with some good cache (12 or 16MB). And with a quadro or ati fx graphic card. The difference is so huge that you won't even believe your own eyes.

• +Mark Rodriguez and +Colin Smith, I started to write a response with notes on my experience with my new Sony laptop, but it got long so I made a new post out of it: https://plus.google.com/107459220492917008623/posts/FjKqGAaYyUz

• I'd love to get a Mac +Paul Porter, but even though I could get the Apple "friends and family" discount they're just too expensive.  Since I can buy roughly two Windows PCs for every Mac, I can upgrade every year instead of every two, and my kids can benefit greatly from the extra machines I pass down.  

  I did drop by an Apple store recently and those Retina displays sure do look nice though.  If money were no object, I'd consider a MacBook.  The Apple 27" monitors looked great too, and at 2560 x 1440 I could fit on the screen a lot more of an image I'm working on at 100% zoom.  The Apple display is over $1000 while Dell has similar models for closer to $700 (low cost brands go as low as $400, but reviews rate them as horrendous).  So on the desktop PC front I'm considering graphics cards supporting that resolution well.  The off-the-shelf PC models don't seem attractively configured or priced (I was just looking at Dell's site this morning), but I can build a system relatively cheaply for the performance I'd get.

• thanks +Jeff Sullivan that will be one to consider

• +Steve Cole I have a generally favorable impression of Dell, and after hearing horror stories about HPs recently, while +Lori Hibbett has had a good experience with a new Dell with 24" Monitor, I was looking this morning at the Dell XPS One with 27" monitor, in case Dell might put together an attractively-priced bundle for the holidays.

  Unfortunately the customer reviews seem to be unanimously negative for that model:
  http://www.amazon.com/Dell-XPSo27-6472BK-27-Inch-Desktop-Black/dp/B0084C38ZA/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356030604&sr=1-6&keywords=XPS+One+27%22

  I'll probably still favor a Dell 27" monitor, but the positive reviews of those are by general users, while photographers rate them very poorly.  I'll probably wait until the new S Series that Dell positions as better for photographs (to customers complaining about the current 27" displays) includes a 27" model.  The max at the moment is a 24" model at only 1940 x 1080, no more resolution than my current laptop.