What I Used 2025

December 31, 2025

As the year winds down, I will cover what I am using heading into 2026. I am a bit of a tech enthusiast, so I like to keep my tech up-to-date, though I am not rich and do not have the money to spend on the newest and nicest of anything.

Desktop

My desktop PC has gone through an upgrade over 2025. Almost the entire internals are new, excepting maybe the case and the case fans.

Key Specs at a Glance:

• Processor: Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU
• RAM: CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz
• GPU: ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger Overclocked Dual Fan 16GB GDDR6 PCIe 5.0
• Storage:WD_BLACK 1TB SN7100 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 7,250 MB/s
• Motherboard: MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi Gaming Motherboard

Seeing as RAM and graphics cards are likely to get price increases over the next year at least, I made the upgrade at the right time. While my desktop is not the most impressive gaming rig in the world, it should handle what I play for the foreseeable future on the 32 inch 2k gaming monitor I have it hooked up to.

Laptops

My first and newest laptop is the Acer NitroV 16” that I reviewed here. I am not going to go into detail here since I did a review of it, but some basic specs:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS Octa-Core
• RAM: 16GB DDR5 SDRAM @ 5600 MHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Mobile 8GB VRAM
• Storage:1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
• Display:16” WUXGA (1920x1200) 165Hz IPS panel

This laptop has been great so far and has handled everything I have thrown at it, including very modern games like Kingdom Come Deliverance II.

The laptop I prefer to work on, and do anything that is not gaming, is the trusty, old Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 6 from 2018.

• Processor: Intel Core™ i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz
• RAM: 16GB LPDDR3 2133MHz
• GPU: Intel® UHD Graphics 620
• Storage:256Gb PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe
• Display:14” 2560x1440p display with 100% of the AdobeRGB color gamut

I configured this laptop to what I wanted when purchasing it directly from Lenovo. This has become my main laptop for years and still holds up. I currently have it running Fedora 43 KDE and it has run Linux since the day I got it. I never booted Windows on it, not even day one when I got it. I had a USB stick with Ubuntu ready and wiped it immediately. Almost all of my web development, limited as that has been, has been done with this machine. I have built my desk setup with connecting this laptop through Thunderbolt connection to the Lenovo ThinkPad docking station. It still feels just as good to use as the day I got it and works just as well as my other two computers. While it is getting long in the tooth, and I cannot run Windows 11 on it, with Linux on this I do not feel a need to upgrade from it yet. Any upgrade is a want at this point.

Tablet

I am currently using an 11” iPad Air M1with 64Gb of storage. I was gifted this one used by my brother who upgraded to a newer model. The tablet still runs well and is a large step up from the A13 iPad I was using before.

Phone

The phone is a Google Pixel 9 Pro. I decided to stick with a Pixel, which was upgraded from a Pixel 6. I enjoy having a phone that stays up-to-date with the latest software without waiting for some other company to release their own version of the OS with whatever skin and BS applications they need to push through. It works fine, no complaints here.

In 2026, my brother is getting a new MacBook Pro with an M4 chip and likely giving me his older M1 Pro model. If I get that, I will likely use that for a while and see if it is something I would switch to on a more permanent basis. For now though, I am good on tech and should be able to make it through 2026 without a major tech purchase. If I get anything, it would just be a newer iPad Air with more storage, in part so I can gift the older one to one of my sons. The iPads they are using are beyond getting updates, so eventually some of the applications they use will stop working; some already have. But we shall see what 2026 hold in store and if even iPads start to see price hikes because of RAM price increases.