Is Lightroom still available for desktop or laptop for a one-time payment?

My 2nd question is that my Lightroom runs very heavy and painfully slow on my HP laptop. Any tips to make it run a little faster and smoother with Windows 10?

By @mickey_dslr

Hard to say what could be causing this. It could be a number of things. For example, if you are still on non-subscription Lightroom 5 or 6, they do not have the GPU acceleration features that Lightroom Classic 12 does. That might be worse if you recently bought a camera that captures many more megapixels than the cameras that were out when Lightroom 5 or 6 were released; in fact the higher megapixel sensors are a large reason so many performance optimizations were made from Lightroom Classic 8 onwards which your version doesn’t have. Lightroom Classic 12 makes much better use of additional CPU cores, GPU, and caching.

It would also help to know the specifications of your HP laptop (does your version of Lightroom have a System Info command under the Help menu that could tell us?). For example, Lightroom could slow down if high megapixel images were combined with an older laptop with fewer CPU cores and internal storage that is too full. But we don’t know enough about your computer to be able to evaulate that.

Lightroom, or more specifically -Lightroom-Classic v12.3 works just fine on my PC with Windows-11 and a mid-range GPU.

Value for money? 

In 2012.. You could expect to pay AU$1168 for Photoshop CS5 for the standalone app, and Lightroom retailed for about AU$700. (ie Ps + Lightroom = $1868) The entire Comprehensive master edition suite was a whopping $4344.

How great is it now? To be paying ~AU$14.00 a month (Australian) (US$9.99) for Photoshop and Lightroom-classic, Lightroom on Mobile devices, a Portfolio web site, etc, on a subscription basis. At my $14/m That is the equivalent of ELEVEN years use of the Adobe Apps compared to the 2012 prices!  And you always have regular upgrades to be using the very latest versions.

Isn't that 'Value for Money' for the industry standard in Editing Aps?

Windows 11 won't help to run it faster. I (personally) even recommend staying with Windows 10.

LrC in its latest version 12.x will gain a lot from a beefy GPU. This is rarely the case with a laptop. If you tell us more about your gear like CPU, RAM, GPU and VRAM, HD .... we will be able to tell you if running LrC 12 will make you happy on that device or not.

Management and development of photos is an integral part of any digital photographic workflow. As such, the cost of a photography subscription with Adobe is one of the lower cost parts in that workflow compared to most, even single parts of photo gear (i.e fast lenses, filters, not to mention the camera itself) .... just my 0.02

"Is that true or false? I truly hope it's not true. "

It's true, and has been for a long time.

And I for one am extremely grateful for the best deal in the business.

"without that stupid monthly charge"

Nothing "stupid" about it - it's no different to say, a Netflix subscription.

And as for Lightroom, hopefully it'll be available without that stupid monthly charge

But if not, I'm afraid I'll have to switch to another company's software to edit my photos.

I think its time to switch. It is unlikely that Adobe will ever again offer Lightroom as a single purchase.

No, only a variety of subscription plans, which are an excellent value for what you get. Especially the photography plan: Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and a lot more. Each new version almost always had amazing new features and functionality.

Reference your speed question, Search this forum for Lightroom performance issues. A ton of information will show up.