Reva, If your husband is a professional photographer, he's no doubt using professional equipment. What I'd do in your position is get the make and model of his camera, contact the manufacturer, and ask for their recommendations, which are likely to be a good bit more helpful and to the point than what you'd get with an ordinary consumer model. If he's using Photoshop, tell them that -- I'd be willing to guess they know exactly what the requirements are. As far as laptops go, I'm a fan, but not everybody is. Equivalent hardware (memory, HD, etc.) will, as a rule, cost you more in a laptop than in a desktop, and for a high-performance model, you can expect to spend some real bucks. Also, a laptop experiences more wear and tear -- things are just going to break more frequently as a result of being dragged around. You _have_ to be much more scrupulous with backups. If your husband is the sort who just will not do daily backups, then perhaps a laptop is not for him. I don't know where you purchase your business PCs, but for a personal or small-business model, I'd strongly suggest finding a local dealer who can service it and who has good suppliers for parts. I've got a dealer in Amherst that I like, and I'm sure others have their favorites. As far as software, typically, digital camera manufacturers provide a suite of software, including the interface software that allows you to download photos from the camera, and usually a bunch of add-on software such as OCR, photo album organizers, and really basic photo editors -- mostly not something a professional would really use, except for the interface software which is vital. Ask the camera manufacturer's customer support what version is current and what operating systems it's supported on. Then, if you know where your husband keeps his software CDs, you might look to see what version he has now. It's almost certain that you will be able to download the new version from the manufacturer's website if he needs one. Find out also what version of Photoshop he's using, go visit the adobe website and find out if it's supported under the OS you're going to buy (or if it's still supported at all). Good luck and happy shopping, Reva Reck wrote: > ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee. > ** You too can help the group > ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. > ** If you did, we all thank you. > > > Hi all, > My husband is a photographer & needs a new PC. He has a good > monitor, which he'll be keeping. I'm used to spec-ing out business > PC's, but don't know much about the requirements of programs like > photoshop, or digital camera interface software. Anybody have any > recommendations? Does a laptop make any sense? We can't get anything > better than satellite where we live, so I was thinking that for big > uploads he could go somewhere with reasonable internet access speeds > if he had a laptop. This may well be a gift, so if you know him, don't > mention this posting! > TIA, Reva -- Mary Malmros malmros at verizon.net Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug