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The $599 MacBook Neo is Shaking Up the PC Industry: 6 Best Alternatives

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Apple has never really done “affordable.” For decades, the cheapest way into the Mac ecosystem meant spending at least $999, and that was considered a deal. So when the company announced the MacBook Neo at $599, or $499 for students and educators, the reaction wasn’t just surprise. It was something closer to disbelief. This is the same Apple that charges $19 for a polishing cloth, and it just put a laptop on the shelf for less than most people’s monthly rent.

It’s not an accident or a moment of generosity. The MacBook Neo is a deliberate move into a market segment Apple has ignored for years: the budget laptop buyer. Students, first-time Mac users, families on tighter budgets. These are the people who’ve been defaulting to Chromebooks and cheap Windows machines, not because they preferred them, but because a Mac was simply out of reach. Apple just changed that math, and the PC industry is already scrambling to respond.

Designer: Apple

More Than a Fresh Coat of Paint

The Neo comes in four colors: blush, indigo, silver, and a sharp citrus yellow. The colors even extend to the Magic Keyboard in lighter shades and matching wallpapers, which is a level of cohesion you genuinely don’t see at this price point in Windows hardware. The aluminum enclosure weighs 2.7 pounds, and the 13-inch Liquid Retina display runs at 2408-by-1506 resolution with 500 nits of brightness, outpacing most competing devices in this segment by a considerable margin. Combine that with up to 16 hours of battery life, and the headline specs read like a mid-range laptop, not an entry-level one.

The chip underneath all of that is the A18 Pro, the same processor that powered the iPhone 16 Pro in 2024. That’s where the picture gets a bit more nuanced. It’s definitely more than enough for web browsing, document editing, streaming, casual photo editing, and AI tasks. What it isn’t is a creative workstation. This machine is fanless, silent, and cool-running, but it isn’t going to replace even a MacBook Air for serious video work or sustained heavy computation. Apple has been honest about that positioning, and the spec sheet backs it up.

There are also a few caveats beyond the silicon. There’s no backlit keyboard on the base $599 model, which feels like an odd omission in 2026. Fast charging isn’t supported either, with only a 20W USB-C adapter in the box. The connectivity is minimal: one USB 3 port (USB-C) and one USB 2 port (USB-C), the latter topping out at 480Mb/s, which is slow enough to matter if you regularly move large files. No Thunderbolt. No MagSafe. Touch ID is exclusive to the $699 model. These are deliberate subtractions, not oversights, designed to protect the MacBook Air’s value proposition while keeping the Neo’s cost down.

Road Once Traveled: Windows RT

Before getting too swept up in the novelty of the MacBook Neo, it’s worth remembering that the idea of an affordable, ARM-based portable computer aimed at everyday users isn’t new. Microsoft tried exactly this in 2012 with Windows RT, a version of Windows designed to run on ARM chips and released alongside the original Surface tablet. The pitch was appealing: a sleek, efficient, battery-friendly device that could handle the basics and connect to the broader Windows world.

The fact that it failed is pretty much part of history by now. The core problem wasn’t the hardware or even the concept: it was the software. Windows RT looked and felt like Windows but couldn’t run traditional Windows desktop applications. It was a watered-down experience wearing a familiar face, and users who expected full Windows compatibility found themselves stranded. The app ecosystem didn’t materialize fast enough, either, and Microsoft eventually abandoned the platform. Windows on ARM has continued in various forms since then, but it’s never fully shaken the baggage of that first failed attempt.

Apple, by contrast, spent years laying groundwork before making its ARM leap. When the company transitioned the entire Mac lineup to Apple Silicon starting in 2020, it didn’t ask developers to build for a new platform overnight. The Rosetta 2 translation layer handled legacy Intel apps smoothly from day one, and Apple had spent over a decade pushing developers toward modern APIs and frameworks through iOS. By the time the A18 Pro landed inside a $599 laptop, the software ecosystem was already there waiting for it. The MacBook Neo doesn’t run a restricted version of macOS. It runs full macOS Tahoe, with access to the same App Store and the same apps as any other Mac, and that is the fundamental difference that Microsoft was never able to bridge with Windows RT.

The best alternatives if the MacBook Neo isn’t for you

The MacBook Neo sets a new standard for what a $600 laptop can look and feel like. That said, it’s not the right machine for everyone. If you’re committed to Windows, need more RAM, prefer a larger display, or simply aren’t ready to switch ecosystems, there are some solid alternatives worth considering in the same price range.

Acer Swift Go 14 (SFG14-73)

The Acer Swift Go 14 is one of the more compelling Windows options at this price point, running on an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor with integrated Intel Arc graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. That’s double the storage of the base Neo for roughly the same $600 price. The bigger draw is the display: a 14-inch OLED panel at 2880×1800 resolution, which is genuinely excellent for a laptop in this category and makes the Swift Go a strong pick for anyone who consumes a lot of media.

Designer: Acer

The trade-offs can’t be ignored, though. Battery life comes in around 8.5 hours, which is significantly shorter than the Neo’s 16-hour rating, and it weighs about 2.87 pounds in a larger chassis. It’s also a somewhat older-gen model, and that sweet price tag is only available in select retailers. If you want a bigger, sharper screen and don’t mind carrying a charger more often, the Swift Go earns a serious look.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 (15″, AMD)

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 5 punches above its price with a more generous hardware loadout than the Neo: an AMD Ryzen 5 8540 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, all available around the $500 price point. Lenovo also tends to make the best keyboards in the budget Windows space, and this one continues that tradition.

Designer: Lenovo

Where it falls short is predictable. The display is a 15-inch 1920×1200 IPS panel, which is perfectly functional but a noticeable step down from the Neo’s Liquid Retina screen in terms of sharpness and color. The battery life is what you’d expect from a Windows laptop. It won’t make you smile when you pull it out of a bag the way the Neo will, but if raw specs-per-dollar is the priority, the IdeaPad Slim 3 is a difficult machine to argue against.

HP OmniBook 5 (BA1056NR)

HP’s OmniBook 5 positions itself as an entry-level everyday laptop with pricing that frequently dips below $650, giving it a clear edge over the Neo in pure cost. It runs on modest Intel hardware, comes with a generous serving of 16GB of RAM, and is built primarily for email, web browsing, document editing, and video calls, the exact workload profile Apple says the Neo is designed for. Battery life is rated respectably, and the keyboard and trackpad are comfortable enough for extended daily use.

Designer: HP

The honest version of this recommendation comes with a caveat: the OmniBook 5 doesn’t compete with the Neo on display quality, build materials, or software longevity. The screen is a standard 16-inch 1080p IPS panel in a plastic chassis, and it runs Windows on Intel Core 5 silicon, which is a much older generation than today’s selection. It makes sense as a pure budget play if the price tag is still a stretch, but going in with eyes open about what those savings cost you is important.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (CP714-1H-54UB)

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is one of the more capable Chromebooks available around the $530 mark with a discount ($699 in full), and it brings a feature the Neo completely lacks: a touchscreen. Running on an Intel Core Ultra 5 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, it matches the Neo’s base memory and storage configuration while adding 2-in-1 convertibility and a 14-inch IPS display at 1920×1200. For students, especially, the tent and tablet modes open up use cases that a standard clamshell laptop can’t cover.

Designer: Acer

The limitations are ChromeOS itself, which has narrowed the gap with full desktop operating systems considerably but still trails macOS and Windows for professional app compatibility. Battery life is advertised to be around 10 hours, shorter than the Neo but solid for a school day. At 3.21 lbs, it’s heavier and physically larger, and the display is a step behind the Neo in resolution and color quality. For someone already in the Google ecosystem, though, this is the sharpest Chromebook rival to the Neo in this price window.

Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (ChromeOS)

Lenovo’s Chromebook Plus 14 is the premium option in the ChromeOS space, and its headline feature is the display: a 14-inch 1920×1200 OLED panel with touchscreen support at a price of $749. For a Chromebook, that’s genuinely unusual hardware, and the screen quality puts it ahead of most of the Windows competition in this tier. It also supports Wi-Fi 7, runs on an Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 chip with 16GB of RAM, and offers a build quality noticeably above the typical Chromebook standard.

Designer: Lenovo

The case for it over the Neo comes down to ecosystem preference. If Google Docs, YouTube, and Android apps cover your workflow, the Chromebook Plus 14 delivers a premium screen and a refined experience for less money than a MacBook Air. If you need desktop-class software, the ceiling becomes apparent quickly. ChromeOS has matured, but it still hits walls that macOS doesn’t. This is the Chromebook that makes you reconsider the category, not the one that makes you forget its limitations entirely.

Refurbished MacBook Air M1

It feels slightly odd to list an older Mac as an alternative to a newer Mac, but the refurbished MacBook Air M1 is worth the mention. Available through Apple’s certified refurbished store, third-party retailers, and resellers, the M1 Air frequently surfaces in the $600 to $700 range and represents a considerable step up from the Neo in several areas. The M1 chip is more capable than the A18 Pro for sustained workloads, it has MagSafe-era USB-C with Thunderbolt support, and it comes with 8 to 16GB of unified memory in the base configuration with a more mature, battle-tested macOS optimization story.

The catch is that you’re buying hardware from 2020, and Apple’s software support timeline means the M1 will eventually age out of macOS updates before a Neo purchased today will. For someone who wants macOS and a bit more headroom without stepping up to the $1,099 MacBook Air M5, the refurbished M1 is a pragmatic option rather than an inspired one. It gets the job done, but it doesn’t have the new colors, and the MacBook Neo, despite its compromises, is the more forward-looking machine.

Wake-up call

Affordable Windows laptops and Chromebooks have never been in short supply. The problem has always been that most of them require accepting significant compromises: dim displays, plastic chassis that creak, battery life that barely lasts a workday, or chips so underpowered that the experience degrades within a year of purchase. Many of the more appealing options in this segment come from lesser-known manufacturers, which brings its own concerns around software support and build reliability over time.

What the MacBook Neo does is reframe the question the PC industry has been comfortable not asking. ARM-based Windows laptops have existed for years, and the Snapdragon X series has made genuine progress, but Windows on ARM still hasn’t found the cultural moment that would turn it into a mainstream category. The Neo’s arrival and the reaction to it suggest that the market for a well-made, genuinely affordable computer aimed at students and everyday users is larger than the industry has been willing to address seriously. Apple just walked in and asked whether cheap and simple was enough, or whether those buyers might actually want something better.

The post The $599 MacBook Neo is Shaking Up the PC Industry: 6 Best Alternatives first appeared on Yanko Design.

Microsoft Broke the Only Thing That Actually Mattered

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Any tech nerd knows the unspoken contract that comes with being the only tech-literate person in the family. You get texts when someone’s laptop is slow, called over during the holidays to fix the router, and consulted every eighteen months when someone needs a new phone or computer. For years, the laptop question had a clean, confident answer: a Windows machine. Cheap entry points, massive software compatibility, games that actually run, no walled gardens, no ecosystem hostage situations, and enough flexibility that even a non-technical person could figure out the basics without feeling like they’d violated a terms of service agreement. But the last time someone asked me what laptop to get, I paused. For a good minute I asked myself, should I even recommend Windows anymore?

That pause is new, and it carries weight that no benchmark score or spec sheet can explain. The designated family tech person has historically been one of the most reliable organic distribution channels Windows ever had, recommending the same platform generation after generation because it worked, it was accessible, and there was nothing obviously better for normal people at a reasonable price. When that person hesitates, the platform has a problem. Microsoft built an empire on being the obvious, low-friction answer to the laptop question, and somewhere between Windows 10 and the Copilot era, they stopped protecting that position. And with Apple dropping a $599 MacBook just last week, that position seems even more in danger.

2024 CrowdStrike Outage

The OS that holds civilization together

Windows runs somewhere between 72 and 73 percent of the world’s desktops, and while that’s an impressive monopoly, it completely ignores the critical systems where Windows is actually even more prevalent and essential. Hospital admission systems, ATM networks, military command infrastructure, government offices, court systems, school networks, and banking operations across virtually every country on earth run on Windows. These institutions did not choose Windows out of preference; they are locked in through decades of infrastructure investment, software dependencies, and training costs that make switching systemically impractical at scale. The July 2024 CrowdStrike incident put a specific number on what this dependency looks like under pressure: one faulty content update to a single Windows security tool simultaneously bricked approximately 8.5 million machines, grounded over 8,500 flights globally, knocked hospital systems offline across multiple countries, and disabled 911 call centers across several US states. One third-party software layer, one bad update, and the operational skeleton of modern civic life visibly buckled.

That is the platform Microsoft has been treating as a vehicle for AI feature experiments. Recall, the AI tool Microsoft attempted to ship as part of Windows 11, worked by screenshotting the user’s screen every few seconds and storing those images locally to build a searchable timeline of everything they had ever done on the machine. Security researchers flagged it almost immediately as a catastrophic privacy liability: a permanent, silent, queryable record of every document, message, and webpage the screen had ever displayed. Microsoft paused the rollout after a fierce public backlash, but the revealing fact is that Recall cleared internal review in the first place. The teams approving that feature were not thinking about hospital clerks processing patient records, lawyers working with privileged communications, or government employees handling sensitive data. They were building a keynote demo.

The market is responding accordingly

Microsoft ended official Windows 10 support in October 2025, cutting off security patches for what was still the most widely used version of the OS. Months of upgrade campaigns, notification banners, and every available form of institutional pressure followed. The result: as of December 2025, Windows 10 sits at 44.68% market share and actually gained users after support ended, while Windows 11 dropped from 55.18% in October to 50.73% in December, shedding over four percentage points in two months while the officially dead OS clawed back ground. People are choosing to run a security-vulnerable, unsupported operating system rather than upgrade to the one Microsoft actively maintains, and that is not technophobia or inertia. It is a calculated judgment, made by millions of users independently, that the known risks of the old version beat the unknown risks of moving to the new one.

The TPM 2.0 hardware requirement blocked installation on millions of perfectly functional machines with no meaningful performance justification for everyday users, which meant the upgrade conversation started with resentment before it ever got to features. First-boot setup funnels new users toward a Microsoft account, with the offline bypass buried past the point where most non-technical people will ever find it. OneDrive integration sits deep enough in the OS that users regularly discover their Desktop files have been syncing to the cloud without understanding when or how they agreed to that. A fresh Windows 11 install in 2026 ships with TikTok, Instagram, Disney+, and a collection of Microsoft’s own unfinished apps pre-pinned to the Start menu, none of them arriving with any user consent. Copilot, which no consumer demand survey had identified as a priority, now appears in the OS sidebar, the taskbar, and since 2024, as a dedicated hardware key on new laptops, occupying real estate where a key with actual utility used to live.

Running alongside all of that is a separate update quality crisis that has been building its own track record. A January 2026 security update caused boot failures on certain Windows 11 machines, with Microsoft eventually tracing the issue to a botched December 2025 update that had left affected devices in what they diplomatically described as an “improper state.” An October 2025 security update broke VPN networking for enterprise users running OpenVPN and Cisco Secure Client, a bug that carried through the December patch cycle without a clean resolution. Security updates, the category Microsoft explicitly tells users they cannot afford to skip, became a threat to system stability in their own right. When the patch and the problem are indistinguishable from each other, the trust issue has moved well past inconvenience.

A modified version of a comic by Manu Cornet

Nadella is a great CEO. Just not for desktop operating systems.

Satya Nadella took Microsoft’s stock from roughly $35 in 2014 to over $400 at its peak, killed the Nokia disaster before it could fully metastasize, repositioned the entire company around cloud infrastructure, and placed an early bet on OpenAI when AI was still considered expensive academic theater. Azure’s consistent 30%-plus year-over-year growth commands complete executive attention and pulls the best engineering talent in the building toward it like gravity. By any honest standard corporate metric, Nadella’s Microsoft is a legitimate turnaround story, and the shareholder returns are not fabricated. But Nadella is a cloud and enterprise person at his core, and consumer Windows is a mature product in a saturated market, which in corporate strategy language translates cleanly to “managed asset.” The product that generates excitement gets the architects and the product visionaries; the one that just needs to keep working gets whoever is left after that allocation is done.

Paul Thurrott, who has covered Microsoft longer than most of the current Windows team has worked there, documented what that organizational reality looks like in practice. He wrote that Microsoft “relegated Windows to a backwater world led by B-teamers as the brightest minds at the company moved onto more lucrative career opportunities in Azure and AI.” That is an organizational autopsy, not editorial frustration, and it explains the product trajectory better than any feature changelog can. The talent followed the money and the excitement, and what remained shipped a redesigned Start menu nobody requested, a Copilot key nobody asked for, and a feature that the security community identified as dangerous within hours of its public announcement. The B-team does not ship bad decisions out of malice; they ship them because nobody senior enough to stop them is paying attention.

This pattern has a name

Nadella did not invent this behavioral tendency; it recurs reliably enough across modern tech to qualify as its own CEO archetype. Elon Musk built Tesla into the most culturally significant car company on earth, then spent the better part of two years fixated on Twitter, rebranding it to X, eliminating roughly 80% of staff, and torching advertiser relationships that took years to build, while Tesla’s stock dropped roughly 40% in the first quarter of 2025 alone. Now, he’s discontinued two Tesla models permanently while focusing efforts on an extremely polarizing AI chatbot. Mark Zuckerberg committed somewhere between $40 and $50 billion to the metaverse between 2021 and 2023, a virtual world that peaked at approximately 300,000 daily active users on Meta Horizon Worlds, before quietly pivoting to AI and becoming a public figure most associated with jiu-jitsu tournaments. The pattern is consistent enough to have a shape: a CEO builds something genuinely dominant, gets pulled toward the next big technological narrative, and hands the original product to the maintenance crew while energy and capital chase the new story. The difference with Nadella is the scale of what he handed off.

What separates his case from Musk and Zuckerberg is that he did not get distracted from Windows. He consciously stripped it for parts. Azure and AI received the budget, the senior talent pipeline, and the executive attention. Windows received the downstream output of that redistribution: mandatory AI integrations nobody requested, hardware specifications designed around Microsoft’s AI keynote roadmap rather than user needs, and a product direction driven more by investor narrative than by any user research that has ever been made public. The ordinary people buying $400 laptops are absorbing the cost of that sacrifice. The shareholders benefiting from Azure’s quarterly growth numbers are not.

Enshittification, documented

Cory Doctorow’s enshittification framework describes a platform lifecycle: start good for users, degrade toward serving business partners, then degrade further to extract maximum value for shareholders at everyone else’s expense. Windows 11 maps cleanly onto the third stage. The Start menu was rebuilt from scratch for the Windows 11 launch, stripping out Live Tiles that users had configured over years and replacing them with a static grid that is less functional and harder to customize, with no usability gain justifying the regression. Drag-and-drop onto taskbar applications was removed entirely at launch and only partially restored after months of sustained community pressure. Windows 11 originally shipped without the ability to right-click the taskbar to open Task Manager, a function that had existed since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996, and whose removal was not a redesign decision so much as evidence that nobody tested the product against the habits of actual users.

Control Panel, introduced in 1985, and the modern Settings app, first introduced in 2012 with Windows 8, still coexist in parallel inside Windows 11 in 2026. Basic system configuration requires jumping between both because neither is complete on its own, and the logic governing which settings live in which interface has never been consistently explained or resolved. Thirteen years of two competing tools sharing the same OS, and Microsoft never cared enough about the end-user experience to finish the job. This is not a legacy oversight or a technical debt problem that nobody knows how to solve. It is a choice, visible in its incompleteness, that reveals how little Windows product ownership has mattered to anyone with the authority to demand better.

Where this leaves ordinary people

Windows remains the most practical OS for most consumers, and that matters because it means there is no clean exit for the people being failed by it. MacOS is polished and stable but paternalistic by design: Apple creates deliberate friction around installing software from outside its ecosystem, the interface carries a genuine learning curve for anyone transitioning from Windows, and a MacBook Air M4 starts at $1,099 against a capable Windows laptop at around $400. Sure you can buy the $599 MacBook Neo too, but it’s genuinely less of a laptop and more of a netbook. The price difference between a regular MacBook and a similarly spec’d Windows laptop is not marginal in most of the world, particularly in the markets where Windows adoption is highest. Linux is genuinely improving year over year and deserves acknowledgment for it, but recommending Ubuntu to a non-technical family member invites more trouble than relief. The alternatives exist, but they serve a different user than the one who has to ask for a laptop recommendation.

A regular person can still buy an affordable Windows machine, install whatever software they want, run games across a hardware range that nothing else matches, plug in any peripheral without a compatibility interrogation, and operate without being treated as a security risk for opening a file from outside a curated store. Microsoft is eroding that value proposition methodically, one forced integration at a time, but the erosion has not yet reached full collapse. As of early 2026, reporting suggests Microsoft is pulling back from the AI-everywhere approach in Windows and refocusing on core stability, with Paul Thurrott describing the shift as “something happened,” which from a journalist who has spent years documenting Windows’ decline with the exhausted precision of someone watching a building settle incorrectly reads as cautious acknowledgment rather than optimism. Whether that represents genuine reprioritization or noise management ahead of a Windows 12 announcement nobody has officially confirmed is the question worth watching.

Rebuilding trust after Recall, after a year of destabilizing updates, after years of treating the world’s most consequential operating system as a demo environment for products the market never asked for, takes considerably longer than a few stable patches and a tonal reset in engineering blog posts. The millions of people still on Windows 10, knowingly running an unsupported OS past its expiration date, made a rational call: the known risks of yesterday’s software beat the unpredictable risks of an OS whose roadmap is driven by whatever Microsoft needs to show investors next quarter. That is not the normal frustration cycle where users grumble and eventually upgrade. It is a trust deficit built through years of consistent bad decisions, and a few good patch cycles will not close it. The easiest tech recommendation in the world has become a pause, and the people responsible for that pause are too deep in Azure dashboards to understand what it actually costs.

The post Microsoft Broke the Only Thing That Actually Mattered first appeared on Yanko Design.

Microsoft Broke the Only Thing That Actually Mattered

Posted on by

Any tech nerd knows the unspoken contract that comes with being the only tech-literate person in the family. You get texts when someone’s laptop is slow, called over during the holidays to fix the router, and consulted every eighteen months when someone needs a new phone or computer. For years, the laptop question had a clean, confident answer: a Windows machine. Cheap entry points, massive software compatibility, games that actually run, no walled gardens, no ecosystem hostage situations, and enough flexibility that even a non-technical person could figure out the basics without feeling like they’d violated a terms of service agreement. But the last time someone asked me what laptop to get, I paused. For a good minute I asked myself, should I even recommend Windows anymore?

That pause is new, and it carries weight that no benchmark score or spec sheet can explain. The designated family tech person has historically been one of the most reliable organic distribution channels Windows ever had, recommending the same platform generation after generation because it worked, it was accessible, and there was nothing obviously better for normal people at a reasonable price. When that person hesitates, the platform has a problem. Microsoft built an empire on being the obvious, low-friction answer to the laptop question, and somewhere between Windows 10 and the Copilot era, they stopped protecting that position. And with Apple dropping a $599 MacBook just last week, that position seems even more in danger.

2024 CrowdStrike Outage

The OS that holds civilization together

Windows runs somewhere between 72 and 73 percent of the world’s desktops, and while that’s an impressive monopoly, it completely ignores the critical systems where Windows is actually even more prevalent and essential. Hospital admission systems, ATM networks, military command infrastructure, government offices, court systems, school networks, and banking operations across virtually every country on earth run on Windows. These institutions did not choose Windows out of preference; they are locked in through decades of infrastructure investment, software dependencies, and training costs that make switching systemically impractical at scale. The July 2024 CrowdStrike incident put a specific number on what this dependency looks like under pressure: one faulty content update to a single Windows security tool simultaneously bricked approximately 8.5 million machines, grounded over 8,500 flights globally, knocked hospital systems offline across multiple countries, and disabled 911 call centers across several US states. One third-party software layer, one bad update, and the operational skeleton of modern civic life visibly buckled.

That is the platform Microsoft has been treating as a vehicle for AI feature experiments. Recall, the AI tool Microsoft attempted to ship as part of Windows 11, worked by screenshotting the user’s screen every few seconds and storing those images locally to build a searchable timeline of everything they had ever done on the machine. Security researchers flagged it almost immediately as a catastrophic privacy liability: a permanent, silent, queryable record of every document, message, and webpage the screen had ever displayed. Microsoft paused the rollout after a fierce public backlash, but the revealing fact is that Recall cleared internal review in the first place. The teams approving that feature were not thinking about hospital clerks processing patient records, lawyers working with privileged communications, or government employees handling sensitive data. They were building a keynote demo.

The market is responding accordingly

Microsoft ended official Windows 10 support in October 2025, cutting off security patches for what was still the most widely used version of the OS. Months of upgrade campaigns, notification banners, and every available form of institutional pressure followed. The result: as of December 2025, Windows 10 sits at 44.68% market share and actually gained users after support ended, while Windows 11 dropped from 55.18% in October to 50.73% in December, shedding over four percentage points in two months while the officially dead OS clawed back ground. People are choosing to run a security-vulnerable, unsupported operating system rather than upgrade to the one Microsoft actively maintains, and that is not technophobia or inertia. It is a calculated judgment, made by millions of users independently, that the known risks of the old version beat the unknown risks of moving to the new one.

The TPM 2.0 hardware requirement blocked installation on millions of perfectly functional machines with no meaningful performance justification for everyday users, which meant the upgrade conversation started with resentment before it ever got to features. First-boot setup funnels new users toward a Microsoft account, with the offline bypass buried past the point where most non-technical people will ever find it. OneDrive integration sits deep enough in the OS that users regularly discover their Desktop files have been syncing to the cloud without understanding when or how they agreed to that. A fresh Windows 11 install in 2026 ships with TikTok, Instagram, Disney+, and a collection of Microsoft’s own unfinished apps pre-pinned to the Start menu, none of them arriving with any user consent. Copilot, which no consumer demand survey had identified as a priority, now appears in the OS sidebar, the taskbar, and since 2024, as a dedicated hardware key on new laptops, occupying real estate where a key with actual utility used to live.

Running alongside all of that is a separate update quality crisis that has been building its own track record. A January 2026 security update caused boot failures on certain Windows 11 machines, with Microsoft eventually tracing the issue to a botched December 2025 update that had left affected devices in what they diplomatically described as an “improper state.” An October 2025 security update broke VPN networking for enterprise users running OpenVPN and Cisco Secure Client, a bug that carried through the December patch cycle without a clean resolution. Security updates, the category Microsoft explicitly tells users they cannot afford to skip, became a threat to system stability in their own right. When the patch and the problem are indistinguishable from each other, the trust issue has moved well past inconvenience.

A modified version of a comic by Manu Cornet

Nadella is a great CEO. Just not for desktop operating systems.

Satya Nadella took Microsoft’s stock from roughly $35 in 2014 to over $400 at its peak, killed the Nokia disaster before it could fully metastasize, repositioned the entire company around cloud infrastructure, and placed an early bet on OpenAI when AI was still considered expensive academic theater. Azure’s consistent 30%-plus year-over-year growth commands complete executive attention and pulls the best engineering talent in the building toward it like gravity. By any honest standard corporate metric, Nadella’s Microsoft is a legitimate turnaround story, and the shareholder returns are not fabricated. But Nadella is a cloud and enterprise person at his core, and consumer Windows is a mature product in a saturated market, which in corporate strategy language translates cleanly to “managed asset.” The product that generates excitement gets the architects and the product visionaries; the one that just needs to keep working gets whoever is left after that allocation is done.

Paul Thurrott, who has covered Microsoft longer than most of the current Windows team has worked there, documented what that organizational reality looks like in practice. He wrote that Microsoft “relegated Windows to a backwater world led by B-teamers as the brightest minds at the company moved onto more lucrative career opportunities in Azure and AI.” That is an organizational autopsy, not editorial frustration, and it explains the product trajectory better than any feature changelog can. The talent followed the money and the excitement, and what remained shipped a redesigned Start menu nobody requested, a Copilot key nobody asked for, and a feature that the security community identified as dangerous within hours of its public announcement. The B-team does not ship bad decisions out of malice; they ship them because nobody senior enough to stop them is paying attention.

This pattern has a name

Nadella did not invent this behavioral tendency; it recurs reliably enough across modern tech to qualify as its own CEO archetype. Elon Musk built Tesla into the most culturally significant car company on earth, then spent the better part of two years fixated on Twitter, rebranding it to X, eliminating roughly 80% of staff, and torching advertiser relationships that took years to build, while Tesla’s stock dropped roughly 40% in the first quarter of 2025 alone. Now, he’s discontinued two Tesla models permanently while focusing efforts on an extremely polarizing AI chatbot. Mark Zuckerberg committed somewhere between $40 and $50 billion to the metaverse between 2021 and 2023, a virtual world that peaked at approximately 300,000 daily active users on Meta Horizon Worlds, before quietly pivoting to AI and becoming a public figure most associated with jiu-jitsu tournaments. The pattern is consistent enough to have a shape: a CEO builds something genuinely dominant, gets pulled toward the next big technological narrative, and hands the original product to the maintenance crew while energy and capital chase the new story. The difference with Nadella is the scale of what he handed off.

What separates his case from Musk and Zuckerberg is that he did not get distracted from Windows. He consciously stripped it for parts. Azure and AI received the budget, the senior talent pipeline, and the executive attention. Windows received the downstream output of that redistribution: mandatory AI integrations nobody requested, hardware specifications designed around Microsoft’s AI keynote roadmap rather than user needs, and a product direction driven more by investor narrative than by any user research that has ever been made public. The ordinary people buying $400 laptops are absorbing the cost of that sacrifice. The shareholders benefiting from Azure’s quarterly growth numbers are not.

Enshittification, documented

Cory Doctorow’s enshittification framework describes a platform lifecycle: start good for users, degrade toward serving business partners, then degrade further to extract maximum value for shareholders at everyone else’s expense. Windows 11 maps cleanly onto the third stage. The Start menu was rebuilt from scratch for the Windows 11 launch, stripping out Live Tiles that users had configured over years and replacing them with a static grid that is less functional and harder to customize, with no usability gain justifying the regression. Drag-and-drop onto taskbar applications was removed entirely at launch and only partially restored after months of sustained community pressure. Windows 11 originally shipped without the ability to right-click the taskbar to open Task Manager, a function that had existed since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996, and whose removal was not a redesign decision so much as evidence that nobody tested the product against the habits of actual users.

Control Panel, introduced in 1985, and the modern Settings app, first introduced in 2012 with Windows 8, still coexist in parallel inside Windows 11 in 2026. Basic system configuration requires jumping between both because neither is complete on its own, and the logic governing which settings live in which interface has never been consistently explained or resolved. Thirteen years of two competing tools sharing the same OS, and Microsoft never cared enough about the end-user experience to finish the job. This is not a legacy oversight or a technical debt problem that nobody knows how to solve. It is a choice, visible in its incompleteness, that reveals how little Windows product ownership has mattered to anyone with the authority to demand better.

Where this leaves ordinary people

Windows remains the most practical OS for most consumers, and that matters because it means there is no clean exit for the people being failed by it. MacOS is polished and stable but paternalistic by design: Apple creates deliberate friction around installing software from outside its ecosystem, the interface carries a genuine learning curve for anyone transitioning from Windows, and a MacBook Air M4 starts at $1,099 against a capable Windows laptop at around $400. Sure you can buy the $599 MacBook Neo too, but it’s genuinely less of a laptop and more of a netbook. The price difference between a regular MacBook and a similarly spec’d Windows laptop is not marginal in most of the world, particularly in the markets where Windows adoption is highest. Linux is genuinely improving year over year and deserves acknowledgment for it, but recommending Ubuntu to a non-technical family member invites more trouble than relief. The alternatives exist, but they serve a different user than the one who has to ask for a laptop recommendation.

A regular person can still buy an affordable Windows machine, install whatever software they want, run games across a hardware range that nothing else matches, plug in any peripheral without a compatibility interrogation, and operate without being treated as a security risk for opening a file from outside a curated store. Microsoft is eroding that value proposition methodically, one forced integration at a time, but the erosion has not yet reached full collapse. As of early 2026, reporting suggests Microsoft is pulling back from the AI-everywhere approach in Windows and refocusing on core stability, with Paul Thurrott describing the shift as “something happened,” which from a journalist who has spent years documenting Windows’ decline with the exhausted precision of someone watching a building settle incorrectly reads as cautious acknowledgment rather than optimism. Whether that represents genuine reprioritization or noise management ahead of a Windows 12 announcement nobody has officially confirmed is the question worth watching.

Rebuilding trust after Recall, after a year of destabilizing updates, after years of treating the world’s most consequential operating system as a demo environment for products the market never asked for, takes considerably longer than a few stable patches and a tonal reset in engineering blog posts. The millions of people still on Windows 10, knowingly running an unsupported OS past its expiration date, made a rational call: the known risks of yesterday’s software beat the unpredictable risks of an OS whose roadmap is driven by whatever Microsoft needs to show investors next quarter. That is not the normal frustration cycle where users grumble and eventually upgrade. It is a trust deficit built through years of consistent bad decisions, and a few good patch cycles will not close it. The easiest tech recommendation in the world has become a pause, and the people responsible for that pause are too deep in Azure dashboards to understand what it actually costs.

The post Microsoft Broke the Only Thing That Actually Mattered first appeared on Yanko Design.

The best cheap Windows laptops for 2026

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You don’t need to spend a fortune to get a capable Windows laptop. For everyday tasks like web browsing, writing documents, streaming video or handling schoolwork, a well-chosen budget machine can still deliver a smooth, reliable experience. The challenge is cutting through the noise to find affordable options that balance performance, build quality and battery life without serious compromises.

For many buyers, timing is no longer optional. With Windows 10 support now officially over, upgrading has become a necessity rather than a nice-to-have. The picks below focus on cheap Windows laptops that can handle day-to-day workloads comfortably while keeping you current on software and security updates. If you’re open to spending more for extra power or premium features, our broader guide to the best Windows laptops covers higher-end alternatives as well.

While you can do a lot even when spending little on a Windows laptop, you must set your expectations accordingly. The biggest downside when purchasing a budget laptop (of any kind, really) is limited power. You’ll want to carefully consider a few specs, the most important among them being the processor (CPU). Many Windows laptops under $500 run on Intel Celeron or Pentium chipsets, but you can find some with Core i3/i5 and AMD Ryzen 3/5 CPUs at the higher end of the price spectrum.

We recommend getting the most powerful CPU you can afford because it will dictate how fast the computer will feel overall. Memory (RAM) is also important because, the more you have, the easier it will be for the laptop to manage things like a dozen browser tabs while you edit a Word document and stream music in the background.

When it comes to storage, consider how much you want to save locally. If you primarily work in Google Docs or save most things in the cloud, you may not need a machine with a ton of onboard storage. Just remember that your digital space will also be taken up by apps, so it may be worth getting a little extra storage than you think you need if you know you’ll be downloading big programs. A final side note: solid state drives (SSDs) are ubiquitous at this point, not to mention faster and more efficient than hard drives (HDDs), so we recommend getting a laptop with that type of storage.

As for screens, there’s a healthy mix of HD (720p resolution) and FHD (1080p) options in this price range and we recommend springing for a notebook with a 1080p display if you can. Touchscreens aren’t as common in the budget space as standard panels, but you’ll only really miss one if you get a 2-in-1 laptop.

Before we get to our recommended specs for a cheap Windows laptop, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft clearly lays out the true minimum requirements for any Windows 11 machine. Those include a 1GHz or faster processor that includes two or more cores, at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of available storage space. That’s the bare minimum to run Windows 11; we recommend giving yourself some wiggle room by choosing a machine that will perform well now and for years to come.

  • CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 processors, at minimum

  • RAM: At least 8GB

  • Storage: At least 128GB SSD

  • Screen: At least 1080p FHD

It’s essential to prioritize what’s important to you. But at the lower end of the budget, a good laptop may not offer everything you need, whereas a great one might. Although most machines come with features like Bluetooth, built-in Wi-Fi and additional ports, you might find not all of them come with the specifics you require, like an SD card slot, webcam, charger, and so on. Be sure to check the spec list of any laptop you’re considering before you buy, especially if you need specific connectors and capabilities.

See Also:

As for Copilot+, don’t expect to see much of it on truly affordable Windows laptops just yet. Microsoft’s AI features and Copilot assistant require certain specs to run, namely a powerful neural processing unit (NPU), 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Currently, the cheapest Copilot+ AI PCs will run you about $700, so if you’re willing to pay more for those perks, check out our best laptops guide for more options.

If you’re looking for either a gaming laptop or a “Windows on Arm” laptop, both categories will require you to spend more money than we’re discussing here.

The cheap Windows laptop market moves fast, and — unlike nearly all of our other buying guides — we haven't necessarily tested each specific configuration listed below. However, the combination of these technical specifications and familiar brands represent exactly the sort of entry-level laptops we'd recommend to shoppers in this price range based on our thorough research and expert knowledge.

The best cheap laptop models change all the time. Unlike more expensive, flagship machines, these notebooks can be updated a couple times each year. That can make it hard to track down a specific model at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart or any other retailer. Also, we’ve seen prices vary widely depending on the configuration and retailer you’re looking at.

You can ensure you’re getting a quality laptop by doing a few things. First and foremost, make sure you get a machine that follows the recommended specs we list above. Also, make sure you’re buying from a reputable retailer, including big-box stores like Walmart, Best Buy and Costco, online shops like Amazon or direct manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo and others. If you have a physical store near you (likely a Best Buy in the US), it’s never a bad idea to go play around with some laptops in person before choosing one.

If you decide to shop online from the likes of Amazon or Walmart, double check the seller of the laptop you’re considering. For example, many items on Amazon are “shipped and sold” by Amazon and those are typically the best options. You’ll see that information on Amazon on the right sidebar on a product page, under the Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons. Third-party sellers are common in the affordable laptop space. Amazon sometimes classifies laptop manufacturers as third-party sellers, so you may see a laptop shipped and sold by HP or Dell — that’s a good thing, since it’s coming directly from the manufacturer.

However, there are other third-party electronics sellers out there. We recommend clicking on the third-party seller’s name on Amazon or Walmart (yes, Walmart has them, too) to see how much positive feedback and how many five-star ratings they’ve received from buyers.

You may be inclined to recommend a Chromebook or a tablet to anyone considering a budget Windows laptop computer. Those instincts aren’t wrong, but Chromebooks and tablets aren’t the best buy for everyone. Tablets have the most portability, but they will only work for the most mobile-competent users like kids who have been grabbing smartphones out of their parents’ hands since they’ve been dexterous enough to do so. Tablets can also be just as expensive as some of the cheapest Windows laptops, and that’s without a mouse or keyboard.

Chromebooks are a good alternative for those that basically live in a browser, the trade-off being you must give up the “traditional desktop.” And Chrome OS is a more limited operating system than Windows when it comes to the programs you can install and run.

What can you realistically accomplish on a cheap Windows laptop? Quite a bit, especially if you’re doing one thing (or a limited number of things) at a time. They’re great for everyday tasks like web browsing, checking email, video streaming and more. All of those things can be done on Chromebooks as well, but Windows laptops have a big advantage in Microsoft Office. While yes, there is a browser based version, the native, desktop apps are considered a must have for many and will run smoothly on even the most bare-bones budget laptop. The only caveat is that you may run into some slowdown on low-powered devices if you’re multitasking or working with large data sets in Excel or a lot of photos and graphics in Powerpoint.

When it comes to specs, a bright spot for Windows laptops is storage. Even the most affordable devices tend to have at least a 128GB solid state drive. That will come in handy if you prefer to keep your most important files saved locally on your laptop's hard drive. In contrast, cheaper Chromebooks often have less storage because they’re built on the assumption that you’ll save all of your documents in the cloud. Not only is that less convenient when you need to work offline, but it also limits the size of programs and files that you can download. So, Chromebooks aren't the best for hoarding Netflix shows before a long trip or for use as a gaming laptop.

Windows also has thousands of apps that you can download from its app store. Chromebooks have some Chrome apps, numerous browser extensions and the ability to download Android apps, but quality control is… inconsistent. Android apps, in particular, often haven’t been optimized for Chrome OS, which makes for a wonky user experience. Windows may not have as many apps as Android, but at least the experience is fairly standard across the board.

Windows also gives you the ability to download and use programs from other sources, like direct from the developer. You can run things like Adobe Creative Suite, certain VPNs and programs like GIMP, Audacity and ClipMate on a Windows device, which just isn’t possible on Chrome OS. Chromebooks limit you to the apps and programs in The Play Store and the Chrome Extensions store, reducing any others to unusable, space-sucking icons in your Downloads folder.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/best-affordable-windows-laptops-123000512.html?src=rss

This Phone Runs Android, Linux, and Windows to Replace 3 Computers

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Carrying more computers than you want is familiar. There is a personal phone, maybe a MacBook, and then a separate Windows laptop “just for work” or a Linux box for coding. Phone-as-PC ideas have been floating around for years, but they usually stop at a half-baked desktop mode that feels more like a demo than something you would actually use for hours at a stretch.

NexPhone is an Android 16 handset built on Qualcomm’s QCM6490, a long-term-support chip Qualcomm says will be backed through 2036. That is rare in phone marketing, but it matters when the device is also your computer. It has 12 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage with microSD expansion, a 6.58-inch 120 Hz display, a 5,000 mAh battery, dual rear cameras, dual SIM, wireless charging, and MIL-STD-810H plus IP68/IP69K ruggedization.

Designer: Nex Computing

NexOS lets you treat the phone as three machines in one. On its own, it is a clean Android system with no bloatware. Plug it into a monitor, and you can switch into Android desktop mode or full Debian-based Linux with hardware acceleration, sharing folders between them. If you opt in, you can also boot Windows 11 on Arm, turning the phone into a tiny Windows PC when docked.

NexPhone builds a custom Windows Mobile UI on top of Windows 11, a grid-style launcher inspired by old Windows Phone tiles to make the OS less painful on a small screen. For desktop use, the phone ships with a five-port USB-C hub that fans out to HDMI, keyboard, mouse, and power. Any desk with a monitor becomes your workstation with a single cable, and you pick up at home where you left off at the office.

Windows 11 on Arm still has app compatibility gaps and relies on emulation for many x86 programs, which can hurt performance and battery life. Multi-booting Android, Linux, and Windows adds complexity that appeals to enthusiasts more than casual users. Putting phone, PC, and laptop brain into one device also means a single point of failure, and the rugged build does not remove the need for backups and a fallback plan.

With the optional NexDock laptop shell, you can plug in and get a 14.1-inch display, keyboard, and trackpad in airport lounges or coffee shops without carrying a full laptop. It is designed for people who already juggle multiple OSes and want to consolidate, but not for those hoping to escape complexity. The promise to support the device for a decade is either visionary or risky, depending on how seriously you take startup hardware commitments.

NexPhone is less about convincing everyone to ditch laptops and more about giving the Linux-comfortable, multi-OS crowd a serious shot at carrying one device instead of three. It treats the phone, the OS stack, and the docking experience as one design problem. Whether that holds up depends less on the specs and more on whether the software behaves like three clean experiences instead of one messy compromise.

The post This Phone Runs Android, Linux, and Windows to Replace 3 Computers first appeared on Yanko Design.

ASUS ProArt PZ13 2-in-1 Laptop Review: Portable Partner with Plenty of Potential

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PROS:


  • Handsome, sleek, and minimalist design

  • Lightweight and portable body for creatives on the go

  • Large and long-lasting 70Wh battery

  • Beautiful Pantone-validated 13-inch 3K OLED screen

CONS:


  • Inserted SD card prevents flap cover from closing

  • ASUS Pen 2.0 is a separate $100 purchase

  • Software and peripherals compatibility is still a hit-or-miss


RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The ASUS ProArt PZ13 with Snapdragon X Plus delivers a handsome AI-powered creativity tool that agile creative professionals can take anywhere with confidence and pride.

Life can sometimes take us places we never planned or even dreamed of going to. While some people fear and stress over life’s unpredictable journeys, others have grown to embrace and even love the adventure, both figuratively and literally. Designers, artists, and content creators today have their beloved computers and tools at home or in the office, but they know better than anyone that inspiration can strike when and where we least expect it, not to mention suddenly having to do work just after we stepped outdoors. Laptops were made for this purpose, but their thick and heavy bodies didn’t exactly make for comfortable mobility, while tablets went the opposite extreme and prized portability over the performance that professionals need. The ASUS ProArt PZ13 makes the bold promise of delivering the best of both worlds, so we naturally had to put it to the test to find it out if could really meet the demands and desires of designers and creatives on the go.

Designer: ASUS

Aesthetics

At first glance, you might not think much of the ASUS ProArt PZ13, but closer inspection reveals it has two sides to its design, matching its 2-in-1 detachable laptop functionality. On its own, it’s a rather stylish and striking tablet, black as black, unlike black tablets that look more like “space gray” or other shades. ASUS’s “nano black” coating, also seen on the ASUS ProArt PX13 we reviewed recently, reduces the reflection of light, making it darker than typical metal or plastic surfaces with glossy finishes, no matter the lighting condition or angle. It gives off a professional and elegant character that you’d come to expect from mature designs used in professional settings.

The ProArt PZ13’s CNC-engraved unibody aluminum alloy chassis gives the device structural integrity, durability, and a simple yet sophisticated appearance, highlighted even more by its ultra-slim 9mm profile. There are barely any breaks in the tablet’s visual appearance, aside from a single visible USB-C port, two ventilation grilles at the top, and one air-inflow grille on the back. The classy yet subtle ProArt logo sits at the bottom, opposite the requisite regulatory markings and branding.

All in all, the ASUS ProArt PZ13 exudes an aura of professional beauty befitting a tool for agile creatives, but that image might be challenged by the protective accessories that add value and change the aesthetic a bit. Included in the package is a magnetic keyboard cover and a magnet back plate with a kickstand, both necessary if you’re carrying this portable computer around. They are designed to offer rugged protection and definitely look the part, though it’s a bit strange that ASUS opted for a different hue that sharply contrasts with the pitch-black body of the tablet itself. Gray with a tinge of green, these accessories will be an acquired taste and might not sit well with some people, both in color and in the rugged, ridged design.

Ergonomics

Combining power and portability is always a delicate balancing act. Due to the laws of physics, you can only cram so much into a small space before you start weighing the object down or making thermal management impossible. Conversely, you can only remove so much before performance starts to take a hit. Thanks to its choice of components, especially the processor, the ASUS ProArt PZ13 manages to strike quite a nice balance, weighing only 0.85kg (1.87 lbs) on its own.

That does carry a bit more heft compared to an iPad Pro, for example, or even a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, but when you consider that this is a Windows machine with fans inside, that’s still a pretty impressive feat. That makes the ProArt PZ13 very usable as a tablet, whether for reading documents, watching videos, or even making art, though you won’t want to hold it up with your bare hands for a long time either. This also makes the device easy to carry around the house, the office, or even outdoors, especially if you know you won’t need a keyboard to type on.

The story changes a little bit when you do need to add the keyboard and kickstand to the formula, almost doubling the weight of the device. It’s still significantly lighter than a laptop, but it’s no thin tablet either. And you will most likely have to use both the back plate and the keyboard together since there’s no way to prop up the tablet without the kickstand. That also means you can really only use this 2-in-1 device as a laptop when you’re on a flat and long surface like a table, making the “lapability” of the design quite low.

Performance

This is hardly the first 2-in-1 detachable Windows laptop, but the ASUS ProArt PZ13 is one of the first few to use Qualcomm’s new energy-efficient Snapdragon X Plus silicon. This Arm-based processor is closer to the Apple M chips than, say, Intel or AMD, and is in fact directly targeting Apple Silicon devices. Qualcomm earlier launched the beefier Snapdragon X Elite, but that in no way means that this is an underpowered version, especially considering it still boasts the same 45 AI NPU TOPS performance even with only 8 cores.

In other words, Windows itself runs quite smoothly on this machine, as well as any other piece of software that’s actually designed for or adjusted to work on this computing platform. That includes a growing number of Adobe products like Photoshop and Premiere, popular comics drawing software Clip Studio Pro, and more. The ProArt PZ13 and the Snapdragon X Plus shine brighter when those apps need some AI power, thanks to that dedicated NPU chip that doesn’t choke the main processor.

There, however, also lies a bit of the rub. That smooth and responsive experience works best on software that has already been adapted to work on Snapdragon processors, which isn’t the case for the hundreds of popular Windows programs out there. Yes, those apps can still run thanks to a special emulation layer, and yes, performance has improved significantly since the earlier days of Windows on ARM, but that extra layer is still there and can still affect your performance, especially when it comes to games. The same is true with peripherals you want to connect to the device, especially ones that need special drivers that aren’t supported by this platform yet.

In exchange for that uncertainty, the choice of a Snapdragon X Plus processor brings with it the peace of mind that you won’t have to scramble for a power outlet every few hours. The 70Wh battery can last almost a full day, give or take a few hours depending on your use, which is something even the most generous estimates on an Intel or AMD laptop can even boast about. It also chargers quickly over USB-C using the included 65W charger, though that also means you can use almost any standards-compliant USB-C charger as well.

Regardless of what you use it for, you will be experiencing a bright, colorful, and vibrant 13.3-inch 3K screen, thanks to ASUS’s Lumina OLED technology. Professionals who require color accuracy will be delighted to know that it’s Pantone-validated and has support for 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Even better, ASUS offers all the sliders and switches you need to customize the display to your requirements and tastes. Its refresh rate does cap out at only 60Hz so it won’t be the best option for gaming, which isn’t what you’ll be using this laptop for most of the time anyway.

The ASUS ProArt PZ13 only has one USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C port visible for quick access to a charging port, but don’t fret, it isn’t the only one. There’s another USB-C port of the same type hidden behind a silicone flap, which also hides a full-sized SD card reader. Digital photographers will probably delight in the inclusion of this port which is absent on almost all tablets these days, while those who regularly work with microSD cards will be happy to know that ASUS actually ships an adapter in the box. The one catch to this design is that you can’t have an SD card permanently inserted there because a part of it juts out of the frame, making it impossible to close the silicone flap over it. It’s clearly not designed for storage expansion but removable storage to support the workflows of camera users.

Sustainability

Unlike with its other products, ASUS is a bit silent on the amount of recycled materials it uses for the ProArt PZ13. Rather than focus on the use of sustainable materials, it instead highlights the ways this device can last a long, long time before it needs to be turned in for proper disposal and recycling. With an IP52 rating and conforming to the US MIL-STD-810H spec, you can carry and use this portable tablet with confidence anywhere, knowing that it can keep up with you wherever life or work takes you. Of course, the kickstand back cover and keyboard cover offer additional protection as well, which is all the more reason you won’t want to keep these three pieces apart for long.

One detail about that detachable magnet keyboard, however, might be a source of worry for some. While more convenient than a USB connection but also more reliable than Bluetooth, this design has a tendency to break easily due to wear and tear. ASUS will undoubtedly sell these separately for some time, but there will always come a point when they will go out of production, perhaps outliving the ProArt PZ13 itself. Reliability has improved over the years, of course, but it’s still something to keep in mind with this type of detachable keyboard.

Value

The ASUS ProArt PZ13 is both familiar and completely new. Its 2-in-1 detachable laptop design is something we’ve seen since the very first days of the Microsoft Surface, but its combination with a Snapdragon X Plus is just as new as the processor itself. To some extent, it’s wading into uncharted waters, but it isn’t alone either, and its biggest rival is none other than Microsoft itself and the latest Surface Pro. Fortunately, ASUS has its work cut out for it thanks to its competitive pricing.

At first glance, the ProArt PZ13’s $1,100 price tag seems to be on the losing end compared to the Surface Pro’s $1,000, but then you have to consider what you’re actually getting in the package. ASUS bundles the keyboard cover with the tablet, while that’s a separate $180 purchase for the Surface Pro, at least for the keyboard that can also charge the Microsoft pen. Neither comes with a compatible pen, and those cost an additional $100 for the ASUS Pen 2.0 and $130 for the Surface Slim Pen. That brings the total to $1,200 for the ASUS ProArt PZ13 and $1,310 for the Surface Pro, and even then you’re only getting 256GB of storage versus the generous 1TB on ASUS’s 2-in-1 laptop. In this context, there really is no contest between the two.

Verdict

The ASUS ProArt PZ13 promises the Holy Grail of mobile computing, offering reliable performance and long battery life in a thin and light design, and for the most part, it does deliver on those. Granted, software support on Windows on ARM processors like the Snapdragon X Plus is still a bit of a gamble, but things are getting better quickly, especially for the more popular programs used by professionals and hobbyists alike. Things are far from perfect, but for creatives looking for a reliable and stylish computer they can easily take anywhere, the ProArt PZ13 is definitely worth considering.

The post ASUS ProArt PZ13 2-in-1 Laptop Review: Portable Partner with Plenty of Potential first appeared on Yanko Design.

DIY tiny Windows XP PC is an extreme nostalgia trip

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Although the craze for old “retro” designs has gripped many industries, it has taken a rather odd direction in the computing and gaming worlds. More than just recreating the designs and experiences of the past, many retro computers or consoles also strangely decided to shrink those products down to sometimes unusable sizes. Though manufacturers like Nintendo have jumped on that bandwagon, the biggest push comes from makers and modders who now have a wide arsenal of tools available at their disposal, giving them the freedom to create or recreate almost any design imaginable. This painstaking DIY project, for example, tries to bring back the iconic beige computer boxes of the 90s in a way that’s almost usable, at least if you can manage squinting at a 4-inch screen.

Designer: Salim Benbouziyane

The PCs of the 90s and early 2000s aren’t really the epitome of inspired industrial design, which is why their rival Macs became the choice of designers, creators, and design-conscious users. Nonetheless, these geometric boxes were also the pinnacle of computing technology of that period, earning them their place not only in offices and homes but also in iconography. There are also quite a number of fond memories attached to these machines, which some more skilled craftsmen are now using to turn some of that nostalgia into a working PC, albeit a miniature one.

Patterned after one of the more common designs of Dell PCs, this tiny retro computer revives the spirit if not the function of those 90s computers. It’s pretty much a box-like CRT monitor sitting on top of another horizontal box which was the convention for desktop computers at that time. The attention to detail is pretty impressive, from the carved DELL branding to tiny “Intel Inside” and Windows decals.

It’s a completely functional computer, though not all represented features actually work. The floppy disk drives, for example, are naturally too small for any disk, but they happen to be the right side to let a micro SD card through. There are LED lights to indicate power and mimic the flickering “hard drive spinning” activity. On the software side, it convincingly mimics the Windows XP look and feel, but it’s actually a flavor of Linux designed for the Raspberry Pi that’s running inside. And, of course, it can run DOOM, just like any self-respecting computer.

As impressive as this intricate recreation might be, it is also one that is a true labor of love. It requires a lot of 3D printing, custom soldering, and fiddling with electronics, so it’s not something that just about anyone can do on their own. Fortunately, the instructions and materials for this project are all listed and available for anyone to see, reliving the spirit of openness and exploration that was also alive during that period.

The post DIY tiny Windows XP PC is an extreme nostalgia trip first appeared on Yanko Design.

DIY tiny Windows XP PC is an extreme nostalgia trip

Posted on by

Although the craze for old “retro” designs has gripped many industries, it has taken a rather odd direction in the computing and gaming worlds. More than just recreating the designs and experiences of the past, many retro computers or consoles also strangely decided to shrink those products down to sometimes unusable sizes. Though manufacturers like Nintendo have jumped on that bandwagon, the biggest push comes from makers and modders who now have a wide arsenal of tools available at their disposal, giving them the freedom to create or recreate almost any design imaginable. This painstaking DIY project, for example, tries to bring back the iconic beige computer boxes of the 90s in a way that’s almost usable, at least if you can manage squinting at a 4-inch screen.

Designer: Salim Benbouziyane

The PCs of the 90s and early 2000s aren’t really the epitome of inspired industrial design, which is why their rival Macs became the choice of designers, creators, and design-conscious users. Nonetheless, these geometric boxes were also the pinnacle of computing technology of that period, earning them their place not only in offices and homes but also in iconography. There are also quite a number of fond memories attached to these machines, which some more skilled craftsmen are now using to turn some of that nostalgia into a working PC, albeit a miniature one.

Patterned after one of the more common designs of Dell PCs, this tiny retro computer revives the spirit if not the function of those 90s computers. It’s pretty much a box-like CRT monitor sitting on top of another horizontal box which was the convention for desktop computers at that time. The attention to detail is pretty impressive, from the carved DELL branding to tiny “Intel Inside” and Windows decals.

It’s a completely functional computer, though not all represented features actually work. The floppy disk drives, for example, are naturally too small for any disk, but they happen to be the right side to let a micro SD card through. There are LED lights to indicate power and mimic the flickering “hard drive spinning” activity. On the software side, it convincingly mimics the Windows XP look and feel, but it’s actually a flavor of Linux designed for the Raspberry Pi that’s running inside. And, of course, it can run DOOM, just like any self-respecting computer.

As impressive as this intricate recreation might be, it is also one that is a true labor of love. It requires a lot of 3D printing, custom soldering, and fiddling with electronics, so it’s not something that just about anyone can do on their own. Fortunately, the instructions and materials for this project are all listed and available for anyone to see, reliving the spirit of openness and exploration that was also alive during that period.

The post DIY tiny Windows XP PC is an extreme nostalgia trip first appeared on Yanko Design.

Windows on ARM success can drive PC design innovation

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Despite the power that smartphones and tablets have these days, PCs and their Mac equivalents remain the workhorses of the modern world. Not only do they have more power, they also offer more flexibility thanks to decades of research, development, and innovation. Market analysts, however, have long been pointing to the demise of the PC market, especially desktops, and there has indeed been a great deal of stagnation not only in hardware but even in product designs. It’s not that there haven’t been any improvements, just that designs have become predictable and even sometimes forgettable. You can’t, after all, change the design formula too much unless you also drastically change the internals as well. That’s the kind of burst in innovation that awaits the PC market, both laptops and even desktops, if running Windows on the same hardware as smartphones and tablets finally becomes reliable and productive.

Designer: Qualcomm

Rough Start: Microsoft Surface

It’s not like the combination of Windows and ARM-based processors, the same silicon that powers mobile devices, hasn’t been done before, but almost all past attempts have come up short of expectations. Disregarding the antiquated Windows CE and Windows Phone variants, Microsoft has time and again tried to bring the benefits of phones and tablets to PCs without much success. One of the first ones in recent memory is the smaller Microsoft Surface. Although the Surface Pro has become something of an icon today, its base model didn’t enjoy the same level of fame, attention, and sales.

Microsoft Surface RT

Designer: Microsoft

The Surface RT and Surface 2 both ran on ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra processors that were normally quite capable on Android tablets. Even those, however, couldn’t bear the weight of Windows, even the watered-down Windows RT version. To add insult to injury, the apps available for that platform were a dismal number which didn’t include the software that people needed to use on Windows. Thus, these first attempts at Windows on ARM were considered to be abject failures, but surprisingly, Microsoft didn’t give up completely.

Microsoft Surface Pro 9

Fast-forward to today, there have been numerous attempts to improve the situation, both from the hardware and the software side. The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 now has a version that runs an even more powerful ARM Qualcomm processor, and the Microsoft Store has quite a selection of popular apps. There are also some emulation solutions for running “normal” Windows software on ARM laptops and tablets, but that’s not exactly a panacea. All these sound like too much effort for what seems like a niche design, but it’s an effort that could yield a bountiful harvest if it succeeds.

Faster, Slimmer, Cooler

Qualcomm announced last month its new Snapdragon X Plus and Elite processors, and while the “Snapdragon” name is popular for smartphones and tablets, the “X” chips are earmarked for use in Windows computers instead, particularly laptops. Qualcomm boasts numbers that would make the likes of Intel and AMD worry, though it’s also aiming squarely for Apple’s M series processors. That’s definitely a tall order, especially with the launch of the new Apple M4 chip, but if theory proves to be even remotely near the mark, it will be a huge win for the Windows market and PCs in general.

Designer: Qualcomm

The new Snapdragon X Plus and Elite unsurprisingly boast about being able to do heavy-duty generative AI work, something that would require a lot of processing power that is traditionally only available on “regular” laptops and desktops. What would set it apart, however, is how it delivers that performance with lower battery consumption, heat, and space compared to equivalent Intel and AMD processors. It’s too early to say if Qualcomm will be able to deliver those promises, but it’s definitely a big leap compared to previous generations.

ARM-based processors like those from Qualcomm and MediaTek have been used in mobile devices precisely because of these traits. They can keep the product compact without impacting performance, something that laptop makers aim for every year. More importantly, however, these small form factors open the doors to less conventional designs, paving the way for dual-screen, foldable, or rollable PCs that don’t sacrifice their power for the sake of their novel appearance and features.

Thinking Outside the Box

The very first benefit of Windows successfully and smoothly running on ARM devices would be thinner laptops with longer battery lives. It can’t be understated how significant that will be for creatives, especially those who will rely a lot on that generative AI that everyone’s talking about these days. But even if you do much of your designs manually, the idea that you can bring your work anywhere without breaking your back and stay unplugged for more than half a day is going to appeal to a lot of people

Lenovo Yoga Book 9i

Designer: Lenovo

Once that has become the norm, however, it will be time to explore the possibilities that thinner, more compact, or smaller devices can bring. Imagine those handheld gaming PCs becoming thinner and smaller, almost down to tablet or even phone sizes. Admittedly, being able to play just about any PC game is going to be tricky today, but that’s not going to be the case in the future.

And then there are the current novelties like laptops with two screens or foldable displays, designs that have to sacrifice performance for the sake of super thin bodies. It hasn’t arrived yet, but a rollable screen might even become a thing for computers. In other words, Windows on ARM would enable all these forms beyond desktop towers and laptops to become possible without sacrificing too much performance. We seem to be heading in that direction already, but hardware is only half the battle.

Uphill Battle

No matter how powerful ARM chips are, enough to smoothly run Windows, all of that will fall on deaf ears if Windows on ARM isn’t able to support as much as 80% of regular Windows software, including games and especially content creation tools. That was what killed the Surface RT and Surface 2, after all, and things have improved considerably but not yet to most PC users’ satisfaction. One of the available solutions right now is emulation, like making the software or game think it’s running on an Intel/AMD computer, but that incurs penalties in performance.

AYANEO Flip DS

AYANEO Slide

Designer: AYANEO

There are also obstacles to be overcome on the hardware side. As strange as it might sound, PCs are a somewhat open ecosystem when it comes to the variety of things you can plug into a computer and have them working automatically. You lose some of that with Windows on ARM because of compatibility issues, and that might prevent less popular but heavily used peripherals from working, at least not at first. Unfortunately, that might be a huge deal breaker, especially for those who have already invested in devices for their workflow.

Designer: Qualcomm

Final Thoughts

Qualcomm’s announcement of the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite tried to preempt Apple’s new M4 chip and iPad Pros. Apple’s venture into the ARM world is both a boon and a bane for the likes of Qualcomm as it demonstrates what’s possible. But even Apple has remained within the boundaries of traditional devices like a tablet and a laptop. Not surprising for a company that is very meticulous and careful about the design of its products.

Designer: Apple

The Windows world, however, is a bit more daring thanks to the diversity of people involved. Unconventional and sometimes impractical designs pop up once in a while, but they’re all hampered by the limitations of hardware that’s commonly available for PCs. Windows on ARM isn’t new and it still has a long way to go to confidently match what Intel, AMD, and now Apple are selling, but stakeholders in the PC industry should probably consider rallying behind this if they want to breathe new life into the stagnating PC market.

Designer: Samsung

The post Windows on ARM success can drive PC design innovation first appeared on Yanko Design.

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus leak shows a laptop with an Android tablet as the screen

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Laptops are no longer what they used to be. Sure, the majority still come in the standard clamshell design, but even those sometimes have touchscreens or even second displays. And then there are laptops that are actually tablets in disguise, folding backward or splitting in half. These convertibles and detachables, respectively, have shifted the landscape of portable computers, opening the doors to more use cases and features. For the most part, however, they’re all still typical Windows laptops, but Lenovo might be putting an odd twist to the design with a 2-in-1 laptop whose screen transforms into an Android tablet when detached from its main body.

Designer Name: Lenovo (via “Apocalypse“)

The idea behind a 2-in-1 laptop, popularized by the likes of the Microsoft Surface Pro, is actually the reverse of a laptop. Technically, it’s more of a tablet that you can attach to a keyboard, whether that keyboard simply serves as a cover or a weighted base like a regular laptop. All the electronics are actually behind the screen, from the processors to the storage to even the battery, making the screen completely standalone.

What Lenovo might have in mind, however, is to have two different operating systems installed on the device, working independently depending on the situation. When the screen is docked on the keyboard, it will display Windows that’s running in the base. Once pulled out, however, that screen becomes a standalone tablet running Android and not Windows.

ASUS Transformer Book Duet

As odd as that might sound, it’s not exactly completely new. Back in 2014, ASUS announced what would have been the crowning glory of its Transformer Book line of 2-in-1 detachable laptops. The Transformer Book Duet could run both Android and Windows, though you have to boot into each one separately. Here, all the computing hardware is still on the display, and the keyboard is just an accessory to keep the screen anchored down. ASUS’s ambitions, however, were allegedly crushed by both Microsoft and Google who didn’t want their operating systems to be living under the same roof. That was nearly a decade ago, however, and Lenovo might be thinking it’s time to stir things up again.

What isn’t clear is whether it will be a case of a dual-boot tablet again or if Lenovo will be doing things a little differently. It’s possible to have a complete set of hardware inside the keyboard, running Windows, while the tablet has its own hardware dedicated to running Android. That makes the division of labor a little simpler and you don’t have to reboot over and over again to switch between operating systems. Unfortunately, that would also mean you can’t use Windows in tablet mode and take advantage of the stylus for creating digital art. Then again, Windows hasn’t really been great on tablets, which is why there would be interest in putting Android there in the first place.

The post Lenovo ThinkBook Plus leak shows a laptop with an Android tablet as the screen first appeared on Yanko Design.