How-To Geek

Documentaries are a great weekend watch, giving you a glimpse into some of the biggest events in history. You get to sit back on your couch and watch something for an hour and a half, and you don't even have to feel guilty about it because you're learning something, or at least that's what I tell myself.

In the good old days, you could buy software outright and then use it forever without needing to pay anything more. These days, you're far more likely to have to pay a monthly subscription to keep using your software. However, the era of software subscriptions may be coming to an end, as AI-assisted developers are releasing free replacements for entire software suites.

While Ryobi tools at Home Depot are exclusive to the retailer, Ryobi is owned by TTI, which also owns Milwaukee and Ridgid tools. Home Depot is the only retail company authorized to sell Ryobi-branded products. You won’t find them at Lowe’s, Harbor Freight, Menards, or other big retail chains.

In a vacuum, the Nvidia Shield TV Pro is still one of the beefiest and most capable streaming boxes around. Its Tegra X1+ chip coupled with 3GB of RAM is powerful enough for any video file, you get support for most major HDR and audio formats, and the streamer also offers extra goodies such as excellent AI upscaling, gigabit LAN, and two USB 3.0 ports.

It's amazing what you can find when it comes to used computers. The current strange pricing of computer hardware notwithstanding, for the most part computers devalue rapidly. So a machine from ten years ago will have lost nearly all of its value.

One of the best things about Home Assistant is how customizable it is. Instead of installing a huge piece of software that supports every smart home device known to man, you can install specific integrations for the devices you own. There are also powerful plugins, including what were previously called add-ons but are now known as apps, that make Home Assistant even more powerful.

My keyboard doesn’t have a Delete key. It doesn’t have F1 through F12, Home, End, or even a tilde, and I type thousands of words on it every day without missing any of them. That’s because my keyboard has layers: hold one thumb key and the entire keyboard turns into something else entirely. Once I started building my workflow around layers, a normal keyboard started to feel like it was missing something.

In case you didn't know, the popular Plex self-hosting media service also supports music. You can take your CD collection, rip them as high-quality lossless files, and then play that music back through the Plex client.

Some of Excel's most useful functions are also its simplest. SORT is a good example: with a single argument, you can alphabetize a list, and with a couple more, you can sort an entire dataset. Better still, the results update automatically when the data in your source range changes, so you don't have to repeat the process every time a number or name changes.

Ever wonder why some products are so well represented on 3D printing model repositories? Popularity plays a part, but many get a helping hand from high above with official models and CAD references. Some of these are gimmicks, while others have fostered a vibrant community of model designers.

Amazon Fire Tablets restrict you to the Amazon Appstore, but they run Fire OS, a custom version of Android. That means you can install Google's Play Store to gain access to millions of Android apps and games, including Google apps like Gmail, Chrome, Google Maps, and more.

I‘ve always been a fan of home theater and TV technology. Over the decades, I’ve tried many of the “next big things” the industry has offered: projectors, rear-projection TVs, a 43” tube TV that felt huge at the time, and for a short while a curved TV. Looking back, it’s been a fun ride, but many so-called “game changers” never lived up to the hype.

Several years ago, I was really into playing the bass. The playing styles of Les Claypool, Geddy Lee, Arthur Barrow, and Victor Wooten inspired the heck out of me. So I bought a few basses and a couple of amps. One amp in particular, a Blackstar 3W practice amp, ended up being one of my most used amplifiers (with both bass and guitar). Last year, the input jack stopped working entirely, and I thought the device was completely dead. I turned out to be wrong about that, so I repurposed it into something new.

All the popular power tool brands make a ton of excellent tools, but when it comes to accessories and other gear, Ryobi is at the top. The company has a loyal following of DIYers and offers over 350 products that all work with its 18V ONE+ battery system. Ryobi makes a bunch of weird tools, and the company recently announced a brand-new combo they're calling a "Storm Preparation Kit" that you'll surely love.

When an app freezes, opening Task Manager, hunting down the right process, and forcing it to close can feel like more work than it should be. Fortunately, Windows 11 has a built-in shortcut that lets you force-close a misbehaving app right from the taskbar. Here's what it does, how to turn it on, and when to use it.

Wi-Fi and RJ-45 Ethernet are relatively new inventions in the history of computing. But the idea of two computers talking to each other existed before computers were ever even made. There are dozens of standards that kept early computers connected, but few of them are even brought up when people talk about super-old machines.

You probably assume only employers, marketers, and big corporations can track when you open their emails. But the truth is, anyone can do it — me, your friends, your family, or even a complete stranger on the internet. Luckily, Gmail and most other email providers have a simple setting that can shut this down — at least most of it. But first, let me quickly show you how email tracking works in the first place.

The next version of Samsung's One UI will be a big one — One UI 10 — and rumors suggest it could come with a brand new name: Galaxy OS. This wouldn't be the first time Samsung rebranded its Android software, but I hope it comes with much more substantial changes.

I never move or deploy extra motion, presence, or contact sensors. Until recently, I never found a need to do the same for water leak sensors either. But I’ve a newfound appreciation for having a few spares around the house.

My desk used to run on a tangle of adapters: a laptop charger, a video cable, a USB hub, and a dongle for everything else. A monitor with a proper USB-C port cleared most of that away. Here’s how it works, and when a dock still makes more sense.