https://www.pocket-lint.com Light, powerful, and ready for anything, the latest laptops are here. Join us for a look at the future of work and play. Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:00:17 GMT en-US hourly 60 https://www.pocket-lint.com/sneaky-ways-you-might-be-damaging-your-computer/Keeping a Mac or Windows PC running for a long time can be challenging. It's not as complicated as it used to be -- as anyone who remembers life before SSDs and the internet can tell you -- but at the least, there are basic software maintenance tasks, and repairing or upgrading hardware inevitably becomes difficult, if not impossible. You'll be lucky to own a computer that has parts available for a full decade.

]]>Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:00:17 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/sneaky-ways-you-might-be-damaging-your-computer/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/steer-clear-of-budget-laptops/To avoid any controversy, I don't have a problem with budget laptops just because they're cheap, or because they don't have the best specs on the market. I'm a believer in using the right tool for the job -- but also in money well-spent, regardless of how wealthy you are. There's no sense dropping $2,000 on a laptop if you won't be handling anything more complex than web browsing and emails. For that, an iPad or Android tablet is probably enough.

]]>Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:00:16 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/steer-clear-of-budget-laptops/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/dear-laptop-makers-stop-taking-away-ports-and-slots/For a long time, I avoided buying a laptop. That might sound strange for someone who writes for a living, but if your interests include PC gaming like mine do, a desktop tower is always going to be the most economical option. It costs more to get miniaturized specs with any performance, and you can upgrade many desktop parts at will, instead of just storage or RAM. Ultimately, the best performance is only possible with a desktop, since there's far more room for memory, processor cores, and cooling.

]]>Sun, 14 Dec 2025 16:00:16 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/dear-laptop-makers-stop-taking-away-ports-and-slots/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/keep-pc-from-overheating/Heat is the enemy for many electronics, but especially for modern PCs. They're complex beasts with many parts, and excessive heat in just one area can cause a computer to crash, assuming a component doesn't fail permanently. It's almost a miracle that PCs run at all, given how many apps are designed to push their performance to the limit. You can thank decades of work by engineers for getting us to a point of stability.

]]>Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:00:17 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/keep-pc-from-overheating/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/aluminium-os-android-pc/Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for secrecy anymore, at least on the level of companies like Apple. It's revealing minor features and products constantly, and has all but given up on keeping new Pixel devices under wraps, to the point that it does teaser announcements ahead of its press events to keep the rumor mill under control. If you're going to get excited about Google tech, it's probably because you're already onboard with what's happening.

]]>Fri, 12 Dec 2025 03:00:26 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/aluminium-os-android-pc/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/your-old-usb-sticks-have-an-expiration-date/Like DVDs, CDs, and almost every other piece of technology from the early 2000s, USB sticks around the world are beginning to see mass failures as the technology inside them ages. According to Flash Bay, USB flash drives can withstand between 10,000 to 100,000 write/erase cycles, and when the limit is reached, the drive can begin to fail, which can lead to drive corruption and data loss. USB drives can also expire after several years of non-use, exposure to humidity, controller chip failure, and more.

]]>Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:05:16 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/your-old-usb-sticks-have-an-expiration-date/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/pointless-windows-maintenance-tasks/This is dating myself, but I remember when keeping a PC running was entirely a do-it-yourself affair. Before Windows 95, there was an unspoken assumption that you were technically inclined -- as a kid, I remember having to mess with IRQ settings and memory managers just to get some of my games to run properly.

]]>Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:00:15 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/pointless-windows-maintenance-tasks/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/old-computer-ports-peripherals-drives-components/When it comes to the world of consumer-grade electronics, absolutely nothing stands still. What was considered cutting-edge a mere decade ago is today all but ancient history, with tech components, peripherals, and standards evolving exponentially on seemingly a yearly basis.

]]>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:23:03 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/old-computer-ports-peripherals-drives-components/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/reasons-i-love-the-new-windows-11-start-menu/Microsoft is currently in the process of rolling out its latest Windows 11 version 25H2 update to eligible PCs, and, alongside this platform upgrade, the company is also trickling out a variety of user-facing changes and improvements to the operating system.

]]>Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:24:44 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/reasons-i-love-the-new-windows-11-start-menu/ https://www.pocket-lint.com/protect-phone-or-laptop-during-cross-border-checks/I'm a dual US-Canadian citizen, with friends and family on both sides of the border. That's meant a lot of international travel in the past, but frankly, I'm a little nervous about the prospect of flying back to the US in the current political climate. The Customs and Border Protection agency has ramped up its searches of phones, laptops, and other devices, checking 14,899 between April and June 2025 alone. Yes, the odds are that I'll be able to fly to the country without much trouble -- but I don't want to risk delays or seizures, and I do value my privacy.

]]>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 01:00:17 GMThttps://www.pocket-lint.com/protect-phone-or-laptop-during-cross-border-checks/