The solution, according to Microsoft, is to get rid of it and buy a computer that can run Windows 11. But that's not good enough. This ThinkPad - like millions of other PCs in the same boat - is still perfectly functional.
COBOL, short for Common Business-Oriented Language, is the most widely adopted computer language in history. Of the 300 billion lines of code that had been written by the year 2000, 80 percent of them were in COBOL. It's still in widespread use and supports a large number of government systems, such as motor vehicle records and unemployment insurance; on any given day, it can handle something on the order of 3 trillion dollars' worth of financial transactions.
the Neo suitable for "lightweight computing and everyday productivity, document editing, and web-based apps" while running Windows 11. Parallels says the MacBook Neo's respectable single-core CPU performance keeps the Neo feeling "quick and responsive" when running multiple Windows-only software packages, including QuickBooks Desktop and other accounting apps, Microsoft Office
The MacBook Neo is a $599 laptop ($499 with the educator discount) that disrupts the market, bringing a trimmed-down version of the premium build MacBooks are known for to this lower price point. Yes, there are trade-offs to get the price this low, but Apple has done a good job at managing them.
The Game Boy family of handheld consoles was groundbreaking, making gaming more accessible to millions worldwide. Nintendo's portables beat off technologically superior competition from the likes of Sega's Game Gear and Atari's Lynx. They became home to foundational moments for the medium, from what is still arguably the definitive version of Tetris to the birth of Pokémon. Yet with the iconic gray monolith launching in 1989, it's now pushing 40-and playing those important classics gets tougher every year.
Microsoft PC Manager, which first appeared in beta form in 2022, and is now available for free to anyone who wants to give it a try. Microsoft promises it "effortlessly enhances PC performance with just one click," and will "keep your PC running smoothly." In other words, it's intended to clean up some of the clutter and baggage that your PC may have accumulated over the years.
It's the story of why the 16-bit version of Digital Research CP/M was late, but the delayed arrival of this now-obscure OS is what catalyzed the development of a different, but source-level compatible, OS. That OS started Microsoft on its way to its current $3.5 trillion capitalization, and is also what led to the development of OS/2, Windows, and indirectly Linux.
I've had several incarnations of the self-hosted home lab for decades. At one point, I had a small server farm of various machines that were either too old to serve as desktops or that people simply no longer wanted. I'd grab those machines, install Linux on them, and use them for various server purposes. Here are two questions you should ask yourself:
Pleban's talk, "Hacking the last Z80 computer ever made," was more than just a dive into retro computing. It also explored some of the many strange decisions involved in launching a new range of hardware based on the eight-bit Zilog Z80 chip in 1999 - when the 16-bit computer era was largely over, and just a couple of years before 32-bit x86 chips would be replaced by x86-64.
The issue focuses on how Windows handles these directories for specific user sessions. Because the kernel creates a DOS device object directory on demand, rather than at login, it cannot check whether the user is an admin during the creation process. Unlike UAC, Administrator Protection uses a hidden shadow admin account whose token handle can be returned by the system when calling the NtQueryInformationToken API function.
Windows cloud PCs have gone from Microsoft's side project to the centerpiece of its post‑Windows‑10 strategy. But the story in 2026 is less "death of the PC" and more "merger of PC, cloud, and AI under Microsoft's terms." Today, the most interesting question is not whether Windows moves to the cloud, but how much local control users are willing to surrender in exchange for AI‑infused desktops.
Retail point-of-sale systems today offer a wide range of options for peripherals and hardware. Their technical specifications play a major role in selection, and big retailers often choose multiple vendors to reduce a single point of failure. This gives them an advantage to negotiate price or support as well. Technically, these peripherals also require updating with new models and may have new feature sets. This necessitates the redevelopment of point-of-sale applications, increasing development costs.
January 13 marked another milestone for legacy systems, as support for the software - codenamed Longhorn Server - expired for customers that bought Microsoft Premium Assurance (PA). Extended support ended for Windows Server 2008 on January 14, 2020. It was possible to keep the lights on until January 10, 2023, via Extended Security Updates. A fourth year came courtesy of Azure, which took the code to January 9, 2024, but that was it for anyone without PA.
A few months ago, I decided to breathe new life into a 2019 Dell XPS 15 that had been collecting dust for a couple of years. Despite its (at the time) high-end Core i7 CPU and 32GB of RAM, Windows was frustratingly slow on it. The fan was constantly at full throttle even when the machine was idle, and it regularly failed to install updates.
I recently wrote about my migration away from VirtualBox to KVM/Virt-Machine for my virtual machine needs. I've found those tools to be far superior (albeit with a bit more of a learning curve) than VirtualBox. Since then, however, I've found another method of working with KVM (the Linux kernel virtual machine technology), one that not only allows me to create and manage virtual machines on my local computer, but also from any machine on my LAN. That tool is Cockpit, which makes managing your Linux machines considerably easier.
If you use virtual machines, there's reason to feel less-than-Zen about AMD's CPUs. Computer scientists affiliated with the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany have found a vulnerability in AMD CPUs that exposes secrets in its secure virtualization environment. The flaw, dubbed StackWarp, potentially allows a malicious insider who controls a host server to access sensitive data within AMD SEV-SNP guests through attacks designed to recover cryptographic private keys, bypass OpenSSH password authentication, and escalate privileges.
The emotional hit was something I didn't expect, although perhaps I should have. The Commodore 64 Ultimate, a new version of the legendary 8-bit computer, comes in a box designed to resemble the original packaging a photo of the machine itself on a background of deep blue fading into a series of white stripes. Then when you open it, you find an uncannily accurate replica of what fans lovingly referred to as the breadbox the chunky, sloped Commodore 64, in hues of brown and beige,
HP-UX had a good run, after a long and very varied history. The first version ran on the HP 9000 Series 500 range of 32-bit machines based on the HP FOCUS multi-chip CISC processor. In 1984, the Hewlett-Packard Journal ran a detailed article on how that port was created, based on a kernel called SUN - not related to Sun Microsystems' SunOS.
The reason for this is Snap - a Linux application packaging format - creates a local Trash folder for each VS Code version, one that's separate from the system-managed Trash, according to a VS Code bug report dating back to November 11, 2024. Not only that, but Snap keeps older versions of VS Code after updates, potentially multiplying the number of local Trash folders and the trashed-but-not-deleted files therein. Emptying the system Trash folder doesn't affect the local instances.
