If you like the idea of the MacBook Air but don’t want to be in the Apple ecosystem, then you’ll be happy to know that there are some great alternatives, and they’re much cheaper than you’d expect. A great example is the Surface Pro 9, which is really Microsft’s answer to the MacBooks; being slim and packed with features, it’s essentially a high-end tablet and laptop rolled into one. You can even get your hands on it for just $770 rather than the usually steep $1,100 price, meaning you save yourself a whopping $330 in the process.
There is a lot of love about the Surface Pro 9, and a big part of that is the overall design and build; weighing in at 1.94 pounds and 0.37 inches thick, it easily competes with something like the MacBook Air in terms of size. It’s even more impressive when you consider that you’re getting an Intel Evo Platform Core i5 under the hood, which is a mid-range processor that’s very similar to the same desktop PC version. That means you get a lot more power out of the laptop as a whole, and it should easily handle most of your productivity and day-to-day work without any issues and you might even be able to get some slight creativity work and gaming done, too.
Another big positive is the keyboard it comes with, which feels great to type on and is removable so that you can use the Surface Pro 9 as a laptop if you’d like. At 13 inches, it’s pretty big, about as big as a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, so it’s not going to be difficult to hold up and use for long periods. The only big downside is the 8GB of RAM is somewhat on the smaller side, especially when you consider that it runs Windows 11, but it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. Neither is the 256GB of storage, which should be fine for most folks, and if you need more, you could always grab one of these external hard drive deals.
Overall, the Surface Pro 9 is an excellent portable laptop with a good amount of processing power under the hood, and with the discount from Best Buy that brings it down to $770, it really is worth grabbing. On the other hand, if you’d prefer something with a larger screen or a more traditional laptop experience, then you can check out these laptop deals instead.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.