Desire Athow

Desire Athow

Managing Editor, TechRadar Pro

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

Then followed a weekly tech column in a local business magazine in Mauritius, a late night tech radio programme called Clicplus and a freelancing gig at the now-defunct, Theinquirer, with the late Mike Magee as mentor. After an eight-year stint at ITProPortal.com, where he discovered the joys of global techfests and transformed the publication into one of the biggest tech B2B independent publishers, Désiré moved to TechRadar Pro where he has been the editor for nine years.

He has an affinity for anything hardware and staunchly refuses to stop writing reviews of obscure products or cover niche B2B software-as-a-service providers. He is an avid deal hunter and can be found lurking around on various deals forums.

Articles by: Desire Athow

A hooded figure in front of a laptop. Digital symbols obscure his face and appear to be pouring out of his head

‘A candidate who was hostile from day one never produces that baseline’: Nation states spies applying for legit jobs are hard to spot

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Nation state spies are using AI to create fake identities and realistic job applications, infiltrating organizations to steal intelligence.

A person typing on a laptop and using a tablet. Only their upper torso, arms and hands are visible. Text superimposed on the image shows AI

‘The question is no longer how much AI can produce, but how much of that output is genuinely usable’: How we use and pay for AI is undergoing a major shift

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Enterprises are shifting from capabilities and performance to prioritizing trust, accuracy, and measurable business outcomes.

A woman out of focus in the background touches the word AI, lit up in glowing yellow light, in the foreground. The woman is wearing smart glasses

‘You fix it by making the secure option just as fast and frictionless as the risky one’: Practical advice on addressing shadow AI

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Workers clearly have an appetite for AI but personal accounts are still being used – approved tools need to be easy to reach and use.

GMKtec NucBox G5

$169 GMKtek N5095 mini PC is a brave but desperate attempt to revive a PC market decimated by AI and RAM greed

By Desire Athow Published

Popular mini PC vendor debuts a new GMKtec G5S model based on obsolete tech in a bid to reduce price.

Female Programmer Coding on Desktop Computer With Six Displays in Dark Office

‘Stop calling it a hobby and start treating it as infrastructure’: EXANTE calls out the underfunding of widely used open source projects

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Despite the growing importance of open source software, most widely used projects are underfunded because they’re not glamorous enough.

Steam Machine rivals

Steam Machine is ridiculously expensive — here are 9 PCs (and a $1000 laptop) that easily surpass Valve’s controversial gaming console

By Desire Athow Published

$1,049 for a 512GB customized mini PC with 16GB of RAM and an integrated APU is tough to swallow for many

Man coding programmer, software developer working on digital tablet with binary, html computer code on virtual screen

‘Never let the builder be its own reviewer’: The next challenge is trust, not speed of code generation

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive AI coding platforms are becoming crucial infrastructure, but governance, verification and trust are now major challenges.

The SanDisk 4TB Creator Series on a pink background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Big Savings'

You’ve got 11 hours to save 67% on this 4TB SanDisk Creator SSD, now just $350 down from $1050

By Desire Athow Published

Save 67% off this 4TB Sandisk Creator SSD, now $350 down from $1050 but hurry up this anti Prime Day offer ends in 11 hours.

Huawei UB-Mesh

China’s Lineshine ‘came out of nowhere’ to grab title of most powerful computer in the known universe

By Desire Athow Published

"Intelligent splendor or brightness" uses Arm CPU only to unexpectedly surpass US rivals.

Wo-we P6 Lite Mini PC, HP EliteDesk 800 G5-SFF Mini PC, Lenovo Thinkcentre M75S G2 SFF Mini PC on a yellow background with a price cut text overlay

OpenClaw powers $99 mini PC but it's an AI agentic trap wrapped in Windows 11, delivered with a CPU from 2011 - choose a refurbished PC instead

By Desire Athow Published

It's not exactly a deal when you look closely at the details

Rmatamini P99S mini PC on an orange background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Don't Miss'

16GB 'Bonkers' Xeon PC is back at Newegg for Prime Day with $239 price tag, Nvidia Geforce GPU, 256GB SSD - Is this the best PC deal of 2026?

By Desire Athow Last updated

Newegg's weird mini PC divided opinions, but is now back with a vengeance

6 Comments
A satellite in orbit around the earth

‘Networking becomes the make-or-break factor’: Orbital data centers reintroduce a challenge we’ve now fixed on land

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Space-bound data centers promise solar energy and scale as AI demands soar, but latency re-emerges as a major issue.

Acemagic AX15 Laptop

Want a $400 laptop on Amazon Prime Day? This Ryzen 5 7430U with 16GB RAM is the best deal I've seen so far — and now for even cheaper

By Desire Athow Published

Prime Day If you’re looking for value for money, this Prime Day laptop deal could be the one for you.

OpenAI, Broadcom, Jalapeno

Broadcom and OpenAI debut Jalapeño Intelligence Processor, plot an Apple-like move to 'build the full stack'

By Desire Athow Published

The AI arms race just got a little bit spicier as Broadcom and OpenAI target Nvidia.

A Dell 14 Plus against an orange TechRadar background

Forget Prime Day right now — all of my favorite Dell laptops are even cheaper directly from Dell, including $499.99 for a Ryzen 7

By Desire Athow Published

Amazon Prime Day has some great deals — but Dell has it beat with these deals on some of my favorite laptops of the year.

Two Corsair Vengeance RAM kits on a purple background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Don't Miss'

Best RAM deals 2026 from $5 per GB — Desktop PC, laptop, DDR4, DDR5, SODIMM

By Desire Athow Last updated

TechRadar Deals Upgrade your PC without breaking the bank by jumping on these excellent cheap RAM deals.

Dell Inspiron 15 on green background with big savings text overlay

Save $530 on this Dell Ryzen 7 laptop? Forget Amazon on Prime Day, check out these 5 laptops with huge price cuts

By Desire Athow Published

Take care when buying a cheap notebook – although we can promise that these Dell and MSI laptops won’t disappoint.

The Samsung 990 Pro SSD on a pink background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Big Savings'

'Absolutely stellar' 2TB Samsung 990 Pro is a 5-star SSD at just $370 — don't miss its superb performance for professionals and gamers with a $270 discount

By Desire Athow Published

The 990 Pro boasts some of the fastest read/write performance of any PCIe 4.0 SSD we’ve ever tested.

Amazon prime day

Check these 9 'awesome value' productivity boosting gadgets on Prime Day from just $1.87

By Desire Athow Published

Updated Comfort, organization, and productivity shouldn’t break the bank - these 9 smart gadgets start at just $1.87 for Amazon Prime Day.

Three laptops on a green background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Don't miss'

This HP laptop is Amazon's best-selling Windows notebook but please don't buy it or you will sorely regret it

By Desire Athow Published

Prime Day Even with a 37% discount, this N100-based HP laptop just doesn’t deliver the goods

A data center in a blue light

‘The defining divide in enterprise software over the next five years will be between companies that rent intelligence versus companies that own it’: Enterprise AI is becoming increasingly distributed

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive InstaLILY CEO Amit Shah says future enterprise success relies on owning intelligence more than renting models from hyperscalers.

Saily homepage on a macbook

‘We have to make eSIMs as simple as possible’: Saily says removing friction is the next big battle for democratizing travel eSIMs

By Desire Athow Published

Exclusive Saily wants to democratize global connectivity by removing technical friction and simplifying user onboarding – travel apps could soon offer much more, too.

Dell 16 laptop deal

This $550 Dell laptop deal genuinely amazed me — an 8-core performance upgrade for heavy office multitasking

By Wayne Williams, Desire Athow Last updated

Dell 16 Laptop is a serious office upgrade that's more affordable than it has any right to be.

A Dell and HP laptop on a green background next to a TechRadar badge that reads 'Don't Miss'

Why you should ignore any laptop sold as just 'Intel Processor' — it’s a Prime Day red flag

By Desire Athow Last updated

Hear me out: I’ve seen thousands of listings — don’t get stung by the ‘fake’ laptop deals on Amazon this Prime Day. Here's my pro checklist to find a real deal.

A Seagate Expansion external desktop hard drive on a desk with a laptop

Where are all 28TB external hard drives? Popular Seagate Expansion drives vanish from retailers' virtual shelves as component shortages hit consumers hard

By Desire Athow Published

Seriously, what happened to the high-capacity desktop drives?

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