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I'm going to start off with a generality. Laptops are at least an order of magnitude harder to design, manufacture and select than desktop computers. Weight, power consumption, screen size, trackpad, keyboard, cooling, CPU, GPU and memory all present difficulties not present in desktop computers (except for all in one designs). Desktops allow for the easy upgrade of GPU's and memory. Laptop GPU's (there might be an exception) are not upgradable. Memory is sometimes upgradable.
My next generality is every Windows laptop I have owned for at least the last 7 years has a way of running hot and getting noisy. This happens even on relatively modest tasks like web surfing. Sometimes a fan utility will fix this, sometimes not. Maybe someone makes one which adapts automatically, but all of my experience is either there is a manual utility setting or nothing at all.
This next general observation about Windows laptops is something which was not so bad in the past, but I find it very annoying and have returned a Lenovo Legion 5 and a Dell Inspiron 16 in the last year because of it. Remember third party crapware? Trials of McAfee are still on most new laptops. However there is now third party stuff with telemetry. Dell has some program claimed to optimize network performance. Fortunately, it's easy to remove. Gaming laptops have Nehemic Audio. This is considered to be spyware by many. It's nearly impossible to remove. I attempted to remove it from the Legion 5 and it clobbered the audio stack to where Equalizer APO would no longer work. I did a reset which fixed the audio stack but when removing the McAfee trial I found Microsoft Defender had been disabled, so I returned the thing. Windows gaming computers carry a lot of manufacturer installed utilities some of which keep track of and report back on the games one plays. Their fan and power utilities are essential for optimum operation.
There is something worse than 3rd party crapware. That is manufacturer installed telemetry. On the Inspiron 16 which I briefly owned the services running had all kinds of sinister names like "Dell Data Vault" and telemetry this and that. These things are being marketed as utilities which optimize the user experience, but some comments I found elsewhere was employers could access data vault to see how the employee was using the machine. I'm sure all this info goes back to Dell although there is probably a way out for enterprise customers purchasing boatloads of Dell's. I tried to remove this stuff on the Inspiron but found it disabled the utility which controls the fan and some other useful items. Reinstallation did not work so I did a reset. Since the system image was done months earlier lots of stuff had to be updated. It turns out these days you may be stuck with your manufacturer updating utility because they are not putting everything on Windows Update anymore. The system did not update properly. Icons and links disappeared for essential utilities. I took it back. I will note here that out of the box it did not update without problems. In other words, you can do a clean install, but your machine will lack fan control and might not update properly. Maybe you can get a third party fan control working, maybe not. Do you really want to have to mess with on your brand new laptop.
Intel integrated GPU's are OK for office work and video playback. The Iris Xe (about to be replaced by a faster IGPU with an Arc designation) can output 8K video at 60 Hz. What the Iris can't do competently is any task which utilizes GPU acceleration. It performs abysmally compared to discreet GPU's or the IGPU in my MacBook Pro M3 Pro (11/14 cores). A Denoise operation in Lightroom took 6 minutes. The Mac did it in 45 seconds. An RTX 4080 with an uncapped 145 watt TDP is more than twice as fast at that operation, but will be packaged in a machine weighing around 9 pounds (4 kg) when the power supply is considered. I will note here that manufacturer specification only give the weight of the computer. The power supply is listed by wattage. As a rule of thumb laptop power supplies weigh 1 lb (454 gr) per 100 watts. The brick which comes with gaming and other high power drain laptops will also have a heavy duty power cord which can add even more weight.
More later...
My next generality is every Windows laptop I have owned for at least the last 7 years has a way of running hot and getting noisy. This happens even on relatively modest tasks like web surfing. Sometimes a fan utility will fix this, sometimes not. Maybe someone makes one which adapts automatically, but all of my experience is either there is a manual utility setting or nothing at all.
This next general observation about Windows laptops is something which was not so bad in the past, but I find it very annoying and have returned a Lenovo Legion 5 and a Dell Inspiron 16 in the last year because of it. Remember third party crapware? Trials of McAfee are still on most new laptops. However there is now third party stuff with telemetry. Dell has some program claimed to optimize network performance. Fortunately, it's easy to remove. Gaming laptops have Nehemic Audio. This is considered to be spyware by many. It's nearly impossible to remove. I attempted to remove it from the Legion 5 and it clobbered the audio stack to where Equalizer APO would no longer work. I did a reset which fixed the audio stack but when removing the McAfee trial I found Microsoft Defender had been disabled, so I returned the thing. Windows gaming computers carry a lot of manufacturer installed utilities some of which keep track of and report back on the games one plays. Their fan and power utilities are essential for optimum operation.
There is something worse than 3rd party crapware. That is manufacturer installed telemetry. On the Inspiron 16 which I briefly owned the services running had all kinds of sinister names like "Dell Data Vault" and telemetry this and that. These things are being marketed as utilities which optimize the user experience, but some comments I found elsewhere was employers could access data vault to see how the employee was using the machine. I'm sure all this info goes back to Dell although there is probably a way out for enterprise customers purchasing boatloads of Dell's. I tried to remove this stuff on the Inspiron but found it disabled the utility which controls the fan and some other useful items. Reinstallation did not work so I did a reset. Since the system image was done months earlier lots of stuff had to be updated. It turns out these days you may be stuck with your manufacturer updating utility because they are not putting everything on Windows Update anymore. The system did not update properly. Icons and links disappeared for essential utilities. I took it back. I will note here that out of the box it did not update without problems. In other words, you can do a clean install, but your machine will lack fan control and might not update properly. Maybe you can get a third party fan control working, maybe not. Do you really want to have to mess with on your brand new laptop.
Intel integrated GPU's are OK for office work and video playback. The Iris Xe (about to be replaced by a faster IGPU with an Arc designation) can output 8K video at 60 Hz. What the Iris can't do competently is any task which utilizes GPU acceleration. It performs abysmally compared to discreet GPU's or the IGPU in my MacBook Pro M3 Pro (11/14 cores). A Denoise operation in Lightroom took 6 minutes. The Mac did it in 45 seconds. An RTX 4080 with an uncapped 145 watt TDP is more than twice as fast at that operation, but will be packaged in a machine weighing around 9 pounds (4 kg) when the power supply is considered. I will note here that manufacturer specification only give the weight of the computer. The power supply is listed by wattage. As a rule of thumb laptop power supplies weigh 1 lb (454 gr) per 100 watts. The brick which comes with gaming and other high power drain laptops will also have a heavy duty power cord which can add even more weight.
More later...
