I saw headlines yesterday, such as “Apple Removes $599 Mac mini, Raises Starting Price to $799.” The knee-jerk reaction to a headline like that is that Apple raised prices. It’s not true. There is a readjustment. True, a Mac mini priced at $599 is no longer available. The lowest-priced mini is now $200 more, at […]

ISSUE 23.18 • 2026-05-04 HARDWARE By Will Fastie Somewhere in the AskWoody archives, you’ll find an article stating my ultimate goal — to reduce the number of PCs on my desk from four to one. Hah. That didn’t happen. I did manage to cut it down to two, though. Then I bought a Mac mini. […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie Physically putting the NAS together is easy. Setup takes some time. You’d think somewhere along the line I’d have deployed network-attached storage for someone, client or friend. This is the first time. It’s different from putting together a RAID solution for a business’s server or creating a mirror for my own […]

HARDWARE By Will Fastie With the NAS now up and running with an accessible storage volume, it’s time to make it useful. What’s useful? As stated in the previous articles, I want the contents of my D: drive out of my daily driver, Obsidian. But I still want all that data to be easily accessible. […]

Maine’s legislature passed on April 14, 2026, a bill prohibiting the “construction or permitting” of any new datacenter which consumes more than 20 megawatts of power. If signed by the governor, it would take immediate effect but expire on November 1, 2027. Other states have proposed similar bans, but Maine’s is the first to pass […]

On April 10, Alex Oot from Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program team posted Improving your Windows Insider experience to the Insider’s blog. If you are participating as an Insider, you’ll want to read the post. There are several announcements in the post, but one might catch your attention. Under the heading “Clearer channel definitions,” the post […]

ISSUE 23.15 • 2026-04-13 FROM THE FORUMS By Will Fastie Last week, we published a Public Defender column by Brian Livingston titled Any USB drive or cable you plug in might be a silent killer. You might have seen the reaction in the column’s forum topic. The forum exploded. So did my inbox. Read the […]

I was chatting with Copilot, doing some research about vintage drum machines. I have a little BOSS DR-220 Dr. Rhythm synth that provides the basic functionality I want, but it does not have variations. I was looking for something slightly better. The research session was pretty good, telling me about some equipment I’d never heard […]

ISSUE 23.14.1 • 2026-04-09 By Will Fastie Fresno is experiencing a freak taxation event. Reports remain sketchy, but it appears that an unusual event has occurred in the Fresno area. Apparently, a well-known accounting firm is undergoing a targeted forms attack. Its building has been completely covered with paper tax documents, trapping the staff inside […]

Apple garnered a huge amount of publicity with the MacBook Neo, which is still exploding on YouTube and other social media. I don’t think the Neo is selling at a loss, but if it were it would probably be worth the “Hey, look at me!” moment. I’m starting to think this is an opening salvo […]

I received a call from a friend yesterday morning asking me to remove something from Outlook. It just showed up. “It” was a Copilot icon on the left edge of the message block when writing an email. A grayed-out instruction suggesting using Copilot has been in the message block for some time, but it vanishes […]

I received this email yesterday: I have received notifications about photos in OneDrive, along the lines of “This day in OneDrive” or something similar. After experimenting with that long ago, I simply ignore and delete them. Because this was unusual, I decided to click through and take a look. I was taken to an online […]

I use OneNote every day, all day — primarily to keep our master editorial calendar. I paste text into it all the time. I call this “quicksand.” That’s because the keyboard shortcuts for this simple task keep changing. Even worse, the actual “paste as text” function keeps changing. To the left you can see “Keep […]

Last week, Intel had a relatively low-key event called Intel Pro Day 2026. It was about processors in the Core Ultra Series 3 lineup that are designated “vPro Eligible.” vPro chips are intended for the commercial market, with manageability and security built in. As best I can determine, all the new Ultra 3 chips with […]

WINDOWS 11 By Will Fastie Unaccountably, Microsoft has lost its UI mojo. It’s not surprising that the Windows Start menu gets a lot of attention whenever it changes. It’s a highly visible feature of Windows’ overall user interface. No one can escape the need to use Start from time to time, even when some of […]

ISSUE 23.11.1 • 2026-03-19 By Will Fastie Great care must be taken when conversing with AI bots. In what can only be a galactic coincidence, I corresponded with two people this past Monday, both of whom had chatted with bots. One was an 87-year-old Plus member with a long background in technology and the other […]

The new MacBook Neo laptop is turning heads. That’s despite very few people having put their hands on one; although it was announced on March 4, it doesn’t ship until this Wednesday. Even so, there was an explosion of sorts. YouTube videos about the Neo came from not only from the usual suspects, but from […]

I’ve been following Microsoft since 1979. It gives me some instincts about the company and its products, as well as an understanding of the various transitions it has made over the years. I’m not so lucky with respect to Apple. In the ’80s, I tried to establish a relationship with the company and was snubbed […]

Yesterday, Apple quietly announced new M5 chips, updates to the entire MacBook line, and new Studio displays. A day earlier, the iPhone 17e and the new M4-powered iPad Air were announced. The star of this round of products is clearly the revamped MacBook line, in which every MacBook is now powered by an M5 chip […]

I confess — I’m a YouTube junkie. I’ve pressed that nefarious button to the left far too many times. I subscribe to YouTube channels for one of two reasons. The most important is the desire to provide support, however little, to channels I think are worthwhile, cater to my interests, or that I plan to […]