How-To Geek

Netflix is getting a head start on the holidays this November, with a couple of Christmas movies joining its catalog. There’s a lot to look forward to this month, but before you dive into everything streaming in November, there are a few exciting releases to keep your eye on this week.

Search online for ways to speed up Windows 11's File Explorer, and you'll find plenty of familiar advice: disable thumbnails, clear File Explorer history, switch to This PC, and turn off the Preview Pane. The same handful of recommendations kept appearing in troubleshooting guides, support articles, and forum discussions, so I decided to test them. What surprised me wasn't which tweak worked best. It was how little difference most of them made.

The right tools are critical to any project, and work gets done faster and more efficiently when everyone works in a comfortable, fun environment. This is where power tool accessories, like Milwaukee's Rover Triple Light Panel and M18 Jobsite Radio, hold their own. The Rover Triple Light Panel illuminates your workspace so you can work safely and comfortably, while the Jobsite Radio delivers excellent sound quality and volume for your favorite songs on the job. Get both at 65% off with these Home Depot Deals.

Microsoft has been pushing Windows users to shift to OneDrive after canning its old PC migration tool. Windows 11 had a better option for a while, allowing people to send files directly from one computer to another without the need to use cloud storage. But that choice is gone now with a cloud-first replacement that only offers 5GB of free storage.

Editing your PC's environment variables can save you time in Command Prompt and make your scripts more concise. It also lets you customize where Windows stores certain files. This is what you need to know about getting started adding, editing, or removing entries from your Environment Variables on Windows.

Samsung is my baby, but I don’t feel the same way about every app that comes preinstalled on it. Bixby, Samsung Shop, Samsung News, and a few others rarely make it into my daily routine. I already have alternatives that do their jobs better, so keeping both versions feels unnecessary.

I broke the cardinal rule of homelabbing—open ports and reverse proxies without properly locking things down. This led to not just one, but two of my servers being compromised over the period of a few months. I’ve locked things down now, but here’s how you can tell if your homelab has been hijacked by a cryptominer.

Bose is one of the most trusted audio brands, and you can't go wrong with its high-quality products. They aren't cheap, but you don't have to pay full price for Bose headphones and Bluetooth speakers if you take advantage of these limited-time Amazon deals. Now's the time to upgrade your sound with the Bose SoundLink Plus Bluetooth speaker and QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) going at massive markdowns.

I was so excited when it came time for me to buy my first TV, and I unfortunately let that excitement get away from me a little bit. I ended up with the opportunity to get a fairly new curved Samsung TV for an absolute bargain. Back then, the technology was still new, and I got swept up in all the marketing jargon. I didn't know that it would end up making watching TV in my living room so incredibly frustrating.

Cloud-based LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT may be impressive, but your prompts are all processed on someone else's servers. Local LLMs offer privacy, but the more capable models require powerful hardware to run. Even if you can only run small LLMs at home, you can make them much more accurate by giving them offline access to Wikipedia and other data.

I have a bad habit of opening certain apps whenever I pick up my phone — even when I have no real reason to check them. I’ve tried ignoring notifications and setting app timers, but neither has stopped me from going back for another scroll. I’ve scrolled straight through lunchtime without even realizing it.

Like many tech writers, I spend a ridiculous amount of time sitting in front of my computer monitor. On any given workday, I typically start before sunrise, and it's not unusual for me to finish just after sunset. I need to do whatever I can to protect my aging eyes, and dark mode has become one of the ways I make the long hours in front of my computer monitors more comfortable.

Most messaging apps rely on internet connections, cellular networks, and remote servers to deliver your messages. End-to-end encryption protects message content, but you still depend on a service to handle communication. If you want to exchange messages without relying on conventional messaging infrastructure, inexpensive radio hardware offers another option.

SpaceX is eyeing the possibility of creating a fourth national mobile service carrier in the United States. To better accomplish this, the rocket company is looking into buying or leasing Boost Mobile's current network, according to the Washington Post. This comes on the heels of reports that CEO Elon Musk has been in talks with other cellular carriers so he can add cell phone and related services to his business portfolio.

Competition in the PC silicon industry has heated up the last few years with the arrival of Apple and Qualcomm on the scene. Now, NVIDIA has joined the fray with its new RTX Spark platform, pairing a beefy Arm64 CPU with NVIDIA's industry-leading Blackwell GPU. It's no wonder the Yoga Pro 9n is among the first to showcase RTX Spark's undeniable power, as Lenovo knows how to make a killer laptop. Between the sky-high pricing and the RTX Spark specializing specifically in artificial intelligence, though, there's only a small group of people that should realistically consider buying this laptop. On the bright side, those people should be happy.

It's the start of a new month, which means the streamers will be loading up on new movies this week. Some of these movies were released in theaters earlier this year, while others are streaming originals. On Netflix, there are two noteworthy originals coming out this week: one is a heartwarming Christmas adventure, and the other could be a sneaky Oscar dark horse.

Excel already has plenty of jobs. It organizes information, crunches numbers, and keeps track of things, but there comes a point when trying to make it do everything itself creates more hassle than it saves. So I connected it to four other services and found that I could get much more out of my spreadsheets when I let them handle some of the work around it.

Everyone needs a few more tools and accessories, right? Milwaukee is a go-to choice for millions and makes some of the best tools, but there's a good chance you're sleeping on its REDLITHIUM line of accessories. If you already have all the tools you want, check out this list of accessories you never knew you needed.

Linux kernel developers have spent much of 2026 debating how to deal with AI-assisted code contributions, including whether developers should disclose their use of AI tools and how maintainers should review machine-generated patches. Following an ever-busier Linux 7.3 testing cycle, Linus Torvalds appears to be more at ease with machine-assisted contributions as he released Linux 7.4-rc1.

Ready to try Linux but confused by the hundreds of distros out there? Wondering which one will actually suit your needs without wasting days testing and tinkering? I've narrowed down your search to three distinct distros that cover the needs of most new Linux users.