For all the genuine progress in PC hardware over the last decade in things like performance and reliability, one other attribute has quietly regressed, and that's how understandable failures are. Older systems tended to fail decisively, with diagnoses that were easy to come by. A bad stick of RAM meant no POST. A dying hard drive clicked itself into an early grave. Power issues shut the system off, full stop. Modern PCs, by contrast, are fantastic at almost working. And that makes troubleshooting far harder than it used to be.

Do you miss the Windows Phone? If not, you really should. It's something that we here at XDA wonder about all the time. What if Microsoft didn't decide to throw in the towel with its mobile phone operating system and kept going? Given how Microsoft is adding new features to make Windows 11 a suitable console OS, it's not a stretch to imagine that, if Windows Phone had kept going, we'd see mobile variants of it too.

I've been using Unifi Protect for a while. It's the backbone of my home security system, and I opted into it because it seamlessly slots into my Unifi Wi-Fi set up as well. At this point, the entire set up is so well integrated into my home that it is effectively infrastructure, and I plan to stay within the ecosystem. And for the most part, it works great. It'll record 24/7, notify me when something moves within my selected frame, and keep my footage stored safely. Basically, everything a security system is supposed to do. Well, almost.

Choosing a monitor in 2025 isn't easy. There are just way too many great options available, which is actually a really good problem to have. Of course, if you're focused on buying the best, there's only one true option in our opinion, and that comes in the form of Alienware's AW2725Q gaming monitor.

Docker is an invaluable tool in a self-hosted setup, and I spend a lot of time managing containers and monitoring their activity. I previously built a Docker Swarm cluster and could monitor the container activity to some extent. However, the one thing that I miss is hardware resource consumption, and there's no option for it in Portainer. I tried my luck with Uptime Kuma, which is a good way to monitor and get notifications about each container's status. Sadly, it doesn't include hardware resources monitoring.

NotebookLM has quietly become one of my most-used tools for learning. I use it to break down long documentation, understand unfamiliar concepts, and explore topics without jumping between tabs or losing context. It helps me think through things, not just look them up. Over time, I started wondering what would happen if I used the same approach on something deeply familiar, i.e., my own code. Could it help me reason better, or learn something new? That curiosity led me to try an unusual experiment: giving NotebookLM full access to a codebase and treating it like a human teammate. The results were more interesting than I had expected.

Single-board computers (SBCs), such as the Raspberry Pi, are great for home lab experimentation. Still, every time I've gotten something working on one, I realize it's not quite as powerful or helpful as I thought it would be. I know, it's a terrible thing to say, but it's true. They're not powerful computers, and trying to pretend otherwise is foolish.

With PC manufacturers worldwide trying to navigate a market where RAM is in short supply, different companies are trying different things to help stay afloat. We've already seen one adopt a "bring your own RAM" plan that allows people to send in their sticks of memory for installation on a PC they want to buy, but most of the time, companies are simply upping how much they charge for devices with RAM in them.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog, and in the world of computing, nothing comes closer to the definition than a mini PC. Sure, they're littered around enterprise workstations and used as POS devices, but the average computer buyer still imagines a large mid-tower chassis when they think of a desktop. In the past decade, these diminutive boxes have become engineering marvels that shrank a computer down to the basics, eliminating excessive RGB lighting, wind-tunnel fan configurations, and the functionally unhelpful glass panels. This makes mini PCs great secondary mobile workstations that shuttle your workflow between a home setup and workplace without the leaden heft of a 16-inch laptop.

While Christmas is usually a time for joy and cheer, some malicious agents use the downtime to do damage. After all, with everyone at home and companies shut for the day, a cybercriminal can get up to all kinds of mischief, and it'll take a while for anyone to notice, let alone take action.

A NAS has a lot of moving parts that come together to form a storage system that feels complete. With centralization of data, backups and redundancies in place, and cross-platform file availability set up, the NAS feels like a clear upgrade over having files scattered across laptops and external drives. Having done so much to get the setup in place, you start to think that once the NAS is up and running, the hard part is done.

It's been five years since Capcom revealed Pragmata, their brand-new sci-fi game. The game was initially supposed to come out in 2022, and it's certainly seen its fair share of delays, but thankfully, we can finally get a taste of it through a rather fantastic demo that Capcom just put out exclusively on PC.