Portable System Help

[Cyanide]

Hi guys!

I need a bit of help planning a possible new system please!

I'm covering a few events in the near future and need to do some on site photo printing. I did one last week and took my desktop & inkjet with me and it was painful - too much setting up, too long printing etc. I'm in the process of buying a dye-sub printer but I'll need a system to run it.

I need to try to keep the budget as low as possible, I'd considered a laptop but they all run W8 these days and I hate the thing so that's a no-go.

It needs to be able to run Lightroom 5 (no full photoshop, I don't intend to do full editing on it) and connect to the printer and that's about it.

I was looking at the lil mini pc's to bolt to the back of a monitor but I'm not sure if they'll have enough power and I'd probably be paying a premium for the tiny size over a small desktop.

Does anyone have any recommendations and/or a spec?

Cheers

Dan

 

[Cyanide]

I'd considered a laptop but they all run W8 these days and I hate the thing so that's a no-go.

I don't understand this, Windows 8 differs only slightly from Windows 7, I use lightroom and Photoshop myself, there's no difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8? - Just boot to desktop and you're done.

Anyway, what's your budget?

I tried the beta and I've used a few laptops running on it since, had all sorts of compatibility issues, menus are awful and it's too hard to find the simplest of things and I just generally hate it. I'd much rather stick to W7!

Not really got a budget set at the moment, the cheaper the better but if I need to spend a bit more to get the right performance then so be it (and that doesn't mean spec me an i7 beast with 2 gpus )

 

[Cyanide]

Looks almost exactly like the one I had in my head so at least I'm thinking on the right lines!