I'm planning to buy a notebook mostly for Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects use. No 3d or games.

How important is the graphic card? I'm on a quite low budget. I'm still planning to go for core duo, because it has been a lot faster in test for adobe than normal centrino.

One budget laptop I found in my price range is Acer 4202wlmi. It has Core duo t2300 1.66Gh, 80GB 5400rmp hdd and 2GB of DDR2 533 Mhz memory. The problem is the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphic card.

1. Is it still ok for pal editing and compositing?

2. What do you think about pcmcia sata card and external sata hard drive. Would it be fast enough for editing?

Thanks,

Walter Hemming

Some of the progs you mention use the gpu to accelrate stuff I think, so I presume the gpu will matter. Try checking with the software vendors.

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Intel GMA 950 graphic card is supposed to support hardware acceleration and Open GL 1.4.

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm

Just how well it would work in Premiere and AE? And does anyone have experience with pcmcia sata and external sata hdd?

Premiere might not have a problem with that integrated VGA, but I don't know about AfterEffects... it really needs a hell of a GPU.