How-To Geek

The internet is a vital part of daily life, and you should get the speeds you pay for. This is a quick and easy way to turn a Raspberry Pi into an internet speed monitor so you can be sure you can know for a fact if your ISP is ripping you off.

I love making creative projects the old-fashioned way. As a teenager, I played around with Dreamweaver, Quark Xpress, and Flash. In college and at work, I used Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Publisher for most of my projects. For me, a desktop publishing project or a handmade website is a fun journey where I learn things and feel enriched by the experience. The end result matters, but it isn't the entire point of what I do.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are perfect if you want some electric driving without the stress of range limits. Most have enough pure EV range to cover your everyday drives, and when the battery dips, the hybrid mode kicks in as a handy backup.

Gas prices are skyrocketing across the country. According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular fuel is $3.88 at the time of this writing. That is about a 33 percent increase from just one month ago. Last night I paid $5.09 per gallon for 94 octane. I could have gone out for a nice steak dinner for the price of filling my tank. So, in times like these, it is natural for people to try to get the most out of a gallon of gas.

Nearly three decades after helping establish the large luxury SUV segment alongside the Cadillac Escalade, the 2026 Lincoln Navigator is showing off its new exterior and a tech-focused interior that centers on wellness and relaxation. Lincoln sometimes refers to the 2026 Navigator as a “spa” or “sanctuary” on wheels, a mantra the automaker adopted after the large SUV's redesign in 2025.

Every time I install Ubuntu, whether it's a fresh setup or an upgrade—I follow a checklist of tweaks I immediately apply. It's a set of changes I always make to ensure the system feels comfortable, familiar, and efficient for me.

It's hard to believe that the whole real-time ray-tracing thing started all the way back in 2018, with the release of the NVIDIA GeForce 20-series of GPUs. Suddenly, the lighting method used in high-end pre-rendered Hollywood movies could be used in live video games. Well, at least that was the promise.

It's important to make your workspace comfortable. You'll likely be spending 8 hours a day there—and staring at a drab, lifeless setup isn't conducive to productive work, especially if the space isn't even designed to make working easier.

Everyone loves a good television show, but what makes one a classic is its ability to stand the test of time. That means immense rewatchability, cultural impact, and consistent, high-quality storytelling. Shows that do are often nostalgic and resonate across generations, creating memorable characters and embedding themselves in the public consciousness.

Android’s notification system is one of its strongest features. However, as much as I try to keep things tidy, there are a lot of settings to check. Thankfully, a recent “Notification Organizer” feature does all the hard work for me.

I recently repurposed an old laptop I had lying around into my first makeshift NAS by adding a hard drive and USB-C hub to it. It initially started mostly as a curiosity, mostly to see what it’s like to own a NAS. What I thought would be a quick weekend project quickly turned into an ongoing learning experience, but I’m glad I did it.

Have you ever had a Home Assistant automation grind to a halt because something went wrong during one of the actions? Sometimes this is desirable, but in some circumstances, it might be better if the rest of the automation continues to run even if one of the actions fails. Thanks to a recent Home Assistant update, it's now possible to get your automations to continue running even when an error occurs.

Apple TV has all kinds of new shows and new seasons scheduled to land over the next five or so months. But that's kind of the problem—you're paying for the service, so what's there to watch right now? I've got you.

AirTags used to be the best trackers in Apple's Find My network, but that is no longer the case. The ecosystem has expanded, and there are now many more devices to choose from. Here is how the AirTag lost its crown as the top Bluetooth tracker—and what you should buy instead.

When we think of PC upgrades, we usually think of a graphics card, RAM, maybe a CPU, maybe an SSD ... Coincidentally, all but one of those components are outrageously overpriced right now, and CPUs were never that cheap to begin with.

Storage fills up faster than it should, especially when you're juggling multiple machines. Between older PCs, test systems, and everyday use, I've learned that low disk space rarely tells the full story. Windows will give you a vague breakdown, but it doesn't actually show you what's going on. I've had drives that looked full for no obvious reason, and digging through folders manually never gave me a clear answer.

If your Linux system crashes and locks you out, you risk losing everything—files, data, time. If you have a bootable Linux USB recovery disk, tough, you'll be ready to restore, repair, and rescue your system before it’s too late.

Windows is a (mostly) useful operating system out of the box, but if you use it enough, you find that there are things that might make life a little easier. Savvy users will install PowerToys. Here are some things in the latest version that I hope become standard in the future.

Did you know that your smart TV is tracking your viewing and streaming habits? Your smart TV knows what you watch, when, for how long, and even what you passed over before choosing that specific movie or show. To make matters worse, your smart TV is actually capturing screenshots of your browsing habits and sending them back to the manufacturer.