Best laptops for 2026
Our top picks for best laptops include Chromebooks, MacBooks, Windows machines and gaming laptops.
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Best laptops for 2026
Our top picks for best laptops include Chromebooks, MacBooks, Windows machines and gaming laptops.
Read More -
Ask Engadget: PC or Mac for back to school?
It's that time of year again on Ask Engadget, when unfortunate, impressionable youths get kicked out of nurturing homes into the adult-beverage-soaked halls of higher learning institutions. Of course, the question of the hour is what kind of computer should you guilt your parents into purchasing for you, but Dave's making things particularly hard on himself:"I'm a Uni student doing IT Security, and I'm looking to replace my now four year old Windows laptop, and am tossing up between getting another Windows PC or getting a MacBook, and just wanted some advice on how it would suit me. Essentially I do some C/C# programming, Web design, presentations, reports and the like, with assignments needing to be in PPT and DOC formats. Could I get some advice on how each one would fare for my purpose, and iWork and Office compare for University use? Any help would be much appreciated!" It sounds like Dave's got some pretty specific needs, and our gut feeling is that he won't hear the end of it from his peers if he's running any software that isn't governed by an open source license, but what say you peoples? Oh, and don't forget to send your questions and moral conundrums to ask at engadget dawt com, or next week we're going to be featuring a heartfelt plea from Josh to help him decide his favorite color.
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Toshiba's 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive: a world's best for laptops
Step aside Fujitsu, there's a new 2.5-inch hard disk champ on the block by way of Toshiba. A world's first 320GB 2.5-inch drive, in fact. The MK3252GSX drive spins a pair of 160GB platters at 5,400rpm with an 8MB buffer and 12ms average seek time over a 3Gbps SATA interface. So yeah, it's just 20GB more data that the Fujitsu 300GB disk but that HDD spins at just 4,200rpm. Better yet, The Tosh drive stands just 9.5-mm tall -- a full 3-mm less than Fujitsu's 300 gigger; that's about as thin as it gets in these 2.5-inch laptop drives. Look for the 320GB disk as a factory shipped option around November when Toshiba starts turning 'em out for mass production.
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