Hardware Recommendations

[ulim]

I am looking to buy a new 17" Laptop, whose primary use will be running iMatch. There are some decisions to make as to the hardware:

* Will iMatch profit from 8 GB RAM (presumably running Windows 8 or 10) or is 4 GB more than enough?
* If I get an SSD+HDD configuration, what should I put on the SSD? Windows and iMatch or my images? This is assuming that the SSD is too small to hold everything.

Conventional wisdom says to put data on the hard disk and apps on the SSD. But I wonder, since I see iMatch doing a lot of I/O when I edit pictures. IMatch updates metadata automatically and continually, if I have the option set to write metadata back immediately. Right now I have deactivated this option, because the current laptop is too slow. But perhaps putting my images on a SSD would allow me to switch this feature back on.

Any and all recommendations and experiences welcome,

Ulrich

[Mario]

Put Windows and your database on the SSD. Your images and other mass data can be on the normal disk.
Windows will start fast, the database will perform excellent.

Of course processing images on the SSD is faster, but not that much. And you can always keep the files you work on on the SSD, and then move them to the HDD when you're done.

4 GB as a minimum is OK (IMatch is a 32 Bit application and can use up to ~ 3.5 GB).

But  more memory is always good. I would not buy a computer with less than 8 GB today, especially notebooks which are sometimes hard to upgrade.
Also, SSD's are pure gold. A 256 GB SSD can easily hold Windows, all your applications and important things like the TEMP folder, the IMatch database etc.
If you only have an option for a 128 GB SSD, it will also work but will be more crammed.

[ulim]

That's pretty much in line with what I thought. Images and iMatch database are 50GB right now, so theoretically I could fit everything on a 256G SSD. But some laptops come with a 128G SSD and something like a 500G HDD, they can be cheaper and still offer more room.

Thanks for the comments, I think I'm on the right track now.

Ulrich