How-To Geek

Depending on how you go about it, building or buying a NAS can be an expensive hobby or a cost-effective venture. You can repurpose an old PC and turn it into a NAS, but you can also buy highly specialized, ready-made NAS units to satisfy all your storage needs. One way or another, even just the hard drives alone can cost a lot, especially considering the current prices of storage.

Sometimes, fuel economy figures are seen as fixed and unchangeable numbers. That what appears on the EPA window sticker (i.e., city, highway, and combined) when a vehicle is new are the preset numbers, no matter what.

I'm a big believer in smart home automation over smart home control. Being able to turn on a light using an app on your phone or by asking Alexa is great, but the light turning on automatically when you enter the room is much better.

Google doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to privacy, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Pixel phones actually have some of the best privacy-focused features you can find in the Android world. You just have to make sure to enable them.

Subcompact SUVs have exploded in popularity over the past decade. Automakers rushed to meet demand, rolling out smaller crossovers built for city life and young families.

Installing apps on Windows hasn't changed much in years. Most people still open a browser, search for the program they want, download an installer, and click through a handful of setup screens. It works, but it's slow and repetitive. If you're setting up a new PC or reinstalling Windows, the process gets even worse. Installing a handful of everyday apps can mean jumping between half a dozen websites and repeating the same steps over and over or pulling out a USB drive full of installers and running them one by one.

If you ask me, the 1980s and 1990s were the golden age of action films. However, everyone knows the classics from the 20th century. If we start the clock at the year 2001 or later to give newer films a fair chance, how do they rank? This is my attempt at putting up a scoreboard for the new century so far.

Thanks to the rising prices of everything, including PC components, the looming RAM-pocalypse, and the fact that RGB is slowly falling out of favor among PC gamers, there's a growing trend of PC components once considered "obsolete" finding their way back into more and more desktop PCs.

Are you tired of everyone recommending a new Linux distro claiming it's the best? Are you wondering which one of these best distros is actually aligned with your needs and requirements? Well, let me spotlight five popular Linux distros and what they do, so you can finally make your choice!

I cut the cord and went all-in on streaming back in 2015. Thanks to Sling TV, I ditched my expensive cable TV bill and got all the essential channels at a fraction of the price. Everything was great for a few years, and eventually, I switched to YouTube TV, but the good old days are long behind us.

The golden era of couch co-op gaming is still one of the most loved times in video game history. Even though modern consoles focus on online-only multiplayer, that immediate, in-person feeling you get from local competition is exactly why games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and the Mario Party series are my favorites. For years, if you wanted to keep that nostalgia alive, it meant you had to track down old hardware, hunt for controllers, and deal with those fuzzy, standard-definition graphics.

How many devices do you have in your smart home? How many are connected to the internet, and how many of them are running updated firmware? Do you even know for sure? If not, it's time for an audit of your smart home devices.

Electric vehicles were once among the most expensive options on the market, often carrying price tags far beyond comparable gasoline-powered cars. But as the EV market matures and more models return from leases, used prices are beginning to fall quickly. In some cases, the shift is dramatic enough that buyers can now purchase a used electric crossover for the same price as a brand-new compact sedan.

If you'd like to get more done in your day without getting overwhelmed, these free tools may just save your day to day.

When you switch from a Windows PC to an Apple Mac, you'll probably hit a few hurdles. These quirks will go away over time, but that can be frustrating and slow you down, especially if you've used PCs for ages. I'll go into the subtle but important operational differences between a Mac and a PC to get you ready for those less obvious changes you'll need to make to really get things done. If I had known how different the Mac was, I wouldn't have been so eager to switch over.

Wi-Fi 7 routers are heavily marketed as a massive leap over older Wi-Fi standards, promising faster speeds, lower latency, and much better optimized connections.

This was another busy week in tech, with Google announcing a big change to Maps navigation, impressive updates for the Dolphin emulator and Ghostty terminal, Amazon's ad-free Prime Video plan going up in price, and much more. Here are the biggest stories you might have missed.

Thanks to big leaps in lithium-ion battery technology, the days of the tangled extension cord are finally winding down. There's a new class of powerful, portable cordless tools designed to solve common household problems. You no longer have to deal with bulky equipment or hunt for an outlet to deal with a sudden mess or emergency. Here are some of the best tools for the job.

Microsoft has a pretty long history of bringing out ambitious products and then, sometimes really quickly, just stopping them. Its graveyard of discontinued projects is full of promising, and sometimes much-loved, software and hardware that, for various reasons, just didn't fit into the company's long-term plans. This whole process is a big part of how Windows has changed over time, often leaving you scrambling for other options. From simple, nostalgic apps that were too pure for today's Windows and were killed, to clever hardware platforms that maybe launched a bit too soon, a new bunch of services and features have officially been retired. We're going to look at several recently discontinued Microsoft products and features that you may not know are dead.

I want to love OpenClaw… I really do. But I just can’t bring myself to accept the security vulnerabilities and complicated setup that comes with it. Perplexity Personal Computer? Now that’s something I can get behind, as it might finally deliver my dream of a proper AI personal assistant.