Typophile

Best Laptop for desktop publishing...?

HuntedCity

I am fairly new to digital printing. I have been getting by with an old tower with Windows XP and Microsoft Word 2003. But I have some money saved up and am looking to buy a laptop, that would possibly come equipped with what Id need to make books. I do not know much about Macs but I would be willing to try it. I am unfamiliar with publishing programs, and was also wondering if there are any computer packages available out there that come equipped with the best software for publishing and design. I can spend about $3000. Thank you all for any help you can give.

Si_Daniels

"Book making" seems an odd phrase. Are you a writer, an editor or a book designer? And what type of books?

Dave Crossland

Books that are less text-heavy (cookery books, travel guides, etc) are often designed with either a "Desktop Publishing" (DTP) layout program, like Scribus (free, and zero price) or InDesign or Quark (proprietary, and expensive).

Books that are very text-heavy (novels, academic texts) are also designed with a "typesetting" program, like LaTeX (or its less book-focused cousin, ConTeXt.) LaTeX is especially good at typesetting mathematics and other scientific literature.

The excellent Without Hot Air book (available to download in full at no cost) was designed by the author with LaTeX and nicely shows off what it can do.

Jason Pagura

For bookbinding you'll need at the minimum a saddle stapler. I have a very small Bostitch B8SB. I suppose I could use it on my lap but it would be much more comfortable on a desktop.

bowerbird

what kind of books do you want to create?

-bowerbird

BlueStreak

I've been working on Macs using DTP setups since 1984, and I love my current setup. While they've changed the MacBook Pro configuration to the point that I don't think I'd like the newer models being offered, I have a 15" MacBookPro2,2, Intel Duo Core. It only came with 1 gig of RAM, but I doubled that for $30 USD (including shipping). I'm running CS3, use FontExplorer for font management, and among many other things have Parallels running Windows XP.

It's a very steep learning curve if you haven't used it, but Adobe CS3 is the gold standard for DTP work — InDesign for page layout with Photoshop for image editing and Illustrator for vector tweaking. Well worth the investment in the long run for anyone in the DTP business.

Also, and very importantly, I rarely use my laptop as a laptop. I use it with a mouse, and external keyboard and monitor, meaning I use it the way a tower is used. From what I've seen this is the current trend since the price and expandability of laptops has gotten much better. It offers the best of both worlds. I use is as a desktop computer, but can unplug it and be free of my desk any time I want.

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