Battle of the Laptops: The Pursuit of Coolness

The Lenovo Ideapad Slim 5 Gen 10 (model no. 13ARP10), with its 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS display and Ryzen 7 processor, is perhaps the Windows laptop to buy for those who want an M4-powered Apple MacBook Air but don't want to spend Rs 1.20 lakh

Last month, I’d written about my son’s laptop. Or rather, the fact that the old one was broken and we were looking to buy a new one. Having told my son that I’d been using computers for close to 40 years, had set up and run an animation, video editing and computer graphics training institute in the mid-1990s and had once headed the writers’ team at CHIP (a leading computers/technology magazine back in the late-1990s), I assumed he would be sufficiently impressed. And that he would not question my wisdom in selecting a laptop that would be best suited to his requirements. Clearly, I was clueless about how hard it is to impress the young these days.

My son has finished school about a month ago and will soon be starting college. Which would mean some homework, maybe a few college assignments. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel sheets, web browsing, emails, video chats and watching videos. That should be about it, right? So, I suggested we get something with an i3, i5 or Ryzen 5 (hexa-core) U-series processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 15.6-inch screen and a good display, ideally a full-HD IPS LCD. A fair number of such laptops are currently offered by manufacturers like Acer, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Dell and MSI, at prices ranging between Rs 35,000 to 45,000. Laptops with an IPS display are a bit more expensive than those with non-IPS displays but still cheaper than OLED displays.

What’s With the F***ing Loudspeakers?!?

One of the things I miss most from the past, from my growing up days in Lucknow, is… peace. Peace and quiet. I was born in Lucknow and spent a good 20 years in that city before moving out to Bareilly. And in those 20 years, we lived in four different houses, in different residentials areas across the city. And in all those years, wherever we lived, I don’t remember ever being subjected to loudspeakers. Not once. Sure, people still celebrated all festivals, happy new years, birthdays, anniversaries and… whatever else there may have been to celebrate. People celebrated with joy and enthusiasm and with a genuine sense of neighbourhood camaraderie. But without the noise. Without massive loudspeakers blaring out jarring music at earsplitting levels of volume. Without the incessant noise, which today makes me want to get the hell out of Delhi-NCR and move to some small, remote village somewhere up in the mountains of Himachal.

Flights of Fancy: My Imaginary 10 Watch Collection

I like interesting watches, mostly mid- to high-end Swiss watches. But when it comes to actual buying, all I can afford is watches from regular, mass-market brands. Companies like Casio, Seiko, Citizen and Timex. I have my reservations about Chinese watch brands, though some of them seem to be doing good work these days, producing great-looking watches with high levels of fit-and-finish, at very reasonable prices. Some names that come to mind are San Martin, Addiesdive, Boderry and Baltani. There’s also Pagani Design, though most of their watches are homages to some very well-known Swiss watches. And for those who are willing to pay more – much, much more – there’s CIGA Design and Behrens, whose watches cost about the same as some Omega or Rolex watches! In any case, some Chinese watch manufacturers are, today, producing watches that are quite spectacular. Watches that, say, a Titan probably can’t even dream of making today. But I’m not too sure if I’d actually want to wear any of those. I mean, I’d happily choose a bowl of Schezwan chicken fried rice (with some chicken chilli on the side) over raclette and Älplermagronen, but when it comes to watches, Swiss is the way to go.

So, if cost was not a limiting factor, which watches would I get? Well, the mind tends to wander all over the place when I think about that. I quite enjoy going to watch manufacturers’ websites, browsing through their collections and daydreaming. Almost all the watches that I like are far, far beyond my reach. But one can still dream, right? I mean, even if you can only buy a Maruti Alto, there’s nothing stopping you from logging on to the Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Bentley or Rolls-Royce website, going to the car configurator section and spending an hour or two there, speccing out your dream car exactly the way you want. It can be quite satisfying even if the whole thing ends right after you’ve finished configuring ‘your’ car, and you don’t actually ever buy it.

What if I did have enough money to buy whatever watch I wanted? What watches would I buy then? What watches would go into my imaginary 10-watch collection? In no particular order of preference, these are the 10 that I’d probably get.   

Looking to buy a Laptop: Hey RAM!

Getting a laptop that ticks all the boxes, at a price that fits your budget, isn't the easiest thing in the world. But as long as you know what exactly to look for, you should be okay

I was looking to buy a new smartphone in October last year and, at that time, wrote about how unexpectedly complex the selection process has become. This time around, I’m looking to buy a new laptop for my son, who’ll be going to college later this year. He happened to drop his laptop 2-3 months ago and one of its hinges is now broken, along with cracks in the bodywork and a cracked bezel. Repairable, yes, but repairs will be fairly expensive. Plus, other issues include a non-IPS LCD display that has very poor viewing angles, and poor battery backup. So, it’s time for this laptop to go and for us to buy a new one.

My son uses his laptop for many hours every day. Most of his school assignments are done on the laptop. And since he also runs a small NGO and is heavily involved with multiple other events and activities, there are online meetings, video chats, image and video editing work, making presentations, working on documents, and… you get the drift. The last time we bought a laptop for him – an Acer Extensa, powered by an Intel Core i3 N305 processor, along with just 8GB of RAM – it turned out to be a mistake. The Acer’s performance levels were quite okay – no complaints there – but its non-IPS LCD display turned out to be very bad. I had ordered the laptop online, on Amazon, and had no way of knowing in advance that the display on a 35,000-Rupee laptop could be so bad! I did try to return the laptop right away but Acer wouldn’t accept the return, saying that they won’t take it back since there was no actual ‘defect’ in it and that there was no ‘malfunction’ as such. Amazon India couldn’t help with this either and we were stuck with the damn thing.

Recommended Read: Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham

Close to four decades ago, NASA and the American space program faced one of their biggest setbacks ever. In January 1986, one of the two rocket boosters attached to the space shuttle Challenger sprung a leak and exploded. The explosion happened just 73 seconds after the shuttle had taken off and Challenger crashed into the Atlantic Ocean less than three minutes later, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was a disaster of epic proportions and one that was watched live, on television, by millions of Americans. The story of how – and why – this happened, has been told in bits and pieces in thousands of magazine and newspaper articles, and on many TV shows. But now we have Adam Higginbotham’s book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, which was published in 2024 and which is the full, deeply researched, comprehensive account of what really happened on that day in ’86 and how a multi-million-dollar piece of machinery fell apart due to sheer carelessness, apathy and incompetence of those involved. The book is an incisive piece of work, sharp and very well-written.

Sipani Badal Rides Again

The late-1970s Sipani Badal, at the INDEA booth, at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025

 

Okay, not really. I mean, the Sipani Badal isn’t really coming back in any shape or form. But for one glorious week, this three-wheeled plastic-fantastic from the ’70s had showgoers – at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025 – in its thrall. This was, mind, India’s premier automotive show, where car and motorcycle manufacturers were busy taking the covers off their latest, greatest electric vehicles that are all the rage these days. Swoopy, swanky styling, powerful electric motors, batteries that charge quickly and allow vehicles to be driver farther than ever before, and plush, luxurious cabins filled with high-tech electronics, ADAS and big touchscreens – that was the vision of mobility shown at this year’s Expo. And yet, amongst all this glitter and EV-glamour, the stone-simple Badal held its own, bringing happy smiles to the hundreds of people who visited the INDEA booth from 17^th to 22^nd January.

Recommended Read: Ghosts of K2

Here’s an honest admission: I’m not much of a climber. When holidaying in Nainital, I often take a cab to go from the Mall Road up to whatever hotel I happen to be staying in, usually not more than 2-3km away. Forget about mountains, I even take the elevator when going up to my apartment, which is on the 2nd floor of the building I currently live in. And yet, I do have this strange fascination for reading about adventures in climbing, of great exploits in extreme mountaineering. Real accounts of people risking life and limb to get to the top of some piece of rock. I mean, getting to the top of something like Mount Everest or K2 entails suffering extreme physical hardship, tolerating intense cold and freezing winds, facing difficulties in breathing due to lack of adequate oxygen and coming to terms with extreme dangers that include the risk of losing toes and fingers to frostbite. And, of course, there's the ever-present risk of death. More than scaring the hell out of me, which it certainly does, extreme mountaineering leaves me confused. It’s simply incomprehensible to me. Why do it at all?!? But I guess that is what separates a couch potato like me from mountaineering heroes, the people who have astonishing courage, the sheer indomitable will to achieve something that is impossible for 99.99% of the rest of us.

In the context of the above, I just finished reading ‘Ghosts of K2,’ a terrific book by author Mick Conefrey, who has laid out the saga of how people started trying to climb K2 in the early 20th century and how an Italian team became the first to summit the great, savage mountain in the 1950s. Many tried, most failed, some died. Even for those who succeeded, controversies dogged them for the rest of their lives. But the story of the sheer effort – the planning, the massive resources, the logistics, the manpower, the technology – required to go up a mountain like K2, and actually getting to the summit, is simply brilliant. It’s a story that unfolds over many decades and Conefrey has done a very good job of telling that story. If you are at all interested in mountaineering – or even stories of extreme adventures of any kind - I’d suggest you get a copy of this book. The paperback is available on Amazon, for a mere Rs 375.

From Affordable to the Ludicrous: The Watches I Currently Want

I’ve written earlier about my fascination with watches and my penchant for trawling various ecommerce websites as well as watch manufacturers’ websites to keep tabs on the latest that’s happening in the world of watches. There are some YouTube channels that I also follow for this, and they serve up some truly great content that keeps me happy. The watches that are on my list of want-to-buy keep changing but I thought I’d share my current list with you. These are the watches I currently want to buy and while some are within the realm of reality, which I might actually buy someday, some others on this list are mere fantasy, watches that I might never actually be able to buy in this lifetime. That’s okay, I guess; it’s okay to dream a little, right? So here we go.

Book Review: Secondhand - Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

Humanity is drowning in a sea of… stuff. You know, stuff, things we can’t stop buying. Shoes, clothes, furniture, electrical home appliances, kitchenware, digital devices, automobiles. We buy stuff to use, to show to others, to keep up with the neighbours, to give as gifts, to store so it can be used ‘someday.’ We buy stuff for the pleasure that its ownership gives to us, we buy stuff so we can pass it on to our children someday, we buy because we fall for the marketing that makes us believe we need to ‘upgrade,’ and we buy stuff because, well, because we can. But how many of us ever stop to think, even for a minute, what happens to all our stuff once we are done with it, when we no longer have any use for it and when we don’t want to keep it any longer? Where does it go, what happens to it, where it ends up? Adam Minter’s book, Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale is a thought-provoking read that encourages us to pause and think about the afterlife of the things we buy, once we sell, donate or discard those things. It’s an unexpectedly interesting story that takes you all over the world, exploring the world of ‘secondhand,’ which in some ways almost functions like a parallel universe, a shadow economy that barely accounted for.