Laptop/Chromebook Recommendation

keymomachine · 2021-07-23T19:43:50.000Z

I'm in the market for a new laptop or chromebook and looking for a bit of advice from my fellow brickpickers. Too much backstory: I grew up using Macs in the 90s because my dad was an elementary school teacher spearheading the use of computers in education in his district. I used an iBook in college that had so many problems, it was awful, but it was mine, then I got a real nice Macbook Pro with my first paycheck after college and it was quite good, only had it's logic board replaced once! All this time I was using Windows workstations for GIS and I became disillusioned with Apple as a megacorporation. My current laptop is a 2016 Razer Blade because I wanted a nice Apple-like form factor but also ports without dongles and thought I'd have time to play video games. Well, this computer runs awesome, but something about it waking up while closed for updates or something basically cooks the batteries and ruins them - so I'm on my fifth battery in four years and it's just failed so time to replace this computer and probably also the battery. I use my laptop for browsing the internet with 10-25 tabs open (oh hello ADHD): Inventory and Sales in Google Sheets, many tabs of this forum, several different stores, bricklink, Gmail, FBMarketplace. Nothing particularly intensive, just a lot of things at once. I'm considering a mid-level $400 or so Chromebook perhaps with tablet functionality - would be nice to have a good screen to display downloaded Lego instructions. I've also heard great things about the new Apple M1 chip and that the next generation of Macbook Pro might have functional ports built right into the computer! I'm also open to sticking with Windows, though I don't have a ton invested in that. TLDR: The battery in my laptop died so I can't do my work! Any recommendations?