HISTORY By Will Fastie I thought the waiting list for AskWoody-hosted tours of the System Source Computer Museum was on the wane, but the most recent tour was full and the waiting list remains strong. Reactions to the museum continue to be very positive. Visitors are polled after their visit, and the consistent rating from […]

WINDOWS 11 By Lance Whitney Microsoft offers a number of methods to back up your files in Windows. Here are the tools I use — and how I use them. I’m a firm believer in backing up files. By that, I mean my files. You’ve probably heard that advice hundreds of times. But imagine if […]

ISSUE 22.29 • 2025-07-21 HISTORY By Will Fastie Our most recent tour of the System Source Computer Museum welcomed a hybrid of AskWoody Plus Members, free subscribers, and a few Baltimoreans who expressed interest. This tour evoked responses similar to those of our previous guests. Universally, attendees express amazement at this priceless collection. More interesting, […]

ISSUE 22.27 • 2025-07-07 HISTORY By Will Fastie Our spring bonus issue, exclusively for Plus members, was very well received. We decided to do it again. This time, we asked all our writers to reflect on tech they don’t miss. They offered quite a few suggestions, and we chose one from each of them. Read […]

HISTORY By Simon Bisson It’s been nearly 30 years since Windows 95 came along and began the long and slow process of handling Windows memory and device drivers. Plug and Play may well have begun life as “Plug and Pray,” but even that was better than the DOS-era tools that had come before. We owe […]

HISTORY By Peter Deegan The Small Computer System Interface, better known as SCSI (skuz-ee) was a promising technology from 1981 that no one misses today. SCSI devices were supposed to chain together, allowing a single connection from the computer to handle multiple peripherals such as hard drives, printers, optical drives, and scanners. Every device had […]

HISTORY By Max Stul Oppenheimer, Esq. For those new to this ancient technology, it was a system for making sure you didn’t give a copy of your software to a friend — or run it on more than one machine at a time. It worked by requiring that the original, from-the-manufacturer diskette be in the […]

HISTORY By Mary Branscombe The “universal” connector wasn’t really that universal. I’m “the girl with the USB earring.” It’s ideal for social engineering: the novelty of seeing me take it out of my ear has almost every executive I’ve ever interviewed ready to put it into their laptop. It’s been years since I plugged anything […]

HISTORY By Ed Tittel Back in the early 1980s, standardized networking technology was still years off. During that period, I had to learn and work with AppleTalk, NetBEUI/NetBIOS, DECnet, IBM/SNA, IPX/SPX, OSI and — of course — TCP/IP. At one point, I could give you reasons why one might — or might not — choose […]

HISTORY By Susan Holly I was a tried-and-true PC user from the very first days of desktop computers, under the tutelage of AskWoody’s own Will Fastie. He was the editor of the magazine I worked for in the early ’80s, dedicated to all things PC. My Christmas bonus that first year paid for my first […]

HISTORY By Ben Myers Luckily, I managed to skip Windows 8, but I still had hands on it. I had a few looks at Windows 8, both in local stores and online, and quickly decided it was not for me. I am a committed Start-button person, favoring small icons on the desktop and taskbar, too. […]

Jordan Drysdale // As I wander through life, in what now seems like a world gone entirely mad, disconnecting from digital is my newest hobby. Information overload constantly smashes us […]

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