Laptop suggestions

The following is what I use as of March of this year. For your needs, I think it is quite sufficient. If you use Microsoft 365, you will end up with all of the lovely Office Suite of apps, and a total of 2tb of storage space, 1tb onboard, and 1tb in the cloud.

I know you said you are not a gamer, but I am, and while I did not get this for gaming, it games quite well. With a decent AMD Ryzen multicore processor and dedicated AMD Radeon Vega 3 graphics processor, this 14 inch laptop should hit all of your checkboxes.

Finally, it is well under $1,000. 🙂

Have a look:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BY3PGDZR/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1

I think they are just around your budget, and they should be siriously considered give the amazing battery life thanks to those new Snapdragon processers.
Although I would advise you to test them with Jaws/NVDA before buying them, or, see if you get a return window if something doesn't work as expected.

The last Surface Laptop with arm works fine with nvda. The batery and performance its amazing.

I would really love to get my hands on one of those. If you can, and it sounds like they are pretty much within your budget, go for one of those. All the reports I've heard are fantastic.
Also that HP Brian linked to looks very good, and my Dell Latitude 5320 from a few years ago is still running like a champ. But, some Dells have volume issues where the volume doesn't stay constant. This was driving me nuts for a while, but an update seems to have fixed it.
Rather than brand, I would encourage you to look at specks. Nothing with less than 8 gb ram, and I would recommend at least a newer i5 or i7.
But for battery nothing will beat those new laptops with ARM.

They both work great for me.

the only issue would be that you don't have a dedicated aplocations key but you can use right control plus function, they're both next to one another.

This is on an HP laptop, I don't know about Lenovo as I had an all in one pc from them.

Interesting. On my Dell that doesn't work. I had to remap my right alt key. Also sometimes shift f10 will work.

Interesting, maybe it's an HP thing.

That is not a bad laptop, and will definitely meet your needs. I believe I saw that you could choose between an Intel or AMD processor. Preferentially, I would suggest the AMD processor, not only because you save about 20 bucks, but because I personally hate Intel processors.

Just a personal preferences all. Otherwise, that laptop looks great! 👍🥳

Overall, mostly Intel CPUs are expensive compared to their AMD counterpart these days.
However, Intel's Evo standard is a very good set of specifications, and laptops with Intel Evo branding are made very good speaking from personal experience. Again, expensive.

The best thing of this pc its the batery hahahahha, not only the performance.

Back to your comment about the applications key, even though it's not the main point of this thread, I did want to clarify something. When I tried it before I was using a bluetooth keyboard while broadcasting, because my mixer takes up so much room that I have to put the laptop elsewhere. Anyway, your fn and ctrl suggestion does not work on the bluetooth keyboard, unfortunately. But, I tried it again later on the actual laptop, and what do ya know? It did work.

Hi.
I have an HP for 1 year and 3 months, Intel i7-1800h, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB SSD.
The only criticisms I have are that it sometimes gets very hot for no apparent reason and the rubber strip on the bottom of the laptop came off completely out of nowhere and started falling apart, plus a screw has come loose. Other than that, the performance is impeccable; I've never experienced any stuttering or freezing.
My 2 cents.

My reasoning is mostly just a personal preference. I have had many, many Intel-based computers, both Mac and PC, and they all seem to have a heat sync issue. This is only my 2nd or 3rd AMD-based PC, and none of my AMD computers ever had an overheating issue.

Ever.

Also, as someone mentioned, you get more bang for your buck. 🙂

If you want more indepth information, read this article:
https://www.techopedia.com/amd-vs-intel-which-processor-is-better

HP & AMD make for a good PC experience. True story. 👍

Anyone who wants to know. Today is the day if you want to find a good deal on computers. Good luck.

You are kind of on your own regarding Acer, I am not now, nor have I ever been a fan of that brand. Still, it will be your computer, for you to use, as you need, so if you feel it is a better deal, then go for it. 😊

Prime Day ends by Midnight tonight. Better hurry~ 😇

Hi there, after my ugly experience with an macbook air 2019, I got myself a Surface Laptop 4 which is very stylish, light and efficient, and has one of the most smooth keyboard I ever owned. I got the one with 16 gb of memory and almost never gets unresponsive. I use it 8 hours a day for my office work.

I know now there is the new version Laptop 5, but if you want to save some money, maybe you could still find the old version which is very nice.

I'll be selling my mac soon. I had a taste of Arm for 1 year and will never ever take x86-64 ever again. I had a very bad experience with hp in terms of battery life (and plus with the connection to what's happening in the world now)... Will buy one of thoes copilot plus pc today.

That is when I will go ARM. Otherwise, I can agree with you that ARM is very nice for productivity and entertainment consumption. 😀

I know it's something to do with computers but that's about it.

Ok quick history lesson for the class. The old x86 processors, which are still around today, began in the late 1970s. In the early 80s, a team at UCLA Berkley realized that the old x86 processors were not really utilizing all of the predefined instructions coded into the processors, called 'instruction sets'. So they developed somthing called Reduced Instruction Set Computer, or R. I. S. C, (pronounced 'risk').

Fast forward to the now, and we have Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer Machines, or Advanced RISC Machines, or simply 'ARM'.

These are essentially the same type of processor found in smart phones and tablets.

Computer developers have learned how to integrate the tech into our mainstream computers, and thus we have ARM computers.

isn't technology exciting?

Here is an article for you to peruse, if you fancy:
https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/linux/what-is-arm-processor

To put it simply, ARM chipsets are processors integrated or built into the motherboard. They have far less instruction sets as the x86 or x64 processors, and are therefore much faster with far better battery use. Which is why M-series macs can go all day long.

At least, in theory. 😉

But from reading here you guys don't agree that these batteries go for a long time?

I'm not really bothered for me as I very rarely use my laptop off of charge but it's an interesting disgussion to be had.

Oh and the co pilot button is interesting, if it allows you to speak to the thing I might care a bit more but a button to bring up a thing that might be accessible on Monday but not on Tuesday? No thanks.

Plus I honestly just don't use it, now if they get gpt 4 o involved then that might be actually useful.

I think the argument is that x86 and x64 architecture are more of a battery drain than ARM architecture. ARM tends to be very, very battery efficient, and therefore you can do more for longer.

My only issue with ARM is lack of gaming support. That is just me, well, and every other gamer-centric person out there. 😇

As for AI, I don't use it as much as some of the zealots on here. I do not have a problem with the existence of AI, or what can be accomplished with it, I just don't feel the need to turn to AI to think for me. 😝

Agreed. +10000000. Thus, I'm not angry as many people about every device not getting Apple's version of AI in the fall. Frankly, other than maybe better voiceover image descriptions or something like that, I could care less.

Exactly why I am quite content to run an iPhone SE3. Though i will say, if the YouTube videos are to be believed, the iPhone SE4 is shaping up to be interesting. 😎

I am more a fan of the sleek form factor of the older iPhones such as the current SE models. My disdain regarding the current form factor of iPhone goes back to December of last year. I have posted about this here on AppleVis, but to summarize:
1. Bought a brand new iPhone 15 Pro in Dec. 2023.
2. Roughly 2 weeks later, the iPhone overheated and bricked.
3. Returned it and received a same day replacement. This was Jan. 2024.
4. Same thing happened about a week or so later, if memory serves.
5. Said, 'f**k it', and refunded and got myself an iPhone SE3.

As the 15 Pro was originally an upgrade from an iPhone SE2, the SE3 was a no-brainer for me. 🤷

I know quite a few people, both here and in the really real world, who own an iPhone 15, and have no issues. Good on them, but I personally will never own an iphone 15 again, and will be extremely skeptical going forward when it is, once again, time to upgrade my iPhone. 😩

@Brian, my SE3 comes in today! Not gunna lie, pretty excited. I also have been hearing rumors about the SE4, and look forward to that one. I do really like face id and no home button, but it is not a big deal to me either way. Both ways work incredibly well.

After your Galaxy S22, the size of this new iPhone is going to break your brain. It will seem so incredibly thin, and it is. Yet it packs a pretty decent punch for something so compact.

Fact is, I can hold my iPhone in a tee shirt pocket; case and all.

not something I really do, but the point remains.

I am sure you will be satisfied with your purchase. When the SE4 is released and you upgrade, I am sure as well that you will be glad you got to experience the SE3 for a time. 😉

Bro, I thought BSI would continue to give me fits, but no, not at all, and on iOS 18 it's even better. Still not sure how the battery will hold up. I can't really qualify it based on usage so far today, since I did all the system setup, installed the beta, all that fun stuff which tends to drain it more than normal. Tomorrow at the gym will be my first good test.

Do whatever you do on a smart device, for at least a solid week (7 days), then make your decision on how good or bad you feel the battery is. Oh, and yeah, downloading/installing an entire OS is a battery slayer.

True story. 😜

With Windows 11, we get three battery settings, High power efficiency, balanced, and best performance, plus a "reduced footprint "recommendation screen within the settings app.
If you choose all of the recommended "reduced footprint" options, you will have superior battery life, I mean really, really superior. The one downside to this is that when the laptop is closed, not necessarily powered off, just lid closed, you can't use any of the ports because when the lids closed they kind of shut off. At least, that has been my experience when attempting to charge a pair of Bluetooth earbuds using my laptop, with the settings.

However, if you do the "reduced footprint" settings, but leave the battery settings on "balanced", you will still get superior battery life, but have access to your ports when the lid is closed. I find I still get really, really decent battery life, and I use my laptop for a lot of stuff. Gaming, streaming media such as Netflix and YouTube, not to mention listening to podcasts. Yes I am weird, I listen to podcast on my computer rather than my iPhone.

Don't judge me… 😃

Also, I use my laptop for schoolwork, as I am currently working through a six month certification program for network engineering through Cisco Networking Academy. 🥳

Hi,
As I mentioned in another post, I'm starting to dislike HP. Despite the battery life being quite good, the rubber strip on the bottom has completely come off, it doesn't stick anymore, and it has started to fall apart and displace the adhesive strip, making it extremely difficult to reattach. I suspect it began to come off due to the insanely high temperatures it randomly reaches at times, and it huffs as if it’s doing something crazy like training an LLM or something, which makes me furious since I've have it for just over a year.
But in terms of performance, it's excellent; it rarely stuttered except for NVDA itself, and it has very stable performance.
Has anyone experienced the same as me?
Best regards.

While I cannot be certain without having someone with sight do a diagnostics on your machine, I would contribute the over heating to your processor. Intel are known for over heating and for said over heating to cause battery bulging.

Apologies as I do not know the correct term for that, but it is where the over heating literally causes the battery to swell up and that can lead to all kinds of weirdness.

For example, my old MBP is Intel-based, and the bottom of the case has, what can only be described as, a baby bump. 😖

City Girl said,
"Because you’ve been so helpful, I’ll give you a reprieve on that whole listening to podcasts on your computer thing. A bit strange, but you do you."

Brian's response,
😝

Thank you, that is all. 🙇

I just got a Surface Laptop 7 with the Snapdragon X Plus at the end of June, and I'm very impressed. All the software I want to run works just fine, including audio games. I have a desktop with an i9-12900K and an NVIDIA RTX3060 if I want to play video games like The Last of Us I.

I'm still investigating battery life, but it seems to be very good, particularly if I use battery saver mode. Sadly, Windows isn't an efficient OS, so I'm not sure the claims of 20 hours are accurate unless you use battery saver mode and stick to very basic tasks with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled.
OH, and by the way, I also enjoy consuming media including podcasts on my computer. I don't like touch interfaces, but use them because I have to in this modern era. I'll always prefer a desktop OS with a keyboard or one of the specialized blindness players like the SensePlayer over touch anything. Touch interfaces are accessible, but not at all efficient.

I would not say they are not as efficient. I am to the point where if I could do everything I need to do with an iPad, I totally would. Sadly, though there are apps out there that will technically let you broadcast from an iPad, there's nothing that offers me the level of automation for the iPad I really need. But if it ever happens, I probably could go iPad pro and not need a laptop. I can do audio work on an iPad, and didn't find it all that hard after the first time.

Shame Apple did not include the automation tools that were on Macs, for the iPad. Those used to be amazing for creating automated workflows.

Sadly I do not know the state of automation in today's Mac.

Still, I stand by a previous statement; Windows did things right, when they designed the first Surface Pro. As it is essentially a Desktop and a Tablet all in one. Windows even has both a desktop GUI and a tablet GUI depending on how you use the Surface Pro.

If Apple ever made a MacBook like that, however, I think people would stop buying iPads.

🤷