Buying before tariffs
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Apparently the price of electronics could skyrocket under Trump's tariffs. Due to the so-and-so's at Microsoft, my current laptop--which isn't that old and has many years left in it--cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 and therefore will need to be replaced come November. Perhaps I should buy now? I'm so pissed at MS that I've even considered buying from Apple, but seeing Cook kiss Trump's you know what, I'm right put off. But so has Microsoft, so there appears to be little choice.
My current laptop is a Dell and I'll never own another one. My previous laptop was a Sony and it was mostly good (it had a wonky spaceband from the very beginning but some jerry rigging mostly fixed the problem).
PC Magazine rates Asus Zenbook 14 OLED as the best laptop in 2025 for most people. I've never heard of Asus. They also mention some Lenovos. They also mention one Dell so I'm not sure I trust their opinion!
Does anyone have laptop recommendations?
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I'm not the right person for specific hardware recommendations, but it might be helpful if you described the kind of things you do on a computer so people who are can direct you to devices that would match your needs to the right configuration. Do you do graphics, gaming, or other resource-intensive activities? Or are your needs pretty basic?
In the laptop world I've had two HP machines that each worked for a decade or more; I'm on one of them as we speak. I also have a 17" LG Gram that I've been happy with. It's a few years old and has 32GB of memory and a 2 TB SSD drive. It's incredibly thin and light and I love the big screen. Good battery life. But I only use it at home; 17" is a little harder to carry around because of the length and width, even though the machine is light as a feather and very thin.
I usually buy something with more memory and storage than I think I need. By the time the device is at end of life, it probably needs to be replaced just because it seems that you need more and more horsepower because the then-current versions of apps keep needing more resources.
On the trivial side, I like a backlit keyboard.
I end up buying from Costco (you may not be a member, so maybe not an option for you) because their prices are competitive and the have a 90 day return policy on electronics. If I don't like a device, I can return it. But I've never done that. And the devices I've gotten via Costco seem to have less-than-average amount of bloatware.
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I don’t know about laptops, but I just purchased a new Lenovo PC for the art gallery, my son (who works in tech) said the Lenovos were workhorses and will probably last as long as we need it to. We were operating on a 10 year old Dell which really was on its last leg, (I couldn’t even get it to recognize a memory stick or an external hard drive, I had to upload our important stuff to google drive) and we needed to upgrade to windows 11 anyway. We got the all in one bundle - where the computer is part of the monitor - it was simple to set up and is working great. Cost about $500.
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I ended up ordering from Amazon (was a little worried, but it came quickly and was fine) because I couldn’t order the base model directly from Lenovo - they won’t ship the least expensive one - they will ship the others. You can only pick them up from a store and we don’t have a Best Buy.
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My current laptop is a Lenovo Yoga 9i. My last one was a Lenovo Yoga 7i -- it lasted 4+ years and was still going strong - I only replaced it because I wore actual holes through the spacebar and the S key from so much typing.....that should tell you how much of a workhorse it was. My current one is going on maybe 3 years of trouble free use and so far the keys are all intact LOL. We've also bought the Lenovo Yoga line for my husband and my son who uses his at college. He actually has two because he broke one by dropping it (and the actual computer parts were fine - the power button was crushed so it wouldn't turn on/off but once we fixed the button, the rest of it worked fine). And we just bought my daughter a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop for christmas - that one came from Costco.
Before my Lenovos, I had both HP and Dell and they were mostly fine (though each had their quirks -- the HP, especially, ran super hot all the time), but the Lenovos run circles around them. Unless something radically changes and I end up with a lemon at some point, all my computer purchases going forward will be Lenovo.
I believe there's a Lenovo Ideapad for $650 in the latest Costco flyer that looks pretty similar to my Yogas....that setup is nice because the screen is touchscreen and can bend all the way around so the computer sits flat like a tablet. It even comes with a little pen you can slide out of the laptop and use to write on the screen. https://www.costco.com/lenovo-ideapad-5i-16-touchscreen-2-in-1-laptop---intel-core-7-150u---1920-x-1200---windows-11-home---16gb-ram---1tb-ssd---cosmic-blue.product.4000262909.html
ETA - looking at that, I don't think the pen slides into the laptop itself. The one that came with my yoga 9i does which is nice because I always have it. Either way, it's pretty convenient to have the laptop that can flip to "tented" like in the photo, so you can prop it on a table to watch videos or all the way flat like a tablet (which I do when I put it on my music stand to do video music lessons.)
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Also, though, just because Microsoft won't support Windows 10 anymore doesn't mean you have to get rid of the laptop. It will probably work for many more years. I'm running windows 10 now on my Lenovo and have no plans to upgrade unless I absolutely have to - everyone I know who is using Windows 11 low key hates it, so I'm keeping Windows 10 as long as I can.
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Too late now - the deed is done.
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This post is deleted!
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Monday morning should be interesting.
Maybe see if you can find a used/refurbished computer. Or maybe wait it out.
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Ha! I really didn’t think that dumb SOB would actually do it, but he did. Tariffs are now the law of the land. I have been thinking about what this means and what it means is higher prices for paper, paper that comes from Canada! That means toilet paper and paper towels!
My guests use astonishing quantities of toilet paper and paper towel. Best I buy a truckload tomorrow while I can still get it. I’ll be in line at BJs when it opens. I hope they have a forklift.
I have also left a voicemail with my management company to include a 10% tariff adjustment to be added to the normal rental rates for the Airbnb‘s.
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All those illegal crossings from the north.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Canada has allowed "millions and millions" of people to illegally enter the United States. However, with regard to Canada at least, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data for Fiscal Year 2024 tells a different story. In that period, Border Patrol apprehended 23,721 people who illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border, representing just 1.5% of nationwide Border Patrol apprehensions. In contrast, at the U.S.-Mexico border, Border Patrol reported more than 1.5 million apprehensions in the same year.
In 2023, the last year for which we have statistics at the moment, more people crossed illegally from the United States into Canada than in the opposite direction.
And the flood of fentanyl:
In Fiscal Year 2024, USCBP seized 21,148 pounds of fentanyl at the southwest border, mostly smuggled from Mexico. In contrast, only 43 pounds were intercepted at the northern border. This means that less than 1% of all fentanyl seizures occurred at the U.S.-Canada border.
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