MSI has buttoned-up Venture and Venture Pro business notebooks for CES to go with its gaming laptops. They come in 14- to 17-inch sizes, with older Intel Meteor Lake chips or AMD’s Ryzen AI 7 350. The Venture Pros get discrete 40-series GPUs.
MSI usually means business when it comes to specs, but I guess it makes exceptions for business.
Dell just killed off XPS, but its new “Pro” laptops pull a neat trick: most USB-C ports and batteries are now officially user-replaceable.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a screwed-on, non-soldered modular USB-C port,” Dell PM Katie Green tells us. She says Dell also plans to bring this to consumers “when it makes sense.” No word on Framework-like modularity yet.
With rumors of Nvidia entering the CPU market, 2025 might be an even bigger year for Microsoft’s Arm efforts.
My retro writing machine collection just got a fun new entry: the Smith-Corona PWP 7000LT, which The New York Times has called “a reasonable alternative to portable computers for people who are not comfortable with more powerful machines.” Somewhat incredibly, it actually works.
If there were any doubt we’d see a new generation of Nvidia graphics hardware at its CES 2025 LAN party, that’s evaporated.
The latest hint comes from @MysteryLupin on X, who’s had early leaks before, with these pictures showing a 16-inch HP Omen Max and specs including an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
A touch more speed and just a tiny bit more convenience.
The folks over at MacRumors have stumbled onto leaked mentions of M4 MacBook Airs in the macOS Sequoia 15.2 update.
This may point to new MacBook Airs coming soon, which aligns with earlier rumors that new 13- and 15-inch models with M4 processors are expected in early 2025.
I’m still working on my GPD Win Max 2 review, and there’s now a more powerful model on sale. It’s pricier at $1,500 — but the 8840U version I’m using is now discounted to $1,000, so that’s great!
This is the best tiny Windows machine I’ve used, though I find I want a mouse. It’s also an OK handheld.
Apart from “subtle differences” like a slightly bigger heatsink and rearranged components, the newest MacBook’s internal layout is about the same as the M3 model’s. iFixit summarizes in a blog post supplementing its video:
Parts pairing and calibration issues remain a major obstacle. Batteries and ports are relatively repair-friendly, but swapping displays or logic boards is a minefield of software locks.
A new “improved” Windows search will allow you to search for documents, photos, and other files by just describing them — even when you’re not connected to the internet. The new AI search experience will roll out to Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs early next year.
We have both M4 Pro and M4 Max 16-inch MacBook Pros, and after initial testing for my review of the 14-inch M4 version, we want to see how hard we can push them.
What kind of workloads or further benchmarks are you curious about? Let us know in the comments.
It’s been a very busy week for the Mac. Apple gave creators and select media a preview of its latest machines in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Here’s Vjeran’s video roundup on the new Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro. The more I see that nano-texture coating on the latter, the more I’m sold on it.
Stay tuned for our reviews.
6
Verge Score
The $1,300 ‘Aura Edition’ laptop doesn’t quite live up to its fancy new Lunar Lake processor.
