Need portable Photoshop-capable notebook under $700

Hoping for some good recommendations for something that will run Photoshop easily while still being portable.


1. What is your budget?

$400-$700

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

15"

3. What screen resolution do you want?

decently high

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

portable

5. How much battery life do you need?

3 hours-ish

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Civ IV, maybe Civ V if possible, on Low. But not really necessary.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

Mostly what I want is to be able to have a nice portable machine to edit photos in Photoshop (CS3) and do other moderate graphics work without having to stay in my house all the time.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

around 300 GB? A Bit less is ok, more is always fine.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

around 3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

Don't need one necessarily

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

Prefer Lenovo and Asus for reliability. Maybe Sony, maybe Acer?

No Dell-- I know them well enough to hate them Not Apple.

13. What country do you live in?

US

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

Our household already has another computer that will run games, and has a DVD burner etc, and we have an Asus netbook, but I need something that's portable enough to take to the cafe but which will still run Photoshop well.

Hello babayaga;

MSI CX640 15" Notebook $650
Core i3 2310M(2.10GHz) 15.6" 4GB RAM 500GB HDD 16.6" 1366x768 LCD w/ NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M graphics

MSI CX640 15.6-inch Notebook Review (not an identical model)

Thank you, WR2. I've been confused about whether I really need 1) a dedicated GPU and 2) dual- or quad-core CPU.

In the past, I've bought gaming machines, so running Photoshop was never an issue. But now I don't know what Photoshop work itself needs, and I'm trying to find the balance between weight and battery life vs performance.