How-To Geek

There was once a time when you could avoid buying a smart TV, but that’s no longer true. While convenient and packed with streaming apps, smart TVs are also filled with ads and tracking technology that monitors how you use your device, what you watch, and more.

Most people assume that deleting files and emptying the Recycle Bin permanently removes them—but that’s not true. Those “deleted” files still sit on your drive and can be restored with recovery tools. So how do you securely erase sensitive data? You can use sDelete, Microsoft’s tool to wipe data.

Android has matured into a pretty great operating system over the years. However, it’s far from perfect. I’ve used every modern mobile operating system as a daily driver, from webOS to Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. Here are the things that I think Android needs to copy from mobile operating systems of yesteryear.

Are you ready for more homelab projects to do? Because I know I am! This weekend, set your sights on saving money by canceling subscriptions, supercharging your coding experience, and overhauling your automation workflows.

Are you still using the built-in password manager from Google or Apple? If so, it’s time to leave your old password manager behind and move to something more universal and cross-platform.

If you ever wish that reading the system logs, optimizing music metadata, and checking battery health were easier on Linux, I've got recommendations. With your spare time this weekend, you may find an app that makes your Linux PC just a little bit more powerful.

This weekend on Paramount+ I've decided to mix together three totally different genres in the hopes that at least one of them will spark your interest for a good weekend binge.

If something breaks on a Windows PC in my family or circle of friends, I am usually the one who gets the call. Over the years I have become the default tech support guy, and that means I spend a lot of time hunting down strange errors, slowdowns, and the kind of odd behavior that rarely shows up in Microsoft’s help docs. I have written before about the tools I rely on to fix Windows, including a few standouts from the Sysinternals Suite that have saved me more times than I can count.

I love the array of fresh available content on Amazon Prime Video. This week, I bring you some personally verified gems in a very witty historical comedy, a modern-day dramedy set in Bristol, and one of television’s most bingeable psychological thrillers of this century—you know, the kind that creates the obsession where you’d rather finish a season than stop to sleep.

One usually visits a graveyard or cemetery to pay your respects, but also to remember the good times before you lost something special. That's me visiting the Google graveyard of dead products and services. When it's time to lay some flowers at the headstone of Google Reader, all I can remember is that the web used to be a much better place.

As we speed through December and the weather outside is frightful (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere), now is the perfect time to hunker down and watch some quality entertainment on Netflix.

When I started using Microsoft Excel, my spreadsheets were a mess, and I wasted hours trying to make them look professional. If you're struggling with manual formatting, these six simple tips are the shortcuts I wish I had known from day one to clean up my data faster.

If you want the most satisfying typing experience and a decent gaming keyboard, you should opt for a mechanical.

As governments keep rethinking their rules around vehicle emissions, buyers are rethinking what they want to drive.

Notion has become integral to my daily workflow. During the week, there’s not a day that goes by where I’m not in Notion for at least a few hours, if not most of the workday. Here’s how Notion makes both my personal and professional life so much easier.

A little over a decade ago, SSDs began to drop in price, making them a viable storage option for consumer PCs and offering significantly faster performance than traditional HDDs.

Raspberry Pis are iconic devices among home labbers, self-hosting enthusiasts, and tinkerers alike. While they can be used for self-hosting services, I've stopped using them for that purpose only completely and moved my projects to a mini PC instead. Here's why.

Sluggish automations can make your smart home feel unresponsive, which can ruin the user experience. Diagnosing the issue can be difficult, since there are so many variables you have to consider. Here are some things you should start with when trying to find the cause of your issues.

Lexus has built its reputation on long-term dependability, and the brand’s recent SUVs are some of the strongest examples of that legacy. In a market where new-car prices routinely exceed $50,000, finding a nearly new luxury SUV that you can trust for the long haul has never mattered more.

Christmas is the time of year when all the best holiday TV specials and movies are released, and this season is no different. Rowan Atkinson’s hotly anticipated comedy miniseries is finally out, making it the perfect time to settle on the couch and enjoy it with the family.