Rebellion88

In all honesty I don't know why Mac's have a reputation for being better at design applications. First and foremost you can get a better specification for less money on a windows machine. With all the Adobe products fully functional and many more free ones, secondly I own a Asus G750which is easily up-gradable full HD and the cooling which is second to none. Asus, or Lenovo are the two brands I would choose or something with a Sager/Clevo casing for upgrade ability. I normally change my laptop every 12 months and have two I use so been through a fair few. Secondly on a post earlier about a laptop with an i5, for things like photoshop an i7 will be superior on a mobile platform as the i5 mobile series are dual cores with hyperthreading where as the i7's are quads and will give a massive performance increase.

Fantastic responses, been dabbling in some basic HTML and CSS layouts toying around and I guess there is bits of knowledge that stick and others that don't. I have had a go with Code academy but Tree house looks appealing so I think thats the route I will go. I have an old version of Dreamweaver MX2004, so been using the code part and just checking the WYSIWYG at the results. Is there any good notepad editiors designed for web design that support HTML5 as I think my Dreamweaver may let me down there?

First and foremost I'm curious are you a developer or a designer and what software do you use, also be nice to know what hardware you use and why so it could be a laptop, tablet etc... I'm interested in web design and development and would love to know how you get the most out of the tools available, is it the Adobe CC software or more free software online to cut back on those monthly costs.

Asus have outstanding build quality or Lenovo would be my pick of the two. I have owned countless laptops, and with the tough life they lead with me they are my recommendations, or better value would be to build a desktop from scratch. That way your get better performance for money.

I have been considering for sometime now to learn something new to utilise different skills. I'm 26, did college in software development more Visual Basic and C#/C++ but the aspect of Web development or even mobile apps have intrigued me. I'm in no rush and would like to try and learn something quite well and a bit of trial and error. In respect to web development, I'm guessing the core HTML and CSS are vital. What have you found in the past to be the best way to learn these and tools used to do so? I know you can read and try to remember it all but I think I maybe in a losing battle. I think what confuses me, is what language is good for which type of site and when you start combing languages like CSS and HTML together? Lastly from a freelancers point of view do you find you have a good market to be in? Or is the way phones are going the app market a more flourishing area? Thank you for any help or advice. Best Regards, Dean

This may be a strange question, but if you designed the whole web page in Photoshop for example can it still be coded and have the functionality of a site that is just done in Notepad++ for example using HTML and CSS? A can a professional website be created this way or would it be seen as a bit of a beginner?

AM3+ simply because it offers superior architecture and will allow you to upgrade in the future more easily.