I’m just out of high school, I’ve been working with adobe illustrator and Photoshop since middle school but obviously I still have a lot to learn. I’m going to community college in the fall but I want to continue working with the programs and creating things on my own until I can go to a college for graphic design. With that being said, I’m looking for a laptop that simply does it’s job, my biggest concern is money (I have none), I have no specific budget but I need the least expensive as possible because money is a big restriction for me. My second biggest concern is longevity because it needs to get me through at least two years without becoming impossibly outdated. I’m very ignorant when it comes to computer specs and I plan to do more research but I wanted to ask the advice of somebody with more experience.
Inexpensive and longevity are sort of at odds with each other.
It’s better to know what your willing to spend ahead of time as it’s harder to decide what you can and can’t live with without relating it to cost. Since your largest constraint appears to be money, it will dictate what’s available and from there you can sort it your nice to have from your need to haves.
Thank you for the advice of having a budget ahead of time, the reason I didn’t is because I don’t exactly know the price range of what I need. I think I may have been a little unclear when I mentioned longevity, to rephrase, I need it to work well atleast a couple years (2-4) without being so outdated it can’t properly run illustrator and Photoshop. I obviously have a lot to research but I was looking for a few reccomendations so I know what to look for because I’m very inexperienced, I have just been using the programs at school. I don’t know what exactly a laptop needs to run these programs. Thank you so much for taking time to reply.
Maybe something like this $679.00
you can add extra RAM
and change to faster SSD drive when able
The illustrator and photoshop you have, what version and what platform (I’m guessing PC but best to ask)
You can find fairly budget priced PC laptops out there. The trick with Adobewares is to max out your ram. Since most laptops now come with non-upgradable ram, you need to plan to get more than you need if you want the machine to last more than 5 years. 16gigs of ram would be minimum. 32 would be nice.
The other thing you want is a fairly large hard drive (SSD.) At least 500 gigs. If you can get a 1TB model, even better.
And I know it costs money but consider an outboard backup drive. The way they push updates these days, you may want to go backwards more often than you think. I run macs for workhorses and I have never had to resort to a backup drive as much as I have the last 5 or 6 years.
As for specific brands…I have two generic Dell towers for production machines out in the shop. I’m not familiar with PC laptops to offer a suggestion.
Thank you so much for the tips, I ended up with a 15 500 with decent specs and I would have been completely lost without the advice. 
