All posts tagged: laptop

This excellent HP laptop is nearly 50% off at Best Buy – and comes with a cheap TV

This excellent HP laptop is nearly 50% off at Best Buy – and comes with a cheap TV

Published by skeptic

HP/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Whether you’re looking for a solid laptop for streaming and office or school work, or a first laptop for older kids and teens, the HP OmniBook 3 — HP’s MacBook Neo competitor — is a great choice.  With a 16-inch 2K touchscreen display, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, you’ll have plenty of power and performance for everyday use. And right now at Best Buy, you can save almost 50%, bringing the price down to just $680 — plus a $99 43-inch Toshiba TV for a dorm-ready tech bundle. Also: The best Labor Day 2026 laptop deals: Apple, Lenovo, Dell, and more Built with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255U processor, the OmniBook 3 is capable of better power efficiency and faster multitasking than previous versions. ZDNET laptop reviewer Cesar Cadenas was able to get an impressive 28 hours of use out of the OmniBook 3 on a single charge, making it one of the longest-lasting Windows laptops we’ve tested. And when you need to top …

The best early Labor Day 2026 laptop deals: Apple, Lenovo, Dell, and more

The best early Labor Day 2026 laptop deals: Apple, Lenovo, Dell, and more

Published by skeptic

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Labor Day means the end of summer and back to school — but not without snagging a good deal on a new laptop. There are some notable sales happening before the holiday, and we’re tracking price drops on both Macs and PCs that we recommend personally — not just for students, but for the office, for creators, or everyday use. Also: The best laptops of 2026: Expert tested and reviewed All the laptops on this list we’ve either tested in our lab, gone hands-on with, or are familiar with through testing similar models. We approach testing in two parts: assessing performance through real-world scenarios and industry-standard benchmarking programs. With that in mind, we’re confident these laptops are solid picks for a variety of use cases.  Also: The best early Labor Day deals to shop now: Save on TVs, Apple devices, and more The best Labor Day laptop deals  Current price: $1,849 (8% off)  Regular price: $1,999 The M5 MacBook Pro is the latest in Apple Silicon, on sale now …

5 free apps and tools that make an old laptop worth keeping

5 free apps and tools that make an old laptop worth keeping

Published by skeptic

I have a couple of budget laptops from the past decade. Some I’ve given away, others I’ve kept as backup. However, laptops are often reliable hardware, so they can easily last a decade and only stop being relevant if they stop receiving the latest software updates. Case in point being Windows 11. While these Windows laptops with 8GB of RAM and slower HDDs are not enough for my current workflow, they can be surprisingly useful for dedicated single-use projects. Whether you are looking to self-host your password manager or create a network-wide adblocker, these five free apps make an old laptop worth keeping around. Related I turned my old PC into a media server in under an hour I turned a forgotten laptop into a full media server—no money, no pain. Jellyfin A personal media server that costs nothing Turning your old laptop into a media server might be the best use case for the hardware if you are looking to build one. Instead of scattering your movies, music, and photos across external drives and …

Best battery life laptop 2026: Our top pick lasts 40 hours

Best battery life laptop 2026: Our top pick lasts 40 hours

Published by skeptic

It’s frustrating to sit down at your laptop for an afternoon of work, only to realize that it’s hovering at two percent battery. Oh, and you forgot your charger at home. Perfect. That’s why battery life is one of the most important factors shoppers consider when searching for the best laptops, according to a 2025 CNET survey. (FYI: Mashable and CNET are both owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis.) That makes total sense. While not everyone needs a marathon runner — PC gamers and creative professionals will probably prioritize performance — a laptop that constantly leaves you stranded without juice is an inconvenience. It’s not truly portable, which is basically the whole point of buying a laptop instead of a desktop PC. This is why Mashable tests every laptop we review for battery life using a standardized video rundown exercise. Modern laptops should provide an all-day charge The battery lives of laptops have improved dramatically as of late — Windows laptops, in particular. In 2024, only one PC we tested lasted over 20 hours. …

I deployed OpenClaw on a laptop and learned exactly where it hits its limits

I deployed OpenClaw on a laptop and learned exactly where it hits its limits

Published by skeptic

One of the more popular locally hosted AI assistants would be OpenClaw. It’s a free and open-source AI agent that can make use of LLMs to generate responses. It also supports both cloud and local AI models, and I was curious to see how well it would fare on a relatively high-end laptop. To this end, I deployed OpenClaw on my Arch Linux install, intent on finding out its limits (and uses). I hit a wall quickly, but the journey itself was fascinating (and educational!). All things considered, I’d consider OpenClaw a worthy assistant to have on your PC, local or not. Related These three words changed how I use Claude forever Ask Claude to “learn how to” do anything and build a skill to use forever. Meet the test laptop Ryzen AI Max goodness and quite a lot of usable VRAM The laptop of choice was the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025). My version came with the lower-end Ryzen AI Max 390 and 32GB of unified memory — shared between the system RAM and …

Dell XPS 13 vs. MacBook Neo: A Surprising Upset

Dell XPS 13 vs. MacBook Neo: A Surprising Upset

Published by skeptic

Ever since the MacBook Neo was announced this spring, I’ve been looking for a serious alternative. Not a cheap knockoff that sacrifices quality for price. No, no. I was hunting for a Windows laptop with the same goal as the MacBook Neo—hiding its compromises and delivering an otherwise premium laptop at a lower cost. For months, it was crickets. Then, the Dell XPS 13 showed up on my doorstep, and it understood the assignment. For many reasons, this was the one I’d been waiting for. But the question remains: Is it actually the better budget laptop? The answer surprised me when I dug into the testing. Hidden Compromises When the MacBook Neo was originally announced, it was a shocker. Apple coming in at the $599 price point for the base configuration felt unreal. Apple had never in its history brought the MacBook to such a low price. Even at its new $699 starting price, it’s in unprecedented territory. Importantly, this encroached on the territory of Windows laptops, where it has traditionally had a monopoly. Photograph: Luke …

Dell XPS 13 review: The first budget laptop to rival Neo raises the bar for all PCs

Dell XPS 13 review: The first budget laptop to rival Neo raises the bar for all PCs

Published by skeptic

pros and cons Pros Gorgeous build. Excellent battery. Display punches above its price point. Very thin and light. Cons 8GB of RAM is limiting. Only two USB-C ports. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Dell’s new XPS 13 dropped with a singular purpose in mind: compete with (and take down) the MacBook Neo. Does it do that? It depends. But it absolutely does raise the bar for “budget” Windows laptops — something PC makers realized they could no longer avoid post-Neo. Perhaps, then, the question is not so much about the Dell XPS 13’s relationship to Apple’s most affordable MacBook and more about how it relates to other inexpensive Windows devices. Seen in that light, the XPS 13 is the best budget Windows laptop on the market right now.  Also: Dell’s new XPS 13 is a MacBook Neo rival that costs $599 and retains premium features That’s not hyperbole. The XPS 13 would be a fantastic device even if it weren’t considered “budget” — it’s exceedingly thin and light, has an airtight build …

Heatwaves can harm your laptop — here’s how to prevent it

Heatwaves can harm your laptop — here’s how to prevent it

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Working on your laptop during another summer heatwave could lead to your device overheating. If your computer sounds like it’s about to explode, feels too hot to touch, or is working extremely slowly, there is a good chance that the machine’s cooling system is not able to properly bring its temperature down to a normal level. Not only is the problem annoying due to slow performance and sudden shutdowns, but it can also cause longterm damage to your laptop’s internal parts — and in rare cases, can even start fires. Thankfully, there are several ways to keep your tech cool while you enjoy the sunny days. Before you accidentally set your laptop ablaze, or break it in half due to frustration, here are a …

Meta’s New Open-Weight Model Can Run AI Agents on Your Laptop

Meta’s New Open-Weight Model Can Run AI Agents on Your Laptop

Published by skeptic

Meta is putting its money (and AI models) where its mouth is. The company said Monday that its latest model is built specifically for AI agents. Meta Glimmer is out now and is built to run on your laptop or PC. Meta Muse Glimmer is a 30-billion-parameter model, which sounds big, but it’s actually built to run more efficiently than other big AI models. (By comparison, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model, which approaches the capabilities of top models from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, has 2.8 trillion parameters.) It can run on a single GPU, so you can run it on a newer MacBook or another computer with a relatively recent chip. The model is meant to help you orchestrate an army of AI agents, the newest wave of generative AI tech that lets you outsource tasks to bots known as agents. Open-weight AI lets anyone, including researchers and cybersecurity defenders, see how an AI model operates. It isn’t fully transparent – open-source advocates say that to be truly open source, we’d need to know …

Ornith 9B gave my 16GB laptop near-35B answers, and it reads images too

Ornith 9B gave my 16GB laptop near-35B answers, and it reads images too

Published by skeptic

Ever since I made my own AI voice assistant for controlling my smart home, I’ve been on the lookout for better models I can run locally. There’s no shortage of powerful local LLMs around, but unless you’ve got a near-enterprise-grade server racked tucked away in your house, you’re likely going to have to settle for something that isn’t as smart as its cloud counterparts. Ornith 9B, however, turned out to be different. It might be the smallest model in DeepReinforce’s Ornith 1.0 family, but this model gave my laptop nearly 35B answers, with media support. Related The fix for local LLMs was never a bigger model My local LLM kept choking on context until I added this 500MB model. A small model with big ambitions Ornith 9B punches well above its size As mentioned before, Ornith 9B is the smallest member of the Ornith 1.0 family of models, which also includes 31B dense, 35B mixture-of-experts, and a massive 397B mixture-of-experts variant. What sets the whole family apart, however, is a self-improving reinforcement learning recipe, post-trained …