How-To Geek

Quality combo tool kits, like DeWalt's Cordless Drill and Impact Driver, are perfect for home DIY jobs or professional builds and will never go out of style. They make hard jobs easier and are durable enough to last for years without needing replacement.

When I open up Task Manager and I see that 60% of my 32GB of RAM is in use and I have 10GB cached even though I'm not doing anything, my first instinct is to start ending tasks and services to "free up RAM." My intuition—built in the XP and Vista era—tells me that it is a sign of a problem.

If you've been buying Ryobi or Craftsman because they seemed like the safe, practical choice, the warranty math might not be working in your favor anymore. Both brands offer a 3-year limited warranty on their cordless lineups, and neither makes it easy to get a replacement when something goes wrong. However, there is still Hercules, which acts a lot like Craftsman used to.

You won't have to sit in the living room to watch TV shows receiving their annual honors. Amazon and the Television Academy have signed a six-year agreement to make Prime Video the exclusive, free streaming home for the Emmy Awards.

Partitioning your storage drive from one large volume into multiple smaller ones seems like an unnecessary step on modern PCs that can often create more problems than it solves. But back when hard drives were the mainstream storage medium, partitions were surprisingly common — you'd be hard-pressed to find a Windows PC that didn't have multiple partitions.

Nothing beats the big-screen experience. For over a century, films have been a major part of our lives. Movies give us entertainment, art, commentary, and inspiration. But how those movies look and sound matters. So, good equipment is essential. If you’re going for the theater experience, you’ll need a high-quality screen and, more importantly, a powerful projector that won't let you down.

As the weather cools, most households quietly change how they use water at home. Iced drinks give way to hot coffee and tea, slow cookers and soup pots come back into rotation, and kitchens start filling up ahead of Thanksgiving. All of that runs through the same tap, which is why autumn is a reasonable time to think about what is actually coming out of it before the year's busiest cooking season arrives.

You don't have to buy a pricey video card enclosure to add external graphics to your PC — the phone in your pocket might do. Reddit user StayLameBro has found a way to use his iPhone 17 Pro Max as an external GPU that assists his MacBook Pro M4.

It's easy to end up with multiple versions of the same Excel report. You might need one for each region, department, or product, so you copy the report and change the data it shows. I've done this plenty of times, and for a while, I didn't see much of a problem.

Samsung is rolling out its One UI 9 update in earnest, if later than expected. The custom take on Android 17 is starting to reach Galaxy S26 devices in the U.S. roughly a week after the launch was supposed to start.

Streaming was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to cable television. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. Streaming has now become a necessity for major media companies. Between new originals, licensed content, live broadcasts, and sporting events, many streaming services have significantly expanded their content offerings. More movies and shows lead to bigger spending, which, ultimately, has resulted in higher subscription prices.

Want to tackle some DIY car repairs? Well, having the right tools can make or break the experience. Here are the nine essential tools every DIY car repair kit should include, and why each one matters.

Android is a powerful operating system with tons of potential. As a result, many set-top box makers often settle on it. It's hard not to see why: it gives users an easy way to install Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and more. But what if you could make your Android-powered TV box? Here's how you can do it with a Raspberry Pi.

Pet hair, kitchen crumbs, and muddy footprints can make floor cleaning a daily job. A robot vacuum that cleans, mops, and even handles its own mop care can take most of that work off your hands.

External drives, like the WD Elements, are essential storage devices everyone should have to protect valuable data from crashes or theft. They're also great for storing your movie and music collections because you can take them anywhere and access the offline files without a subscription.

We all know that finding the right tool for the job is important, but sometimes it's pretty difficult amid all the outside noise, different tool ecosystems, battery platforms, and endless options scattered across store shelves. Milwaukee makes some extremely popular and common tools everyone enjoys, but it's those "sleeper" tools that are often overlooked you'll love the most.

I spend a lot of time behind a computer, and for decades Windows has been my daily driver. Mostly, that's because it's the environment I had to work in at the different companies I've worked for over the years. That said, the gap between Windows and Linux keeps getting smaller for the things I actually do every day. At this point, I can see pretty clearly that Linux can handle my regular workload and workflow without too much compromise.

Open-source is a promise, not a guarantee. And if you've been homelabbing long enough, there's a good chance that you're running some stale, unmaintained Docker containers. While these containers may be safe to use in the short term, they do pose some long-term risk (or may simply break at some point), so you should disable or replace them as soon as you can.

As much as I want to like Galaxy phones, Samsung makes some software decisions that I just don't get. This is particularly true when it comes to notifications. One of my favorite conversation features on Pixel phones is technically present on Galaxy phones, but Samsung broke it.

I got tired of randomly finding out a hard drive I thought was good wasn't actually good, so I built a tool to automatically benchmark and test my drives before I trust them with my data. Here's what I built and how you can use it to make your homelab more reliable.