Computer Help and Support

given you want to work with images and recording I would look for a machine with at least 8 gigs of memory preferably 16gig and at least 500 gigs of drive space. Even 500 makes me nervous with you saying you are doing podcasts as well.

Solid state drives are great and will definitely speed up load times and write times when working with video or the podcasts but it comes with a price and once the programs are loaded you will not see a huge difference in performance given enough memory to work with. You really see most of the difference when loading an app initially or when writing large amounts of data. They are definitely nice but with your usage you should be aware that storage space is going to come at a premium with an SSD

I am not sure what exactly you are doing with the photos but any real editing is going to lean heavily on the graphics processing unit. if it is just basic storage of photos then anything will work but if you are going to be doing extensive editing you should definitely pay attention to the GPU (video card)

I would not recommend anything below an I5 on the intell side or if you can find one an A10 or FX on the AMD side.

You could save a little cash if you are able to replace the HDD yourself by getting say the one linked above by steve and then switching out the drive for a larger one you purchase separately.

There are a large amount of configurations to chose from and it is difficult to suggest the right machine for you without knowing more about your usage.

Things like will it sit on a desk or will you move it often. If it sits on a desk then you don't need to worry about things like weight also standard drives are much more sensitive to movement and SSD can be dropped with little to no impact on the drive the same drop can ruin a standard drive.

if you are going to work from say the couch then the newer convertible laptops can be nice that flip into a touch screen so they can be used like a tablet on the couch.

There are a lot of options but knowing your usage and preferences will help nail the machine for you down a lot.

With a working budget of $800 you should be able to get a pretty satisfying machine. I would definitely want to know more details of your usage before going with the fist good price I came across. What works for you may not work for someone else and vice versa.

lastly whatever you go with if possible I would highly recommend going into a store and looking at the model and feeling the keyboard and mouse pad to see if they are comfortable for you. you an get a great machine but be completely unhappy with it just because the keyboard for you is horrible.

Happy to try to nail one down for you if you want to provide more usage details.