what do i need and how much will it cost

[LITTLE COL]

any help appreciated

at the moment i am using an slr camera ( costing alot of money in prints)

what are the requirements (meg , ram , graphics card etc.)for a cheap laptop and camera to suite that will make my life easier and give me better quality images

also not connected to the net at home but i can transfer files at work if possible

any advise will be gratefull and then i can look in to it

many thanks

little col

[geppetto]

Col

Whats your budget?

Are you looking for new stuff and would the camera be a webcam

a DSLR or an ordinary digital point shoot type camera.

Plenty of good spec laptops available for around £450...

[LITTLE COL]

no got to much money i will have to save a bit but if you use a laptop what kind of system requirements do i need or would you say buy new!

dslr is a bit dear at the moment so a webcam may do

cheers col

[russ]

The laptop spec is very low for running a webcam and the K3CCD software. You could get away with a very old Pentium 200mmx, 64Mb RAM and 10Gb hard drive, running Windows 98SE. Those sort of laptops would probably only fetch £70-90. Although I would recommend searching out Pentium II/III based laptop for a few quid more, especially if you want to run Windows XP. Also, aim for 256Mb RAM and the largest hard drive. The webcam movies will eat the hard drive at a rapid rate.

Allow £60-70 for the webcam and adapter if buying new. But perhaps look for a secondhand Philips Toucam Pro or Pro II that already comes with the adapter. They're worth approx £35-40 secondhand. All the software you need is free.

So in summary:

tight budget/minimum spec = laptop £70-100 webcam £35-40 = total £105-140

bigger budget/recommended spec = laptop £150-200 webcam £60-70 = total £210-270

Russ

[Ambermile]

Of course, the above is valid up to the point where you need to actually process those avi's you have taken. Here is where a slower laptop will fall down, so either try to get one a little faster or maybe get a memory stick so you can dump the files to a faster machine for processing.

Arthur

[LITTLE COL]

cheers folks will look into this

col

your advise is great as always

[G1ZmO]

If I were you I'd go with a second hand or refurbished laptop

Remember you're going to be taking it outside in the damp and dark so you don't want to spend too much on it incase the weather gets to it or it gets knocked over in the dark :shock:

Aside from that: Try to get one with USB 2 ports and as big a HDD as possible (avi captures really eat up hard disk space)

Cheers

Paul

[russ]

Arthur is right regards the processing. You'll need to transfer your captured movies to a beefier machine. Processing on that spec would be painful to watch.

USB 2.0 would be good but won't be on any budget secondhand buy.

This is currently the best specced budget laptop i've seen anywhere:

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/118198

Great price and will process those movies too with ease.

Russ

[geppetto]

Agree with you there Russ

That's an absolute bargain and a good make as well :shock: 8)