How-To Geek

When a file is no longer serving a purpose, it’s time to delete it, and you probably know at least one way of doing so. But there may be more ways than you realize, and each has its own advantages, quirks, and things to teach us.

A mini PC is a solid option for a home server. They're small, relatively cheap, and low-power. I use a mini PC as a home server, but there are several things that my old Dell OptiPlex PC does better.

Every Excel spreadsheet eventually starts to rot. If your workbook relies on ancient file formats, hard-coded values, and formulas that look like massive, multi-line blocks of text, you're running legacy code that's slowing you down. And if you don't future-proof it, it's a ticking time bomb. Here's how to spot the rot and modernize your datasets.

Samsung leads the world in making phones with screens that fold. Long before that, there was a time Samsung made a phone shaped like a point-and-shoot camera. There was also an even weirder time, when Samsung made a phone that was a projector—the Galaxy Beam. The early 2010s were not quite the right time for this phone. 2026 is.

The best thing about working with the terminal is just how efficient it can be. Imagine if someone gave you a thousand documents and told you to replace specific patterns of text inside those files. You could spend days opening those files in an editor and manually replacing the text inside them. Or you could run a single "sed" command and be done in a few seconds. It genuinely feels like a superpower the more I learn about it and practice it. Here are 6 things I learned that made the terminal less frustrating for me and sped things up at the same time.

The settings you use in your 3D printer’s slicer can massively influence the quality of your print. If you’re having trouble with failed prints, underwhelming print quality, or prints that are weaker than you expected, you should consider changing a few of these settings.

A sentiment long repeated in the computing space is that you should have a separate SSD for your OS and important apps, and a second drive for, well, everything else. But many people don't stop to think about why, and what the exact role of that secondary drive should even be.

Even though most Linux distros don't require as much time in the terminal as they used to, eventually, it is going to come up. If you're doing anything remotely, executing a long task, or even just multitasking, the default tools may not be enough. That is where tmux comes in.

Home Assistant is great, but it comes with a steep learning curve. It's understandable why the idea of letting an AI do everything for you is appealing, but it could have serious consequences.

You've spent hours perfecting a workbook and emailed it to your team. But 10 minutes later, you get a flood of questions: "Where do I enter data?" "What does this column mean?" Instead of a clean hand-off, you're stuck playing tech support for your own creation.

Repairing things is one of the best reasons to get a 3D printer, and it might just give you the push you need to learn to model items for yourself. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some examples of how a 3D printer can come in clutch and save you money.

The SUV world has changed a lot in the past decade. What used to be all boxy, practical vehicles now puts design, style, and tech front and center—even in affordable crossovers.

An NVMe SSD is the fastest type of storage you can put in a PC, but it's also a lot more temperamental than the old spinning hard drives they've replaced. Lately, my system hasn't felt nearly as fast as when I first built it. I first noticed slightly longer loading screens, but sluggish file transfers between my PC and my NAS is what truly gave the problem away—it was my nearly full SSD.

Building a homelab might sound like the kind of project that requires a big budget or an entire weekend, but it doesn’t have to. Any old PC or laptop collecting dust at home can be repurposed into a surprisingly capable homelab. With the right tools, the setup can be quick and beginner-friendly. Here’s how I turned my spare computer into a fully functional homelab for $0 in under an hour.

Dealing with an older car’s infotainment system is incredibly frustrating. Whether it’s an ancient, basic stereo from the era of CDs or an early touchscreen setup, the lack of Android Auto severely limits what you can do with it. So, you’re probably thinking about upgrading to an aftermarket head unit, but you’ve heard mixed things about their quality and reliability.

There are many streaming services out there, with a lot of underrated shows. Whether it’s underrated shows on Netflix or maybe the shows on MGM+ that get slept on, there are so many out there that people don’t know about.

I don’t like to see a bunch of notifications gather at the top of my phone, but I’m afraid to swipe them away for fear I’ll forget to do something important. Fortunately, there’s a tucked-away corner of Android where no notification goes forgotten.

I have a lot of gadgets in my smart home, and many of them can genuinely save me time. The trouble is, the list of things I want to do next with my smart home continues to grow, and there's simply not enough time in the day to get it all done.

Motion detectors are useful smart home devices for creating simple automations, such as turning on your lights when you enter a room or being alerted to motion in your home when you're away. Standard infrared motion detectors aren't always the best tools for the job. There are some compelling reasons to choose mmWave sensors instead.

The first graphics card I ever bought with my own money was a 16MB Voodoo 3 2000. That card introduced me to the world of hardware acceleration on PC. No more software-rendered Quake, only "real" 3D objects with smooth frame rates and sharp resolutions.