Laptops are expensive, there’s no getting away from it, but you can appreciate the financial implications of choosing the best laptop at the right time. While there are always new laptops coming out, a few times throughout the year, buying a laptop becomes a little more affordable, even if you want the latest and greatest.

To choose the best time to buy a laptop, keep in mind:

• Big Sale: Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday, Prime Day
• back to school
• New hardware versions

Black Friday / Cyber ​​Monday

Black Friday is obviously a good time to shop for a laptop, but it’s more than just door chores. New laptop hardware is usually released either at the beginning of the year or around October, depending on the manufacturer. This means that all laptops that are one generation old or about to be one generation obsolete after CES or the Consumer Electronics Show will be heavily discounted.

This is because retailers like Amazon and Best Buy want to clear their shelves to make room for new products when they arrive. So, yes, that might mean you’re not getting the fanciest laptop, but when you can save a solid 20-30% off the sticker price, does it even matter?

Couple that with the fact that these retailers are using huge Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday discounts to get your attention, and you could end up with an extremely affordable laptop. I’ve seen Black Friday stock drop the price of the MacBook Air a couple of weeks after it came out, and Apple laptops tend to be the most expensive. load to see any discounts especially when they are new.

Black Friday this year falls on November 23rd., but the season of deals continues to stretch. If you’re looking to buy a laptop during Black Friday, you can expect discounts to start around October.

Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day

As with Black Friday, Amazon has its own promotions every year. In my experience, Prime Day laptop deals are never bigbut that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If you’re not too picky, you can find a solid laptop at an affordable price, but it probably won’t be a luxury top-of-the-line device.

Instead, Amazon Prime Day is one of the best times of the year to get one of the best Chromebooks out there. These are already ultra-affordable laptops, and Amazon is cutting prices even further on Prime Day. The best part about this is that you don’t have to worry too much about what kind of hardware you get with a Chromebook since pretty much everything you’ll be doing on the device is tied to the web browser anyway.

We don’t know when Amazon Prime Day will be this year, but it usually happens right in the middle of summer, making it a great time to buy a laptop if you’re a student or parent of one.

If you want new hotness

If you’re not necessarily interested in bargain laptop purchases, but instead want to have the best laptop possible at any given moment, you should wait for Nvidia, Intel, or AMD to announce new laptop hardware. This year it happened at CES: Nvidia, AMD and Intel released brand new laptop hardware, marking a whole new generation of laptops. Although the launch of Intel and Nvidia really only affected gaming laptops.

Intel Announces 13th Generation Raptor Lake Mobile Processors at CES 2023

If you’re looking for a powerful ultrabook, it’s a bit more difficult to pinpoint the exact time to get one. Typically, Intel releases its less powerful U-series processors at seemingly random times. For example, 13th gen Intel processors are currently available for both gaming laptops and desktops, but 13th gen U-series processors are currently out of stock. These laptops are likely to arrive soon, but we may have to wait a bit.

This is where you should keep an eye on technical news and rumors. Laptop hardware tends to pop out of the blue, so if you want to jump on the news when they do, you’ll have to keep an eye on them.

New equipment can bring prices down, sort of

One of the other benefits of waiting for new laptop hardware is that it will immediately lower the price of the latest generation of hardware. It might be a bit of a shame to spend a thousand dollars on a one year old laptop, but let me assure you that generations of laptops very much gradually.

You don’t have to worry too much about the 12th gen Intel laptop when the 13th gen Intel laptops come out, because the 12th gen chips will only be a few percentage points behind the 13th gen chips. And even in this case, the difference will not be noticeable in everyday computing tasks. Trust me, one generation of processors won’t speed up Photoshop. so many.

Keeping an eye on new laptop hardware and then getting a good deal on the latest generation laptop is one of the best ways to buy a laptop, and that goes for the best MacBooks as well. When a new MacBook comes out, you can open any used market and see hundreds of old MacBooks at a deep discount because their owners want to buy a new one. If you want to be savvy when buying a new laptop, no matter the time of year, this is the way to do it.

The best affordable laptops to choose from right now

If you don’t want to wait for a sale or any new models to be released, here are some of the best budget laptops to browse through our laptop buying guides:

Dell

Dell XPS 13

If you don’t want to spend money on a MacBook, the best MacBook alternative is the Dell XPS 13 laptop.

lake on Dell

ASUS

Asus TUF Dash 15

If you’re after a good gaming laptop under $2,000, this is a great choice on a budget.

lake on Amazon

Microsoft

Surface Pro 9

One of the best removable laptops. We recommend a model with an ARM-based Microsoft processor, SQ 3.

lake at Best Buy

Apple

Apple MacBook Air M2

The Apple MacBook Air (2022) is one of the best laptops for everyday use.

lake on Amazon

Jackie Thomas is an IGN technical editor and buying guide editor specializing in hardware overviews and features.

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Dave Jewitt
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Adam Mason
on May 20, 2023 7:00 AM PT

nexon, one of the largest gaming companies in the world, sneaking into the web3 like some of his peers in Asia. Developer MapleStory is building a blockchain-based ecosystem based on a 20-year-old multiplayer online game where players can exchange in-game assets such as clothing, equipment, and virtual pets in the form of non-fungible tokens.

Around 160,000 people in South Korea still play MapleStory. wrote recently in a blog post with a link to Korea MapleStory data.

Blockchain games have popped up all over the place in the past two years, but few have become mainstream or even popular. like game to earn Axie Infinitydid not last long.

Nexon promises to create more sustainable crypto games. “There was a time when the perception of ‘blockchain = P2E’ was widespread and there was a lot of talk about using blockchain to create money making games,” a Nexon spokesperson told TechCrunch in a text message.

“But the market has changed since then and there are more creators who want to use blockchain for serious game development.”

It’s still too early to tell if MapleStory N, Nexon’s first blockchain game, will maple story universe, the NFT ecosystem based on the IP of the classic game will ever reach the heights of its Web 2.0 version. Nexon, of course, has bright prospects.

“MapleStory has over 180 million users worldwide and even more people love MapleStory’s IP. We expect MapleStory N and MapleStory Universe to appeal to many gamers,” a Nexon spokesperson said.

The main criticism of games based on the principles of “play to earn” is related to their flawed economy, where gamers buy NFTs only to create and sell these digital goods to those who buy them after them. Nexon does not follow the pyramid path.

MapleStory N does not have a cash shop, and players acquire items as they play, such as by completing quests and defeating monsters. If people don’t get what they want, they can purchase items from others through the secondary market of the NFT ecosystem. Players will also eventually be able to trade their in-game assets on external marketplaces, according to Nexon.

Joining the masses

Nexon is working with several partners to enable the transition to web3. The firm has already announced that MapleStory Universe digital goods will trade at the Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution popular with game developers. The South Korean gaming firm said today that it is teaming up with fellow web3 company. Hachi Laboratoriescrypto-audit and wallet solutions provider used by over 500 companies.

“A lot of gaming companies started knocking on our door after seeing the success of Axie Infinity as Haechi Labs has been offering smart contract security auditing and wallet solutions for the past 5 years,” CEO Geon-gi Moon told TechCrunch in a written response.

“Nowhere else will you see so many AAA gaming executives being so optimistic about integrating their games with blockchain except South Korea.”

Most existing decentralized applications require users to log in through their crypto wallets. But what if people don’t have web3 experience? hachi advertise face walletwhich allows users to log in to crypto games like MapleStory N through their existing Google, Facebook, Apple, Discord, and Kakao accounts.

Once logged in, users will have access to their Face Wallet accounts. Anyone who has used a standalone wallet like MetaMask knows how hard it is to try to keep your 16 word seed phrase safe. Losing the seed phrase means losing access to the wallet forever. Custody solutions are easy to use, but on the other hand, asset owners are at risk of being hacked or the platform going bankrupt.

Face Wallet attempts to solve the custodian’s dilemma by offering a self-storage wallet that allows users to log in with a six-digit password and gives them the ability to recover passcodes.

Here’s how it works: when a user creates a wallet through Face Wallet, their key is split into two encrypted “shares,” Moon explained. Share 1 is stored in a secure infrastructure environment and typically also on the user’s device. Share 2 is stored in the Face Wallet team repository. The decrypted keys are never given to Haechi; also Haechi cannot decrypt any of the encrypted keys, Moon added.

Haechi isn’t the only one trying to make their own wallets more user-friendly. The Ethereum community itself is addressing this issue with a major technical update called “account abstraction” and developers such as soul venture walletare rushing to introduce wallets based on the capabilities of smart contracts.