I bought a Razer Blade six months ago. I love the OLED screen, the ultra-pretty graphics in Zwift, and the glowy colouredness of the keyboard.

But Windows and Nvidia drivers are doing my head in. Occasionally the Nvidia GPU doesn’t shut down and just rumbles away in the background, which leads to the fans screaming and the computer sucking up 120W needlessly. And if you put it to sleep it sometimes doesn’t wake up, which is quite a common Windows 11 issue.

80% off listing fees on Ebay today. Do I just go “screw it” and buy a Mac? I thought I’d play more games than I do, and most of them are now on Xbox Streaming.

Do I just go “screw it” and buy a Mac?

Buy a desktop and a cheap laptop

Do I just go “screw it” and buy a Mac?

To do what?

To do what?

By frequency of use, the most common apps on my laptop are Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Zwift, Calibre, Spotify, Fusion360, Calibre, and VLC. Everything else is done in a browser.

Stuff that I’d like to work but doesn’t happen brilliantly under Windows at the moment:

– Some programs still don’t have DPI-aware scaling and go blurry after it’s been connected to an external display.
– Windows frequently forgets what size a window was and resizes it to a tiny square.
– Bluetooth needs turning off and on to make it connect to stuff like headphones or a trainer.
– Previewing most things like PDFs require opening it in Acrobat.
– Printing sucks (although I’m willing to blame printers exclusively here).

I don’t want fans to scream every time I play a YouTube video, even when the power options are set to balanced. I want it to wake up when I open the lid, guaranteed every time. I don’t particularly like the non-stop ads for OneDrive / Skype / Teams etc, although owning an iPad I’m aware that I won’t get away from the equivalent marketing.

Based on your complaints and your usage, I’d say you’ll be very happy with a new MacBook Pro.

Based on your complaints and your usage, I’d say you’ll be very happy with my three year old Dell Latitude that I have at work.

Needs to be 4K display or equivalent pixel density unfortunately.

My M1 Air is pretty much indistinguishable in performance from my work M1 Pro in Photoshop, Lightroom or Premiere Pro.

The M1 Air is a properly astonishingly fast laptop for about a grand in the refurb store – and there can’t be many ‘normal’ uses where you’d need anything faster or more capable; it made my stupidly expensive work Dell Precision feel 5 years old.

You’ll come for the speed, you’ll stay for the trackpad.

Based on your complaints and your usage, I’d say you’ll be very happy with my three year old Dell Latitude that I have at work.

I have remarkably similar usage as OP, but i do it on a 3 year old dell latitude from work. It’s ok. But if I’d spent Razer Blade type money, I’d be expecting more. And I’d be annoyed about the things OP is complaining about. I’m not terribly qualified to comment on a new MacBook Pro, but I do have positive experiences of a 2013 MacBook Pro. And I’ve read the glowing reviews of the new Mac silicon. I think OP might be happy there.

I had a Sony laptop a few years ago that was a fine looking machine. Similar issues to those described and they never really got sorted. Just feels like that with such a vast range of hardware out there that some windows machines just never play nice with drivers. The manufacturer support was pathetic given the price of the thing too.

I have a great windows desktop now that never misses a beat.

I would probably sell it while it is still worth something if you really aren’t getting on with it, it is unlikely to be miraculously improved by updates.

Gotta say that sounds like a right shocker. There are loads of good Windows laptops around, the problem is it’s not easy to tell which is which.

If you have the money, and the apps are supported then you would be fine with a Mac, but to be fair it sounds like there’s something physically wrong with that Windows laptop.

I watch HD video from Netflix and run Zwift on a 12 year old Lenovo running Windows that has an Nvidia graphics adapter, and it runs nice and cool. And I haven’t done anything special to it besides a fresh install of Windows when I put the SSD in, so it clearly ought to work.

If I were you I’d be looking at a clean Windows install first.

Occasionally the Nvidia GPU doesn’t shut down and just rumbles away in the background, which leads to the fans screaming and the computer sucking up 120W needlessly.

I don’t think that’s just the nVidia graphics not shutting down – it’s some software using it and a load of CPU besides. On my old Lenovo I messed about with Linux, and for a while I didn’t have the switching thing working so I was running purely on the nVidia card. The whole system power usage was about 20W vs about 11W with the nVidia turned off. Nowhere near 120W, nothing should consume that unless it’s being thrashed, so I think there’s some kind of bloatware doing that not the drivers.

And for the record Macs aren’t immune to this kind of thing either. The indexing process (mds) has been going nuts on my older one for over a year using up enough CPU to bake my lap and get the fans going.

Have you tried calling their support?  I know we tend to try and search the internet for solutions but often the support folks have already come across this or it  may even be a hardware issue.  If it’s still in warranty give them a call

Razer usually has software installed that controls fan speeds. You should be able to adjust the fan speed for each application and if the laptop is idle it should be silent.

My Alienware fan was noisy until I altered the fan settings for different applications.

Oh, also I tend to avoid Chrome these days as it seems to eat CPU.  Have pretty much switched to Edge and life is  better

Edge and Chrome use the same internals these days.

Occasionally the Nvidia GPU doesn’t shut down and just rumbles away in the background, which leads to the fans screaming and the computer sucking up 120W needlessly.

That’ll be someone in Pyongyang using your laptop to mine bitcoin carry out DDOS attacks.

Edge and Chrome use the same internals these days.

Indeed but Edge for some reason doesn’t seem to be so power hungry.  I might be to do with the way they pause tabs when you aren’t using them.  Chrome does appear to be making an attempt to fix it though

I love my macbook pro. It just works. It helps that my wife does the admin, but she likes them too (and having just struggled all day with my mother’s windows atrocity, she’s not wavering in that assessment).

It has a minor niggle with RStudio (I suspect due to the latter not yet working properly with the M1 chip) and I have to reboot it more often than I’d like – about 3 or 4 times in the past year – but other than that it’s rock solid.

The M1 Air is a properly astonishingly fast laptop for about a grand in the refurb store – and there can’t be many ‘normal’ uses where you’d need anything faster or more capable;

Nice to hear that. I’m looking to upgrade (at long last) from my 2012 MacBook Pro and not sure whether the current M1 Pro is worth the extra over the Air.

Oh and I’ve been using and supporting Windows since v3.1 and using a mac at home for about 15 years. I like them.

Switched from using windows and lenovos to the M1 Air this year, and I’m very happy. Macos is annoying in its own ways, but it doesn’t come with candy crush preinstalled and doesnt force you to upgrade the OS or anything.

Also got the LG 5k screen, fonts have never looked as good..

Razer, a brand founded on form over function.

I had a Sony laptop a few years ago

They’re shite too.

Just feels like that with such a vast range of hardware out there that some windows machines just never play nice with drivers.

Because OEM’s load them up with crap that usually tries to do something that the OS does fine on it’s own and ends up fighting itself.

That aside (it wasn’t a criticism of either of you BTW, it seems fair to assume a quality brand should work) it seems you have multitude of problems that can be fixed in a multitude of ways. Or one if you haven’t done it already.

Stuff that I’d like to work but doesn’t happen brilliantly under Windows at the moment:

– Some programs still don’t have DPI-aware scaling and go blurry after it’s been connected to an external display.
– Windows frequently forgets what size a window was and resizes it to a tiny square.
– Bluetooth needs turning off and on to make it connect to stuff like headphones or a trainer.
– Previewing most things like PDFs require opening it in Acrobat.
– Printing sucks (although I’m willing to blame printers exclusively here).

I don’t want fans to scream every time I play a YouTube video, even when the power options are set to balanced. I want it to wake up when I open the lid, guaranteed every time. I don’t particularly like the non-stop ads for OneDrive / Skype / Teams etc, although owning an iPad I’m aware that I won’t get away from the equivalent marketing.

1) Have you done a fresh install? Not a factory reboot but an actual fresh install of Windows. OEM bollocks LOVES to mess with settings and make stuff more complicated than it has to be. You don’t need any of it. That would probably address your first three problems.

2) This isn’t 1998, Acrobat is a pile of shit. Foxit is far less bloated (or used to be) and is the best alternative I’ve found. Edge is okay as long as you never have to print stuff to scale like dressmaking patterns and such. I don’t need to open anything if I activate the Preview Pane (Top of explorer pane > View > Preview Pane [LHS]) although I’m not sure if that’s Windows or Foxit driving that.

3) Printers are just dicks. Honestly, I have no idea how the hell we have come so far and yet printers just get worse as time goes on. It doesn’t matter what OS you have, your printer will still be a dick.