Upgrading our laptop - what does an astrophotographer need?

 My old laptop is a dell XPS 13. Portable, lightweight, compact. It has done sterling service for the last eight years. It has travelled with us extensively; been dropped and generally thrown around in a rucksack and a motorhome. Its lid is covered with stickers collected over our travels. I am very, very sentimentally attached to it. 

I love my old laptop. I was heartbroken when I discovered that windows 10 updates will stop in October. I immediately sought to upgrade my old XPS but, alas, on reading up on the dell website, I discovered that my processor was one generation too old. An interent search on various forums confirmed my worst fears; those who had tried to migrate across to Windows 11 on this laptop had had nothing but problems subsequently. 

So, the boss and I decided now was the time to upgrade - but to what? 

Well, we travel a lot so a desk top is out. As is a large heavy laptop. Maggie decided that our new one should have specs that would allow me to continue my astrophotography journey for the next few years. I am slowly progressing towards PixInSight, Star exterminator etc - so it will need some grunt! We want something which will last us another eight years, so good reliable build quality.  I was dispatched to do some research.

My old laptop had an inbuilt graphics Intel card, 256 Gb storage drive and 8Gb of RAM. It has done amazingly well, hasn't it. 

After some thinking, here is my list of 'requirements' for my new laptop

• bigger screen - 14"
• still lightweight and portable; slim build
• non touch screen but with good high resolution and colour reproduction/contrast for photo editing (1920 x 1080 minimum) 
• haptic keyboard
• 32 or 64Gb RAM so I can work more quickly with Fits files and stacking
• a good CPU quad core (minimum) processor intel i7 or i9 is my preference, for speedy stacking, rendering, etc 
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• at least four USB ports - thunderbolt 4 would be preferable; built in SD cartd reader as well 
• efficient thermal cooling technology; multiple fans which are QUIET!
• long lasting battery - at least 18 hours if possible 
• good after sales back up and service

Why all the high end specs stuff? Well, I use a DSLR and shoot in RAW. RAW images can be data intensive and stacking a hundred or so and all the calibration frames as well can be really draining on computer resources. My old laptop has struggled at times, especially when using SIRIL.  The CPU does all the grunt work and so I need something more powerful. Fast storage is a must when processing and editing all these files. And of course, the more programs I download in the future, the more memory space I will need so 1 TB seems to be the thing and within my budget - just! As well as editing thye photos, I also make YouTube videos and this is where the old laptop struggled - writing voideos to storage; video editing software etc. Laggy!  This should be so much more quicker with a faster SSD drive. 

What have I ended up with?

Another Dell XPS. No seriously, I looked at hundreds of diffrent laptops of various makes on-line and in store; but at the end, I kept coming back to two brands - Dell and Lenovo. I have used them both throughouit my teaching career and they have proven to be bomb proof as far as I am concerned.  

Dell were selling off the last of their XPS ranges and offering substantial discounts as they have introduced a new 'different' laptop range this year. Consequently, I paid precisely what I paid for the old one eight years ago but this time with a £500 discount on top and the extra warranties thrown in. 

My new configuration specs are: 

• CPU - Intel Core Ultra 7 155H  12 core 3,85 Ghz processor 
• 32 Gb RAM
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a dedicated Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• 14" screen, slim, lightweight
• haptic keyboard
• non touch screen with high resolution
• battery that lasts 18 hrs
• ultra quiet two fans and four cooling vents 
• 2 year warranty extension
• 2 year battery warranty extension
• superior after sales technical support package

Basically, I got everything I wanted at a budget I could afford.  Having used the laptop for the last month, I have to say I am really impressed. It is blisteringly fast, lovely to use and rather stylish in design. The haptic keyboard is a revelation. 

Sadly the weather hasnt yet played ball and so I have yet to use SIRIL on it but I suspect it will be far faster than what I have been normally used to.  I'll let you know! 

Postscript:

I have had the laptop for just over a month now and have started some basic processing in Siril, Affinity Photo and GraXpert. The new laptop is blisteringly fast - around five times faster on just about everything I have asked it to do thus far. Take basic OSC preprocessing scripts in Siril. Old laptop, could take up to 25 minutes. Same data on new laptop - five minutes flat. Stacking data in affinity photo - old laptop - 35 minutes; same data new laptop - 6 minutes.  It really is an impressive beast. Moreover, it doesn't overheat, the fans don't get noisy. 

Basically, absolutely loving the new laptop and chose the right specs!