The release of Valve's Steam Deck has supercharged the portable PC gaming scene. It harkened changes to Steam that have allowed it to flourish in the Switch-like form factor, welcoming in a new generation of handheld gaming computers and now the Steam Deck OLED. With more competition on the rise, Valve has remained committed to updating the firmware that keeps the Steam Deck ticking in this landscape. One such new update is currently available on the preview build sporting a feature that might help improve the long-term battery health of your Steam Deck.

Batteries wear out with use and charge, and dealing with this degradation is probably one of the biggest lamentations of current technologies. On almost all the portable tech you own, I'd wager the battery life is likely one of the first places you'll start to notice it aging. It's why so many new pieces of tech are coming out with a battery limiting feature, just like the one in the May 8th Steam Deck Beta Client update.

Those with that update installed can navigate to the Settings on their Steam Deck to find a new Battery Charge Limit control in the Power section. Here you can limit a full charge on the unit to only charge until 80% battery. Of course, this will mean your battery life on a single charge will go down by about 20% but the overall life of the battery may thank you.

It's especially recommended for anyone who doesn't take their Steam Deck off charge very often, or doesn't regularly go through a full battery depletion. It should help with potential battery problems caused by being on charge most of the time. If you're not running your battery down past 20% often anyway, this is of course a no brainer and should be an easy setting to flick on and forget about it.

It's worth remembering that these settings can also always be turned off. If you're finding you just really need that extra bit of battery to get you through the day then feel free to flip it back to normal mode. If you're someone that finds yourself doing a bit of both then having the limited charge mode on most days, but turning it back to full charge when you go out could also be a great solution. It also will likely depend on which accessories you're choosing to use with it.

For now the battery limit is only available in the test preview build for Steam, so it looks like Valve is going to wait and see before implementing it as a standard feature. Since the portable PC gaming scene is still somewhat enthusiast, having a nice test batch of willing beta subjects is fairly likely. It'll be interesting to see if this 80% limitation on battery does end up helping for overall battery life and whether or not it rolls out to the main software build.

It's been a tumultuous year for Chrono Trigger enthusiasts. Rumors of a potential remake have cropped up several times, only to be quickly debunked. I can't blame fans for their gullibility: it really is very weird that Square Enix hasn't done anything with the Chrono series for so long, though the publisher did indicate in March that it intends to honor the 30th anniversary of Chrono Trigger with projects that "go beyond the world of the game."

Corporate mysticism aside, JRPG legend Yuji Horii, who among other things had a hand in writing Chrono Trigger, and has worked on countless Dragon Quest games including the forthcoming Dragon Quest 12, has indicated in an interview with Gamereactor that he wants to work on Chrono Trigger.

Noting the 30th anniversary, Horii says "Yes, it has been a long time. Yes, I want to do something." Acknowledging the HD-2D remakes of the older Dragon Quest games, Horii adds that he's "getting a lot of requests for a Chrono Trigger remake as well, so I'm starting to look into it."

This follows a quickly debunked rumor earlier this month. At a Comicon in Italy a translator misinterpreted Horii as all but confirming a Chrono Trigger remake, but Gematsu later confirmed that Horii hadn't made any confirmation at all: it was a translator's gaffe, basically.

A HD-2D remake seems like an obvious choice, though a small part of me dreams of Chrono Trigger getting the Final Fantasy 7 Remake treatment. That seems fanciful, especially given the erratic market and Square Enix' famously high sales expectations. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D did exceptionally well for Square Enix—to the extent that they were actually happy with its sales—so it seems inevitable that the company will double down on this remake format. I'm fine with that, as long as they don't touch the music.

Whatever form it takes, a Chrono Trigger revival of some kind seems basically inevitable at this point. While you wait, the original is discounted by 50% on Steam at the moment, and is perfectly playable nowadays despite being busted at launch. Its divisive sequel Chrono Cross is also going cheap.

Lae'zel is a lot of things—a proud warrior of Vlaakith, a fierce combatant, and a genuinely impressive character, able to grapple with her faith and still come out determined to do things the right way. Turns out, her voice actor shares that determination.

In a recent interview with ReadyAimFire, Devora Wilde tells two understandably-astonished interviewers that she was recording voicelines for the character "two days" before giving birth.

"At the beginning it was fine but towards the end I was getting like, a bit 'oof'," Wilde says, in what must be the understatement of the century. "95% of the time you'd be in the suit, and so by the end I'd have to have a little chair [so I could] between the lines go and have a little sit down.

"It was getting towards the end, and they were like, 'Are you sure you wanna come in?' And I said, 'Guys I'm gonna be here right up until the due date, just you watch'."

Wilde goes on to say that this wasn't some nefarious pressure on Larian's behalf, she was just determined to get the job done. "Nobody was pressuring me to, they were like, 'You can leave whenever you want', but I was like, 'Guys I feel fine, why would I [go]? Let's hit the ground running now!'"

At the time, another (less important) due date was coming—the release of Baldur's Gate 3: "This was coming up to May 2023, the game was due out in August. So I knew like, 'The game has to come out, come on guys, we need to get on it!'

"It was coming up to that week where I was about to give birth, and I was still coming into the studio, and I was like 'see you tomorrow!' and they were like 'maybe!' and I was like 'haha!' And then my waters broke after the session," you'd think that'd gently encourage Wilde out of the recording booth and into the hospital, but she adds:

"I said to my husband, well, I feel alright, maybe I can go in tomorrow! And he went, 'You're absolutely not going in … I think now's probably not the time.' … I was still very much in denial of the fact that I had to like, push a human being out".

Hypothetically-speaking, Lae'zel as a character wouldn't get pregnant: Gith lay eggs, and hand-pick who goes to a creche in the Prime Material Plane (time moves differently in the Astral Plane, where the Gith typically live) to do so.

However, the determination of being about to create new life and going 'yeah, I could probably record more voicelines'? That all checks out for a character who pretty much came out fully-formed as the stubborn badass she is.

The days are very much numbered; official support for Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025. After a decade of ongoing-support, it's perhaps no surprise Microsoft is finally laying this operating system to rest. However, millions of users are now staring down the question of what to do next. For instance, what if you don't meet the somewhat stringent minimum hardware requirements to straightforwardly upgrade to Windows 11?

Is paying Microsoft for Extended Security Updates, or upgrading to a fresh Windows 11 Copilot+ PC really your only options? No, absolutely not. Ian's guide from last year explains you have a few avenues to explore, but End of 10 zeroes in on one possible solution for Windows 10 users who'd rather not part from perfectly serviceable hardware: jumping ship to Linux (via TechSpot).

Put together by a number of folks involved in Linux development, the End of 10 website argues that there's no need to buy an expensive upgrade if your post-2010 hardware still runs to a satisfactory standard (obviously, gaming rigs aren't really a huge part of this particular conversation). Instead, End of 10 claims users can make their possibly more than decade-old hardware "fast and secure again" by switching to the latest version of the open-source OS—even offering a list of places worldwide that will assist with installing Linux for those not confident attempting it alone.

Obviously, learning Linux is far from a novel proposition, especially with Windows 11's very particular system requirements. To upgrade to Windows 11, you will need a processor from either Intel's 8th-generation or AMD's Ryzen 2000 series at least. Without either of these or something newer, the system requirements for Microsoft's latest OS leaves a lot of pre-2017 setups out in the cold. There are ways around this, with Flyby11 circumventing the installation processes' hardware checks. Otherwise there's ISO burning tool Rufus, though Microsoft only endorses this specific method for actually compatible rigs.

But End of 10 strikes me as targeting Windows 10 users with limited tech literacy who feel The Fear at the thought of sneakily sidestepping official hardware requirements—so, definitely not folks who emerged from the womb knowing that the penguin is called Tux. The simple language the website uses and its easily accessible, helpful links feel very much in keeping with Linux's open-source spirit.

Granted, anyone going this route then has to try and learn how to actually use Linux. If you've been a lifelong Windows user, that's definitely an adjustment, but arguably not impossible—especially with End of 10's gentle nudging of visitors towards Linux-based communities.

Furthermore, I appreciate End of 10 at least gesturing towards the concern of mounting e-waste. A 2024 investigation by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research shared that a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste were produced in 2022 alone. UNITAR highlights that that's 82% more than 2010, with the world on track to churn out another 82 million tonnes in 2030. With this in mind, why not repurpose an old bit of kit with plenty of life left to run Linux?