Laptop Upgrade from HP DV5

[the.ronin]

Hey all, been out of the scene for a bit so I'm completely oblivious to what the latest and greatest is. But my wife is in the market for a decent laptop to upgrade an HP Pavillion DV5 with an Intel Core2 at 2.0Ghz. She would be using the laptop for professional photo editing using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom among other programs.

It seems basically any decent laptop these days can outperform this HP. I had come across this Sony Vaio Flip 14 which has an i5 and found on refurb for a very good price. She really likes the monitor and the ability to turn the thing into a tablet.

As an aside, I noticed there was no sticker on the underside showing the serial number for the Windows 8 installation. This worried me a bit because I often do clean installs on new machines to get rid of all the bloatware.

Anyway any advice would be greatly appreciated. Really, any laptop that can double as a tablet and show a significant improvement (which shouldn't be hard) over the HP DV5 would be taken into serious consideration.

 

[Meaker]

What sort of budget are we talking?

 

[the.ronin]

Sorry forgot budget - not much I'd like to keep it under $700. So obviously not the latest and greatest just something noticeably more powerful than the HP DV5 with the Intel Core2.

 

[jimh425]

Some pcs have serial number in bios now. In general, Sony makes good hardware. I i5 will probably be a good upgrade especially if it has a SSD. I'd also consider a Dell since they seem to be having very good sales lately.

 

[Meaker]

What sort of colour accuracy and gamut are required? What is her printer gamut? What colour calibration tool does she use? Is the editing done on the internal panel or a professional external monitor.