I do much (more than I’d like to admit) of my work on a laptop - a MacBook Pro 2.6 to be exact. I was pretty happy with the performance of Lightroom on this system with the default memory of 2GB. However, I needed to install Fusion and Windows Vista on the Mac for a project I was working on, and the 2GB just didn’t cut it.

Everyone knows that buying memory from Apple can cause severe wallet shock, so I started looking around for other options to upgrade to 4GB, the max this laptop can hold. There are a number of options out there, but I tend to be conservative with my choices here - after all a memory problem is much more expensive to me than spending a bit more upfront. I finally settled on Kingston since I’ve had experience with their memory in the past and very good luck with their memory cards in my cameras. The 4GB upgrade cost a whopping $100, compared to the Apple price of $400. The Kingston upgrade took about 5 minutes to install and has performed flawlessly.

What really surprised me though, and the point of this post, is the improved performance I see in Lightroom. Develop module tasks now run more smoothly, and in the case of Lightroom 2.0 I’m getting much better response with the localized adjustment tools. Library mode is also smoother in scrolling and displaying previews, and background processing in general is faster than before.

If you combine some of the other options, like generating 1:1 previews on import, using collections to sort photos into manageable groups, and using decent hard drives, Lightroom can be effectively used on a laptop as a main work platform. I still need an external monitor for critical work, but it’s nice to not be bouncing from one computer to another as often as before!