Laptop Buying Help

[notabear]

Currently looking for recommendations on a "day to day" laptop for my portents. I personally haven't been in the laptop market for over 8 years so I'm a little out of the game. It's not like they're going to be doing anything crazy, just something that has good battery life and wont feel slow/obsolete in the next 4-6 years.

[BiotechBen]

7 minutes ago, notabear said:

Currently looking for recommendations on a "day to day" laptop for my portents. I personally haven't been in the laptop market for over 8 years so I'm a little out of the game. It's not like they're going to be doing anything crazy, just something that has good battery life and wont feel slow/obsolete in the next 4-6 years.

An HP Pavilion or Lenovo Thinkpad/IdeaPad are great options with A Ryzen 5 5500U/5625U or Intel 1235U/1240P with 16gb of RAM and at least 512gb of storage.

[Imbadatnames]

11 minutes ago, notabear said:

Currently looking for recommendations on a "day to day" laptop for my portents. I personally haven't been in the laptop market for over 8 years so I'm a little out of the game. It's not like they're going to be doing anything crazy, just something that has good battery life and wont feel slow/obsolete in the next 4-6 years.

Budget?

[notabear]

6 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Budget?

Pretty flexible with budget, definitely willing to spend the money for a good/the right product. 

[seanondemand]

MacBook Air. Best battery life on the market, ARM based laptops with chips like Apple's M1/M2 are the future (and the way Apple's entire product stack has gone) so should hold up extremely well.

[Imbadatnames]

6 minutes ago, notabear said:

Pretty flexible with budget, definitely willing to spend the money for a good/the right product. 

Depends what you really want it for. My default answer is the M1 MacBook Air for most people. The 8GB/256GB model can be found between 800 and 900 and does basic laptop stuff very well, very snappily and has the best battery you can find outside of a larger MacBook. It will also be suitable for years as macs age very well. 

[notabear]

23 hours ago, Imbadatnames said:

Depends what you really want it for. My default answer is the M1 MacBook Air for most people. The 8GB/256GB model can be found between 800 and 900 and does basic laptop stuff very well, very snappily and has the best battery you can find outside of a larger MacBook. It will also be suitable for years as macs age very well. 

Any windows recommendations to avoid the pains of switching OS's?

[Imbadatnames]

57 minutes ago, notabear said:

Any windows recommendations to avoid the pains of switching OS's?

Tbh there's nothing on the windows side that comes close to the mac. The closest alternative would be a XPS 13 which is down on power, battery, you have to get the 16GB model because it’s windows which makes it more expensive than the mac too and it just won’t last as long. 
 

Personally I didn’t find switching OS too difficult. It mostly works the same and there’s a handy how to guide when you first boot up.