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They aren't as high-end as the MacBook Neo, but these Windows laptops show that Apple has some strong competition.
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Apple is looking to gain a foothold in the more budget-friendly end of the laptop market with the MacBook Neo. The system starts at $599, which is darn inexpensive for an Apple laptop — it even has the same starting price as the M4 iPad Air.
As such, the MacBook Neo should help Apple compete with cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks. Pricing it at $499 for educational use won't exactly hurt either.
Apple is really lowering the cost of entry for those looking to pick up a new MacBook here. The base MacBook Neo costs $500 less than the cheapest M5 MacBook Air, which is now officially Apple's midrange laptop.
Of course, there are a lot of tradeoffs you'll make by opting for a MacBook Neo instead of a MacBook Air. If you're curious about all the differences between the Neo and the base 13.6-inch Air (and perhaps what you'll be foregoing if go you with the cheaper option), we've got you covered.
MacBook Neo vs. MacBook Air exteriors
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Sometimes you can notice the signs of a failing SSD. For instance, the once-quick transfer speed slows to crawl, there are frequent program or system crashes, or file system access errors or SMART errors occur. If you notice these things, especially in combination, there's a good chance your SSD is on its way out. In that case, it's time to prepare for the worst and do the following:
Back up critical files
It goes without saying that the first thing you'll want to do if you think your SSD is on the blink is to back up your critical data. Backups should be done regularly anyway, but even if you're doing that, you'll still want to make a new backup of your critical files at this point to have them ready to go should your SSD suddenly die.
See our roundups of the best Windows backup software and
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