Awesome Windows

The 1980s gave us computers that shared a case with their keyboard. Pentaform’s Abacus returns to that by attaching a tiny Windows computer to its keyboard. It has an Intel Cherry Trail CPU with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0/3.0, Micro SD, and HDMI 2.0 outputs, as well as a trackpad and a 40-pin GPIO connector.

Lenovo’s unique laptop features two 2.8K OLED displays which can be used in either a stacked landscape or side-by-side portrait mode. Its wireless keyboard can be docked on the bottom panel or placed on a table for maximum screen real estate. It also has a smart pen stylus and a 360-degree rotating Bowers & Wilkins soundbar.

Drew Builds Stuff has an office in the basement of his parents’ house. Because of its subterranean location, it doesn’t get much light. To brighten things up, he built a window wall out of three 75″ 4K TVs, resulting in a 12-foot diagonal image. Since he can load up any video footage, he can pretend to be anywhere on Earth.

This portable PC has a 17.3″ foldable 2.5K OLED touchscreen that transforms from a tablet to a dual-screen laptop. You can use part of its screen as a keyboard or attach the included keyboard and trackpad. It also has a Harmon Kardon 4-speaker audio system, a 5 MP AI webcam, and an HD IR camera for face login. Starts at $3500.

This made-to-order controller from Return to Paradise adds five linear slider controls to your Windows or Linux PC (sorry, no Mac support). It can be used to map volume controls and faders in DJ and gaming software via a USB connection. It works right out of the box with the open-source app deej.

Designers and engineers at Japan’s IMG SRC agency were given a challenge to come up with creative uses for a transparent LCD screen. The coolest idea they came up with was a touchscreen that simulates writing on a fogged-up window, complete with drips of water running down the screen.

We recently were reminded how painful it was to get on the Internet in the 1990s. Installing software on a computer without a CD-ROM drive was even more of a chore. Tech Tangents walks us through the slow but somewhat meditative task of installing Microsoft Office 97 from its 46 floppy disks onto a Gateway 2000 laptop.

If there’s one thing we don’t miss about computers, it’s having to install software and operating systems from dozens of floppy disks. Nobel Tech condensed hours upon hours of footage into a 6-minute time-lapse showing the time-consuming installation process of every major version of Microsoft Windows, from 1.01 to 11.

In 1996, photographer Charles O’Rear snapped a photo that would appear on over a billion desktops thanks to its selection as the default Windows XP wallpaper. Animator Zachary Loren Jones revisits the story of this iconic image and its impact on the zeitgeist with an imaginative and surreal retrospective.

It’s been a while since we booted up a computer running Windows XP or Vista, but the memories came flooding back as soon as we clicked play on this clip from Korean a capella group MayTree, who sang some of memorable sounds from Microsoft’s early-2000s operating systems. Their Movie Intro Medley is a hoot too.

Microsoft Windows has a long history of throwing annoying and cryptic error messages at us. Video artist 4096 decided to memorialize some of the operating system’s various foibles over the years with a fun-filled electronic music remix inspired by this Japanese video. MacOS even gets into the game at 1:24.

Designed for artists and creators, MSI’s slimline desktop tower PC features a design you won’t want to hide. It offers up to a 10th-gen Core i9 CPU, DDR4 dual-channel RAM, Thunderbolt 3, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), an NVIDIA RTX 2020 Super GPU, and easy upgrades. It looks great alongside the matching Prestige 5K2K display.

When computer geeks want to show off, they try to make DOOM run in unlikely places. In this case, Max Holt took the game and used Windows Task Manager’s multicore view to show off a version of the classic FPS, using a ridiculous 896 CPU cores. It also plays PONG.

We’re already quite familiar with the evolution of Windows sounds. Now listen to a variety of Windows startup, shutdown, and error sounds played on piano, courtesy of Bored Piano, where you can also check out digital piano covers of familiar game console startup sounds. More on his Japanese language channel.

Humble has teamed up with software maker Ashampoo to deliver an outstanding “pay what you want” deal on Windows productivity and utility software like Backup Pro, PhotoCommander, PDF Pro, WinOptimizer, and more. A portion of every purchase goes to American Cancer Society, Child’s Play, and a charity of your choice.

This ultracompact gaming PC is designed to play the latest AAA games. It runs Windows 10, and packs a 10th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, an Intel Iris Plus G7 GPU, a 512GB SSD, and 16GB RAM into a mag-aluminum chassis. It has an 8″ 1280×800 display (189ppi), dual analog gamesticks, a D-pad, ABXY, and shoulder buttons.

Take your audio and video streams anywhere – with or without a wireless signal. Audials One 2020 is a Windows application that can record and save high quality streams from a variety of streaming music, video, and online radio stations, so you can keep and play them back any time. Save 66% in The Awesomer Shop.

If you’ve been a user of the Microsoft Windows operating system, you know that each major version has had its own unique startup and shutdown sounds. Pod was kind enough to catalog most of these musical flourishes from Windows 3.1 through Windows 10. This older video captures a few more obscure variants.

It’s a key sequence PC users dread having to use, but the old “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” is still in use today. Nostalgia Nerd looks back at the origin of this key combo which dates back to the 1980s. We’re sure that Apple will profess that their “Command-Option-Esc” key combo is far superior.

Asus turned up at Computex 2019 with a droolworthy laptop design. It packs a 15″ 4K OLED main display, a 14″ ultra-wide touchscreen, and a trackpad with a digital screen that doubles as a numeric keypad. It can be equipped with an Intel Core i9 CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU.

SteelSeries’ Stratus Duo is a multi-platform wireless controller. It can connect to Android devices as well as standalone virtual reality headsets via Bluetooth. It also connects to Windows PCs via 2.4 Ghz wireless and a USB dongle. It lasts up to 20h per charge.

Who would’ve thought that the coolest ugly sweater would come from Microsoft? Over the holidays, the software giant gave away Windows 95 sweaters to folks who tweeted messages love for their OS. We hope they bring it back so more of us can have one.

Microsoft improves its premium all-in-one PC. It’s faster, and the Surface Studio 2’s 28″, 4500 x 3000 resolution touchscreen display is now brighter and has more contrast. Its storage maxes out with a 2TB SSD, while its GPU can be either a GTX 1060 or a GTX 1070.