It’s reasonable to assume, given our niche, that all (or almost all) of our readers have a phone. But, you’ve also probably got a laptop, and the interactions and integrations between those two devices can influence the purchase of each. With plenty of reasons for us to be thinking about it, do you want us to review Windows laptops — at least, major ones?
This isn’t an idea we’ve jumped to lightly, and we have a whole list of reasons to be considering it.
First, Chromebooks (which we do review) don’t exist in isolation. Products in your consideration may cross software lines between the platforms, and our myopic focus offers an incomplete picture in that larger scale.
Secondly, like Chromebooks, Windows is getting deeper integration with Android phones courtesy of Microsoft’s Your Phone, and it’s proving to be a popular subject among our readers. It’s almost guaranteed that the upcoming Surface Duo will step up Microsoft’s services integration with the platform as well, and who knows how that might expand to other Android devices in the future.
Third, and on a related note, Samsung and Google have been growing closer to Microsoft in recent years. Samsung’s Galaxy S-series flagships are sold in Microsoft’s brick and mortar stores, even Bill Gates has apparently switched to using the platform, and Google has been working closely with Microsoft on everything from the Edge browser to enhancing enterprise functionality. We’d hesitate to say they love each other at this point, but this is firm sitting-in-a-tree territory.
Lastly, Windows is the defacto desktop and laptop platform for plenty of our Android-equipped readers. Apple pushes a much tighter ecosystem with deep cross-platform integrations that encourages macOS-using customers to also use iOS. While plenty of people can remain platform agnostic, there is a lock-in effect, and according to our own analytics, the majority of our own desktop traffic comes from Windows-powered computers.
We’ve been mulling the idea over for a while now, but we’re curious to hear what you, our readers, think about the subject. Do you want us to expand to review at least major Windows laptops or not?
