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 just how hard - perhaps even impossible - 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.

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.

Pixels Multimedia: Countdown to Launch

As we prepared to launch Pixels Multimedia, there were literally hundreds of things that needed to be done. Surfing on a wave of adrenaline, Tabrez and I spent hours running around every day, getting things organised and ready for launch

In a recent post, I wrote about moving back to Lucknow, reconnecting with old friends and working out an agreement with my friend Tabrez, who said he’d like to work with me on setting up and running Pixels Multimedia. Though we didn’t realise it then, we hadn’t even reached base camp and there was a very tall, very formidable mountain that we’d soon need to climb. The story continues here.

The first step was to find a suitable place for the institute. I wanted to start with about half a dozen computers and wanted to rent a place situated in a fairly busy place, ideally frequented by a large number of young people. But as I started looking at commercial properties in prime locations, I quickly realised that rents would be astronomical. Places that would provide high visibility were terribly expensive. Lower rents meant out-of-the-way places tucked away in quiet areas, which did not have the ‘buzz’ I was looking for. Within a week, I met at least a dozen or more property brokers and owners but was unable to find a place that seemed right, with the right balance between the rent that I’d have to pay and the visibility I’d get.

Back in Bareilly, Obsessed with Computers

Using computers was one thing I learned during the one year I spent in Baroda. By the time I came back to Bareilly, I was obsessed with computers and technology

In an earlier post, I wrote about taking up a job with GSW and moving from Bareilly to Baroda. I spent one year there before coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t really anything much for me to do at GSW – I was contributing no real value and hence had no future in Baroda. My employers agreed with me and it was decided I would return to Bareilly and look for other options there. The story continues here.

So, after spending one year in Baroda with GSW, I was back in Bareilly, unemployed, with zero earnings and no savings. I was now 23 years old and felt a pressing need to do something useful with my life. In Baroda, Kamal ji had allowed me to use his computer, on which I had proceeded to learn the basics of AutoCAD. In the process, I had become deeply interested in computers and what one could do with these wonderful machines. While motorcycles and motorcycle racing remained my primary passions, computers and technology were now a close second. In addition to the motorcycle magazines I bought every month, I now also started reading whatever Indian and foreign computer magazines that I could get my hands on. I was like a sponge, soaking in every bit of computer-related information that I could find, reading endlessly and always looking at ways of finding something related to computers that I could do. It never occurred to me that not having a computer engineering background and no formal training in using computers could ever be an impediment in doing something related to computers. But the question that remained unanswered was, what exactly did I want to do?