• It's good that you have an ATI Radeo HD 6770 in it, and are avoiding getting a system with an Intel GPU.  Intel's display drivers often leave a lot to be desired.  ATIs are pretty good, though occasionally they do release a screwup (like Catalyst 12.1).

• Is there an option to build in a second hard drive?  If so, you definitely want it.
• Deconfigure the Norton Internet Security if you can - get Avast! instead.
• If any CDs/DVDs are optional, get them.  You never know whether you may have to reload the OS or run diagnostics or whatever in the future.
• Not sure what "Optional re-allocation of recovery partition" means, but I suggest you don't opt out of the ability to recover your system if it should become unusable.
• Seems like extended "protection from everything" warranties are a good idea with laptops, since they tend to get dropped, run over, spilled-upon...

-Noel

Noel you old dinosaur!    Norton IS is supposed to be the business with the 2012 version.   Review  I completely understand your stance on it, and it was resource hogging bloatware for years, but I understand it is a class leader now.  Having said that,  I am not sure I would put it _my_ computers.

The OP's link says the notebook has a couple of USB3 ports, so a USB3 external drive is an option, although you obviously lose the mobility which we have to assume he needs or why choose a notebook.  Just don't try and win some scratch space by partioning the C:\ drive.   This link is from the Premiere Pro hardware forum, but mostly valid.

The recovery partition is different of course, and a feature I found very handy when rescuing a friends Toshiba laptop recently.  With the Toshiba, I think I had to hold down the 'o' key while booting to return the laptop to it's out of the box state.

Strange things can happen with AV. I decided to switch from Avast to MS Security Essentials, mostly because it's anti-virus and anti-spyware in one package, very convenient.

The first thing I noticed was that it intercepted panel handling in Photoshop, giving a half-second lag, even if it was just switching a layer off or on. Everything else was unaffected.

So I put Photoshop in the exclude list (throwing in Br, ID and Ai for good measure), and haven't noticed any problems since.

Noel Carboni wrote:

 

Avast is anti-malware of all types

Indeed it is, had to go check. It wasn't when I first got it (the free version) - but since then I just upgraded as they came without looking too closely. That's what you get for not paying attention.

I don't really pay much attention to it anyway. I practice safe surfing (AKA use your head), and have had exactly one "ping" in the last couple of years. That was on Andrew Rodney's site, of all places, so I wasn't too worried.

So I was reading over your post, and even though this is older and has to do with CS5, I have some information for CS6 that will be relevant to your question now that it is time to upgade the software. In general Photoshop has always been more about RAM than Processing power, though that is important too. Until CS5 it could never quite take advantage of what multi-core processors really had to offer, and even the graphics card didn't really effect much of it outside of certain features and the 3D optio

Now that is no longer true and Adobe can effeciently use all aspects of the computer to give you much better performance.
So much so that I was able to buy a brand New ASUS with the following specs:

Dual Core 2.2GHz Processors
8GB of RAM (4GB original to the machine)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit OS
320GB HDD w/ 5400RPM

This machine not only runs photoshop CS6 and Launches in less than 5 Seconds... it can run Premier and After Effects as well, and this Laptop cost me less than $400 (on sale at Best Buy 2 Weeks Ago. You don't have to buy something this cheap, but isn't it great that you can and still run Master Collection effectively?

You can read my details on how to buy a Photoshop CS6 Laptop, what specs you need, comparison between Mac and PC and watch the video of my Photoshop Speed Test by reading this article:

http://robertoblake.com/blog/2012/06/buying-a-photoshop-cs6-laptop