Tending to retro hardware is a real balancing act. In an ideal world, you can use all the parts the device originally came with for all of eternity; however, PC parts are far more fickle than that. Over time, components will give out, and you'll need to find something to replace them. The only problem is that the specific part you need has been out of production for decades, and the only surviving models people are willing to sell are getting older and pricier by the year.

As someone who has three monitors on my desk, wake behavior is something I notice every time I move my mouse or press a key after my PC has been idle for a bit. Not because I'm obsessively timing it, but because the difference is impossible to ignore. Every time, it's my Alienware AW2725DF OLED that lights up first, followed by my LG 27GN950 IPS monitor. You'd think it's because OLED is inherently faster or newer, but that assumption falls apart when my AW3423DW is consistently the slowest to wake.

Raspberry Pi devices get their fair share of criticism, but one of their biggest strengths is that they cost only a fraction of a conventional server or a desktop. The pricing is one of the main reasons why many users who don't need heavy workloads prefer building a Pi cluster to buying conventional hardware.

With the current RAM crisis going on right now, it can be hard to pick up stellar hardware for less. However, if you know where to look, you'll occasionally see devices go on sale for much less than they usually go for, even in times like this. They may not be as current as some may like, but they're still very much capable of handling 2026's tasks.

When you picture a virtual reality headset user, you're probably not picturing someone like Sherry Dickson. At 69, the snowy-haired, retired elementary school teacher hops into her Meta Quest headset five days a week, for roughly 60 to 90 minutes at a time. She's not attending live concerts or watching immersive films. Dickson, a fitness buff since Jane Fonda workout videos in the '80s, largely uses her headset for one reason - to play Supernatural, a VR fitness game with a huge, loyal fan base and a tight-knit community. Supernatural isn't dead, but it might as well be. A few weeks ago, Meta shut down three VR studios as part of broader l …Read the full story at The Verge.

Teams users continue to complain about performance issues on several social media platforms and forums, but Microsoft's collaboration tool remains one of the most popular apps for teamwork. Microsoft made several attempts to speed up Teams in the past, with the latest one being introduced as recently as last month, but the software giant hasn't claimed that it has addressed all the issues users complained about previously.

Obsidian's Bases feature is still relatively new, but there are already loads of plugins available that enhance the experience. I've written about a few of them before, but if I had to pick a single Bases plugin to use above all others, the choice would be easy: Lovely Bases. This plugin transforms Bases from a simple database-like feature into a much more visually oriented experience. For creative work, it's an amazing tool. I've used it to create galleries of all my reference images for my fiction, but that's just one example.

Last week, I noticed that my C: drive was running low on storage, with a little over 25GB of space left. First, I deleted a couple of large files from the Downloads folder, and it helped me reclaim 11GB. Even then, I barely had 36.5GB free on a 306GB volume. That got me wondering, what's taking up all that space? I don't install a lot of programs. It's usually a few that I regularly need. And even with Windows taking up close to 40GB, there should be more free storage. Additionally, I have an external SSD that I can transfer files to. But even for that, I have to figure out which files can be moved without affecting the system's stability. So, I spent the next few hours exploring built-in and third-party utilities, and by the end, I had over 120GB of free space on the system partition.

I've tried every journaling app that promises to be "the one." Logseq had me convinced for months with its bidirectional linking and graph view. But I quickly realized I didn't need a knowledge management system for journaling. I needed a journal that I'd actually use past the two-week honeymoon phase.

Building my first PC in 2019 felt like a dream come true. I could finally let go of the restrictive console ecosystem I had grown up on, and DIY myself the most impressive-looking piece of tech in the house. I spent weeks obsessing over performance numbers, RGB and ARGB coordination, endlessly watching Linus Tech Tips, and I was thoroughly convinced I was building the ultimate machine.

I've tried my fair share of note-taking and planning tools, but I tend to lean on a whiteboard for brainstorming. Unfortunately, whiteboards take up space. Space which I don't have in my study. But lately, I've been looking for solutions to build a digital whiteboard. Yes, I'm aware of Excalidraw integrations for Obsidian. However, I wanted something simpler and standalone since most of my whiteboarding is ephemeral and not something I need to hold on to for the long term.

Raspberry Pi’s marketing is doing what marketing always does: it wants you looking forward, not looking around. Raspberry Pi 5 is the flagship product and offers numerous fundamental improvements. But “newest” is not the same as “best buy,” especially when you’re building a home lab box meant to run quietly for months at a time. For many people, the Raspberry Pi 4 still falls into the practical, low-friction zone.