For all the usual reasons, I decided I needed a new laptop to handle my day-to-day needs.

For a few years now, my daily-driver has been an Asus X515 laptop. I bought it at a time when I had a big, heavy, powerful company-provided Dell system, so I chose to go with a light-weight (in every possible way) system. So-so CPU, just-enough RAM, not-enough storage space, but it was less than $300 and did everything I needed it to do at the time. Any heavy-lifting could be done on the company Dell - I had set up a Windows 11 VM on the Dell to manage any non-company use.

Earlier this month, I came to the inevitable conclusion that I needed something better. Something that would let me play a few modern games - Cities: Skylines 1, a flight sim, nothing too complex. I set up a few CamelCamelCamel searches for some promising laptops, and waited for the early Black Friday sales to happen.

Late last week I got a ping from CCC - an Asus TUF F16 gaming laptop was going on sale for under $1000, with a discount of over $300. It seemed like a good choice, but I spent a few days thinking it over, talking with Carole, and just making sure it made sense.

I pulled the trigger a few days ago, and the new system arrived in at the door earlier today.

I’m gonna let it sit unopened for a few days to finalize my decision, but I’m leaning toward keeping it.