Ask Paul: June 20 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Let's kick off the weekend a bit early with another great round of reader questions.
? PC gaming, mainstream laptop
JustMe asks:

You've mentioned on Windows Weekly that some of the newer processor combinations make for decent gaming without the need for dedicated graphics. This could be a boon to travelers who need both a laptop for work but want the ability to game on the go. Is there any one CPU combination or a particular laptop series that sticks out as better than any other at this point?

Yes. Anything with a modern AMD processor--meaning "Zen 5" family--is better than anything from Intel, whether it's Meteor Lake (Core Ultra), Lunar Lake (Core Ultra Series 2) or Arrow Lake (ditto). The integrated graphics in Lunar Lake are demonstrably better than those in Meteor Lake, so that's good. (I can't speak to Arrow Lake, but it uses an older integrated graphics chipset.) But anything from AMD is better than either. And there are tiers of AMD chips for premium laptops, so the newer and higher-end chips are the best of the best.

The asterisk here is that you can also get literal gaming laptops, portable workstations, or laptops aimed at creators that also included dedicated graphics. This will cost more, and the resulting laptops will be thicker, heavier, and louder, with more fans. But they will also perform better than PCs with dedicated graphics.

That's not what I care about. I am blown away by the quality I see on AMD-based business and mainstream laptops these days. And if you end up with Lunar Lake, it works fine and looks fine. In a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I might see something like 1920 x 1200 at 30 FPS on low graphics quality settings with Lunar Lake but full resolution (2880 x 1800 or whatever) at 60 to 110 FPS on good/great graphics settings, depending on the chip and configuration. Both are playable. But the AMD versions are always a lot better.
? Only Apple could go to China and give them everything
JustMe asks:

Just finished reading Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company. My reaction was, "are you ?!#ing kidding me?!" Are you still planning on writing your review of this?

Yes. This book is a revelation. Brad and I discussed it a bit this past week on First Ring Daily. But I will publish a formal book review soon.
?‍? The AI paradox
wright_is asks:

I keep looking at the LLM chatbots and I still haven't found a need for any on a regular basis. I use Perplexity for some searches and Brave's Leo for others, but the actual ChatGPT and similar systems don't bring any visible benefit for the work I do or my hobbies.

Curiously, I don't use AI regularly either, and I often don't even think to try. I can't explain this per se. But I do know that my wife has only increased her usage of AI and that she does so to be more efficient and it's working out well for her. She also recognizes that it's only a matter of time before her clients start replacing her with AI...