Microsoft

7 of the best laptop brands of 2019

To survive in today’s world, a laptop is almost a necessity. Whether you’re a contractor using a 2-in-1 to show off floor plans or a college student who needs a Chromebook for class, they make life that much easier.  But with all the name brands offering every laptop you could possibly imagine, how could you…


To survive in today’s world, a laptop is almost a necessity. Whether you’re a contractor using a 2-in-1 to show off floor plans or a college student who needs a Chromebook for class, they make life that much easier. 

But with all the name brands offering every laptop you could possibly imagine, how could you possibly know the best ones to shop from?

At first glance, that’s not an easy question to answer since there are laptops capable of doing everything you could possibly want or need. It can be even harder when trying to separate them by brand and trying to find out what advantages some companies offer over others.

Luckily, we’re here to help make that search a little easier. From reviews, body design, brand alternatives, and more, we’ve figured out the best laptop brands to shop from in 2019. 

Best reviewed

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Image: Lenovo
The Good

Excellent reviews across the board • Wide selection of laptops

The Bad

Poor customer support

The Bottom Line

With a huge selection of laptops, Lenovo is the brand to lean on for consistently positive reviews.

1. Lenovo

While you wouldn’t think it, Lenovo is the brand to check out if you’re looking for some of the best reviewed laptops out there.

  • Popular line:ThinkPad
  • Chromebooks available:No
  • 2-in-1s available:Yes
  • Available at:Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy
$1,759 from Amazon
A laptop could look like the best thing ever on paper, but if it’s poorly reviewed, that could be the kiss of death. Positive reviews, especially when it comes to laptops, are still the best barometer to go by when looking for a new device. And for 2019, no brand has been as well reviewed as Lenovo.
At first glance, you may find it surprising that Lenovo is the best reviewed laptop brand, especially when put up against other names like Apple or HP. While these aren’t poorly reviewed, it’s simply the fact that, laptop to laptop, Lenovo keeps a level of consistency across its products that contribute to those positive reviews.
The ThinkPad line is Lenovo’s go-to line of laptops for anyone looking for an excellent, well-rounded laptop like the T470. The biggest reasons for this is a sturdy design and build quality, fast performance under the hood, and an excellent battery life. The X1 Carbon reviewed extremely well across the board, too, from the likes of CNET, PCMag, and LaptopMag. Common praises went to the Carbon’s thin design and battery life, among other features.
Those are just two examples of the positive reviews Lenovo laptops have received in 2018. On the whole, Lenovo has kept a level consistency that has been reflected in those positive reviews, and if that matters in finding your perfect laptop in 2019, Lenovo is a go to choice.

Best customer support

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Image: apple
The Good

Excellent customer service • macOS offers smooth performance

The Bad

No major changes to hardware • Limited choice

The Bottom Line

Customer support can make or break someone’s experience, and no one does it better with laptops than Apple.

2. Apple

Apple doesn’t just offer premium laptops, but premium customer service as well to ensure those MacBooks keep going.

  • Popular line:MacBook
  • Chromebooks available:No
  • 2-in-1s available:No
  • Available at:Amazon, Best Buy
$2,799 from Amazon
As great as modern technology is, we still haven’t reached a point where everything works 100% of the time (and we probably never will). That’s why it’s important to have good customer support to keep the user base happy. And no company does that better right now than Apple.
In a way, it’s almost a necessity for Apple to invest in its customer support given the quality of their products. That doesn’t mean the 2018 MacBook is low quality, it’s the opposite. Because Apple products are of a certain quality, it only makes sense customers would expect the same of its customer support.
Thankfully, Apple consistently lives up to its user’ expectations. Agents respond quickly to questions about functions or possible difficulties, whether it be on the Apple website or social media. If you need to get your MacBook serviced, you can take it to the closest Apple store to get it  checked out. That kind of boots on the ground support is practically unrivaled in this space.
And if you have AppleCare+, accidental damage is covered for those drops and cracks. There will be repair fees, but it’s still better than dropping another $2,800 on a new MacBook Pro.
Customer support can make or break most people’s experiences with a company, though it’s true you tend to hear more about negative experiences than positive ones. Thankfully, Apple has been able to stay on the opposite side of that, so if you need your MacBook checked out, you’ll be in good hands.

Best for gaming

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Image: razer
The Good

High-end gaming on the go • Surprisingly thin design

The Bad

Extremely limited choice

The Bottom Line

Razer offers desktop power in a thin, laptop body for any gamers on the go.

3. Razer

When it comes to PC gaming, Razer is a premiere name offering premium laptops.

  • Popular line:Blade
  • Chromebooks available:No
  • 2-in-1s available:No
  • Available at:Amazon, Best Buy
$1,499 from Amazon
When it comes to PC gaming, the right name does make a difference. Sure, companies like Asus might offer their own gaming laptops, but in this space, there might be no better name than Razer.
Started in 2005, Razer broke into PC gaming with the Boomslang mouse and it was off to the races. Today, Razer peripherals are among the best products you can get to fill out a gaming setup. Whether it’s a mouse with high DPI for movement, a mechanical keyboard with mechanical switches for faster input, or a THX-infused surround sound headset, you can find some of the best accessories on the market from this company.
In the last few years, Razer also expanded into gaming laptops with the Razer Blade line. As opposed to other gaming laptops that lean on the bulkier side, Razer has been able to pack plenty of power into extremely slim bodies. 
The model that captures this best is the 4K version of Razer Blade Pro 17. Packing a GeForce GTX 1080 and Intel Core i7 processor, it isn’t lacking for power in any way. And since it’s VR ready, you’ll finally be able to get yourself an Ocul

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Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water

Share this Story : Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa – with a lot of water Copy Link Email Facebook X Reddit LinkedIn Tumblr Breadcrumb Trail LinksPMN WorldPMN NewsArtificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa – with a lot of waterAuthor of the article:The Associated PressMatt O’brien And Hannah FingerhutPublished

Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa – with a lot of water

Article content

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.

But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

Article content

As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.

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But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”

Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All of that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings.

In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.

“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

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In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.

“Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying ChatGPT,” Ren said. “If you’re not aware of the resource usage, then there’s no way that we can help conserve the resources.”

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work. Google’s spike wasn’t uniform — it was steady in Oregon where its water use has attracted public attention, while doubling outside Las Vegas. It was also thirsty in Iowa, drawing more potable water to its Council Bluffs data centers than anywhere else.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Microsoft said in a statement this week that it is investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint “while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

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Story continues below
Article content

“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,” the company’s statement said.

OpenAI echoed those comments in its own statement Friday, saying it’s giving “considerable thought” to the best use of computing power.

“We recognize training large models can be energy and water-intensive” and work to improve efficiencies, it said.

Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2019, more than two years before the startup introduced ChatGPT and sparked worldwide fascination with AI advancements. As part of the deal, the software giant would supply computing power needed to train the AI models.

To do at least some of that work, the two companies looked to West Des Moines, Iowa, a city of 68,000 people where Microsoft has been amassing data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers are due to open there later this year.

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Story continues below
Article content

“They’re building them as fast as they can,” said Steve Gaer, who was the city’s mayor when Microsoft came to town. Gaer said the company was attracted to the city’s commitment to building public infrastructure and contributed a “staggering” sum of money through tax payments that support that investment.

“But, you know, they were pretty secretive on what they’re doing out there,” he added.

Microsoft first said it was developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers for OpenAI in 2020, declining to reveal its location to AP at the time but describing it as a “single system” with more than 285,000 cores of conventional semiconductors, and 10,000 graphics processors — a kind of chip that’s become crucial to AI workloads.

Experts have said it can make sense to “pretrain” an AI model at a single location because of the large amounts of data that need to be transferred between computing cores.

It wasn’t until late May that Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, disclosed that it had built its “advanced AI supercomputing data center” in Iowa, exclusively to enable OpenAI to train what has become its fourth-generation model, GPT-4. The model now powers premium versions of ChatGPT and some of Microsoft’s own products and has accelerated a debate about containing AI’s societal risks.

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Story continues below
Article content

“It was made by these extraordinary engineers in California, but it was really made in Iowa,” Smith said.

In some ways, West Des Moines is a relatively efficient place to train a powerful AI system, especially compared to Microsoft’s data centers in Arizona that consume far more water for the same computing demand.

“So if you are developing AI models within Microsoft, then you should schedule your training in Iowa instead of in Arizona,” Ren said. “In terms of training, there’s no difference. In terms of water consumption or energy consumption, there’s a big difference.”

For much of the year, Iowa’s weather is cool enough for Microsoft to use outside air to keep the supercomputer running properly and vent heat out of the building. Only when the temperature exceeds 29.3 degrees Celsius (about 85 degrees Fahrenheit) does it withdraw water, the company has said in a public disclosure.

That can still be a lot of water, especially in the summer. In July 2022, the month before OpenAI says it completed its training of GPT-4, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That amounted to about 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to the city’s residents.

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In 2022, a document from the West Des Moines Water Works said it and the city government “will only consider future data center projects” from Microsoft if those projects can “demonstrate and implement technology to significantly reduce peak water usage from the current levels” to preserve the water supply for residential and other commercial needs.

Microsoft said Thursday it is working directly with the water works to address its feedback. In a written statement, the water works said the company has been a good partner and has been working with local officials to reduce its water footprint while still meeting its needs.

_-

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

__

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing agreement that allows for part of AP’s text archives to be used to train the tech company’s large language model. AP receives an undisclosed fee for use of its content.

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Article content

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.

But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water, pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.

Article content

As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.

Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content

But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”

Building a large language model requires analyzing patterns across a huge trove of human-written text. All of that computing takes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. To keep it cool on hot days, data centers need to pump in water — often to a cooling tower outside its warehouse-sized buildings.

In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research.

“It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI,” including “its heavy investment in generative AI and partnership with OpenAI,” said Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside who has been trying to calculate the environmental impact of generative AI products such as ChatGPT.

Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content

In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. The range varies depending on where its servers are located and the season. The estimate includes indirect water usage that the companies don’t measure — such as to cool power plants that supply the data centers with electricity.

“Most people are not aware of the resource usage underlying ChatGPT,” Ren said. “If you’re not aware of the resource usage, then there’s no way that we can help conserve the resources.”

Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period, which Ren also largely attributes to its AI work. Google’s spike wasn’t uniform — it was steady in Oregon where its water use has attracted public attention, while doubling outside Las Vegas. It was also thirsty in Iowa, drawing more potable water to its Council Bluffs data centers than anywhere else.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Microsoft said in a statement this week that it is investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint “while working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application.”

Advertisement 4
Story continues below
Article content

“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,” the company’s statement said.

OpenAI echoed those comments in its own statement Friday, saying it’s giving “considerable thought” to the best use of computing power.

“We recognize training large models can be energy and water-intensive” and work to improve efficiencies, it said.

Microsoft made its first $1 billion investment in San Francisco-based OpenAI in 2019, more than two years before the startup introduced ChatGPT and sparked worldwide fascination with AI advancements. As part of the deal, the software giant would supply computing power needed to train the AI models.

To do at least some of that work, the two companies looked to West Des Moines, Iowa, a city of 68,000 people where Microsoft has been amassing data centers to power its cloud computing services for more than a decade. Its fourth and fifth data centers are due to open there later this year.

Advertisement 5
Story continues below
Article content

“They’re building them as fast as they can,” said Steve Gaer, who was the city’s mayor when Microsoft came to town. Gaer said the company was attracted to the city’s commitment to building public infrastructure and contributed a “staggering” sum of money through tax payments that support that investment.

“But, you know, they were pretty secretive on what they’re doing out there,” he added.

Microsoft first said it was developing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers for OpenAI in 2020, declining to reveal its location to AP at the time but describing it as a “single system” with more than 285,000 cores of conventional semiconductors, and 10,000 graphics processors — a kind of chip that’s become crucial to AI workloads.

Experts have said it can make sense to “pretrain” an AI model at a single location because of the large amounts of data that need to be transferred between computing cores.

It wasn’t until late May that Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, disclosed that it had built its “advanced AI supercomputing data center” in Iowa, exclusively to enable OpenAI to train what has become its fourth-generation model, GPT-4. The model now powers premium versions of ChatGPT and some of Microsoft’s own products and has accelerated a debate about containing AI’s societal risks.

Advertisement 6
Story continues below
Article content

“It was made by these extraordinary engineers in California, but it was really made in Iowa,” Smith said.

In some ways, West Des Moines is a relatively efficient place to train a powerful AI system, especially compared to Microsoft’s data centers in Arizona that consume far more water for the same computing demand.

“So if you are developing AI models within Microsoft, then you should schedule your training in Iowa instead of in Arizona,” Ren said. “In terms of training, there’s no difference. In terms of water consumption or energy consumption, there’s a big difference.”

For much of the year, Iowa’s weather is cool enough for Microsoft to use outside air to keep the supercomputer running properly and vent heat out of the building. Only when the temperature exceeds 29.3 degrees Celsius (about 85 degrees Fahrenheit) does it withdraw water, the company has said in a public disclosure.

That can still be a lot of water, especially in the summer. In July 2022, the month before OpenAI says it completed its training of GPT-4, Microsoft pumped in about 11.5 million gallons of water to its cluster of Iowa data centers, according to the West Des Moines Water Works. That amounted to about 6% of all the water used in the district, which also supplies drinking water to the city’s residents.

Advertisement 7
Story continues below
Article content

In 2022, a document from the West Des Moines Water Works said it and the city government “will only consider future data center projects” from Microsoft if those projects can “demonstrate and implement technology to significantly reduce peak water usage from the current levels” to preserve the water supply for residential and other commercial needs.

Microsoft said Thursday it is working directly with the water works to address its feedback. In a written statement, the water works said the company has been a good partner and has been working with local officials to reduce its water footprint while still meeting its needs.

_-

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

__

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing agreement that allows for part of AP’s text archives to be used to train the tech company’s large language model. AP receives an undisclosed fee for use of its content.

Article content
Comments

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

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