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The truth couldn't be further from what you tell. Have been using a MacBook Air for my personal use along with an HP ProBook since 2014. The HP is all but dead, battery life was never great to begin with and the hardware never really worked well with windows.

The MacBook on the other hand is untill today seamless in its operations, great battery life, is still fast, boots up in less than 30 secs.

People who tell that Macbooks have only visual appeal are the ones who really haven't used them for any serious periods of time.

I would recommend the following options:

1. Razer Blade 15: At 2 kgs with 16 GB memory, this laptop is a powerhouse. One of my dream purchases. The only fly in the ointment would be the warranty coverage. Haven't come across any stores in Delhi-NCR selling this.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-blade-15-2022

2. Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: At 1.7 kgs with a Ryzen 9 processor and 32 GB memory, this one is no slouch either. Warranty would not be an issue with this one.

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops...14-2024-review

Hope this helps!

My office had given me two options : Macbook or Windows laptop. I chose Windows. My office work requirements make the MacOS almost redundant as most of the software I work on requires MS Office add-ins that are simple to install on Windows OS and irritatingly difficult to do so on Macbooks.

A simple click and install on Windows OS is a bit twisted in MacOS And these steps never work in the first go on most client macbooks as they have security policies etc that I am not well versed with.

Second and more important reason is I usually install Steam and play games on it when traveling, my office is fine with it as long as games are installed using legit means. Macbook support is either limited or one has to do some research to get things working.

While we are on that topic, I recently sampled the Dell XPS series top of the line and was mighty impressed by it.

Having used both windows and post M1 macbooks, I too think macs do not measure up to the hype. They hang, they gawk (the newton spinning wheel) and require restarts to work smoothly. Think good old windows 98/2000 days. I am a typical bangalore worker - word doc, excel, ppt and a heavy dose of vscode, intellij, pycharm and command line usage.

My main peeves with the mac, both HW & SW:

1. Irregular keyboard shortcuts, on windows some shortcuts worked the same regardless of app (minimize, maximize, open file, show desktop etc). Many apps on mac simply dont respond to minimize, maximize or restore. No matter how many shortcuts I learn, I reach for the mouse more often than i’d like to.
2. Lifeless keyboard feel (got used to it now). Been a TVS gold user for almost a decade; will always miss the clickety clack of a long travel mech keyboard. The TVS gold did not work with mac very well even after heavily customized key mapping, finally gave up and went with a mac full size keyboard - again as lifeless as the built in keyboard. Mac compatible mech keyboards are rare and cost a bomb, and no mech option from apple
3. The mac mouse was too small for my hand and caused pain in the center of the palm, thankfully HP and Dell USB mice work satisfactorily
4. The way apple tries to jail buyers within apple products to get niggle free performance - particularly monitors & keyboard. My dell U2412M looked terrible on the macbook and after R&D on scaling issues with M1s, 218ppi magic, sleep/wakeup problems with custom drivers, settled for an apple studio display (wallet bleed :crying)

To finish on a positive note:
1. Excellent retina display, pleasure to read anything, built in speakers are outstanding. Never felt the need for external speakers
2. Good battery life and clever magsafe design. Nothing will crack if you trip on the cable by chance
3. Looks cool and feels solid to hold, lesser wires overall
4. Most dev tools work well on the mac, on windows I had to keep SSHing into Linux for build & other activities.

I need a suggestion please. The regular laptops I have used start lagging after around 1.5-2 years.

What type of a laptop is recommended for long hours. ie 12 hours a day for the below:
1- Tons of emailing.
2- Using CRM's, online tools such as logistics tracking etc.
3- Full time zoom switched on (non stop 9 hours).
4- 95% used plugged in.
5- Lot of typing.

No games, no techy stuff like coding, media making etc.

I use a M2 Pro with 32GB RAM and 1 TB storage for work, I also have parallels installed. I got parallels as I too was a die hard Windows fan and used it since 3.x and moreover since the new Apple silicon wont boot windows by Bootcamp anymore it seemed like a good option to use Apple hardware for windows.

As the days passed, I am now more and more a Mac OS user I hardly ever use Parallels except for apps which are not supported on Mac OS such as Access :Shockked: as to why anyone would need it, but I do get files in that format for work. The only things I use from the Parallels toolbox are the great Mac OS tools to dock windows and sort the icon bar on the top right

So my advice would be adopt Mac OS its just a different but equally or in some cases a better way of working and save yourself from the Parallels subscription costs and a Windows license as well !

An out-of-the-box suggestion, a Lenovo ThinkPad. Yes, you heard it right!

A little context here, I have been a fan of Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup for a long time. Have seen my father working on ThinkPads for the past 17 years. They are reliable workstations and also very durable and modular. However, the modularity scene of the ThinkPad lineup has changed as Lenovo is making the laptops less modular and soldering the components like RAM, storage and network modules directly to the motherboard. IMO, the ThinkPad's build quality has been deteriorating in the past year with their E series and T series especially. These machines were and are still built like tanks ( doesn't apply anymore to the E series and T series), in fact, they have been used by NASA astronauts in the ISS and by many other US govt agencies. For those who don't know, the ThinkPad line of workstations/business laptops was owned by IBM earlier. IBM sold it in 2005 as they weren't making a profit out of the business and they exited the PC business.

Okay , the context turned out to be long. Coming to the matter, I suggest looking at their Z series, P series and the X1 carbon.

Hope this might help!

With almost no good laptops available in the market, choosing a laptop has never been easier.

Want an actually good laptop?
Latitude (5 series/7 series) or ThinkPad (T series/X series).

Want to watch movies and willing to sacrifice a bit on quality?
Galaxy Books.

Want an Apple?
Get an Apple. Not a bad choice at all with the new processors, if you're willing to take certain risks.

I want to put this out there for those who might have similar requirements in the future. If you're looking for a laptop with MacBook like build quality which has good battery life, power and portability then one should check out the Samsung Galaxy Book range.

All these laptops are Intel Evo certified which ensures good battery life and fast wake up times. It's basically Intel saying this laptop is well optimized for their chips.
Also all of them have an aluminium build and are quite light as well as slim. The 360 versions come with a touch screen and a stylus (S Pen) in the box which enables a lot more features but I think it'll be most useful for businessmen for signing documents on the go.

The latest Samsung Book 4 series has launched just recently and there are some discounts offered on the Book 3 and Book 2 series. A friend of mine purchased the Book 2 Pro 360 last week and even a 2 year old model is working as fast as the Dell G15 that we compared it to.

This came to mind after reading GTO's post
Can't help but think if these Samsung Laptops would be perfect for this requirement and would love to know if they were considered before purchasing the Macbook Air 15"

Congrats on buying the new MacBook. Having been a mac user for office work (XL, ppt, emails) and my actual dev environment is on a more powerful windows PC, my suggestion would be to try and move away from apps that are specific to windows or Mac. The world is going towards cloud connected apps. That will enable you to seamlessly move from windows to mac to Android as situations demands. Of course - this is easier said than done - especially when a solution is already working well, who wants to change it. But give it a thought - it may work in some cases. For example, consider office 365 - what a masterful change from a decade ago where everything was on windows + office. Now you have the same on every platform and also on the web in case an app does not work that well.

If you do the above, I feel that your dependence on parallels will come down. This will also help you appreciate the mac OS side too and not just the HW. Arguably, the HW is the best of the mac today with the M series chip. But, don't discount the Mac OS software too. It's just a matter of getting used to.

It's like having a manual and an auto at home. The first few seconds are all you need to switch your mental mode from one to another.

Hi,

I'm on the lookout for a basic laptop preferably with SSD storage and a decent ram for my father. He mostly uses all the Microsoft apps, browses on Google Chrome for Youtube, Prime Video, etc and that's about it primarily. But I would like it to last long and be of good quality with great reliability.

I've been a Mac user for the last 5-6 years and hence have no idea regarding Windows laptops hence would be grateful for your suggestions of the right brand and if possible, models too.

Thank you.

Since you haven't specified a budget, here are a few laptops under Rs.50,000 that are worth considering:

1. SAMSUNG GALAXY BOOK 2
https://www.flipkart.com/samsung-gal...70JVPR0014Ggrg

It comes with basically everything you need (12th gen i5, MS Office, Anti-Glare Full HD LED Display, all sets of ports, Decent Battery Life, Upgradeable RAM etc) and costs just under 42k.

2. LENOVO THINKBOOK 15 G5
https://www.flipkart.com/lenovo-amd-...1=U70Jpa8001LV

Full Metal Body, Ryzen 7 7700U, Full HD Anti Glare Display, MIL-STD-810H compliant, expandable storage, all necessary ports, decent battery life and a price of just under 43k make it a good laptop for office tasks.

Advice needed to resurrect an old and slow Windows laptop.

I would like to apologize in advance for the poor quality captures of system information. Since it would have taken forever to send screenshots over to another device, I had to resort to taking pictures with my phone.

We have a 5-year old laptop that's not seen much use due to it being painfully slow at any task.

Configuration:Brand: HP Notebook
Processor: i3 6th generation
RAM: 4GB
HDD: 1 TB
OS: Windows 10 Home Edition



The following is the pressure I see on the system even when idle.



I assume the HDD is the major bottleneck here, followed by the low RAM.

Please let me know the following.

1. We intend to have two laptops at home (we have none now apart from my work laptop and this HP one). Is it worth upgrading this laptop's RAM and HDD, so only one additional laptop purchase is needed to handle heavier workloads? The present laptop could then be used for lighter tasks and during travel.

2. If it can be upgraded, can it take up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of SSD storage? I cannot install utility software packages that could potentially tell me this information. If yes, how much would this cost us?

3. If it cannot be upgraded, can this laptop be traded in during the purchase of a newer one?

4. In general, is it better to purchase new laptops from physical stores of the manufacturer, physical stores of third party dealers or online?

Thank you for your help.

Just an extra 4 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD will magically transform your old laptop. One of the desktops we have had similar configuration as yours. We just added extra 4 GB RAM & replaced old HDD with 1 TB SSD.



Now it is usable even for 'medium intensity' multi-tasking. RAM usage never goes over 80%, which makes me come to a conclusion that 8 GB RAM is enough. You can track this via Microsoft PC Manager (available on MS Store) & free up RAM if needed:

100% disk active time could very well be the sign of a failing hard drive.

Do back up your data ASAP, if there is anything of value there.