content: I still have a laptop that I purchased in 2011 that is still more powerful than many of the machines in the same price bracket, today. It has an A-10 5800k processor, 8GBs of ddr3 1600 RAM, 1TB HDD, 1080p screen (not touchscreen though), and it cost me $650 new. For a laptop it still rocks for gaming. I can play Skyrim on high settings, have no problem running Cities: Skylines, or the like. If you ask me, they have mostly made laptops look prettier on the outside, dropped features and peripherals, added touchscreens, and made them more expensive without providing much in the way of performance boosts, although they do have better batter life (which doesn't really matter to me on a fullsize laptop as I generally have access to power and even my 2011 one still gets a few hours of battery life between charges. I think that is part of the problem, the market is maturing and they aren't really introducing anything innovative, so people are sticking with what they have.