Stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Open source has won, and Microsoft has surrendered

Many Linux users are ticked off and anxious about Microsoft joining the Linux Foundation. They are missing the real significance of that move.

I’m going to say no to the new MacBook Pro

Many of the design choices are likely to add up to user frustration.

Windows 10 runs again — but for how long?

Microsoft finally issued a patch that released Windows 10 PCs from reboot hell. So why is ungrateful me just bracing for the next awful thing to happen?

I want out of Windows patch hell

You’d think that when it made patches pretty much inescapable, Microsoft would have made darn sure those patches were problem-free. But you’d be wrong.

AirPods: Just as bad as you thought they’d be

No matter how much you love Apple gear, you’re going to have trouble loving AirPods.

Cortana: The spy in Windows 10

Cortana, Windows 10’s built-in virtual assistant, is both really cool and really creepy.

Pausing on the PC death march

Does it bother you that we’re heading toward a post-ownership computing world where we will have little control over our videos, music, software programs and devices? It does me.

The dying technologies of 2016

To every thing there is a season, and for some technologies the time to die is almost upon us.

Lies, damned lies and benchmarks

Volkswagen cheated on the emissions tests for 11 million vehicles. But it’s not the only company that has built lying into its testing and benchmarking.

How to put your movies on your media server

I have a huge movie collection. It used to all be on VHS tapes, then I moved to DVDs, and now I'm slowly moving to Blu-Ray. That's all well and good, but along the way I decided I liked the convenience of making my hundreds of movies accessible from ...

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Are Android tablets ready to take on the iPad?

The Nexus 7 seems to be taking off among consumers, but the real game-changer is Android 4.1, known as Jelly Bean.

Ready or not, here come the business tablets

OK, we all know that people want to bring their consumer technology into the office. In particular, though, people really want to use tablets in the workplace.

The day of the password is done

When the popular Web site Gawker was hacked into recently, more than a million user IDs and passwords were released. If you were one of the people compromised that's annoying -- very annoying. Not that it's a big deal that someone could log into a go...