Top 5 weekly: Converting an old MacBook into a Windows XP machine, a nationwide Kaspersky ban, and more

Our news center has been hard at work over the past few weeks, covering all of the big events and announcements from Google, Microsoft, Computex, and Apple. While it’s always an exciting time to see all of the new reveals, it’s nice to have a chill period before the next big event. That doesn’t mean that the news came to a halt, though; here are the five best news pieces we saw this week.

The coolest drone you’ll ever see

What’s better than a drone? A drone you made yourself. Such is the case with this cool Batwing RC plane, which uses a 3D-printed shell and some parts bought off of Amazon to get the job done. The creator has shown off videos of them making and flying the plane, and they’re pretty impressed at how far it has come. Best of all, you can make your own if you’re feeling that creative itch – the inventor has included everything you need to get started.

Love for the old operating system still hasn’t died

What’s the first thing you do with old hardware? If your answer is to run an old version of Windows on it, then you’re in good company. This week, we saw someone acquire a touchscreen MacBook from 2011 and play around with it for a bit. Once they were done, they installed a tablet version of Windows XP on it and tested it out. There were a ton of driver headaches, but they managed to get everything working well at the end – so well, in fact, that he proved it could run Half-Life at a good framerate.

Make Microsoft Edge your own with this handy tool

Microsoft Edge is a far better browser than it was when it was first released, but perhaps Microsoft went a bit too far with adding features to it. As such, there are a lot of built-in tools that some people may not want around, but have no choice but to keep. Fortunately, someone released a tool that can debloat it and make it a little more streamlined than normal. At the time of writing, there’s no easy way to revert the settings, so be careful; however, it’s a welcome change nonetheless.

A teeny-tiny Mac for a teeny-tiny price

There are lots of things you can do with a Raspberry Pi, but its ability to emulate old software for a fraction of the size that it takes a PC is one of its many fortes. This was proven this week by someone showing off a Macintosh 128K running off of a Raspberry Pi Pico, which didn’t even break two digits in cost. It’s a cool example of how you can give old software new life with a tiny board and a little bit of ingenuity.

A huge mix-up in the cybersecurity field

Source: Kaspersky

Finally, we got the news that the ongoing tensions between the US and Russia have caused the former to ban Kaspersky from its country. It’s huge news, as many users and companies have come to respect Kaspersky as a major player in the cybersecurity field. We’ll have to see which antivirus apps people will opt for in its stead, and what that means going forward.