How-To Geek

5G is coming! It’s the future! It will speed up your phone, make your house connected, and finally bring you the fulfillment no other wireless standard could bring you. Or not.

Phone makers and carriers would have you believe 5G is really, truly, absolutely going to happen this year. But just like its predecessors, 5G mobile tech is going to have its growing pains, and early adopters will essentially be a huge group of product testers who are paying companies for the privilege of ironing out the kinks. If you’re hoping for a phone that’s sleek, gets long battery life, works wherever you go, and (perhaps most of all) is affordable, you might want to hold off on a purchase for at least a year or so.

This is all just a little bit of history repeating. The first selection of 3G phones had some of the same issues, as did LTE phones (or “4G” if you’re in the US and you had to de-tangle that thread) a few years later.

Why should you think twice about buying a first-gen 5G phone? Let’s break it down.

We’ve become addicted to phones that are thinner and sleeker as manufacturers have pushed for bigger screens, allowing batteries and other components to spread out without adding bulk. But speedy 5G wireless will require some bigger radios inside your phone, and more of them.

That’s a lot of extra space a 5G phone will need to make inside its glass and metal case. That being so, it’s likely that 5G phones will be limited to the larger “phablet” models (think the “Plus” iPhone size and bigger) just so they’ll have room to hold all those guts. If you prefer something smaller, or for that matter thinner, you’ll be out of luck.

If you want a practical example, check out some of the early hardware for 5G hotspots. These little gadgets don’t need much more than a radio cluster, a battery, and maybe a little LCD screen, but they’re still twice the size of their LTE predecessors.

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If you’ve had your laptop for a year or two, it may be full of dust. Dust clogs fans, vents, and heat sinks, preventing your PC from cooling down properly. You can remove a good amount of this dust, even if you can’t open your laptop.

Dust build-up can prevent a PC from cooling down properly, and that heat can even cause hardware damage. Your laptop’s fans may also run at full blast, draining your battery. Your laptop may even reduce its performance to stay cool.

Most laptops, especially newer ones, aren’t designed to be opened by their users. This presents a serious problem. On a desktop PC, you’d power down your PC, open the case, blow it out with a can of compressed air, and close the case. You could dust out a laptop in a similar way– if only there was a way to open it up and get inside.

Your laptop may have a bottom panel (or several bottom panels) you can unscrew to access the internals. Check your laptop’s manual, or look up a special “service manual” for your specific model of laptop online. Power down the laptop, remove the battery, and unscrew the panel to get at the laptop’s insides. If a service manual is available for your laptop, it will walk you through the process. Depending on your laptop, opening the panel may or may not void your warranty.

After it’s open, take the laptop somewhere you don’t mind getting dusty — like your garage, or even outside. Use a can of compressed air to blow out the internals of your laptop. Ensure you’re blowing the dust out of the laptop’s case, not just moving it around inside. For example, you could blow more toward your laptop’s vents so the dust would be blasted through the vents and out of the laptop. Be careful when blowing air at the fans in the laptop — if you make the fans spin too quickly, they could be damaged. Blow at the fans from many different angles, using short blasts of air.

We recommend compressed air — also known as canned air — for a reason. Don’t use a vacuum, and be extra careful if you opt to use an air compressor instead of a can of compressed air.

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Just like your car, your house, and even your body, your computer needs a good cleaning every once and a while to prevent dust build up and overheating.  Cleaning a PC is easy to do and only takes about 20 minutes, so today we’re going to cover how to effectively clean the inside of your desktop computer.

Editor’s Note: This article shows how to completely clean everything inside of the computer case. You don’t necessarily have to remove the RAM and video card if you don’t want to. We do recommend cleaning your computer on a regular basis.

Depending on your environment, you may need to clean your computer more or less often. Computer placement is one important variable. Keeping your computer on the floor allows for dust, hair, skin cells, and carpet particles to get inside easier. If you keep your computer above the floor—say, on your desk—particles are less prone to getting inside.

If you smoke near your computer, tar, ash, and other gunk can build up in your computer’s fans and on inside surfaces. Ridding your computer of these things every 6 months can increase your computer’s performance.

If you’re the owner of a pet that sheds, you might want to clean your computer more often. The inside of your computer is just as susceptible to fur clogging fans and other areas of your computer.

In short, if you keep your computer off the floor, don’t smoke, and don’t have shedding pets, you can probably get away with cleaning your computer once per year. If any of those things do pertain to you, you might want to clean your computer every 6, or even 3, months. And, as always, if your computer starts getting hotter than usual, open it up to check for any dust or hair buildup and then clean it.

Do not open your computer while it is running or with any cables attached to it. It is always safer to remove all peripherals such as USB cables, audio cables, video cables, and especially the power cable. Yes, keeping the power cable connected does ground the PC and it’s often okay to leave it connected while working inside the case. But, even the tiny trace of moisture from canned air can cause trouble if the components are getting power.

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1. Buddy Holly
2. Stephen Hawking
3. Jimmy Carter
4. Carl Sagan

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Mozilla just “experimented” with advertisement banners for Booking.com, a hotel reservation website, on Firefox’s New Tab page. Here’s how to disable all those banners so you never see any of these ads in the future.

A Mozilla spokesperson told VentureBeat that this “was not a paid placement or advertisement,” and was “an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner.” Who does Mozilla think they’re fooling?

Anyway, if you don’t want to see these advertisement banners in the future, there’s a simple solution.

Click Menu > Options > Home, or just click the gear-shaped “Options” button at the top-right corner of FIrefox’s New Tab page.

Under Firefox Home Content, uncheck “Snippets.” This will disable all those message banners at the bottom of Firefox’s New Tab page, including ones hawking hotel booking websites.

While you’re at it, you may also want to uncheck Pocket’s Sponsored Stories, which are another type of advertisement that Mozilla places on your New Tab page.

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Apple started using the HEIC image format with iOS 11. It’s preferred over the incumbent JPG because of its smaller file sizes, and it’s also made its way to the Mac. HEIC can cause problems for some apps. Here’s how to easily convert HEIC files to JPG.

If you live your life on iOS, then the chances are pretty good that you never really know when an image is in the HEIC or JPG formats because, for the most part, it doesn’t matter. However, when you start sharing images or saving them to your Mac for future use, you might want them in a more common format. That tends to happen most on a Mac, so wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick and easy way to convert any number of HEIC format images into JPG? If you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty with Automator, a quick and easy way you shall have.

Let’s get started.

Launch Automator on your Mac—it’s in your Applications folder, or you can use Spotlight to search for it—and then click “New Document.”

Next, from the list of templates, click “Quick Action,” followed by “Choose.”

Over on the left side of the screen, type “copy finder” into the search box and then drag “Copy Finder Items” to the right-hand side of the screen. Here, you can then select the folder to which you want to save the converted images.

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If you want a Wi-Fi cam to watch over your house while you’re away at work or on vacation, there are a ton of options. But if you want one that works well with your Google Home, there are some specific models to aim for.

In all honesty, there’s only one Wi-Fi cam that integrates flawlessly with the Google Home, and it’s the Nest Cam, which comes in indoor and outdoor versions. It works great mostly because Google owns Nests, so the integration is about as seamless as it gets.

The extra kicker is that the Nest Cam works with the Google Home Hub, as well as with a regular Google Home with a Chromecast device connected to a television. This integration allows you to pull up the video feed on your Home Hub or Chromecast using your voice.

So if you have a Google Home Hub, you can say something like, “Hey Google, show the family room camera.” Or if you go through a Chromecast you have to be a bit more specific with something like, “Hey Google, show the family room camera on the bedroom TV.”

Aside from the seamless Google Home integration, the Nest Cam is really easy to set up, and the app is really easy to use. So even if you don’t have a Google Home, the Nest Cam is just a really nice all-around Wi-Fi cam in general.

The one downside is that it’s kind of useless without the $5/month Nest Aware subscription (without the subscription you lose out on video recording and reviewing footage). But that’s not a bad price to pay at all, especially for how good the user interface is.

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As it turns out, the best emulator console you can buy may soon be the Xbox One. Libretro announced on Twitter recently that the emulator will be coming to Xbox One in “early 2019.”

While the logistics of exactly how this will work aren’t entirely clear yet, there are a few details available. First of all, Microsoft doesn’t allow game emulators in its Store, so the odds of RetroArch showing up in an official channel is pretty slim. Libretro noted that it could make the emulator available in the Store without any installed Cores, but that’s unlikely.

We’ve bit the bullet and will commit to releasing an Xbox One port of RetroArch for early 2019! Might require Developer Activation and might not be available on the Store but will be possible for anybody with an Xbone to obtain nonetheless! pic.twitter.com/hcZpiPBCPg

— libretro (@libretro) December 28, 2018

What’s more probable is that the app will be available for sideloading, which requires the Xbox to be in Developer Mode. That means users who are interested in turning their Xbone into an emulation station will need to cough up the $19 to active a developer account. Woo.

Once that’s done, however, it’s easy peasy from there. You can’t run officially licensed Xbox games or software while in developer mode, but there’s a simple “switch and restart” button for moving between Retail and Developer Modes.

All in all, this sounds pretty promising for Xbox users who are also interested in playing some old school titles without having to set up a dedicated emulation machine. We’ll let you know once this is officially available, along with the details on how to make it work for you.

via MSPowerUser

Google Docs lets you use voice typing to dictate using your computer’s microphone. It’s great for people who suffer from a repetitive strain injury, or for those who just don’t like typing. Here’s how to use Voice Typing in Google Docs.

Note: Voice Typing is only available for use in Google Docs and the speaker notes of Google Slides, and only if you’re using Google Chrome.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is to make sure you have a microphone installed and working.

Once your microphone is set up, fire up Chrome and head on over to Google Docs. Alternatively, from the address bar in Chrome, type docs.new to start a new document instantly.

To activate Voice typing, click Tools > Voice Typing. You can also press Ctrl+Shift+S in Windows or Command+Shift+S in macOS.

A window with a microphone icon will appear; click on it when you’re ready to dictate. You can move the tool out of the way by clicking and dragging the window wherever you want.

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Windows 10 lets you synchronize settings on all devices you sign into with your Microsoft Account. Some of these settings include themes, language preferences, and passwords. But what if you don’t want your old settings to transfer over? Here’s how to disable and remove all account Sync settings on Windows 10.

Sync Settings were first introduced with Windows 8 and are available for any Windows 10 device you sign into with your Microsoft account.

By default, when you enable Sync settings, Windows uploads various system settings and preferences to OneDrive. When you sign in to another device with the same account and on which you’ve also enabled sync settings, those settings all transfer over. It’s really handy if, for example, you like your desktop and laptop to look the same or you want to retain all your settings on a fresh install.

The following is a list of the settings that get synced to your Microsoft account:

• Theme – Desktop background, user tile, taskbar position, etc.
• Passwords – Windows credential manager, including Wi-Fi profiles
• Language Preferences – Spelling dictionary, system language settings
• Ease of Access – Narrator, on-screen keyboard, magnifier
• Other Windows Settings – A full list of Other Windows Settings

RELATED: Understanding the New Sync Settings in Windows 10

Disabling Sync settings in Windows 10 lets you limit what information Microsoft sends to the cloud and stores on their servers. Whether you want to disable a single setting or stop syncing altogether, this is how you can gain control of your settings once and for all.

Note: If you have multiple devices that all use Sync settings with your Microsoft account, you need to follow these steps for each device to disable and remove Sync settings completely.

Open up the Settings app by clicking the Start button and then the Settings cog. You can also press Win+I.

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Released only a few months ago, the Google Home Hub has won us over in a way a product hasn’t in a very, very long time. Here’s why we’re designating the Home Hub our Product of the Year.

At the start of 2018 Google announced it was branching out into “Smart Displays”, products that would rival the Amazon Echo Show and similar products. At first, the Google ecosystem was only populated by third-party products produced by companies like JBL and Lenovo—we reviewed the Lenovo Smart Display back in August of this year and thought it was pretty great.

And while the first smart displays were, in fact, pretty great, they couldn’t hold a candle to Google’s own product, the Home Hub, released in October of this year.

Between the lower price point ($150 at full retail, on sale for $99 with and without bonus products like a Google Home Mini pretty frequently) as well as a really polished user interface and hardware platform, the Home Hub has shaped up to be the best smart home value we’ve seen all year. At $150 it’s a great value, at $99 it’s a steal.

Most of us on the Review Geek staff pre-ordered one to play with the moment it was released, but without fail every single one of us has purchased more. I’ll admit I went from playing with just my pre-order unit to putting a Home Hub in every major area of my house—bedroom, kitchen, living room, etc.—within a month of getting the first one. Throw in some Google Home Minis and it’s safe to say that I’m totally (and happily) immersed in the Google smarthome ecosystem now.

Let’s take a look at some of the things we love about the Home Hub and why we’re not calling it just the best smart home product of the year, but the best product of the year, period.

Ambient Mode on the Google Home Hub truly has to be seen to be believed. One of the first things we fell in love with was how astoundingly good the ambient mode is.

When you’re not actively using the Home Hub you can set it to display photos—just like the Chromecast you can set it to display art, space photos, or other curated photos as well as your own Google Photos albums—or display the time in a dimmed mode that is more like e-ink and less like a bright tablet-like display.

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There’s nothing like a loud bang and a bright flash of light to really make an occasion feel special. New Year’s Eve, Halloween, and of course, the Fourth of July are all celebrated with fireworks. They’re a pretty tricky subject to photograph, though, so let’s break down what you need to know.

For all the flash and bang in real life, fireworks on their own are a pretty boring photo subject. Totally isolated, they look like something computer generated. Instead, the best firework photos have something else happening in the image. It might be people in the foreground or just the fireworks bursting over a city, but there’s something else going on.

RELATED: What Is Shutter Speed?

When the pyrotechnicians let off fireworks, they do it to get the best show. This means that fireworks are let off individually or in small bursts one after the other. It’s rare that the whole sky will be filled all at once. This looks great in real life, but in a photo, a single firework going off looks anticlimactic. Most firework photos are actually long exposure images that capture all the fireworks that went off over a 10 second, 20 second, or even longer period.

To capture a photo of fireworks, you’ve got two options: the first (and the bad one) is to hand-hold your camera and try and time a photo so you capture the fireworks as they go off. The second (and good solution) is to set your camera up on a tripod and use a long exposure time so that the fireworks burst at some point during it. This is the method I’ll be discussing.

For the best photos, get to the location of the firework display early, before the sun has fully gone down. Set up your tripod and frame the shot where you think the fireworks are going to be. You might need to adjust things later, but getting there early will let you get the best position and angle.

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If you’re a human person who occasionally engages in commerce, hackers are probably targeting you. This year, resolve to do something about it.

You know you need to take better care of your personal information, but you keep putting it off. It’s understandable, but this is the year you take your security into your own hands. Here are seven resolutions you can make to lock down your data in 2018. Like going to the gym regularly, it might be annoying to get started, but you’ll be better off once you build better habits.

Re-using passwords is a very, very bad idea. Sure, having the same password everywhere makes it easier for you to remember, but it means that one site’s security leak compromises all of your accounts. To stay secure, you’d have to change all your passwords every time any service you use is compromised, which is not feasible.

This is why you need to use a different password for every site, and a password manager can help you do that. LastPass is a popular free choice, but there are some solid options out there that are easy to set up and use.

Stop putting this off. Everything you do online is at risk until you stop re-using passwords, and password managers make doing so simple.

RELATED: Why You Should Use a Password Manager, and How to Get Started

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1. Walter F. Palmer
2. John Pond
3. Robert Wauchope
4. Adolph Ochs

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Need a way to target and massage those hard-to-reach muscles, whether you’re at home or on the road? Massage balls are a perfect (and portable) tool to work deep into your aches and pains.

Whether you’re looking for a simple ball to dig deep into your muscles, a ball with spiky projections to massage your feet, or even a bigger ball to target your large muscle groups, then you’ve come to the right place.

Check out our list of massage balls to help you massage deep into your muscles. And if you can’t get enough, check out our articles on massage sticks, foam rollers, and percussion massagers.

Massage balls work immediately to target knots and pain anywhere on your body. While other muscle rollers have many benefits, they usually relieve pain in larger areas that may not be as deep. A Kieba Massage Lacrosse Ball is great for massaging muscles and their surrounding tissue to get rid of pain and relieve tight muscles.

Taking one of the Kieba balls and rubbing it into your body (or laying a ball on the ground and using your body weight to massage a muscle) gives you a concentrated massage that is sure to break up those problem areas. You can use this ball anywhere—sit in a chair, stretch out on a yoga mat, or even lie on a bed.

This pack comes with two Kieba balls, so you can either keep the balls in different locations for use or you can use two at the same time (to reach larger muscle areas). But because a Kieba ball can fit in the palm of your hand, you can easily bring it with you anywhere.

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Denuvo is an anti-piracy (DRM) solution that game developers can choose to include in their games. Gamers have been upset about Denuvo for years, and apparently for a good reason: Denuvo slows down games, according to recent tests.

Denuvo is a digital rights management (DRM) solution for game developers. They can license Denuvo and integrate it into their PC games. If they do, the Denuvo software provides anti-piracy protection. It’s designed to make it more difficult for people to “crack” games and distribute them for free. According to Denuvo, it “stops the reverse engineering and debugging” required to crack a game.

No anti-piracy solution is perfect, but Denuvo promises the “longest crack-free release window.” In other words, game developers are hoping their games won’t be cracked for a while, forcing people who might otherwise pirate the game to buy it if they want to play the game without waiting.

Denuvo isn’t an additional piece of software that is installed on your computer, and you won’t see it in your list of installed software. A game that uses Denuvo has the Denuvo anti-piracy software integrated into its code. If the game is running, Denuvo is running as part of the game. Anyone who wants to crack a game has to get around the Denuvo protection, which makes that process more difficult.

Fair-minded gamers should want game developers to make money selling their games. But that’s not what this is about. Like often happens with anti-piracy solutions, gamers have long objected that Denuvo creates problems for legitimate, paying customers.

Denuvo claims this is nonsense. The official Denuvo website says “Anti-Tamper has no perceptible effect on game performance nor is Anti-Tamper to blame for any game crashes of genuine executables.”

But there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary. The director of TEKKEN 7 blamed Denuvo’s DRM for performance problems in the PC version of the game, for example—a rare case where a game developer, rather than merely a player, knocked Denuvo.

Some game developers have removed Denuvo from their games after release. Overlord Gaming ran some benchmarks on the with-Denuvo and without-Denuvo versions of these games. As Extreme Tech notes, Denuvo causes performance issues in nearly every tested game. From longer load times to frame rate drops, Denuvo’s protection appears to slow things down. Performance sometimes improves by 50% after Denuvo is removed by the developer.

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1. Davis Station, Antarctica
2. Redmond, Washington
3. Cusco, Peru
4. Paris, France

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Convincing yourself to buy new pots and pans can be difficult. But it’s easier to make the investment when you can find a good cookware set that meets your needs.

There’s a lot to take into consideration before buying new cookware. If you’re tired of replacing your pots and pans every couple of years, then maybe you should buy stainless steel or cast iron cookware. If you don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen, then you might not need anything more than a cheap non-stick set.

Thankfully, we’ve done some of the work for you. We’ve taken the time to consider different needs, different cooking styles, and different budgets. Here’s our top picks.

If you’re just looking for some affordable pots and pans that will do their job, then you should consider the AmazonBasics non-stick set. It’s packed with two saucepans, a pot, and two frying pans (three of the “pieces” in this set are glass lids). That’s more than enough cookware for most meals, especially if you don’t spend a lot of your time cooking.

Of course, there are some downsides to these cheap Teflon pots and pans. For one, they can’t handle the power of your dishwasher. They’re also a bit thin, so they won’t distribute heat as evenly as a set of thicker cookware. Oh, and if the Teflon coating starts to flake off, then it can end up in your food. That’s a shame, because there’s no long term data on the effects of Teflon injestion and people try to avoid it in light of that. But if you take good care of your pots and pans, then the Teflon coating should be fine.

Stainless steel cookware is great to work with, and it can last forever if you treat it right. This 11 piece Cuisinart stainless set is an affordable, heavy-duty cookware set that can bring you into the world of stainless steel. It comes with two skillets, two saucepans, a saute, a stock pot, and a steamer-insert (four of the “pieces” in this set are lids).

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Some app and game stores offer refunds for digital purchases, and some don’t. For example, you can get refunds for Android and iPhone apps, or PC games you purchase from Steam or elsewhere.

RELATED: How to Get a Refund For an iPhone, iPad, or Mac App From Apple

Apple lets you request refunds for apps you purchase, whether you purchased them from the iPhone or iPad App Store, or the Mac App Store. This same method also lets you request refunds for digital media like videos and music you purchase from iTunes.

This isn’t a no-questions-asked refund policy. You’ll have to “report a problem” with your purchase using iTunes or Apple’s website and wait for a response from customer service. However, if you purchase an app or game that doesn’t work well, this should save you. Just tell Apple that the app didn’t work properly or otherwise didn’t meet your expectations and they should refund your purchase. We’ve successfully gotten refunds from Apple using this method in the past.

RELATED: How to Get a Refund For an Android App You Purchased From Google Play

Google has a more generous refund policy than Apple does. Within the first two hours after purchasing an app, you can request a refund for any reason and automatically get one. So, if an app doesn’t work well or a game doesn’t meet your expectations, you can return it without dealing with customer service. Just open your order history in the Google Play app and use the “Refund” option for a recent purchase.

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1. Buzz Aldrin
2. Pete Conrad
3. Alan Shepard
4. Neil Armstrong

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