How-To Geek

You might recognize the GEEKOM name from the mini PCs the brand makes. But, did you know that GEEKOM also makes laptops? I've spent the past few months with the GEEKOM GeekBook M16 and I have to say—I'm impressed.

What do you get when you combine an ear-biting champion, a deadpan comedian, and the rarest hip-hop album ever made? One hell of a weekend of documentaries on Netflix, that's what.

There's a button on Excel's ribbon that you should think about twice before clicking: Merge & Center. It's familiar and convenient, but it has a habit of making life harder for spreadsheet users down the line. I've avoided it for years, and Microsoft has finally made the better option easier to access.

I've never been a fan of smart home dashboards; my idea of the perfect smart home is one that needs as little manual control as possible, with the majority of things happening automatically. However, I've always been impressed with the 3D interactive floorplans that people have built. There are some projects that can help you create your own Home Assistant floorplan dashboard.

Those of us who are DIY-minded reach for a few common tools every day. Screwdriver, utility knife, tape measure, pencil, tweezers, and more. I wanted to find a way to keep these tools nearby, so I designed a pocket toolbox with magnets.

Streaming sticks are supposed to get better with updates, not break things that already worked. When Amazon pushed its redesigned Fire TV interface with its updates, some people seemed to have a new issue that came with it. It's not obvious what causes it, and Amazon doesn't mention the fix in the update notes. Luckily, you can fix this issue easily.

Tech companies are infamous for making promises they eventually break, and Microsoft is no exception. Its most popular product, Windows, has borne the brunt of many of those broken promises.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I'm very much pro-desktop PC. If you want to make me happy, I don't ask for much. Give me a huge chassis, give me a ginormous GPU, fill up my cart with all the other components, and leave me alone so I can build the monster PC of my dreams.

If you have an old computer (even a laptop) sitting around doing nothing, you could put it to use for local AI instead. I have two old PCs running various AI tasks all the time: one old HP laptop and a retired gaming PC with a Ryzen 1600X, 24GB of VRAM, and an RTX 3060.

Google Pixel phones sit alongside Samsung Galaxy phones and iPhones on store shelves, but no matter how much money you spend on one, Google’s phones will not be as fast as the competition — except in one area, and that's software updates.

You wouldn’t download a car, 3D print it at home, and then assemble the pieces into a life-size replica… right? That’s the idea behind Print Your Vehicle, a project with lofty ambitions of making life-sized 3D-printed car models a reality.

Want to share your Googlebook with a friend, family member, child, or stranger? While you probably shouldn't pass your laptop around to too many people, Googlebooks offer support for multiple user profiles, plus children and guest profiles. Setting things up takes just a few minutes, so you don't have to worry about anyone rearranging your desktop or digging through your stuff.

I feel like I'm stuck in perpetual productivity mode. I seem to have some trouble not working on something almost constantly. I always turn to Docker to handle work, budgeting, freelancing, personal projects, and even tracking my books/comics collection. I use it on my computers every single day, with some apps running 24/7 in my home lab. So the wheels started turning, and I finally did something nearly impossible: setting up and using Docker on Android.

It can seem weird to spend good money on a capable drill just to end up chewing through screw heads, anyway. It is easy to assume the tool has too much power or the fasteners came from a bad batch of hardware, but I doubt it. Most of the time, the trouble comes down to how that little piece of steel meets the slot. For clean results, it helps to understand why loose fits happen and how even a tiny mismatch can wreck a job.

It's October, which means spooky season is in full swing. One of this weekend's shows is the ideal program for Halloween. It's a story set in the Friday the 13th franchise, but it's not what you expect. On Disney+, Vision makes his triumphant return to Marvel Television in a new adventure.

It's a bit of a hobby of mine to help people troubleshoot their tech problems, and over the years, I've built up a drawer full of gadgets for it. The one I always grab first for network trouble isn't fancy at all. It's a five-port unmanaged gigabit switch that costs about the same as the lunch I had today.

Every so often I do a self audit of devices, apps, and even media I own. I'll ask myself if I use it often enough to justify keeping it. If the answer is no, bam, purged. Done. I've noticed myself doing this quite a bit with various productivity apps, like Tasker. It even extends to some Markdown-friendly apps on my tablet. As I've been building more and more with Obsidian, I've noticed some of its plugins have made me ditch other productivity apps. Here are my favorites.

When GM announced it would drop Android Auto and Apple CarPlay from its vehicles, the decision felt entirely self-serving. The replacement, however, is still powered by Google's Android Automotive platform. While I can appreciate the appeal of that approach, there are some key reasons why the company made the wrong call.

If you suspect there is a hidden Bluetooth device in your house, apartment, or office—or you just lost a Bluetooth-capable device—there's an easy way to track down its physical location thanks to an app on iPhone and Android. Here's how to do it.

Google has kickstarted a new category of premium, AI-focused laptops with Googlebooks, and that means a brand-new operating system to master. Taking screenshots should be a simple affair, and fortunately it is pretty straightforward on Googlebook OS. I'll break down how to use the new Googlebook Screen Capture tool, which should handle all your screenshot and screen recording needs.