On Tech: You can’t find a laptop. Now what?

Why laptops are sold out, and what to do.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 18, 2020 You can’t find a laptop. Now what? Angie Wang By Shira Ovide Hello! On Tech is going on a summer break. We’ll be back again on Thursday, Aug. 27. It’s not just you. It’s tough to find a computer right now for yourself or (especially) your child. Americans went on a home electronics-buying craze spurred by the pandemic, and it has lasted for far longer than anyone predicted. Manufacturers haven’t been able to keep up. Now, as children start returning to classrooms — in person or virtually — the computers popular for school have been in particularly short supply. There are ways to cope with this. You might have to hunt around, be flexible about what you buy and consider alternatives like buying a used computer or reviving one on its last legs. Basically, buying computers is like most things during this pandemic: We have to muddle through as best we can. And that’s if you can afford a computer and access the internet for school at all. This digital divide is a crisis. First, you can’t find a computer because a ton of Americans are splurging on just about every category of electronics, and what seemed like a temporary spring spike has persisted. Stephen Baker, a longtime consumer electronics analyst at the NPD Group, could barely find the words to explain our gadget splurges. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and this level of demand over and over again every single week … is just amazing,” he said. Right now, sales of computers are at levels that Baker said are extremely unusual, except around Christmas. The result is that it’s been hard to find many computer models, particularly the stripped-down laptops called Chromebooks. And sales are mostly nonexistent. If you’re struggling to find the school computer you want at a price you can stomach, here are tips from Baker and Kimber Streams, who writes about computers for Wirecutter, The New York Times’s product recommendation site: Be flexible: Have a plan B, C and D if you’re eyeing a particular computer model, Baker said. Consider desktop PCs, which tend to be in better supply than laptops. (One warning: Desktops often don’t come with webcams needed for virtual school. And webcams are hard to find because again — pandemic buying.) Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Kimber said that if your budget allows, higher-priced Chromebooks or other computers are often easier to find than lower-cost models. Use shopping helpers: Kimber recommended NowInStock.net, which sends alerts when computers or other items you’re watching are available at online retailers, and the Keepa browser add-on, which does the same for products on Amazon. (Be cautious about browser add-ons, though.) Buy used or revive an old machine: Wirecutter and other sites walk though turning an old computer into a Chromebook Do test it out before your kid’s first school day, though, because the Chromebook conversion sometimes doesn’t work. Other alternatives: If you have an iPad, adding a wireless keyboard can turn it into a workable school computer. Or, check out how to buy a used computer without going astray. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT The TikTok drama is endless I just ... can’t … what is happening? Oracle, which makes the dullest software imaginable, is negotiating to buy part of TikTok, an app used by people who mostly have never heard of Oracle. To be clear: This deal — first reported by the Financial Times — is not logical. Except! TikTok’s owner is being forced by the U.S. government to sell its American operations, and Oracle both is well-connected with the Trump administration and knows a good deal when it sees one. So sure, why not. Maybe TikTok’s U.S. app gets sold to Microsoft or Oracle or Twitter or who knows. I love the drama, but I know this is serious. TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, is on the clock to either complete the sale or shut down in the United States. For people who like using TikTok, and especially for those who make a living from their TikTok videos, the limbo about the app’s future can be excruciating. Another reason people are paying such close attention to an app tug-of-war is what it says about the role of technology in the world. As tech has become more important in economies and in our lives, it’s more subject to the same geopolitical fights as everything else. This shouldn’t be surprising, maybe, but it’s a reminder for technologists that politics can have a major impact on their companies’ future. Before we go … Uber is like doughnuts, kinda: Uber and Lyft are fighting a new law in California that requires the companies to classify their drivers as employees, not contractors. My colleague Kate Conger writes that the companies are now discussing a Dunkin’ Donuts-like approach to licensing their brands to independent franchises so that the companies would not directly employ drivers. Coronavirus misinformation is hurting doctors and their patients: A woman accused one doctor of profiting from listing coronavirus on her husband’s death certificate. Another doctor treated a patient who had ingested a bleach mixture pitched as a virus cure on YouTube. My colleague Adam Satariano talked to physicians and researchers who are furious at politicians, social media companies and people misled by bogus online information for the harm caused by misinformation about the virus. America’s favorite online shopping site is bad at shopping: My favorite and pointless tirade is that Amazon is a terrible place to shop if you don’t know exactly what you want to buy. OneZero gives voice to my feelings: “It’s weird to say this of one of the most used online shops in the world, but it just doesn’t work.” (And read a classic of this same Amazon genre.) Hugs to this I know I keep showing you Cincinnati Zoo videos. But I cannot resist Reggie the cockatoo “helping” retrieve documents from the office copier. Thanks so much to our readers who pointed out that the hilarious twins who have made popular videos on vintage pop songs are not teenagers. They’re in their 20s. Good eyes, readers! Sorry, again, to the Williams twins. We want to continue to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

Giving America the business

On the merits of public ownership.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 18, 2020 Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist The trouble with the Post Office goes well beyond the all-too-plausible fears that Louis DeJoy, Donald Trump’s very political pick as postmaster general, may try to disrupt voting this November. There are also widespread reports both from postal employees and from customers of unprecedented delays in mail delivery. These delays appear to reflect a flurry of cost-cutting measures that, on casual observation, seem to be doing a lot more to disrupt operations than they’re doing to cut costs. But DeJoy, a Trump donor who came to his job from a private company that, surprise, made a lot of money from contracts with the Post Office, says that he’s trying to run the Postal Service like a business. And that’s certainly what a lot of conservative commentators say he should be doing. My column today was mainly about the reasons the Postal Service shouldn’t be run like a business. Its purpose is to help bind the nation and foster citizen inclusion, not maximize profits. The thing is, the Post Office isn’t the only institution — the only piece of the economy — for which that can be said. Over the past 40 years, ever since Ronald Reagan, much of our political spectrum has fetishized the virtues of the private sector while trashing the public sector. And hey, there are a lot of good things to be said about free-market competition. I wouldn’t want government officials running supermarkets or bookstores; there have been generations of experience with government-run manufacturing, and it has rarely gone well. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT But there are also areas where profit-maximization, especially if left unregulated, works badly and either public ownership or at least strong public regulation can work well. (Bad management can ruin a public system — but it can ruin a private corporation too.) In fact, the past few decades are full of examples where privatizing and/or deregulating parts of the economy have inflicted a lot of harm. In my column I mention the origins of the Parcel Post. If you didn’t know the history, you might ask why package delivery can’t simply be left up to private companies. Indeed, that’s how it worked before 1913, when there were four major private companies in the business of shipping goods from railroad depots to rural customers. Guess what? They formed a cartel and gouged farmers mercilessly. Do you think that for some reason similar things can’t happen nowadays? Probably some of my readers are too young to remember the 2000 electricity crisis in California (at least I hope so!). But a large part of what happened there was that power companies and traders exploited a deregulated market to engage in price manipulation, deliberately cutting production to drive up prices. This isn’t hypothetical: we have traders on tape, telling power plants to shut down. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT I’ve been struck, by the way, by the extent to which that artificial energy crisis has been sort of erased from media accounts of the period; I’ve even seen retrospective articles about the crisis that somehow don’t even mention the market manipulation. It’s as if the contradiction between our free-market ideology and the reality of market abuse is too extreme to be processed. In my column I also mentioned internet access, where America’s unwarranted faith in free markets has led to absence of competition and very high prices. And then there’s health care. America has the advanced world’s most privatized, business-oriented health care sector. It also has by far the highest costs and some of the worst health outcomes. The point is that while some things should be run like a business, a lot of things shouldn’t. And the mind-set that assumes that business-type attitudes are always superior has been proved false again and again. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Quick Hits I was going to use Eddie Lampert’s destruction of Sears as an example of how bad management happens in business too. But some other names also cropped up. Sears was one of the two great mail-order companies that prospered during the great era of Parcel Post. The other, Montgomery Ward, met its doom earlier. But it did so for an unusual reason: bad macroeconomic analysis. Its CEO bet everything on the return of the Great Depression. The U.S. only pretends to have free markets. Businessmen who became president have a terrible track record, even when they were good at business. Trump is in a league of his own. Feedback If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at krugman-newsletter@nytimes.com. Facing the Music Don’t steal my election, pleaseYouTube Maybe there’s still time to feature this at the Democratic convention? IN THE TIMES nonfiction How Ronald Reagan Triumphed Rick Perlstein’s “Reaganland” completes his multivolume survey of American conservatism with the 1980 election victory of Ronald Reagan. By Evan Thomas DeJoy Earned Millions From Company With Financial Ties to Postal Service The postmaster general, under fire for his business ties and his cost-cutting measures, will testify before the House next week. By Catie Edmondson and Emily Cochrane What if Trumpism Is the G.O.P.’s Natural State? Beating Trump would be just the beginning. Democrats would still be confronted with a radical Republican Party. By Adam Jentleson It’s Simple. Contain the Virus. The Economy Will Come Back. We need to get real about reality. By John M. Barry Read the full Opinion report here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Paul Krugman from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018