An open-source tool that perfectly blends the freedom of handwriting with the power of digital organization is a rare find, but Xournal++ is exactly that discovery. After running into annoying syncing issues on OneNote, I decided to look for alternatives, and my first priority was support for drawing tools.

Reading about NAS drives, I was led to believe that the perfect home server setup had to be complicated. After all, the more the lights, cables, and complexity, the more nerd points you get. I'm kidding, but building a dedicated Proxmox box running multiple virtual machines, Docker containers, backup scripts, and more taught me a whole lot about self-hosting. It looked great on paper, and made me feel like I'd built a data center in my home office. But the constant maintenance and effort needed to keep it running optimally is less than fun. Every small change required SSH access, configuration edits, and hope that I didn't break something I didn't quite understand. As good as Proxmox is, it requires a certain time commitment and willingness to learn when things go south. While the latter wasn't an issue, I just don't have that kind of time on my hands.

With the release of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally family, Microsoft debuted a new Windows experience for gaming handhelds, offering a streamlined UI that is easily usable with a controller and touch screen. It was a long-awaited moment, and something I called on Microsoft to do over a year ago, though I was far from early to make that appeal. Even before it was officially rolled out, you could already enable this experience with some tinkering if you were a Windows Insider, which we also did here at XDA, and it was quite good.

On every GPU box, you'll find a core clock and a boost clock, and these are the numbers your GPU should be able to reach out of the box. If you've ever monitored your GPU while gaming or benchmarking, you may have noticed that those numbers aren't always what you get.

It's not easy to make a ninja game. You have to strike the right balance between stealth and action; lean too hard on one of those, and you lose what makes ninjas so admirable in the first place. Fortunately, one game really did nail the feel of being an assassin of the night, and it was so good at what it did that it got remastered in 2018 and still holds up to this day. It's a game that aged like a fine wine.

When I first bought the Alienware AW3423DW curved OLED monitor in 2022, I was convinced it would benefit not only gaming but also productivity and everyday use. The idea of having a curved ultrawide screen wrap around my field of view was enough to convince me to splurge over $1,000 on it when it launched. I thought the curve would make multitasking feel more natural, reduce eye strain, and make games feel like they were drawing me into the scene.

Microsoft's Phone Link app is one of the key components of the company's cross-device strategy, and the software giant also treats it like one by improving the app. That's Microsoft's official stance, but in reality, not everything works in users' favor. The recent example that I can remember is when Microsoft quietly axed the ability to remove devices from Phone Link.

Ubuntu has always been my favorite Linux distribution for its stability, good support, and out-of-the-box performance. I installed it in one of my older laptops because of all these qualities. However, like any other OS, it isn't immune to slowdowns, especially when I use it for most of my Linux experiments and testing. After several months of using Ubuntu 24 and testing various applications, I noticed my system wasn't as snappy as it used to be.

The new Lenovo ThinkPad T14s lineup features its first-ever convertible laptop option. And as far as 2-in-1 business laptops go, the ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 (Intel) has plenty going for it. It's powerful, efficient, and features the classic ThinkPad durability and industry-leading keyboard.

Whenever CPU temperatures creep into uncomfortable territory, the first thing many of us think about is upgrading the cooler. I did that too for many years because it seemed like the most direct and logical fix. After all, bigger and thicker radiators should mean lower temps. But the thing is, you don't always need to spend $100-$150 on a new AIO just to get better cooling performance for your CPU. In fact, you can improve temperatures by a few degrees without spending any money at all.

For the longest time, I thought upgrading a NAS only meant adding more drives or expanding storage — after all, it has storage in its name, right? Faster disks and cache should speed up everything, and adding larger drives should solve my problem of constantly running out of storage.

Sigh... here we are, doing something that is an endlessly subjective thing ripe for getting you yelled at in any gaming circle — ranking the Call of Duty Zombies games. And yet, that's exactly what makes it fun. Everyone has their favorite era, their comfort map, and that one round they will never, ever forget when it comes to Call of Duty Zombies.