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4 Apr 2025

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Get this excellent Acer Swift laptop with 16GB RAM for just $549
I don’t think you should try running Windows 11 on less than 16GB of RAM, especially with how reliant we’ve become on memory-hungry web browsers. But finding a Windows laptop with that much RAM at an affordable price is becoming harder. Today, B&H has an Acer Swift Go 14 for just $549—an impressive $400 off the list price. This 14-inch laptop looks a little dull, but its solid specs and excellent battery life earned it a four-star rating when PCWorld reviewer Josh Hendrickson checked it out last year. The model on offer at B&H is a little different, with a 16-core Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor and “only” 512GB of storage, but it should have similarly excellent battery life. Other highlights include a 1920×1200 touchscreen, plenty of ports including double USB-C, double USB-A, full-sized HDMI, and an integrated microSD card slot. With integrated Intel Arc graphics, the Swift Go 14 should be able to handle just about any 2D game, plus a few rounds of Fortnite or Minecraft. Just don’t try to throw something like Cyberpunk 2077 at it. But for pretty much any standard office, web, or video purpose, it’s an ideal machine for the task, especially if you’re looking for smooth performance on web-based activity. At 3.05 pounds and a little over an inch thick, it’s no featherweight, but it’s not bulky either. This is one of B&H’s “Deal Zone” promotions, so it’s only good for today—that’s April 3rd, 2025—until midnight Eastern time (9 PM Pacific). Get an order in fast if you want one, though be aware that with a discount this steep, stock might disappear before then. Get an Acer laptop with Core Ultra 7 CPU and 16GB RAM for $549Buy now from B&H

MLB.TV is how all baseball streaming should work
As a Yankees fan living in Cincinnati who also sort of roots for the Reds, I have a unique window into two baseball streaming worlds. One is run by MLB.TV, whose out-of-market coverage lets me watch every Yankees game except those that are nationally televised. The other is run by Main Street Sports Group, whose FanDuel Sports Network app streams local Reds games. The two services ought to be comparable, but there’s really no contest. The MLB app is by far the better way to watch baseball, but you can only use it under two conditions: Either your favorite team doesn’t play where you live (like the Yankees, in my case), or your local team is one of the 10 clubs that partners with the league for in-market streaming. Otherwise, you’re stuck with whichever regional sports network operates in your area for standalone streaming, and the experience will probably be worse. Why the MLB app is better The MLB app can sync radio broadcasts perfectly with the video feed.Jared Newman / Foundry The differences between MLB.TV and FanDuel Sports Network are apparent as soon as I start streaming. MLB.TV’s streams are always smoother out of the gate for me. While video quality can be blurry at the outset, within seconds the stream pops into clear HD quality. On my smart TV—a Hisense set running Google TV—FanDuel’s streams tend to stutter for the first 30 seconds or so, and while they eventually settle down, it’s initially more distracting to watch. Catching up on games is also easier in the MLB app, which shows the inning count in its video player and overlays the score as you fast forward or rewind. That’s helpful for jumping directly to scoring plays, but FanDuel’s app offers nothing similar. And after the game, MLB’s app offers condensed games and recaps, whereas FanDuel’s app offers full replays only. The MLB app’s video player helps you home in on scoring plays.Jared Newman / Foundry MLB’s app has some other neat features that make watching games more enjoyable. My favorite is the option to play the local radio broadcast in sync with the video telecast. (No disrespect to Michael Kay, but I want to hear how Dave Sims is acclimating to his new job.) There’s a statistical overlay for pitch sequences as well, though to be fair FanDuel’s app offers a similar feature. Because MLB.TV’s service also streams other out-of-market games, you also can use its multiview feature to watch more than one game at a time on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Google TV devices. That’s not an option in FanDuel’s app, which doesn’t have much else to watch anyway. The MLB app can stream up to four games at once.Jared Newman / Foundry All told, the MLB app just feels like a more lively place to watch baseball. You open the app and are instantly greeted with scores, schedules, and highlights. The FanDuel Sports Network app feels barren and overly utilitarian by comparison. The FanDuel Sports Network app offers little beyond a pitching stat overlay.Jared Newman / Foundry The FanDuel Sports Network app’s home screen doesn’t have much going on.Jared Newman / Foundry What should be done about it No matter how you pay for the games, you should be able to watch them in the MLB app, where the experience is just better, though that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. As of 2025, five MLB teams (the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Rockies, Twins, and Padres) partner directly with the league to distribute in-market games, priced at $100 for the season or $200 when bundled with MLB.TV’s out-of-market coverage. For five additional teams, the league partners with their respective regional sports networks to offer in-market streaming through the MLB app. That leaves 20 teams whose in-market games aren’t available through the MLB app. Local fans of those teams who don’t want an entire live TV streaming package must instead rely on whatever standalone streaming service their nearest regional sports network offers. In the case of the Reds and eight other teams, that’s FanDuel Sports Network. (A few teams don’t offer standalone options at all.) Even with a FanDuel Sports Network subscription, you can’t use the MLB app to watch live games.Jared Newman / Foundry In the near term, it’d be great if those networks could partner with the league on authenticated access to the MLB app. The technical capability to stream any game already exists—Reds fans who live outside of Ohio can watch them with an MLB.TV subscription—and the MLB app already offers authenticated access for Mets and Dodgers fans who get SNY or SportsNet LA as part of a pay TV package respectively. There should be a system where subscribers to FanDuel Sports Network, Gotham Sports, and other standalone regional sports services could sign into the MLB app as well. Over the long term, the league should just offer in-market streaming access nationwide, with no blackouts. That’s reportedly been the plan for years—here’s a rumor from 2021, and here’s one from last week that says the league wants to partner with a larger streamer on such an offering—but commandeering the rights from regional sports networks has been a slog. CNBC’s Alex Sherman says not to expect any significant moves until 2028, when the league’s major media rights deals expire. In the meantime, the 2025 season is another reminder of how baseball streaming is a case of haves and have nots. Here in Cincinnati, I’m a little of both. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV advice.

Lenovo spills the beans on RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti cards ‘coming soon’
By this point, you’re probably not surprised that Nvidia is working on cheaper RTX 50-series GPUs. Even if you haven’t seen the various leaks, the fact that the RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti exist (along with equivalents from previous generations) sets up a fairly obvious precedent. Even so, we’re grateful to Lenovo for dropping all pretense and showing off the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti graphics cards in a brand-new desktop. The Legion Tower 5i Gen 10 is an upcoming desktop PC in Lenovo’s Legion gaming sub-brand, pre-assembled with “up to Intel Core Ultra i9” processors. It’s a fairly straightforward design with a small-ish, transparent case and an air CPU cooler in the promo photos, though liquid cooling is also mentioned. The rest of the specs are typical, with what appears to be an X870 micro-ATX motherboard, 32GB of DDR5 RAM (up to a maximum of 128GB), and up to 2TB of PCIe Gen4 storage in the pre-configured version. (The hardware itself supports Gen5 speeds and up to three M.2 drives at once, though.) It’s nice, but nothing spectacular. It looks like a mid-range desktop build for those who don’t want to sully their hands with a screwdriver. What caught the eye of VideoCardz.com, however, is that the graphics card options include the Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti, the RTX 5060 Ti, and the RTX 5060. The last two on that list don’t officially exist yet, even though they’ve been popping up in regulatory listings for the last few weeks. It’s also weird that Lenovo would offer the 5070 Ti without the 5070 as another option, but whatever. Supplier stuff can get weird. Lenovo isn’t forthcoming on the specs for those cards, indicating that perhaps the marketing copy was written up with the intention of being published after a yet-to-surface Nvidia announcement. We had heard that the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti were headed to add-in-board and OEM partners last month. There’s no price or release date for the Legion Tower 5i Gen 10, only that it’s “coming soon.” With the RTX 5070 using 12GB of video memory, it seems unlikely that the RTX 5060 Ti would use any more than that, and I’d be shocked to see the RTX 5060 at anything but 8GB. The retail prices of both would obviously come below the RTX 5070’s $550, but who knows by how much… especially with the Trump regime’s tariffs causing price chaos in the US and beyond, not to mention the usual AIB pump-ups. It’s possible these cheaper cards will only be “affordable” in a purely relative sense.