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Retro Tech

Before autocorrect, before the cloud, before anything worked properly the first time. A look at the technology that got us here.

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The Rise and Fall of the PalmPilot

The Rise and Fall of the PalmPilot

Before our phones turned us into perpetual notification victims, the PalmPilot proved you could actually get stuff done with a grey, stylus-wielded slab that barely needed charging.

Published 2 Jul 2026

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Watching the Blocks Move in Disk Defragmenter

Watching the Blocks Move in Disk Defragmenter

The therapeutic, anxiety-inducing story of the software tool that physically rearranged our hard drives, block by colorful box, while we sat in absolute stillness hoping it wouldn't crash.

Published 2 Jul 2026

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Facing the Dreaded Blue Screen of Death

Facing the Dreaded Blue Screen of Death

The surprising story of the crash screen that terrified a generation—from the Microsoft executive who drafted it to the hidden business-grade engine that finally killed it.

Published 20 Jun 2026

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Wrestling with Clippy in Early Microsoft Office

Wrestling with Clippy in Early Microsoft Office

If you typed "Dear..." in Microsoft Word in 1997, you knew exactly what was coming next: a tapping sound, two unblinking googly eyes, and a paperclip asking if you knew how to write a letter.

Published 3 Jun 2026

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Saving Your Life’s Work on a Floppy Disk

Saving Your Life’s Work on a Floppy Disk

A nostalgic look back at the days when a single stray magnet, a rogue cat hair, or a crumb from your toast could instantly destroy your entire university degree.

Last updated 11 Jul 2026

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Survival in the Turbo C++ Era

Survival in the Turbo C++ Era

A breakdown of the rigid, semicolon-obsessed world of Turbo C++ and the manual labor it took to build software before AI turned coding into a conversation.

Published 21 Apr 2026

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Writing Your First Site in Notepad

Writing Your First Site in Notepad

A look at the satisfyingly simple (and occasionally maddening) process of building the early web one HTML tag at a time in Windows Notepad.

Published 21 Apr 2026

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