How-To Geek

Excel can do much more than crunch numbers. If you've got some spare time this weekend, why not explore its creative side? From interactive 3D maps to custom image charts and heat maps, these three projects will help you create visuals that are as useful as they are impressive.

If you carry an older ArkFeld, the iUltra, or a tiny I1R 2 Pro, you know why OLIGHT is one of the best. There's a reason people call them the "Apple of flashlights," and the new OLIGHT ArkPro Ultra is no exception. It has a floodlight, spotlight, UV, and a laser, and is a better, brighter, do-it-all flashlight I can easily recommend.

Just days after the rumors, Tesla has released the Model Y L in the U.S. market. However, the initial version of the three-row, six-seat electric SUV is more expensive than some expected.

Happy Fourth of July to all of our American readers celebrating this weekend. Many parts of the country are experiencing heat waves, so some of you might try to spend some of your time indoors. If you're inside with some AC, there are several noteworthy television releases to check out. Our top selection is the third season of an excellent sci-fi show based on Hugh Howey's novels.

Many affordable cars promise a little extra excitement through sporty styling packages, but most fail to deliver anything meaningful once you're behind the wheel. That's what makes the shrinking pool of genuinely fun, budget-friendly sedans so refreshing—and so easy to overlook.

The automotive industry has spent years convincing buyers that SUVs are the only body style that matters, with crossovers steadily replacing sedans in driveways across America. That shift helped create some dominant sales leaders, but 2026 is proving that consumer tastes aren't always as predictable as they seem.

I used to think backing up my photos to an external drive once a year counted as taking my data safety seriously. Then I found out it's a lot harder than it seems to give your digital assets away. I've changed a few things about how I store and pass on my files, instead of just relying on an SSD, so they don't quietly disappear once I am gone.

Building the perfect smart home isn’t cheap. It’s a process you want to get right first-time, since sinking a lot of money into an imperfect solution will require even more expense to put right later.

Home Assistant can do a lot, but a simple ‘when this happens, do that’ doesn’t always feel simple to set up. So, if you’ve ever gotten stuck picking between a state trigger, a numeric state trigger, or a device trigger, the open-source smart home platform’s newest update is aimed squarely at you. Home Assistant 2026.7 removes that automation friction, while also making it easier to understand what happened and speeds up how you handle device updates.

Summer comes with a lot of little joys, whether it's a nice vacation or a summer watch list you can enjoy for the whole season. But it also comes with a few letdowns and disadvantages. And one of them is the effect rising temperatures can have on your phone.

Are you in the market for a new NAS? While at one point in time, Synology was a default choice, these days it's not so simple. Sometimes Synology is the right pick, and other times you should go with something else entirely—like UniFi.

I was 18 for most of 2005, and I have fond memories not only about that time in my life but also the technology that came to define it. So is this pure nostalgia, or is there something desirable about a simpler time?

The start of July means it's time for Netflix to unveil its latest lineup of new shows. Per usual, it's a mix of returning shows and brand-new programs. Kicking things off is a new iteration of Netflix's Worst Ever franchise, and this version will make you look at your neighbor differently. Then, the streamer launches an adaptation of beloved children's novels.

Running your own LLM is surprisingly easy. Using software such as Ollama or LM Studio, you can install and run local AI models that work completely offline. The size and speed of the models will depend on your hardware, but you can run small models even on modest hardware; the real challenge is deciding what to do with your local LLM once you have it up and running.

The internet is an amazing thing. You can build incredible internet-connected projects using cloud services, but there's always a risk that if your internet connection goes down, your project will stop working. There are plenty of useful ESP32 projects that don't depend on cloud servers and can communicate locally or directly with other devices, so they'll keep working even when you can't get online.

Using text suggestions when writing on a physical keyboard? Is that even a thing? That was my exact thought until I started using it myself. What started as a curious experiment ended up being a daily convenience.

Happy birthday, America. Nearly 250 years ago, delegates representing the Thirteen Colonies gathered in Philadelphia to adopt the Declaration of Independence, severing America's ties to Great Britain. It's a monumental moment in U.S. history, which is why there will be many celebrations across the country this weekend. If you have some downtime during the holiday weekend, it's the perfect time to stream a documentary centered on America's 250th anniversary.

It's been 17 years since Plugable introduced its first universal docking station, the humble UD-160-A. It was a uniquely functional and intuitive USB 2.0 device that expanded a laptop's capabilities without any proprietary connectors or mental guesswork.

As of writing, my NVMe SSD is about four years old—old enough to make me think about replacing it. That said, with sky-high storage prices right now, part of me wants to hold off until the market settles down. The sensible move in that situation is to check whether your drive really needs replacing—but I didn’t expect I’d have to switch operating systems just to find the answers I was looking for.

For the past couple of years, I have been a big fan of Samsung's One UI design language on Galaxy phones. That changed with the update to version 8.5. I'm not alone. Many people are swapping out their home screens for custom launchers and replacing Samsung apps with alternatives. What did Samsung get so wrong?