First let me say, “I AM A MAC GUY”.  We can also say that “I AM A LINUX GUY”.  I am most definitely NOT a Windows guy.  All this being said I am also a Maker, or we used to say in the old  days…….a Geek.

I have a lot of hobby type hardware such as Lasers, Vinyl sign machines, 3D printers, and CNC machines.  These things all have Mac or Linux software of some kind but the cream of the crop software is written for Windows.   While I can function on most of the hardware platforms with Mac, the straw that broke the camels back was my newly found love of CNC.   The best CNC software, hands down, comes from Vectric, and the new CNC machine I bought comes with Vectric VCarve Desktop.  The only computers I own with Windows on it are an old 3rd generation Intel i3 laptop with a tiny amount of RAM and a copy of Windows 10 on Parallels for Mac M1.  By the way, Parallels on a Mac M1 runs about as efficiently and trustworthy as the Government.  And it isn’t portable as I have it on a Mac Mini.  My CNC is in a back yard shed which is either too hot or too cold and I want to do all my prep and design work in the house and run out with the laptop just when it is time to set up the job on the machine.

A new Windows laptop was really my only choice here.  Here were my working parameters:

• Cost –  Always the first consideration.  I only want to use this to run VCarve Software.
• Availability – I wanted a computer I could run to the store and get and return if necessary.  Buying a computer by mail can be a horrible PITA if something goes wrong.
• Upgradability – The laptop I chose can have RAM, and the M.2 SSD upgraded and it has an un-used place for a 2.5″ SSD SATA drive.
• At least an Intel i5 chip
• Upgradeable to Windows 11

I ended up buying an Acer Aspire 5 from Walmart, specifically the:

I hit all 5 of the wickets I listed above. Now lets go a little deeper.
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