How-To Geek

It’s my job to think and write about phones, and that gives me an excuse to try out several different phones that really appeal to me. One of them actually has what so many of us miss about phones from the past—a removable battery and expandable storage.

If you're looking to get into self-hosting and want to build your first home server or NAS, an old desktop PC might seem like the best starting point. It's cheap, relatively powerful, and offers great storage and upgrade options. While it's not a bad choice, there's a much better middle-ground today that combines the efficiency of purpose-built NAS hardware with the flexibility of a desktop PC, without the downsides of either.

If you think you need a premium Copilot subscription to get AI-powered insights from Excel, think again. Before paying for another monthly add-on, check your toolbar—Excel already includes a built-in analysis tool that handles many advanced spreadsheet tasks without the extra fee.

When the first Cadillac Escalade rolled off the line in 1999, it did something no other vehicle had done quite so boldly: it turned a full-size SUV into an unapologetic status symbol. In the years since, the Escalade has been the best-selling full-size luxury SUV in North America, earning a place in American pop culture, from hip-hop videos to Hollywood productions, that no other SUV has come close to matching.

Most Excel spreadsheets don't fail because of bad formulas—they fail because the data was never structured properly in the first place. What looks like a table is often just a formatted grid, and that difference is where problems start.

We all get 24 hours a day, and, unlike money, you can’t save unused time for later. That makes “saving time” more about reallocating it—figuring out which tasks don’t deserve as much of your attention so you can spend that time elsewhere, whether that’s picking up a hobby or being with family. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but these three free and open-source (FOSS) apps can help.

Anker's Soundcore brand just unveiled its successors to the Liberty 4 Pro, and the true wireless earbuds promise a leap forward in call performance — one large enough that the company sought a world record to prove it.

Most PC troubleshooting tips start with digging into the settings of whatever operating system you're using. Maybe you'll run a benchmark. Maybe you'll open up the case. You might run down the list of various ways PCs get accidentally damaged and try to figure out what went wrong.

LEGO and 3D printing may seem like a perfect combination, but there’s more to it than first meets the eye. While you can 3D print LEGO blocks, tight tolerances can produce disappointing results if you aren’t prepared to experiment a bit first.

You'd think that with May winding down, Netflix would be stretching a little thin when it comes to some fresh things to watch on the streaming service. Perhaps you haven't gotten around to watching Steph Curry's fun cartoon movie GOAT, or maybe you're still reeling after watching the harrowing car-crash documentary The Crash that I wrote about last weekend, but if you're ready for a few new suggestions that have come to Netflix recently, then read on.

It is easy to look at certain tools and mistake them for cheap toys that won't hold up during a serious project. We typically assume that "real" work needs heavy, specialized machinery, but dragging out massive equipment for simple tasks gets frustrating very quickly. Ryobi makes many exciting tools, but also many unusually small, battery-powered tools.

Google's password manager takes care of syncing passkeys between Android devices. The same passkeys will sync with Chrome on any platform as long as you're using the same Google account. However, I exclusively use Firefox on my phone and computers. I'm also a huge fan of self-hosting whenever possible, so I prefer a solution that doesn't rely on Google. Here is the setup I'm using for that.

Gmail on Android is polished, familiar, and reliable. Unfortunately, over time, it has stopped feeling like a simple tool for reading mail and started feeling like another entry point into Google’s all-in-one ecosystem. I decided that I wanted something that was just an email client, so I made the switch to Thunderbird. It's a free, open-source, privacy-focused app, and it makes email feel like it used to.

The ESP32 is one of the best microcontrollers on the market for building low-power sensors. By connecting a microphone (and sometimes a few additional components), the ESP32 can react to sound in some interesting ways.

A NAS is easy to set up in a corner and then forget, but even a few free or inexpensive upgrades can make it more useful and more reliable in the long-term. You don't even need to do much—these are 5 ways to improve your NAS without breaking the bank or using up your entire weekend.

Smart switches are very useful in the smart home. They give you the best of both worlds: you can automate your lights, but you can also control them manually when you need to. Smart switches aren't always the best option for every room, however.

You'd think, with USB being around since the late '90s, that Microsoft would have figured out how to make it work reliably by now. We've had no such luck, sadly. Many a Windows user has experienced random USB drop-outs on their PCs.

We made it—it's the weekend, and if you're here, you're likely a U.S. Paramount+ subscriber looking for a great TV show to get into! While the streaming service winds down its new releases for the month, don't fret, there's still a ton of shows, new and old, up for grabs in its formidable library.

Bambu Lab has put its foot in it again, inviting the wrath of open-source advocates and firebrand YouTubers over allegedly patchy adherence to the license that its slicer software depends on.