High tech, high schmeck: What's old is new again

Windows XP is turning 25, and with AI still causing a memory crunch (theregister.com/systems/2026/07/30/samsung-war…) we're really missing the days of low-overhead OSes from Microsoft that just worked.

This week on The Kettle, host Brandon Vigliarolo (theregister.com/author/brandon-vigliarolo) is joined by FOSS reporter Liam Proven (theregister.com/author/liam-proven) and Microsoft reporter Richard Speed (theregister.com/author/richard-speed) to talk about why XP might have been peak Windows, but that's not the only retro thing we're chatting about in this episode.

Along with reminiscing about Windows of days gone by (theregister.com/offbeat/2026/08/25/windows-xp-…), we're also looking at Casio's remake (theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/08/22/casio…) of its classic digital watch to add some basic smart capabilities without losing a two-year battery life, and we're reexamining the long-held belief that putting passwords on paper (labrador.sitpub.com/security/2026/08/24/securi…) is a bad idea.

After all, you can't hack a paper notebook.