#retro-laptop-modding

#retro-laptop-modding

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.

Iceboxes were large lined, insulated wooden cupboards built to store ice, food, and drinks. The ice would usually be placed on the upper shelf, with the food and drinks below, and the cool air from the melting ice would help to keep everything nice and chilled.

The fix, he told me, was temporary - he didn't have the right part and couldn't get it. This experience revealed a broader shift in how modern products are designed, sold, and owned - one that increasingly treats repair as optional and replacement as inevitable.

Apple would never have made it if it weren't for the Apple II, the company's first hit product and the first one to generate the amount of devotion we've now come to expect from fans of Apple's products.

Digital typewriters are carving out a niche for a more focused writing experience, stripping things back to the essentials: just you, a keyboard, and your words.

The Saturnix camera is designed to evoke the industrial aesthetic of 1980s science fiction, featuring a chunky body that feels more at home on a spaceship than in a pocket. The design is intentional, aiming to create a functional tool that stands apart from the sleek, uniform consumer electronics of today.

The DIY centers around the familiar wedge-shaped Slope 45 2×2 LEGO piece, a part historically used in LEGO space-themed sets as a representation of computer terminals inside spacecraft cockpits. Staal enlarged this element to roughly ten times its original size, turning it into a functional housing that blends retro toy aesthetics with contemporary computing power.

Finding the right desk and office chair combo can have lasting effects on the quality of your spinal health, and in my case, landing on just the right pairing has boosted my productivity big time.

The result, shaped by industrial designer Jerry Manock and powered by Wozniak's engineering genius, was the Apple II: a smooth, warm-beige enclosure that suggested domesticity rather than machinery. It belonged on a desk the way a telephone did. That calculated approachability helped sell millions of units across sixteen years of production.

The handheld features a 4.88-inch display with a resolution of 1080 × 1620 pixels and a 3:2 aspect ratio. This format is particularly appealing for retro gaming because it better accommodates older console titles that do not match modern widescreen displays. The panel is also noticeably sharper than the screen used in some competing handhelds, such as the Ayaneo Pocket Micro, which uses a smaller 3.5-inch display with a lower resolution.

What telling people to touch grass ignores, in part, is that grass is not all that good to touch. It's itchy and sticky - there could be bugs in there. There's a far more profoundjoyin touching machines, as is shown again and again in Albert Birney's Obex, which functions as both a shrine to and warning about our reliance on technology.

However, my husband and I did realize that the layout actually seemed intuitive for the space. It made the most of a rowhouse-sized space, and there was no need to make significant changes to the footprint of the cabinetry or the appliances. What I wanted was a space that felt fresh and clean but still vintage-inspired and more fitting for the house. Here's how I did it.

For this time around, however, the concept player here stays within the audio listening gear domain; nonetheless, has clear signs of a TE-inspired design. The retro Bluetooth player is a music accessory that's reminiscent of the classic cassette tape player design, but on the inside, it's a modern music player that plays music wired or wireless. The aesthetics are purely for arousing the nostalgic feel of listening to music on a cassette player, while the audio is digitally played via a DAC for high-resolution output.

The C64 Mini Black Edition is on sale for the first time since its release last October. The Amazon-exclusive retro console is up for grabs for $88 (was $120). The $32 discount is pretty great, but if you're lucky, you can save even more. Amazon is offering an additional 25% off to select shoppers. If you're eligible for the extra savings, you'll see a coupon box below the price. With the box checked, the C64 Mini Black Edition drops to only $66 at checkout.

Returning to old games isn't always easy. Depending on how old the game is, you might run into various problems, including unusual controls or compatibility issues. Another common point of friction you might encounter is an older game running poorly. This can make it a slog to replay some of the modern classics, even if they're just a decade or so old. So I'm happy to see Ubisoft going back and updating performance in games like Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Unity.

Sure, the AirPods Max come in colors - but there's something so cold and un-emotional about anodized aluminum. It grabs your eye, but then immediately lets your eye wander once your fingers have run past its cool matte surface. Aluminum's only purpose was to help build devices that were sleek and thermally advantageous. The problem, however, is that the AirPods Max aren't 'sleeker' than your average headphone.

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.

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,

That is where Razer's Pokémon collection comes in. Instead of one Pikachu mousepad, Razer built a full ecosystem that includes the BlackWidow V4 X keyboard, Cobra mouse, Kraken V4 X headset, and Gigantus V2 M mat. The line is officially licensed and leans into Kanto nostalgia, wrapping every peripheral in Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle graphics across bright yellow surfaces with synced Razer Chroma RGB lighting.

Smart TV UIs are hard enough for adults to navigate, let alone preschoolers. When his three-year-old couldn't learn to navigate with a remote, one Danish computer scientist did what any enterprising creator would do: He turned an old floppy disk drive into a kid-friendly content controller that starts streams based on what disk you insert. As Mads Olesen explained in a blog post, his son usually winds up asking him to handle the television, leaving him disempowered and unable to make content choices for himself.

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.

We started from a very silly place,

It takes the classic tape deck design and turns it into a smart speaker with two tiny 1.5-inch circular OLED displays. They're in that place where the spinning reels used to be, since this isn't exactly a cassette player. On the left, you get the playback controls and on the right side, you get a digital waveform or equalizer. Both screens are touch-sensitive, letting you interact directly with the device without constantly reaching for your phone.

There's something oddly nostalgic about Caligra's c100 Developer Terminal, yet it feels completely modern at the same time. At first glance, it looks like someone took a pristine keyboard from the early computing era, polished it up, and reimagined it for 2026. But this isn't just a keyboard. It's an entire computer, cleverly disguised as the thing you type on.