Wexford teen avoids jail after gang attack on male he believed had molested girlThe Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i is a 16-inch versatile laptop for the office, home, and everywhere in between, on sale right now for Black Friday. It's powered by the latest Intel and Nvidia hardware, and has a battery that can last all day. The laptop has a disappointing webcam and comes loaded with too much bloatware. When it comes to laptops, professional and student users have more in common than you might think. Both groups want a flexible machine that can handle the whole day's work, while doubling as an entertainment center at night, and both would agree that a long-lasting battery is a must. Well, I've found the perfect laptop for both groups: Lenovo's 2024 IdeaPad Pro 5i . This 16-inch laptop has everything a professional could ask for in a work machine, while also being a solid choice for college students. Also: The best Black Friday deals: Live updates Lenovo's device is nothing short of powerful. Under the hood, you'll find an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor alongside an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics card, resulting in rock-solid performance. I tested the hardware by running many common workplace tasks from web browsing to writing documents and video conferencing platforms simultaneously. It handled everything I threw at it without skipping a beat. Additionally, the Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i has 32GB of memory, ensuring load times are almost nonexistent. This hardware configuration even allows the IdeaPad Pro 5i to act as a capable gaming laptop, perfect for those long days when you want to unwind with a game. Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i The Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5i is a formidable 16-inch laptop with powerful hardware, a 2K OLED display, and a long-lasting battery. Also: This inexpensive laptop brings back a buzzword that was once the talk of the tech industry All this power can be thoroughly enjoyed on the IdeaPad Pro's hi-res 2K (2,048 x 1,280) OLED screen that's capable of displaying content in stunning detail. The screen has a speedy refresh rate of 120Hz, enabling realistic movies and a silky-smooth visual display. Unlike many other laptops with OLED displays, Lenovo's machine doesn't sport much image-enhancing software. There's no Dolby Vision, nor does it cover 100% of the sRGB color gamut. As a result, colors aren't as vibrant as on some competing devices. The IdeaPad Pro 5i does support HDR for high contrast, but that's about it. I should point out that the display is a touchscreen, but given that this device is not a convertible 2-in-1, I found the feature to be a little gimmicky. Sitting above the OLED screen is the device's 1080p webcam. It's passable for video calls, although honestly, its quality is quite lackluster. Recordings are grainy, and there is no way to improve the feed without third-party software, either. The basic webcam software can only reposition the camera. The IdeaPad Pro's generous heft allows for a full-sized keyboard, which, when paired with the rubber-like keycaps, result in a very comfortable typing experience. I also appreciate how the arrow keys jut out from the bottom, making them easy to access. Manufacturers, in my experience, tend to make the Page Up and Page Down keys on 14-inch laptops too small. The IdeaPad Pro 5i has fortunately solved this problem. Also: The ThinkPad I recommend for hybrid workers is not Lenovo's newest model Lenovo also made some interesting design choices. The speakers, for example, are located above the keyboard. I'm always glad to see laptops include upward-firing speakers, as I've never been a fan of muffled audio. The IdeaPad Pro's speakers stand out thanks to their Dolby Atmos support. The surround sound technology means the drivers can fill a room with sound. Not bad for a laptop. Battery life is great, as well. The IdeaPad Pro 5i ran for about 8.5 hours straight in my usual livestream tests without the battery saver setting on. With that active, rest assured the device will last you the whole day and then some. In order to charge the laptop, you'll have to use Lenovo's proprietary 230W AC adapter. You can't use a spare USB-C charger. Luckily, the adapter isn't super bulky so it's easy to carry around, although it would've been great to have the option. Also: Your next laptop may be powered by this Intel AI chip, and the benefits are mind-blowing I also need to mention a couple of things that may be dealbreakers for you. First off, it's a hefty machine that weighs 4.27 pounds. Carrying this device around for an extended amount of time may prove tiring. Also, be aware the IdeaPad Pro 5i comes with a bunch of bloatware. The laptop's 1TB of storage is more like 880GB, if you take into account all the apps Lenovo preinstalled. ZDNET's buying advice Lenovo's IdeaPad Pro 5i has all the right hardware components to make it the premiere laptop for professionals and students. It has a strong CPU/GPU pairing, a 2K OLED display, and a decent keyboard, but its usual $900 price tag will place it on the higher end of the typical student's budget. Fortunately, it's currently 15% off at $747. If you're looking for a less expensive 16-inch laptop, Lenovo's V15 G2 is several hundred dollars cheaper, although you're trading in the impressive OLED screen for one that's much more low-key. How we test laptops We use a combination of methods to test laptops here at ZDNET. First, we acquire data from benchmarking software to analyze a system's metrics under the hood, and compare those to advertised numbers. Then, we spend an extended amount of time with the laptop (usually a week or two) using it the same way a normal consumer would, in order to analyze its portability, form factor, and how well the battery actually holds up, among others. For an extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive laptop testing methodology . Benchmarking: We run a series of tests to put the computer's hardware through the wringer in order to see what it's capable of. Cinebench is one of the most commonly-used hardware testing suites, which tests the laptop's rendering performance on single and multiple CPU cores. PCMark 10 is another powerful program that covers a wide variety of tasks performed in the workplace. Processor: The "brain" of the laptop, and one of the most important factors that determines performance. This is tested in benchmarking software. The display: Brightness is measured in "nits," and color spectrums are tested in benchmarking software. The graphics processor (GPU): We test the GPU with a combination of benchmarking software, gaming, and media playback. Physical form factor: We carry the laptop around for at least a week and note how well it commutes. Battery testing: We test a unit's battery in a few ways. A handful of benchmarking programs have their own battery testing components, but we also will just let the laptop run for as long as it can under a medium load. The human element: As we mentioned earlier, metrics and system data is important, but numbers alone don't give you the full picture. This is where we weave in our personal experience with the device and tap into the practical use cases that consumers actually care about. Ultimately, our goal is to break down the capabilities of each and every laptop we test into digestible terms that real people can find useful. What are the best Black Friday 2024 deals? ZDNET's experts have been searching through Black Friday sales live now to find the best discounts by category. These are the best Black Friday deals so far, by category: Black Friday TV deals Black Friday phone deals Black Friday laptop deals Black Friday gaming PC deals Black Friday smartwatch and fitness tracker deals Black Friday Amazon deals Black Friday Best Buy deals Black Friday Walmart deals Black Friday Sam's Club deals Black Friday Apple deals Black Friday iPad deals Black Friday AirPods deals Black Friday Apple Watch deals Black Friday Kindle deals Black Friday streaming deals Black Friday soundbar and speaker deals Black Friday robot vacuum deals Black Friday Nintendo Switch deals Black Friday PlayStation deals And more Black Friday deals: Black Friday deals under $25 Black Friday deals under $100 Black Friday Samsung deals Black Friday Verizon deals Black Friday headphone deals Black Friday tablet deals Black Friday monitor deals Black Friday gaming deals Black Friday security camera deals Black Friday storage and SSD deals Black Friday portable power station deals Black Friday VPN deals Black Friday Chromebook deals Black Friday HP deals Black Friday Dell deals Black Friday Roku deals Black Friday Roborock deals Best Black Friday deals Black Friday phone deals Black Friday TV deals Black Friday laptop dealsDefending national champion South Carolina is No. 1 in the Top 25 preseason women's basketball poll, released Tuesday by The Associated Press. Coach Dawn Staley's Gamecocks return four starters from last season's undefeated team and received 27 of the 30 first-place votes. South Carolina now has captured the top spot in the preseason poll in four of the past five seasons. "We knew we'd have a target on our backs this season as the reigning champions and this preseason ranking just confirms that," Staley said, per the school's athletic department website. "We appreciate the recognition, but I know our coaching staff and our team are more focused on what we see in the gym every day. And that's every player working extremely hard to get better individually and as a team." South Carolina tips off the regular season against Michigan on Nov. 4 in Las Vegas. No. 2 UConn collected two first-place ballots and is ranked in the preseason top 10 for the 30th consecutive year. No. 3 Southern California received the other top vote, with Texas and UCLA also in the top five. Notre Dame, LSU, Iowa State, North Carolina State and Oklahoma round out the top 10. Iowa, which fell to the Gamecocks in the national title game last season, is not ranked following the departure of superstar Caitlin Clark to the WNBA. The Hawkeyes are first among the group of "others receiving votes." Stanford, meanwhile, is unranked in the preseason for the first time since 1999 following the retirement of Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer. The Southeastern Conference leads with seven teams in the Top 25. The Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conference each have six and the Big 12 has four. The rest of the women's AP Top 25 preseason poll: 11. Duke 12. Baylor 13. Kansas State 14. Ohio State 15. North Carolina 16. West Virginia 17. Louisville 18. Maryland 19. Florida State 20. Ole Miss 21. Creighton 22. Kentucky 23. Nebraska 24. Alabama 25. Indiana --Field Level Media
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry threw internal divisions in his political movement into public display. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hard-line immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who aligned themselves with Trump did so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer’s comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks, whom Trump tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.” Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government, weighed in, defending the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump’s world and what his political movement stands for. Trump had not yet weighed in on the rift. His presidential transition team did not respond to questions about positions on visas for highly skilled workers or the debate between his supporters online. Instead, his team instead sent a link to a post on X by longtime adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller that was a transcript of a speech Trump gave in 2020 at Mount Rushmore in which he praised figures and moments from American history. Musk, the world’s richest man who has grown close to the president-elect, was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump’s movement but his stance on the tech industry’s hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. Critics say they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Trump’s own positions over the years reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he also sought curbs on legal immigration, including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump’s businesses, however, hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club, and his social media company behind his Truth Social app used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. However, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he told the “All-In” podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump’s budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes. Get local news delivered to your inbox!People are getting $100 checks from Elon Musk’s America PAC—even if they didn't sign the petitionTexans remember Jimmy Carter, the last Democrat to take the state’s presidential election