looking for a laptop for writing and photo editing

We are looking for a lap top to use off line at home.

I would like to be able to edit photos, both ones I've taken and old family ones that I've scanned onto flash drives.
I have a notion I'd like to put a little book together following the women on my mom's side back several generations interspersing scanned letters with photos and also text.and maybe try to put together an ebook about my pet spider

My husband has a writers program on his  dieing laptop that he liked but is open to others.
He used it for layout and arranging into a form our local printer could use for his chap books.
He has other small books in mind so mostly typing and scanning in images.

So, something under $1000...with lots of storage and several usb ports...a program for organizing info into book format, a good photo editing program....

and the big one, most important maybe...a long life.

To continue...We don't have wifi at home only a limited amount of data on this cell phone so what we need is something we can take to the library or friends who have wifi to load programs.

I had a free gimp editing/design program I liked on my old HP pc but the computer was so slow and made editing a chore rather than fun.

Does any one do a lot of writing and photo editing on a laptop?
Any ideas where to start looking?

Hi Judith,
There's a lot to say for personal preference, but I have been impressed with my 8 y.o. MacBook Air, which runs almost as well as it did when new. My wife recently got a newer Mac laptop, and the quality seems to be consistent (though not as many years of data on the new one). Between my wife and myself, personal and work use, over the years, we've owned Sony, IBM, lots of Dell, and Mac, and the Mac is the only one that's really worth writing home about. It might be a little outside the budget, though, if you look new. I have had bad experiences with refurbished Dell & IBM, but would be keen to hear if there's a different take on Mac refurbs.
I use TexWorks/LaTeX for writing, sometimes use Gimp, and in general Mac's native program suite is fine (and no extra cost...ahem...Office...looking at you). The user interface on Macs used to be notably different from Windows, but even that is converging as Windows keeps aping Mac more in each release.
Good hunting!
Mark

Thank you Mark!

I'll check that one out.

Hi Judith,
I'm not sure I would be much help on the software side, but I would highly recommend looking at the business class of laptop from each of the manufacturers. Most have a consumer line and a business line. The business line is not as flashy but goes through a much higher standard of testing and manufacturing resulting in a laptop that is physically stronger than the consumer line. This generally results in longer life. Some of them are in your price range.

HP Pavilion - consumer
HP Probook or Elitebook - business

Dell Inspiron - consumer
Dell Latitude - business

Lenovo T series - business
Lenovo most of the rest - consumer

***Edit - Mac's are good for photo editing, but I suspect most if not all are going to be outside your price range.

Soon microsoft will only support windows 11, therefore many companies will dump their old infrastructure, or sell out very cheap. If you find an reasonably recent (one 2-3 years), and ask someone to install linux on it, yoiu will be set up waaayy cheaper than 1000$, with equal, if not superior quality. That is if you think in the long term.

thanks everyone!

you've all given us a better perspective.

got one!
see further questions here...
https://permies.com/t/278500/permaculture-writing/art/open-source-software-replace-microsoft

I also only use the Lenovo T series. Everything else can't match it.

My questions would be:
- How big do you want the screen to be?
- How bright does the screen need to be?
- How good are your eyes? Does 4K make a difference to FHD or not?
- Is a keypad required? if so, it needs to be at least 16"

I have a few T 480 here that I bought used and they are plenty powerful for photo editing (I use darktable).
Yes my T14 gen 3 AMD is faster, but instead of waiting 2 seconds I have to wait between 1/2 and 1s for an edit to be applied. Unless that is your full time job the time saved will probably never justify the extra cost.

LibreOffice is good for editing, Calibre for making eBooks and Inkscape for drawing things.

For the Operating system, Ubuntu is pretty easy and well supported, but by default they send more information home than I would like. Since it will not be connected to the internet, that does not matter.

I think 1TB or 2TB SSD is now pretty easy to get for a new laptop. I installed a 4TB SSD since my work produces ridiculous amounts of data and I didn't want to ever have to think about a full disk again.

For the USB-Ports, get a USB-Hub with version 3 or 4. It will be expensive, but then you can plug in as many devices as you want and reduce wear on the ports of the laptop. Maybe even one that also charges the laptop.