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.