How-To Geek

I used to work in broadcasting. One of my first jobs in television was running cables from a production truck all over football fields, baseball stadiums, and makeshift studios. We worked with coax cables frequently during that time, mostly using the N-style connector for truck-to-field links and BNC connectors for indoor, lower-powered work.

Windows is packed with features that rarely get the spotlight. While most users stick to the basics, there are plenty of useful tools and settings buried deep in the operating system that can make everyday tasks a little easier. I decided to explore the deepest layers and found some worth sharing.

I've been a gearhead for as long as I can remember, with a particular weakness for muscle cars, motorcycles, trucks, and anything that feels a little different. The problem is that most of the new vehicles I find exciting today, including Rivians, Corvettes, Teslas, and Hemi-powered vehicles, cost far more than I'm willing to spend.

If you enjoy something enough to do it in your spare time, use it to brighten your day, or see it as a platform for self-development, it’s totally worth your hard-earned money. But there’s a point of diminishing returns, where you feel inclined to buy more things for little gain.

With SSD prices still sky-high, I wanted to check my SSD’s health to see whether I actually needed a replacement. Windows gave me a concerning percentage, but no context—no trend, no cause, no countdown. I was on the verge of buying an expensive new SSD, but decided to get a second opinion. That’s when I turned to CrystalDiskInfo. It gave me the missing context and showed that my SSD still had plenty of life left, giving me the confidence to delay the purchase.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed started in 1993 as a modest gathering on Charles Gordon-Lennox's estate in West Sussex, England. The then Lord March, now the Duke of Richmond, expected two or three thousand people for a hillclimb up his own driveway. Around 25,000 came instead.

Wireless chargers are very convenient, whether you're determined to minimize cord clutter or just tired of plugging in your phone every day. However, there's a hidden cost: your charger is wasting electricity, and that's costing you both money and time.

Modern performance cars are faster, more efficient, and packed with technology, but many of them have lost some of the raw character that made enthusiasts fall in love with driving in the first place. For buyers willing to embrace the used market, there are still a few machines that deliver an experience no new car at the same price can replicate.

You've done the work—you picked a solid router, set a real admin password, maybe even splurged on a mesh system and a VPN subscription. Your home network feels locked down, and honestly, it probably is. Then, one day, you want to check your security cameras from the office, and you flip on one innocent little setting to make it happen.

Android Auto keeps its settings simple, for good reason. The app is based around the things you need every day, with minimal distractions. But if you unlock the developer mode in Android Auto, you can access a few more features. Most are designed for testing and debugging, but some are actually quite useful for everyone.

As a voracious consumer of television shows, nothing excites me more than a premiere episode so good that it’s impossible to avoid rolling right into the next one. These shows have characters that feel alive, narrative twists you never see coming, and cliffhangers that have you promising yourself that you’ll stop after just one more episode.

Ever wanted to quickly check something on your PC while you're away? Or maybe grab that one file you forgot to transfer to your phone? Here's what I use to seamlessly access my Windows PC from my Android phone, no matter where I am.

It's not a great time to replace your GPU right now, which means it's time to give it some love and try to make it stay with you for a while longer, even if it feels like it's officially too old at this point.

Everyone’s talking about AI coding tools right now, but most of the examples feel abstract—a web-based operating system, a DOOM clone, portfolio websites. They’re cool, but they don’t really solve real problems in your day-to-day life. Well, I’ve been running into a frustrating app gap lately where some of the tools I rely on in Linux don’t exist on Windows, and vice versa. That disconnect has been slowing down my workflow, so I decided to vibe-code my way out of it.

Microsoft keeps stuffing new features into the Windows 11 Start menu, and with most of them enabled by default, it has become unnecessarily cluttered. Add web search results that have zero value—when I need to search the web, I'll just open a browser—and you end up with a Start menu that feels bloated rather than helpful. By disabling the following features and options, I turned the Start menu on my Windows 11 PC into a lightweight application launcher and local search interface.

If you read about solid state drives (SSDs), you'll encounter a mountain of advice about how you can optimize your SSD's speed and longevity. However, modern SSDs, advanced controllers, and operating systems have made much of that advice irrelevant. Worse yet, some of it can actually be detrimental to the stability of your PC, especially if you're running a system with limited amounts of RAM.

Over the years, our smartphones have become the one piece of tech that never leaves our side when we travel. Whether it's navigating a new city, contacting the host for the stay, or just keeping yourself entertained while waiting for transport, it's safe to say that traveling would look very different without our beloved devices.

Happy Fourth of July to all those who celebrate! Hopefully, your day is full of food, family, and fun. When you decide to wind down for the night and hit the couch, perhaps stream a movie related to the holiday or summer. Some of these picks are rather obvious, including the 1996 action movie named after July 4.

Repairing things is one of the best reasons to get a 3D printer, and it might just give you the push you need to learn to model items for yourself. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some examples of how a 3D printer can come in clutch and save you money.

The ESP32 microcontroller has become hugely popular in the worlds of DIY electronics and smart home automation. You can use the small chips to build an enormous range of different things at relatively low prices. One of the biggest barriers for people dipping their toes into the world of ESP32 is the fear of having to get stuck in with a soldering iron, but there are plenty of genius ESP32 projects that don't require any soldering at all.