- On this week's episode of Ask Dan,
I tell you what the best budget laptop out there is,
and do the staff of Windows Central
still use Windows 10 Mobile?
The answer may surprise you.
Stay tuned.
"What is the best laptop right now at a reasonable price,
"plus good graphics?"
All right, so a really great question here.
In 2017, we suffer from a problem of
trying to pick the best laptop.
Luckily, there's a lot of options here.
If I had to pick one right now,
it's probably the Dell Inspiron 15 inch 7567.
Now, we rated last year's version
as one of the best 15 inch gaming laptops available
for those on a budget.
This year's version's even better.
It has a GTX1050 Ti, which a lot of people are considering
the real sweet spot for the Pascal series,
at least for those on a budget.
You can even do some Oculus VR gaming with this.
So, we haven't reviewed that laptop yet,
but we will soon, so stayed tuned.
But right now, that's what I'm hearing
as one of the best budget laptops available.
"In light for Microsoft's retreat of Windows 10 Mobile,
"has the Windows Central staff
"also reverted to iPhones or Androids?"
Okay, so that's a real fun question to answer.
For myself, I still do use Windows 10 Mobile
on my main device.
That's the HP Elite X3.
Now, I do carry multiple phones with me.
Not all the time, so my Elite X3 is my first one.
It has my main number on it,
it's what I get text messages on,
that's what I use.
I do carry an iPhone, occasionally an Android phone
on my secondary and tertiary SIMs.
Yes, I actually have four SIMs.
I also carry the Alcatel Idol 4S with me as well.
Zac Bowden also uses Windows 10 Mobile.
Now, he recently did flirt with iPhone
and wrote a few articles regarding that transfer process,
seeing what it's like to come over
from a Microsoft world onto the iPhone.
But he still likes Windows Mobile.
And even Jez Corden, our Xbox guru,
he too loves his Lumia and has no plans to give it up.
George Ponder, who's been writing for our site since 2009,
is also a huge fan of Windows 10 Mobile
and is still using a Lumia and has absolutely
no plans of giving up his device any time soon.
Now, the rest of our staff are part-timers,
as at times they work on other sites like
Android Central or iMore,
so some of them do use an iPhone as their main device.
But the main writers here are still using
Windows 10 Mobile and we have no plans
to change that any time soon,
but who knows what 2017's gonna bring for all of us?
"Do you think desktop apps will be dead in the future,
"with incoming store apps on Windows 10?"
All right, so I've talked about this in the past a bit.
Desktop apps here are referring to Win32,
the classic apps, the ones you download
off of the web and have an executable.
They won't die any time soon.
Let's face it, legacy users need these apps.
They're gonna be around for a long time.
Hospitals, enterprise, they all need this stuff.
It is Microsoft's goal, though,
to get those apps into the Windows Store
through Project Centennial.
The other step is to get it into a full UWP app.
That is a native Windows 10 app.
So, that is the process.
Ideally, yes, Microsoft would love Win32
to actually die off.
But let's not kid ourselves,
that's going to take a long time.
Those apps have been around forever.
Some of them are not being developed anymore,
the developers have gone on to other projects,
so you can't directly port them.
So there will be a gap.
Everything Microsoft is doing right now
is to act as bridges between these two worlds.
But long-term, five years out from now, 10 years out,
yes, they wanna see a huge decline in Win32.
It's an old system, and they think UWP is the future.
"Dell XPS 13 versus Razer Blade Stealth
"for light gaming and video editing?"
All right, so this question is, which is better,
the XPS 13 or Razer Blade Stealth?
These are really tough to answer.
They're kind of different devices.
Obviously, the Stealth is technically
made for gaming, XPS 13 not.
But they have a lot of similar specs,
so I kind of get it.
To answer this question, it really depends on
how you plan on using this.
If you're on the road and traveling a lot,
get the XPS 13.
It does have a better display.
Sure, they're both QHD, but the XPS 13's panel
is just phenomenal.
You're not gonna get anything better in terms of lighting
and color accuracy than that one.
The performance on it, though, is still gonna be good.
None of these devices have GPUs dedicated to them,
so their performance is gonna be similar.
On the other hand, the Razer Blade Steal has one advantage.
That is, Razer Core, its external GPU.
You can use it through its Type C plug.
That means you can throw in a 1080.
So if you're gonna use the Razer Blade Stealth
primarily at home, I would say that's
a better choice for you.
Now, you can use some EGPUs with the Dell XPS 13,
but it's gonna be hit and miss.
For instance, you can use Razer Core,
but sometimes it may freeze up and cause some issues.
So, if you're planning on using this as a home unit,
I would go for Razer Blade Stealth.
If you're gonna be traveling a lot,
get the XPS 13.
"Do you think Microsoft will keep using codename Redstone,
"and for how long?
"Are we gonna go up to Redstone 68?"
All right, so for those of you who do not know,
on Windows 10 they use the codename Redstone
for insider build.
Redstone, of course, comes from the world of Minecraft.
The question is, are we gonna be using these
all the way up for Redstone 66, 67?
So, right now we're at Redstone 2.
That's the creators update that's coming out now.
Redstone 3 is slated for the fall.
Does it go beyond that?
Yes, I've actually heard of going up
to Redstone 9 already, so that is pretty far out planning.
Now, that could, of course, change.
I don't know what the actual threshold here is,
what the end goal is.
Will there be a Redstone 20?
Possibly.
They, of course, may shift things.
After all, it's just a codename, so who knows?
I've heard on internal planning maps,
there are mentions of this already.
So that does it for this week's episode of Ask Dan.
Remember, if you have a question,
use #AskDanWindows on Twitter,
or email us at askdan@windowscentral.com,
and maybe I'll pick your question.
If you like this video, give us a thumbs up
and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
Take care, everybody.
The plan right now is, yeah, Redstone 4,
Redstone 5, Redstone 6.
Oh, man, let me do it all over.