7/30/2024: What you should look for in a laptop

How to buy a laptop

Plus: AI search worries, a neat take on bookmarking, and a better way to use Amazon Music

Jared Newman | July 30, 2024

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a veteran tech journalist, and this is the free edition of Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, consider signing up to get it every Tuesday. Thanks for reading!

As we turn the corner from July into August, we’re headed straight into “back to school” laptop season.

This can be a great time to buy a new computer, whether you’re a student or not. But as with other tech sale events, it’s also an opportunity for vendors to offload old or unwanted junk on folks who don’t know what to look for.

Over at the Advisorator website, I’ve assembled a buying guide for laptop shoppers. It answers common questions such as how much RAM you need, what type of screen to seek out, and the difference between an endless array of CPU and GPU options. It’s up to date with all the latest info and draws on my years of experience reviewing laptops for PCWorld and other sites.

Check out the laptop buying guide →

(Note: This guide is for paid subscribers, but you can check it out with a free trial. Reader support keeps Advisorator ad- and sponsor-free.)

News in brief

Here are a few recent stories that, taken together, seem pretty disruptive to how web search will work:

Microsoft is working on a new design for Bing that reorganizes results around AI-generated content, with traditional links off to the side.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is showing off its own prototype search engine called SearchGPT, with no traditional link list at all.
Reddit has started blocking most search engines besides Google from linking to its pages, ostensibly to prevent AI models from training on its data without permission. (Reddit and Google have a deal allowing such training.) This follows a series of stories about AI companies ignoring websites’ requests not to scan their content.

While the infusion of generative AI into web search has been underway for a while, more than ever it feels like the decades-old search paradigm is collapsing. Instead of search engines freely indexing the web in exchange for links and traffic, AI systems are licensing or stealing the underlying content, then burying the links.

Of course I have self-serving reasons to fret about this—I depend on the old search paradigm for people to discover my work—but I also fear what happens when more sources of information go into hiding. It’s cold comfort that OpenAI’s own SearchGPT demo provided bad information, as the damage to the open web’s being done either way.

More news tidbits:

The FCC will make carriers unlock phones after 60 days, so it’s easier to switch or use a local SIM card abroad. (More from the archives on unlocked phones.)
A long read on how ChatGPT can be pretty bad at summarizing text.
Samsung’s newest phones make app sideloading harder to enable.
Some recent Intel processors have irreversible damage from crashes.
Rumor: A clamshell-style foldable iPhone—like Samsung’s Z Flip—may arrive in 2026.
Apple Maps gets a web version for desktop browsers. I wrote a FastCo bit about what it’s missing vs. Google Maps.
Adobe admits that it’s addicted to Creative Cloud’s early cancellation fees.

Tip of the week

A better way to use Amazon Music: I’ve been endeavoring to use the Amazon Music app more often lately, for a couple of reasons:

I don’t pay for a streaming music service (for reasons described here), but I still enjoy listening to internet radio stations.
Amazon Music’s radio stations are ad-free if you’re a Prime subscriber.

Sadly, the Amazon Music app is a bloated mess, with too many extraneous podcasts and promoted playlists. But I’ve found a workaround: Using the Amazon Music app’s “Car Mode,” you get quicker access to your favorite radio stations and less cruft.

Here’s how to set it up:

In the Amazon Music app, long-press any album, playlist, or genre-based station, then select “Add to Preset.”
Tap the gear icon in the app’s top-right corner, then head to Settings. Tap on “Show Car Mode Button” and select “Always.”
Whenever you open the app, tap the car icon to enter Car Mode. Any presets you selected in step one will appear at the top.

You’ll still have to exit Car Mode to manage your presets, but otherwise you can use it as a quick way to access your favorite stations, whether you’re driving or not.

Try these apps

Public bookmarks: Sublime is an interesting spin on clipboarding that makes everything you save public by default. You can sort bookmarks into collections (here are some video games I’ve played lately), and you can follow others’ collections or their entire feeds. There’s also a browser extension that helps you collect quotes from webpages (and has some rather satisfying sound effects).

The current posting atmosphere’s a bit heavy on superficially-deep thoughts, and I think the free version’s post limits (100 saves, three collections) are a mistake for an app that needs to encourage more posting to thrive, but I like the overall idea. Here’s a link for Advisorator readers to skip the waitlist.

Private databases: Elsewhere in the categorization realm, Collections Database lets you make custom databases for whatever you want to keep track of, from books and music to subscriptions and shopping items. The idea is to be prettier than a spreadsheet, but nearly as customizable. Thanks to longtime reader Chris H. for suggesting this one in the Advisorator Slack.

Spend wisely

Relevant to this week’s feature column, we’ve got a bunch of back-to-school deals on MacBooks right now:

The 13-inch MacBook Air is $200 off through tomorrow with an M3 processor, 256 GB of storage and 16 GB of RAM, bringing the price to $1,099. If you want 512 GB of storage, Best Buy has it for $200 more. There’s also $200 in savings on the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.
The M2 MacBook Air is also on sale for $800, but with only 8 GB of RAM.
The 16-inch M3 MacBook Pro is $500 in off from Amazon or Best Buy, bringing the price to $2,000. Or save $300 in savings on the 14-inch MacBook Pro.
As always, look for Best Buy’s open-box and refurbished buying options for extra savings.

I could use your support! Advisorator has no ads, sponsors, or sales commissions, so I’m entirely dependent on reader support to keep the newsletter going. I charge a modest subscription fee and have never raised prices in my six years of running this newsletter.

As a paid subscriber, you’ll get an exclusive weekly feature column, full access to all the guides and tutorials on my website, and bonus tech deals in every issue. Try it for free:

Thanks for reading!

Got tech questions for me? Just reply to this email to get in touch.

Until next week,
Jared