How-To Geek

Free phone numbers sound like a better deal than they usually are. Google Voice has been handing out U.S. numbers at no cost for years, and for a while it was one of the more useful things Google made that plenty of people used. The catch is that the rest of Android's phone experience has moved on without it, and the gap between what Google Voice offers and what Google Messages now does has grown so wide that I wouldn't recommend it as anyone's main number.

Amazon built Fire TV into the streaming stick that tinkerers happily recommended. Its shift from Android-based Fire OS to the in-house Vega OS ends that deal, swapping app choice and freedom for Amazon's control. And unless stuff changes significantly, future Fire TV sticks are going to be a pass for me.

It used to be that picking a Linux distro mostly came down to which desktop you liked and which package manager you preferred. That is less true today. The distros getting attention now are built to do a specific job, whether that's ensuring ta thousand PCs are identical, surviving a bad update, or playing Windows games on your TV.

There are plenty of free, self-hosted services that can replace popular paid subscriptions. All you need is the hardware to run them on. I paid $200 for my mini PC, and by self-hosting just five services, I save more than $670 every year, based on the monthly subscription prices.

It's increasingly hard to use 4GB of RAM these days. But RAM is expensive now, in case you haven't heard. In the case of Linux, mainstream desktops have grown hungrier, and Ubuntu now recommends 6GB. Two lightweight options still run comfortably on 4GB laptops, though, and each suits a different kind of user.

Your Fire TV has some great diagnostic tools that you probably didn't know about. They answer pretty much every question you have about why your Fire TV isn't working well. Being able to see developer settings and tools is one of the features you really should already be using.

The Linux diff3 command detects differences between three text files. This helps you identify versions, understand their differences, and merge the changes. diff3's great for source code, scripts, or any plain text file.

Today marks the start of the first full week of October. In case you missed it, many new movies have been added to Netflix, including Tyler Perry's tear-jerker Doing Life. The three movies listed below won't make you cry because of their sincerity. In fact, you might look away due to the thrills and scares!

The best and worst thing about tech is just how fast it moves on. You buy a CPU today, then a year later, the socket's changed and your upgrade path is over. Nothing is permanent in tech, and with yearly release cycles for many components, it's easy for things to get left behind.

Building a home media setup used to be a no-brainer because you owned the hardware and files, and you didn't have to pay just to listen to music you already bought. Plex used to be that easy, but now it feels like you have to pay a third party to reach files on drives you bought, on a network you maintain. It's time to stop giving away money to a middleman and pick an alternative.

Old Wi-Fi routers get thrown out long before they stop being useful. Before you toss yours, three projects can give it a second life, and they cost little more than time and a spare Ethernet cable.

For years, downloading an ISO was the first step to running Linux. Today, most installations begin elsewhere: in virtual machines, cloud platforms and automated pipelines. Here's why the good ol' installer image is losing ground, how cloud-ready images are threatening to replace it, and where the ISO still earns its place.

Nowadays, we're using just a handful of data storage media. Flash memory is arguably king, found in SSDs, memory cards, and the storage chips of countless devices all across the world. HDDs are still very important; they aren't as common in the consumer market as they used to be, but they're still the most widely used storage medium in data centers and homelabs. Lastly, there are Blu-ray discs and CDs, which aren't as popular as they were a decade ago but are still used to store movies, games, and music.

It's no secret that Android phones are great for DIY smart home projects. They're essentially an all-in-one Raspberry Pi. However, there's always one big looming question: Is it safe to keep a phone plugged in 24/7? Well, it depends.

I'm not ashamed to admit that for me, every day starts with booting my PC first, everything else second. But the one time I had to rush out instead of sitting down at the computer, my PC refused to boot. This resulted in a stressful couple of hours, hours during which I ran a checklist in my mind, wondering what was wrong with it.

The calendar has flipped to October, and Hulu has an eclectic list of new shows and movies hitting the service. Anyone up for some "Wonderwall?" One of the most talked-about reunions finally comes to streaming in a new documentary this month. Another movie to watch is an intriguing horror featuring one of the stars of Severance.

We've all experienced that moment when something about your internet connection feels off. Maybe you're on a video call, and it is intermittently choppy, or maybe you're gaming and something is slightly weird about the way you're moving, so you launch into your usual troubleshooting procedure.

I built my first PC over 20 years ago, and since that first one, I've basically never stopped. But of course, in that time, I've probably made just about every PC building mistake imaginable, too.

Lenovo's latest premium laptop, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition 14, boasts a lot of premium features. From its all-metal chassis (with polished edges around the bottom case) to the extremely nice OLED panel, here's why I think this is the Windows laptop to get in the sub-$2,500 price range.

An old TV remote is easy to overlook. Once the device it came with is gone, the remote usually ends up in a drawer with a pile of other forgotten electronics, destined to sit there indefinitely or eventually become e-waste. But just because you no longer need it for its original purpose doesn't mean the hardware itself is useless.