Not trying to be snarky but; serious graphics on a 17" monitor? You should be thinking 20"+.
Recommend a Dell 20 or 24" monitor. A bit pricy but great color matching, brightness, contrast, accuracy. If you’re doing a remote presentation, plug in to a customer’s monitor/plasma set.
Defraying the cost a bit; they are fine as a DVD / movie machine. I’ve got an analog satelite box, one external DVD player, computer, and home theater receiver feeding into the monitor and still have more inputs.
I have a 20" monitor on my desktop system. I’m looking for something portable here. I don’t know where you got the idea that this is my only computer.
(Also, I said I changed my major away from graphic design, so there won’t be any “giving presentations to customers” kind of thing, most likely. I will be using this to a small degree for the freelance graphics/web work that I do, but primarily using it for my own art, both for cleaning up/editing photos of my physical work like paintings, and for creating composite images to make paintings from, and for photo editing and other stuff that I do.)
Quibble, last I heard, Dell does not make monitors, they have them made by monitor manufacturer that applies Dell badging. Same with their printers (lexmark makes them IIRC) and motherboards (Elitegroup/ECS).
I have an Asus 15" that I’m pretty happy with (although I run Linux), and they make 17-inchers also. Asus is kinda weird, as they provide a platform for resale, and don’t sell their notebooks directly. If you’re interested, I’ll dig up the vendor I bought my laptop from.
I’ve also heard good things in general about Lenovo laptops; it seems that their IdeaPad Y710 series are 17-inchers (although I’ve never spoken with anyone who had one). I also just did some research for a colleague and came across two gamer sites: Sager and AlienWare. Both have 17-inchers, but I’ve never dealt with nor knew anyone personally who bought from them.
Not sure what your cost constraints are, but any of the above might be worth a gander…
Appreciate it, but I already got something a couple of months ago 
(Alienware is SPENSIVE! wowsers! Needless to say, didn’t get that.)
:smack: I didn’t even think to look at the thread date.
Heh, don’t worry about it. It happens all the time. I’m sure somebody will find the info useful!
Locking thread.