It’s a terrible time to buy a laptop (sorry), but if you gotta do it, here are some to consider.
Qualcomm has now shared that its Snapdragon C laptop platform is built on a 6nm process, with an 8-core CPU and support for up to 16GB of LPDDR5X memory. The budget laptops are obviously not powerhouses, especially with Qualcomm positioning them against Intel N250 devices instead of Intel’s Core lineup or the MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro chip.
The now-former chief scientist of Google DeepMind has shared a pic of the HP laptop he turned in on the way out the door. While he notes that he also had a MacBook to use at home, his “second (& primary)” machine looks to be a five- or six-year old HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook.
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Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Yeeeeeeeeeessssssss.
I woke up to an email from Framework this morning letting me know my data was included in a “limited” data breach at one of Framework’s partners reported on August 6th. Framework says hackers accessed “customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses” but not order or payment info.
The unique Asus Zenbook Duo has two 14-inch touchscreen OLED displays, and can be used either in traditional laptop mode or dual-screen mode. Best Buy has the 2025 edition with a Intel Core 9 Ultra CPU and 32GB of LPDDR5X memory discounted by $600 until 12:01 AM CT on August 7th, 2026, bringing the price down to $1,999.99. Read our review of the 2026 edition.
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9to5Google obtained images of the unannounced device — I included one below, but check 9to5’s story to see them all. Lenovo Googlebook devices also leaked recently.
We probably won’t have to wait too long for official announcements, as the first Googlebooks are set to launch in the fall.
Apple is struggling to keep the laptop in stock, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, with new orders on some configurations experiencing “essentially unprecedented” delays of roughly a month. This joins the shortages for the Mac Mini and Studio, all of which are seemingly connected to the ongoing memory crisis.
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But it’s decent enough for 1080p gaming in our RAMageddon world.
The school year is coming up quickly, and Best Buy is helping to ease the financial burden of getting a laptop. HP’s OmniBook X Flip is $649.99 (usually $1,299.99), and has a 14-inch OLED panel with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, which is great for YouTube or homework, a Ryzen AI 5 430 CPU, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory, and 512GB of storage.
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Tech reviews are tricky beasts at the best of times. But things get a lot trickier when products like the Framework Laptop 13 Pro jump by $800 before they ever launch. When everything is expensive — and continually rising higher — what counts as good value?
yslee:
RAMageddon is just making these reviews impossible, no? It’s hard to say what’s good when the price is so out of whack.
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The Framework Laptop 13 Pro has it all. But RAMageddon spiked its price.
Another byproduct of Framework’s new RAM pricing is that preorders for the Ultra X7 358H version of the Framework Laptop 13 Pro jumped from $2,099 to $2,899. Framework’s announcement didn’t specify this config, but the Wayback Machine shows it.
People who got their 32GB preorders bumped down to 16GB also have to pay more if they want to maintain 32GB from Framework, or source their LPCAMM2 RAM elsewhere.
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The Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Draco Epic marks MSI’s 40th anniversary by maxing out the already-pricey Titan with a flashy dragon design, 96GB of DDR5 RAM, an Nvidia RTX 5090, and an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus. At least the $6,999 price tag also includes a bundled copy of LEGO Batman.
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The new entry-level Surface Laptop 13-inch is last year’s same great hardware with less memory and a higher price.
MacBooks have hard, pointy edges. But would you take a hand file or sanding block to your laptop? Software engineer Max Bretschneider did just that, and the results look pretty good. The more heavily filed MacBook Pro he cites for inspiration from designer Kent Walters? Less so. (Yikes!)
What do you think? Is this now a thing? Should Apple round the corners off more? (Yes to that last one.)
Siri is better, but its limitations are much more obvious on a Mac than an iPhone.
Initial impressions of macOS Golden Gate’s design refinements show promise, but there’s still lots to come.
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Except in price. The prices suck.
And I only broke it a little.
Asus is launching various Vivobooks and ExperBooks at Computex, but I’m most interested in the Zenbook 14 with a base-level Snapdragon X1-26-100. It’ll come in AMD and Intel configs too, but the Qualcomm version will start with a lowly 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD.
Sounds like another Neo wannabe, but we don’t know for certain since pricing is TBD.
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Nvidia’s RTX Spark ‘superchip’ shows promise for Windows laptops. But it also comes at the worst time.
