How-To Geek

Most people build their home network with the goal of making it fast. Get the biggest plan, the flashiest router, the most bars, and call it a day. I get the appeal. Speed is the thing you feel every day, and it's the thing the box on the shelf is screaming about.

When I was doing my Master’s degree, I needed a cheap, small laptop that could fit in my motorcycle backpack and have enough battery power to get through about four or five hours of daily lectures. I ended up getting a used netbook for $50, but it came with a horrible custom distro of Linux that really didn't let you do anything.

Are you ready to buy your first NAS? Before you click purchase, there’s one major thing you need to think of first—do you have the right hard drives for a NAS? Not all hard drives are created equal, and you need to make sure your NAS has storage that’s up to the task.

Excel has plenty of flashy features, but few are as useful day after day as data validation. Drop-down lists were one of the first Excel features I learned that felt genuinely advanced, and I still rely on them to keep data clean and consistent. Here's how to create drop-down lists in Excel using data validation.

I recently found myself in a frustrating position: I was paying for gigabit internet, yet my PC’s speed tests kept dropping to a suspiciously precise number: 100 megabits per second.

Robot vacuums are one of the few things from the sci-fi movies I watched as a kid that actually came true. I might not have a flying car, but I've already owned a few robots that did a half-decent job of keeping my floors clean.

Ubuntu has long been the standard recommendation for people new to Linux, though in recent years that advice has come into question. While more people are touting Fedora as "the everything distro", I think that the title really belongs to Debian. Its tagline, "the universal operating system," is no hyperbole.

If you are just starting your journey into self-hosting, you'll have to make a choice before installing your first instance of Jellyfin, Immich, or Home Assistant: which operating system do you use?

The Awesome Home Assistant list is a collection of highly useful resources for Home Assistant, including a large selection of integrations. The list includes the number of GitHub stars that each integration has received; these are some of the most popular according to the community.

Hulu appreciates comedy. Across movies, TV shows, and stand-up specials, Hulu has a wide selection of programs to make you laugh. One of Hulu's newest shows that premiered this month is Not Suitable for Work, an amusing comedy from Mindy Kaling about young professionals trying to make it in New York City.

Microsoft designs Windows with the assumption that it's going to be the only operating system on the computer drive. Because of that, it does not play nicely when it has to share that drive with another operating system. Anyone who has ever tried dual-booting Windows and Linux will tell you that it rarely ever goes smoothly.

Your Jellyfin library can look just as good as any streaming platform's library, complete with proper titles, metadata tags, and beautiful album covers. It doesn't matter how messy your offline music files may be (they don't even need to have track names), this tool automates all that work with just one click.

Naturally aspirated engines are rapidly disappearing from the modern performance car landscape. With tightening emissions standards and a strong industry shift toward turbocharging and electrification, most sports sedans have abandoned larger, high-revving engines in favor of smaller, forced-induction setups. As a result, the driving character that once defined this segment is becoming increasingly rare.

If like me, you've been looking for an alternative to Google's cloud-first and AI-first Photos app, this list should end your search. These are free and open-source apps without any ads or intrusive AI or cloud features.

Troubleshooting router issues almost always starts with simple advice along the lines of 'have you tried turning it off and then on again,' but when you have to dig deeper, it's the wild, wild west out there. One of the more important pieces of advice that I don't see cropping up often is that you should actually set up router alerts to know what's happening to your network at all times.

Which side of this streaming debate do you fall on: weekly releases or binge-watching? I don't care if I'm called a dinosaur. I prefer weekly releases when it comes to television. Don't get me wrong, there is a time and place for binge-watching. I've knocked out seasons of television before in one sitting. It happens.

On most Android phones, the stock keyboard has internet access and sends data to its remote servers to power features like predictions, voice typing, and personalization. It's not always clear what data they're uploading, how much, or what it's being used for. And while they aren't keyloggers, exactly, it is a privacy concern.

Your NAS probably has several free USB ports that you might be tempted to put to use with any number of peripherals. Most of them are fine, but there are a handful that you should avoid. At best, some low-quality peripherals might make your NAS less reliable than it would be otherwise. At worst, they could physically damage it.

Home Assistant includes a built-in tool for generating images using AI. AI Task has been around since 2025, with image generation added in Home Assistant 2025.10, but you may still be completely unaware of it. Once you know how to use it, it can be very useful.

Businesses often sell thin clients by the pallet (literally) whenever their leases end or the devices reach end-of-life, and as a result, you can regularly find them on eBay or Facebook marketplace for $15 to $25. With a few open-source projects, you can repurpose one of these tiny, low-power devices to replace Google's DNS server and improve your network's security and privacy simultaneously