Computers

 The new HP Spectre laptop is a beautiful marriage of luxurious design and raw horsepower that stands out from the crowd.

Once you have got the basic PC accessories you need, this article may give you a few ideas that can improve your computing experience even more.

As we hit the halfway point of summer vacation (for kids), back to school is starting creep closer. For many parents, that’s going to mean a mad scramble to find a laptop for their university, college high school or even elementary school student. But which one to choose? Best Buy alone stocks hundreds… I can’t tell you the perfect laptop for your student —the best advice I can offer is to make certain you understand your student’s requirements, research the options and don’t leave your choice until the last minute when popular models might be in short supply. To help you get started, though, here are my picks as some of the best laptops of the year for back to school.

There’s a lot to like about portable computers, but Google and its hardware partners like Samsung, Acer and HP found a way to offer a light weight, lower cost alternative to the traditional Windows laptop. Chromebooks are a hot category of portable computers that run Google’s Chrome OS instead of Windows or OSX. With Chrome’s lower hardware requirements and the ability to leverage Google’s cloud services, a Chromebook can offer a full-featured PC experience in a device that’s lighter and less expensive than traditional PCs, without the limitations of netbooks. They may not be ideal for everyone, but Chromebooks are designed to cover many scenarios and are particularly useful for students, road warriors, small business and those looking for light duty home PC.  

Enter to win an amazing Surface Studio computer and the versatile control offered by the Surface Dial. See the details here, then enter on Facebook.

Today, a wireless keyboard is far more than just a computing peripheral. It can be used on-the-go with a tablet, for game-play and entertainment with a gaming console, and even as an integral part of the living room with a smart TV.

 Microsoft Office has been around longer than most of its users and it keeps getting better.  In fact you may be surprised at how many different applications are included. Stream the live Facebook event with experts from Microsoft and Best Buy so you can learn about how many different things you can now do with Office 365. Ask questions during the event and you may win a fantastic prize, including a new Surface Pro 4 computer.

As you no doubt know, when it comes to trying to pack the performance needed to undertake serious video gaming in a laptop, it comes down to a very tricky balance between speed and portability. Try to shove too much power in a gaming laptop and for all intents and purposes, it ceases to be a portable PC —heavy, bulky and with little battery life. Go too far in the other direction, though, and you end up with something that’s svelte but unable to play games on anything but the lowest settings. I just spent some quality time with a gaming laptop that manages to strike the perfect balance: the Eurocom M3. It’s a compact, lightweight laptop with the power to chew through pixels and polygons while keeping frame rates high. Eurocom says the M3 is the most powerful 13-inch notebook ever made and everything I’ve seen supports that claim.

 Mobile PC gaming is always a balancing act: graphics capabilities, screen size, battery life and resolution versus size and price. The ASUS ROG GL552VW gaming laptop is designed to be on the less expensive end of the spectrum, but does affordability compromise its cred? Read my review to find out.

 The ASUS X540LA is a big, surprisingly light and very affordable laptop. Aimed at students and casual home use, this 15.6-inch laptop could also easily replace an aging desktop PC. Here’s my review.