hi
umm see if i can contribute something
honestly, if it's only for photo editting you dun need a dedicated graphics card
the internal 950 provided by intel should be alrite..
what you need though.. is a pwerful enough processing power and a sizable hdd.. processing power to render yr filters and the hdd for yr scratch disk.
the core 2 duo shud be enuf.. and maybe 60gb+ for hdd.
if 60 is not enough, or extra gb is too expensive, get an external one..
these should be your
fundamental criteria..
next think abt the screen.. mainstream is 14.1 or 15.4, but im beginning to think 13.3 is actually big enuf. im using a 14.1 btw. anw, nowadays most notebooks come w glossy screen, so.. nt much of a choice there. some ppl say matte is better cause u can compare true black. this is one of the reasons why macbook pro uses matte. next is how light you want it to be, and rem ur screen size will form a straight correlation with the weight.. oh but the smaller they are.. the more expensive.. haha.
i say u probably can get one below 2k. go for mainstream size, and use xp. u dun nd vista, cause xp seems to be featuring the same stuff vista has (uglier, but nonetheless the same). try look at compaq, hp, lenovo - they're normally budget friendly. please stay away fr acer. and if you want more guarantee.. consider asus, samsung, fujitsu..