Although that card is adequate, thinking about putting a different one in. Forgot I had a bluetooth wifi combo card. Feeling like that would be a good idea given that the only way I can add anything to this box is USB and KB and Mouse need one each, unless I go to a PS/2 Y converter, then one, but that's still 20% of them. So using BT keyboard and mouse would get that back. Think it's an Azurus or something like that. Once upon a time I thought I had an intel combo card, but maybe installed it in something and forgot.

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-10-14, 17:40:

... going back via a trans-Atlantic ship crossing an about a week - hopefully THAT water won't be too low! ...

On our way now .. see attached

last 2 days I had tried to go back to windows 10 on my potato PC and failed.
It installed but for the extended security updates I used an alternative Microsoft account on a pc with a digital license already activated on my main Microsoft email address.
It said it was ESU enabled but still showed missing updates message after windows update.
I tried all the fixes nothing changed it was frustrating
It then got nasty.
Images vanished from folder.
Video games became laggy.
Please learn from my mistake if you already activated ESU with an email account do not use an alternative email address if you reinstall windows 10 and do the process again will fail internally and silently.
Maybe someone could verify this because I also thought i was hacked and changed every damn password I had on planet earth.

Is Win10 still 'modern' or already 'retro'?

I think it's modern. Anyways, I set up an old Toshiba Portégé Z30-C for my son to use in school.

6th generation Core i5, 13.3" FHD IPS screen, 256GB NVMe SSD, very light weight. I can upgrade RAM from 8GB to 16GB if I need.

Quite impressed with how Win10 just picked up all the drivers. I only had to install one driver for the Alps pointing device (trackpoint/touchpad) to get access to the advanced settings.

The only question is whether the battery life is going to be long enough. We'll find out.

Some argue by age.
In which case 6th gen + 10 is "retro"

I argue by any ONE of the following
* BIOS[1]
* ISA/AGP in use [2]
* 16/32bit OS [3]

[1] ie not uefi
[2] Yes, I am aware LPC(ISA 2.0 as it were) which existed up to s1151(v1) and AM4 does technically connect superios but unless it's actively running something else it's kinda moot
[3] I suppose you could count xp64, vista, 7, 8, 8.1 as retro if you really really wanted to but they're functionally degrees away from W11 and there's no particularly compelling reason outside of "it's old and slow" to run them when 10/11 will 99% of the time run fine.

Anything else is just old. I don't think old is retro automatically.
It's like pointing at a 95 Toyota Camry and saying "look it's retro!"
It's just a template car. There's nothing special about it.
No reason to buy or drive it except as transport because it exists at a price in your proximity.

6th gen running w10 would by some definitions be retro.
It's UEFI, PCIE, and running win64.
To me, it is simply old. Nothing wrong with it. It's contemporary enough.
Aside from artificial constraints easily worked around, you can do everything on it you can do on the newest. Albeit slower.