How-To Geek

Not every week can be a banger of new material on HBO Max, but that's OK. When your back catalog includes some of the best series ever out on television, a quiet week is just an invite to crack open the vault.

Linux isn't really just one operating system. It's the bones of an operating system, in the form of the Linux kernel, but everything beyond that is up for debate.

Android Auto is all about convenience, and for a long time, that's all I cared about. Google Maps and Waze work well enough that it's easy to ignore what they're doing in the background, right up until you look at the actual data categories they pull from your device. Once you see that list, going back to treating them like neutral tools gets a lot harder to do.

Finding a three-row SUV that fits both your family and your budget has become increasingly difficult. Many of the most popular options now start well into the $40,000 range, and adding a hybrid powertrain usually pushes prices even higher.

PivotTables have a reputation for being one of Excel's most intimidating features, but they're really just drag-and-drop tools for summarizing data. Once you understand the basics, you can turn thousands of rows into clear, meaningful reports in minutes while exploring your data without ever changing the original spreadsheet.

I clearly remember how happy I was when we finally got rid of the clacky keyboard that came with our original IBM PC clone in the early 90s and switched over to a quiet modern membrane keyboard. To me, this felt like the future, but then mechanical keyboards have made a massive comeback, and now carry the reputation that they're simply better than the alternatives.

Most people shopping for a used Toyota SUV end up looking at the RAV4. It's one of the safest recommendations in the segment, with a reputation for reliability that's hard to argue with.

While it hasn't had the best reputation lately, Plex is still one of the biggest platforms around for streaming your own media — and it's down right now.

For years, a handful of familiar SUVs have dominated sales charts with little challenge from the competition. But 2026 has shaken up the market, with supply constraints, shifting buyer priorities, and changing powertrain strategies giving some models an unexpected opportunity to climb the rankings.

Every few years, the PC gaming world gets handed a piece of tech that's supposed to change everything, and then it just kind of ... sits there. Ray tracing took the better part of a decade. VR is still figuring itself out. And then there's DirectStorage, which Microsoft announced back in 2020 but has barely been used since.

After months of predictions, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, which will air on NBC on September 14, 2026. One of the networks that garnered a significant number of nominations was Netflix with 111. Speaking of Netflix, the streamer landed key nods in Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Drama Series, and Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.

Google already has a relatively small presence in my mobile life. Most of my favorite apps now come from F-Droid, and I long ago swapped out Gmail for Proton Mail. When I recently revisited LineageOS, I got a taste of just how far the open source alternatives to Google have come. Removing the tracking from your phone still comes with sacrifice, but not as much as you might think.

Spotify just made controlling music as easy as talking to a friend. The streaming service is introducing a "conversational experience" beta for Premium subscribers that let you have back-and-forth voice or text conversations to control and learn about whatever you're playing.

I have hated using barrel jacks as power sources for years, but never realized that I wanted a USB-C-powered mini PC until I tried out GEEKOM's latest IT13 Max system. While you can power other mini PCs with barrel jacks, GEEKOM went the extra mile and built in a Power Delivery port just for that purpose.

Watching a new show and constantly changing the volume is one of those small issues that has only gotten worse. Loud action scenes blast you back in your seat, then someone starts talking, and you can't make out a word. Sometimes, the show was badly mixed, but that's not always the case. The usual issue is a combination of things that started long before the content ever reached your TV, and it may be the reason you can’t hear the dialogue.

Performance sedans aren't as easy to find as they used to be. As SUVs continue to dominate showroom floors, the few that remain have become increasingly expensive, with many now starting well north of $40,000.

A Home Assistant dashboard can be a useful way to see key information about your smart home or even to control your smart home devices. You can spend a small fortune setting up a large, high-end wall-mounted dashboard, but you don't have to break the bank. There are plenty of ways to build your own Home Assistant dashboard for under $20.

Google Maps is one of the most convenient apps, and we use it so much that it's easy to ignore or overlook some of its more frustrating aspects. A prime example is all the autoplaying videos when you look up a restaurant in Maps, then click through to the results. Here's how to put the brakes on those videos.

You might think that a brand new HDD is the safest it's ever going to be, but that's not true. Worse yet, just like an SSD can fail at 100% health, an HDD can fail without showing any SMART errors whatsoever.

I have always had a rocky relationship with smart bulbs. I never really saw much benefit beyond the initial novelty, which wore off rather quickly.