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Product keys and Windows activation in 2026
Windows activation still relies on a 25-character product key to verify that your copy of the operating system is genuine. Without a valid key, Windows runs in a reduced-functionality state: the desktop watermark appears, personalisation settings are locked, and Microsoft may restrict certain security features over time. Keys originate from a variety of sources — retail purchases, digital downloads through the Microsoft Store, volume licensing agreements, Microsoft 365 developer subscriptions, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) licences pre-loaded by the PC maker. Microsoft first introduced product activation with Windows XP as an anti-piracy measure, and while the underlying goal hasn't changed, the mechanics have evolved considerably since then.
On modern hardware shipped with Windows 10 or Windows 11, the product key is almost never printed on a sticker. Instead it lives silently inside the firmware, embedded in the ACPI tables of the motherboard. This means that if you reinstall Windows on the same machine — or upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 — activation typically happens automatically, without you ever needing to type a key. That said, there are situations where you need to retrieve the key manually: migrating to a new motherboard, troubleshooting an activation failure, or verifying what edition of Windows your licence entitles you to run.
It is perfectly legitimate to reinstall and reactivate Windows on the PC for which the product key is licensed as many times as you need to.
Most licenses allow for software to be re-installed and activated on the same PC an unlimited number of times. To ensure that you are using your license properly, please see your end user license agreement or product use rights for details on a specific product.
Edition of Windows
Your product key does more than prove ownership — it also determines which edition of Windows you are licensed to run. A Home key cannot activate a Pro installation, and a Pro key will not unlock Enterprise features. This distinction matters when you are reinstalling from scratch, because the Windows 11 installer will ask you to choose an edition before it downloads or applies the image. If you select the wrong edition and activate with your stored key, Windows will refuse the key or activate the wrong feature set. Retrieving your original key first removes the guesswork.
Product keys stored in your PC's firmware
TL;DR — On any PC shipped with Windows 8 or later, the product key is stored in the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) firmware tables, specifically in a table called the MSDM (Microsoft Data Management) table. This is non-volatile memory on the motherboard, completely separate from your hard drive or SSD, so it survives a full disk wipe. Retrieving it takes a single command.
Microsoft's shift to digital licensing — introduced alongside Windows 10 — adds another layer. Once a licence has been activated on a particular piece of hardware, Microsoft's servers link the licence to a hardware fingerprint. On Windows 11 machines that have been online at least once, you can often reactivate simply by signing in with the Microsoft account that was associated with the original activation, even if the firmware key is no longer readable. The firmware key and the digital licence work in parallel, so it is worth knowing how to access both.
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Virtual Hosts with SSL, isn't that hard, is it?
The Apache HTTP Server has always had a virtual hosts feature to serve multiple differently named websites from the same server. Setting it up with SSL is more complex than it perhaps ought to be, and that is probably historical given that the project it named after HTTP it was centred around http and https was originally an additional, often expensive and complex configuration step.
This seems outmoded to me. Traffic encrypted to the web browser with https is mandatory for any serious web presence. http is an insecure protocol that should really be a secondary consideration. Anyway, it is what it is.
With virtual hosts, each individual site appears to the end-user to have a different identity even though it is served from the same server. Hosting providers use this technology to provide resilience, security, scale, analytics and for many other reasons but it is also useful for developers who want to have a replica small scale development or staging environment perhaps for multiple websites. A development environment is my reason for building out Apache 2 virtual hosts with separate Let's Encrypt certificates on my Ubuntu Linux machine.
To make it work, you need to think about setting out the directory structure on your Linux machine, the Virtual Hosts configuration files for Apache2, and a properly resolving DNS record to the Linux machine hosting your virtual host site. Setting it up is easy enough but takes a little bit of concentration on the details of all these moving parts. Adding SSL to these virtual hosts is far less tricky than it once was because 'Let's Encrypt' does most of the heavy lifting now.
You'll need
- Ubuntu Desktop 22.04.1 LTS updated to latest.
- An administratrive user that can 'sudo'.
- Let's Encrypt 'certbot' installed and a good understanding of Linux locations and editing tools.
- An IP address on your Linux machine that is reachable from the Internet. This can either be fixed or dynamic via 'ddclient'.
- Local DNS, sometimes called 'split DNS', perfectly set up for your local area network or a hosts file with entries for the names pointing at the local IPv4 address of the Linux machine.
- The domains you wish to use for your virtual hosts set up to use that IP address or an alias that resolves to it.
TL:DR I now have two dev sites on my local Ubuntu Desktop. Both have valid Let's Encrypt SSL certificates and are working well locally and via the Internet. It took about 45 minutes to set up.
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Read more: Lets Encrypt secure virtual hosts on Ubuntu Linux
Should you upgrade to the 2022 iPad Pro, supercharged by the Apple M2?
A. Yes if you have an iPad older than the first M1 2021 model
TL:DR: If you have the original home button equipped iPad Pro from 2015 (12.9 inch) or 2016 (9.7 inch), or the home button equipped iPad Pro from 2017 then now is the time to upgrade. The 2018 and 2020 no button iPad Pro's are a harder call to make as they have USB-C and improved looks and performance but I would still say it is time to upgrade as they have good resale value and will miss out on iOS features such as Stage Manager that need Apples M1 or M2 chipset power. The 2021 iPad Pro based on the Apple M1 chip is probably not worth upgrading to the 2022 model. The 2024 iPad Pro is the current model but you can find it new with a small discount at Amazon or used with a massive discount if you try hard!
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pmset is a swiss army knife of functionality for sleep, standby, UPS, scheduled event, and power source debugging, The examples in the man page show some uses of most of them. My remote mac is a desktop without an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) so I need a simple power regime to make sure my Mac is on for remote backup when I need it to be online - this is exactly what used to be possible via System Settings.
pmset -g
Lets first check what is currently set on my Mac, upgraded from macOS Monterey to macOS Sonoma. (Annotations mine)
% pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
disksleep 10 - Disk spindown timer; (value in minutes, or 0 to disable)
powernap 1 - Enable/disable Power Nap on supported machines (value = 0/1)
womp 1 - Same as "Wake for network access" in System Settings.
networkoversleep 0 - This setting is not used by all platforms; changing its value is unsupported
sleep 10 - (sleep prevented by sharingd, powerd, bluetoothd)
Sleep On Power Button 1 - Not documented
ttyskeepawake 1 - prevent idle system sleep when any tty is 'active'. (value = 0/1)
tcpkeepalive 1 - Not documented
autorestart 1 - automatic restart on power loss (value = 0/1)
standby 0 - kernel power management to automatically hibernate (setting visible if the feature is supported on this machine)
displaysleep 10 - display sleep timer (value in minutes, or 0 to disable)
Not sure if ttyskeepalive respects Apple Remote Dektop (ARD), but I hope so! The disksleep parameter seems a bit weird. All Mac computers have been SSD for years now. There is no disk to 'spindown'. And standby is a bit weird too. This is a Mac mini - it wouldn't normally hibernate. Ignoring these for now.
pmset scheduled events
pmset allows you to schedule system sleep, shutdown, wakeup and/or power on. schedule is for setting up one-time power events, and repeat is for setting up daily/weekly power on and power off events. Note that you may only have one pair of repeating events scheduled - a "power on" event and a "power off" event. For sleep cycling applications, pmset can schedule a "relative" wakeup or poweron to occur in seconds from the end of system sleep/shutdown, but this event cannot be cancelled and is inherently imprecise" - Source: pmset Man page
type - one of sleep, wake, poweron, shutdown, wakeorpoweron
date/time - "MM/dd/yy HH:mm:ss" (in 24 hour format; must be in quotes)
time - HH:mm:ss
weekdays - a subset of MTWRFSU ("M" and "MTWRF" are valid strings)
owner - a string describing the person or program who is scheduling this one-time power event (optional)
This is obtuse for 2023. Weekdays have letters to describe them, in a way so as to have a unique letter for each day. Old school Unix I guess. Not very 'global'. Anyway, for my purposes for one particular Mac Mini I want it to power on on Saturday at 09:00 and shutdown at 21:00 so the command which has to be run by sudo is :-
sudo pmset repeat wakeorpoweron S 09:00:00 shutdown S 21:00:00
You can check that is set correctly using % pmset -g sched
% pmset -g sched
Repeating power events:
wakepoweron at 9:00AM Saturday
shutdown at 9:00PM Saturday
...
And for another Mac I want the machine to wake each morning in time for my morning routine.
% sudo pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 09:00:00 shutdown MSU 18:30:00
% pmset -g sched
Repeating power events:
wakepoweron at 9:00AM every day
shutdown at 6:30PM Some days
...
Now that is set I can go ahead and configure my backup regime content that my machine will be up all day Saturday to run it. That's another story..
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Introduction
Managing cloud costs effectively is a critical component of financial governance in modern enterprises. Google Cloud Billing provides a robust budgeting system that allows organizations to set, monitor, and control their expenditures efficiently. By leveraging budgets and budget alerts, businesses can ensure cost predictability and avoid unexpected charges.
TL:DR – Don't end up with a costly bill. Set effective alerts so that you can control your cloud services costs.
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Read more: Create/Edit Budgets/Alerts in Google Cloud Billing
Do you need a new cassette recorder, in 2025?
Can I finally digitise my old analog Compact Cassette tapes to Digital audio?
Last year during the holidays, while unpacking boxes, I found my collection of cassette tapes from the 20th century! I never threw them away it seems, even though I haven't had a cassette player connected to my home audio system for decades. Handling and looking through my tapes evoked many memories of recording and playing them, whether they were concert bootlegs, band practices, or taped off the radio. I remembered too the important process of writing out the track listing and decorating the cassette tape labels and covers.
Vintage cassette players and recorders, are expensive and full of compromises on eBay but seem to have a devoted following among collectors, vinyl enthusiasts, and music lovers who perhaps are nostalgic for the warm sound of analog audio and the hiss of tape. Professional and semi professional restoration shops sell them too, often with warranties. I looked up my old long lost Sony Walkman DC2 and the prices are in the stratosphere for this, the king of the Walkman players and much loved by me. So much so that it made me wonder if anyone makes new cassette players and recorders these days. Even Phillips the inventor of the format has no Cassette players or decks in it's current line up. This to me seems both sad and wrong.
But, there are a couple of decent pro audio and HiFi decks around and this is a little bit of a rabbit hole!
TL:DR — Compact cassettes are making a comeback due to their nostalgic appeal, unique sound quality, and resurgence of interest in physical media. If you have the means theres still one Pro Audio and one HiFi consumer cassette deck available in new condition with USB out. Both have the exact same mechanism with a few styling differences, chiefly rack mount capability and one additional playback function on the Pro Audio version. Both are expensive so shop around. If you're looking for a second hand professional level Cassette Deck in 2024 read my other article Tascam 302 Cassette recorder.
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Backing up Windows 11
Why bother?
Over the years, countless people have asked me to revive a Windows laptop or desktop after losing vital data. Asking "Where's your backup?" feels cruel when you already know the answer — there isn't one. macOS users have long had Time Machine as a reliable safety net, but Windows users still get caught out far too often. Windows 11 has had several years to mature now, and Microsoft has made meaningful changes to its backup story — some welcome, some that will genuinely surprise you. If you haven't revisited your backup setup recently, 2026 is a good moment to do it properly.
TL;DR — Windows 11 includes capable built-in backup options, but the landscape has shifted: Microsoft has been quietly deprecating some legacy tools while pushing its cloud-centric Windows Backup app. The safest approach is still a local external drive combined with at least one cloud layer. Get an external drive larger than your PC's internal storage, connect it, and work through the three backup layers covered below. You won't think about any of this until the exact moment you desperately wish you had.
For the local backup examples in this article I used a Samsung T9 Portable SSD, 2 TB — a solid, fast choice that has come down noticeably in price. If your machine lacks an optical drive and you want a bootable System Repair Disc, you'll also need an external USB DVD writer, though a bootable USB recovery drive is the more practical option today.
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