Revive that old laptop for free

October 1, 2025

💻 Revive that old laptop for free: Got a dusty Mac or PC lying around? Install ChromeOS Flex and turn it into a Chromebook-like machine that runs smoothly on minimal resources. Perfect for email, browsing, calls and streaming. Bonus: Google Docs works offline, too. All it takes is a USB. Here’s how to do it. Yea, this tip alone was worth the price of this newsletter.

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Tags: email, Google, Google Docs, laptop, streaming

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Free cloud storage: What you really get and what to do when it runs out

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When you’re everyone’s unpaid emotional support intern

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“Hey, Kim, This isn’t tech. I’m the one keeping the peace, at work, at home, with friends. I smooth things over and manage everyone’s moods. It’s exhausting, but if I stop, I’m scared everything unravels. What should I do?” — Megan from Cincinnati

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Clippy’s final form: “Vibe working” is coming to Word and Excel. Microsoft’s new Agent Mode uses GPT-5 to build entire spreadsheets and docs just from a prompt, while narrating its every move. There’s even a PowerPoint mode that makes decks and does its own research. Somewhere, an intern just burst into tears of joy.

OpenAI adds parental safety controls: After a slew of lawsuits and deaths, ChatGPT will now flag suicidal prompts from teens, with one big but: Both you and the kids have to opt in first. If something happens, human reviewers step in and alerts go out. Oh, you can also block ChatGPT past bedtime. Remember when you were a teen? Yea, they can get around these controls without a problem.

ChatGPT pulls an all-nighter: OpenAI just dropped Pulse, a new Pro-only feature that works while you sleep. It reads your chats, data and random wishes (like my Antarctica trip), then hands you a personalized morning briefing. I’m going to try it and report back.

🧽 AI’s dirty dishes: AI was supposed to save time. Instead? You’re cleaning up its mess. A new Stanford study says 41% of workers are busier with “workslop” since tools like ChatGPT and Copilot showed up, thanks to sloppy drafts, useless decks and bad edits. The bots aren’t just taking your job, they’re trying to give you theirs.

💾 Windows 10’s doomsday date: Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 10 support Oct. 14. Europe gets free updates for a year, but here in the U.S.? You’ve got three options: cough up $30, burn 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, or back up your stuff to OneDrive and pray you don’t run out of storage. Protection ends October 2026.

📞 Paid to spill: A new app called Neon pays you to record your calls: 30¢ a minute, max $30 a day for a little self-spying. It then sells your voice data to AI companies. It’s already No. 2 in Apple’s social charts. Once your voice is out there, it could be cloned, hacked or scammed into oblivion. I think you should pass.

🧞‍♂️ Wish granted, kind of: A Virginia widow asked ChatGPT for lottery numbers. It spat out some digits. She won $150,000. And she’s donating all of it. I won’t be surprised if GPT starts getting thousands of new magic number requests per day. You know, a lottery ticket is a weird gift to give someone. It’s like “Here, this has a 99% chance of being disappointing. I saw it and thought of you.”

Inbox, outsourced: Perplexity just launched an AI “Email Assistant” that moves into your Gmail or Outlook, auto-sorts messages, drafts replies in your tone and books meetings. Cool, but it’s locked behind their $200/month Max plan. For those not trying to drop part of your rent money on your inbox, just smash that “mark all as read” button.