Ian Orford |

Switch From MacBook To Windows – And Why You Should – Roundup

March 18, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

Its been painfully obvious to all of us at LapTop Topics that there is a mass defection from Mac to Windows. Now let’s just clarify that. Yes MacBooks are still flying off the shelves as fast as they can make them, so who exactely IS defecting?

Well, it’s the Pro users to be exact, professional photography editors, graphic artists and media power users who are just not happy with the latest releases from the Apple stable as we reported in Apple Is Dead – Why Not To Buy A MacBook

If you are a dedicated MacBook Pro user and you were disappointed by the latest releases, you will be feeling the pain so we have curated the best articles we could find on switching from Mac to Microsoft, and El Capitan to Windows 10.

I’m committed to switching from a Mac to a PC, and the next step is to start shopping. When you haven’t used anything but Macs for close to two decades, the sheer quantity and variety of Windows choices poses a challenge. So, while I researched which new Windows laptop would be a good fit for me, I spent some time experimenting with the first Windows computer I could get my hands on: my Mac. Switching from Mac to PC: Choosing a laptop

I’ve been an Apple user for over a decade, ever since I picked up a refurbished 17in PowerBook back in 2005 to replace my ailing Windows XP box. But last month, after Apple announced its most expensive new MacBook Pros in almost 15 years, I reconsidered my decision for the first time and, for the past few weeks, I’ve been back on a Windows PC.

Is it time to swap your Mac for a Windows laptop?

I converted to Apple over 5 years ago when it was clear to me Apple made the best products for creative professionals. I loved Apple and became a hardcore fanboy. I was all-in. Now, I’m switching back to PCs. The new line of MacBook Pros are not-that-awesome. Apple has always been a company that makes beautiful, well-designed products (and still does), but they’ve started to put an emphasis on sleek design form over professional function. read more at stuckincustoms.com

After using both the near-final version of Windows 10 and the public beta of El Capitan for a few weeks, we compared the two operating systems across nine categories on a 100-point scale. (Some rounds are worth more than others.) Based on our experience, Microsoft’s platform is now the one to beat. Here’s why.

Windows 10 vs. OS X El Capitan: Why Microsoft Wins

The great debate between Mac and PC has been raging for decades and shows no signs of cooling any time soon. If you find yourself defecting from one side to the other 4 Things About Windows That You’ll Miss On A Mac 4 Things About Windows That You’ll Miss On A Mac Thinking about switching over to a Mac? It’s easy to find faults with Windows. But are you aware of the things you’ll miss? Read More , there are some things you’ll need to know to ensure the changes don’t get the better of you.

7 Tips for Switching from Mac to Windows

Try And Break This! Dell Latitude Rugged Laptop

March 15, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

Dell seems set to be the only real competition in a sector long dominated by the Panasonic range of ruggedized laptops. Dell’s new work anywhere laptops and tablets have been designed to work in the most extreme conditions.

No matter what type of work you do, Latitude Rugged solutions are the right tools to stand up to whatever challenges you face.

Demanding workplaces require professional tools. Our unique rugged solutions allow you to stay focused on your work in any environment.

Laptop Tech Support: 2017 Reviews – Apple Hits The Spot Again

March 13, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

It’s showdown time again with their yearly tech support showdown Laptop Mag again ranks (unsurprisingly) Apple as the number one tech company for customer service.

Is this the reason many Apple fans are choosing to stick with the Cupertino Giant, despite mass defection to Windows machines from some Pro users?

In a surprise move up the ladder comes Acer with a jump to the number 2 spot. Regular in the Tech Support top rankings is Lenovo sitting nicely at number 3.

Turning in totally miserable performance we find Samsung and MSI wallowing at the bottom.

We find this really hard to comprehend considering first of all the size of Samsung as a tech giant, and MSI who on the face of it make some really good laptops.

Not every company offers first-class tech support for its laptops. With confusing web resources, unhelpful social media accounts and clueless phone reps, many brands put a lot of unnecessary obstacles between consumers and the help they need.

After we spent several weeks evaluating 10 laptop makers based on their online support and live chat, social networking resources, and phone-based help, we found that Apple earns top marks once again for its extremely knowledgeable support staff and strong web resources.

Apple Is Dead To Me… And why NOT to buy a MacBook

March 13, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

You couldn’t pay me to use a MacBook Pro. And it’s something I’ve been saying for years. Why? Well the simple fact is they can no longer keep up with a Windows machine and the immense power avaiable, at a much lower cost.

The oft heard crys from Apple fanboys and Girls, ‘no viruses’, ‘they don’t crash like Windows’ blah blah blah et al is just well, totally irrelevant and unfounded.

In other words, the Apple range of laptops and desktops, the once ‘must have’ machine for professional Graphics Artists, Designers and Photographers, is fast loosing it’s fan base. Can somebody tell Tim Cook that becoming a glorified phone company is not the way to repay his customer base for years of ongoing, but fast diminishing loyalty

An extract from an open letter to Apple after the fall ’16 keynote sent by Trey Ratcliffe

first want to start with the overall presentation you gave. I gotta say I’m at a loss for words at that presentation. It’s akin to getting ready to have tacos on Tuesday but instead a swift kick to my groin happened. To me, the magic of the Apple events is dying and becoming quite predictable with a thinner, faster, longer battery life device with features we didn’t truly need. Beneath all of this is a quite literal ignorance of what the pros actually want and need.

A comment from Pratik Naik, of Solstice Retouch

“With the MacBook Pro, it has become very clear to me that their products aren’t congruent with the needs of professionals with the direction of their forced change. Apple’s brilliance came from their focus on minimalism while providing the efficiency that every creative immediately gravitated toward. Now with their latest update, they welcome a flood of inconveniences that are becoming hurdles to efficiency.”

While the new Macbook Pros are anything but, Apple still has a hard time keeping them on their shelves. Why is this? The OS, although flashy, hasn’t really changed since 2013, only occasionally receiving the scraps from the latest iOS release. The company has prioritized the iPhone above all, and as of late last year, has no dedicated Mac operating system team. The hardware continually drags behind the competition and the ability to upgrade the machine becomes more abysmal each year, with everything becoming proprietary and soldered down. read more at slrlounge.com

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming (7567) Review – Best Budget Gamer?

March 10, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

Is the Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming (Probably) the best budget gaming laptop your limited money can buy? If you want a great gaming experience and your on a relatively tight budget then your normally going to end up very disappointed.

Unless of course you get your act together and buy Dells new Inspirion 15 7000 (7567). As Mathew Buzzi of PCMAG says, its an amazing deal at the price, with great looks and an above average battery life for the sector.

“An all-metal or premium build was never in the cards for the Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming at this price, but Dell has managed a pleasing design while keeping the cost down.”

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming can play modern titles in full HD, boasts amazing battery life, and is priced very aggressively. It’s difficult to find a better deal in a budget gaming laptop.

Unfortunately, at this price something has to give, and in this case it’s the display. It isn’t poor enough to be a deal breaker, but it’s the only aspect of the system that would give me pause. The 1,920-by-1,080 resolution is a good choice—less expensive than alternatives, but it still looks sharp and games will run smoothest on this hardware at 1080p—but the picture isn’t especially crisp and viewing angles are subpar since it’s a Twisted Nematic (TN) panel rather than an In-Plane Switching (IPS) screen.

There’s no perfect MacBook anymore – and Apple doesn’t care

March 8, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

Is Apple really losing the plot with the MacBook? Has Tim Cook given up on the idea of the idea of the MacBook as the perfect laptop?

TJ Donegan of reviewed.com believes he has and that Apple Inc now sees it’s future in the iPhone. Have almost single-handedly created the premium laptop sector, Apples CEO now seems to be handing the market to his competitors on a silver platter.

As Donegan is keen to point out there are Windows PC’s at half the price that run circles around most of the current older Mac models that desperately need an update.

“The new MacBook Pros are neat, but they’re all significantly overpriced, have a keyboard that is only slightly better than the MacBook, and are missing major ports requiring you to live the Dongle Life.”

Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly obvious that Apple’s future is all about the iPhone. But while the iPhone has been ruling the smartphone market, Apple’s MacBooks have lost their luster.

While mobile computing is the future, many users and Apple fans depend on Macs to get their work done every day. But despite loud, repeated, and clear complaints from the Mac userbase, Apple has spent the last two years reinventing the wheel instead of listening to its customers. read more at laptops.reviewed.com

Asus ROG G752VS OC Edition (2017) – Full Review and Benchmarks

March 6, 2017 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

The Asus ROG G752VS OC (Overclocked) is huge, both in terms of power, screen size, weight, and yes you guessed it, shear performance. Oh and let’s not forget this superb gaming laptops futuristic design that wouldn’t be out of place on a starship flight deck.

Featuring an in house overclocked 2.9-GHz Intel Core i7-7820HK CPU paired with the outstanding Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Pascal based graphics card you get incredible gaming performance as soon as you rip the wrapping of and fire up this awesome laptop.

Where is all that performance coming from? Well, the previously mentioned Overclocked CPU and GPU combination with up to 32GB of RAM and 8GB VRAM respectively, there are other performance goodies to make this baby really sing. Inside the well built chassis there is a 1TB 7,200-rpm conventional Hard Drive, together with a pair of 256GB PCIe SSDs in a RAID configuration.

Having introduced the ROG brand (Republic of Gamers) in the 2006 which was launched to deliver innovative hardcore hardware to the hardcore gamers who demanded the best Asus have again delivered with the ROG G752VS OC. Read the full review over at Laptop Mag read more at laptopmag.com

The Latest Laptop Reviews – Weekly Round Up

December 2, 2016 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

Plenty to look at this week with some really good, nice shiny new laptops being released, and some not so good. One of the stars of the week is stunning the Dell XPS 13 and 15, the not so good Lenovo N22 Touch Chromebook, the amazing Acer Swift 7, the worlds thinnest laptop, the absolutely fantastic Gigabyte Aero 14, and the beast that is the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro. For good measure we’ve thrown in the Asus MB169C+ review, a portabel USB-C monitor which Kane Fulton of TechRadar reports is a joy to use. And of course right now no laptop review roundup would be complete without featuring the Microsoft Surface Book. Read on and enjoy…

A little on the dim side Carrying case is fiddly to use Kills your laptop’s battery Having more than one monitor is a boon for productivity, and it’s usually easy to get hold of a second panel if you’re working from home or the office. Asus MB169C+ review

The Dell XPS 13 and XPS 15 line of machines, with their unique Infinity Edge displays and gorgeous carbon fiber and aluminum adorned chassis, are some of the best looking, best built, and highest performing laptops on the market. Dell XPS 13 Review: Kaby Lake Makes A Fantastic 13-Inch Laptop Even Better

The computer’s mixed performance and poor speakers stymie those small innovations, though. This laptop will work for young pupils who focus on one assignment at a time, but competing machines offer stronger performance. Lenovo N22 Touch Chromebook Review

Acer Swift 7 Review at a glance Acer Swft 7 is a Laptop of Ultra-thin Proportions. Acer Swift 7 has Intel® Core™ i5 processor, 13.3″ display, 8 GB, 256 GB Solid Acer Swift 7 Review | The Thinnest Laptop Ever!

Even though I’ve done scores of notebook reviews over the years, I should confess that for the most part, I’d not buy the vast majority of them. Hardware review: GIGABYTE AERO 14

It’s a good chip and you can read more about it in my review of the Kaby Lake laptop chips. The CPU is paired with 16GB of LPDDR3/1866 in dual-channel mode and a Samsung 512GB PM951 NVME M.2 drive. A spot-check with Crystal Disk Mark 5. HP Spectre x360 review: Faster, smaller, and better than before

Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series 2 in 1 laptop is a weird mix of good and bad. You get a plastic body with a sturdy finish. The laptop sports a 11.6-inch screen and Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series 2-in-1 laptop review – Digit.in

The TravelMate’s keyboard offers 1.2 millimeters of key travel, which is less than the 1.5mm that we consider the acceptable minimum for most business laptops. Acer TravelMate P648 Review: Is It Good for Business?

Give me a laptop to review and I’m happy. There’s always plenty of clever little gadgets and features to play around with and learn from. A beast of a machine – the MSI GT62VR Dominator Pro

It’s a great machine. Our review focused on the things most daily users of the laptop will encounter, but we decided to return to it and examine how a professional user would use it. In this case a video editor. Surface Bo ok: Is it a worthy laptop for a pro user?

Laptops with the Longest Battery Life – Up To 17 Hours

December 2, 2016 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

The best laptop in our opinion is the one you can work with unplugged for a long time. Michael Prospero, LAPTOP Reviews Editor over at Laptopmag.com obviously agrees because they have just tested a range of notebooks to see which one comes out at the top.

Laptop battery tests can often be tedious and over complicated so Michael and his team have kept this one really simple. They’ve well, just run the test machines, including models from Lenovo, Microsoft, Apple Dell and Asus, until the battery went flat.

Doing what most users do which is web based working and light tasks, they have compiled the list of winners with two Lenovo Thinkpad machines unsurprisingly in first and second place, the ThinkPad X260 and ThinkPad T460 with an amazing 17 hours of duration each, with third and 4th place going to Acer and Apple.

No matter how stacked its specs are, a laptop is useless if it can’t hold a charge. Fortunately, there are plenty of notebooks that go the distance. Using our Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits of brightness, we’ve identified the longest-lasting notebooks on the market. We’re talking more than 10 hours of endurance, which should more than suffice for that cross-country fight, a long day of meetings or multiple, back-to-back classes. read more at laptopmag.com

Mac-lash The Apple MacBook Pro and Why It Isn’t For The Pro

November 30, 2016 by Ian Orford Leave a Comment

The new MacBook Pro that, well, isn’t for the Pro? Did Apple screw up?

Just exactly where has Apple gone with the new MacBook Pro update? Well, it really looks as if it’s gone were many true and loyal long term MacBook fans don’t really like.

There has literally been a huge Mac-lash and much hand wringing since the real usability issues have come to light. So what’s happened?

In truth, it looks like Apple has built and designed the new 15″ MacBook Pro for the consumer rather than the professional developers who have been faithful to the brand and design for years.

Why? You had better read on to check out the 2016 Apple MacBook Pro dealbreakers.

It may seem strange, at first. There’s nothing seriously wrong with the new Macs – they pack in improved displays, a Touch ID sensor (finally!), insanely fast SSDs, better audio quality and the all-compatible USB-C port on a chassis that makes the much-loved and once-impossibly-thin MacBook Air look fat! But the more I think about it, the more I’m not entirely sure if these Macs are for the “Pros” anymore…or for that matter, who they’re really meant for… read more at firstpost.com