How-To Geek

If you've ever put too much faith in a storage device, you're not alone. We've all been there. It doesn't matter if you're buying a portable SSD, an NVMe drive that goes inside your PC, or even a good old HDD—the risk of data loss is always real, and always mildly scary.

A smart home dashboard running on a wall-mounted tablet can look truly impressive, but it's not necessarily the smartest way to do things. If you have to interact with a dashboard whenever you want to control your smart home, you have a manual home with nicer buttons.

My least favorite thing about 3D printing is the waste it generates. Most 3D printers “poop” small amounts of filament to ensure that the nozzle is ready for printing before a print, while failed and multi-colored prints generate even more waste.

My handheld PC has been giving me thermal headaches for a while now, but when things finally came to a head, the cause was predictable in retrospect, but surprising in reality.

Luxury sedans have followed the same pecking order for years. When people think top-tier comfort and status, the German brands usually get named first, while Japanese cars get labeled as the smart, sensible picks.

Prime Video's weekend documentary menu is a triple feature of hoops, old-school arcade glory, and so many muscles, making for a perfect lineup for riding the couch for some downtime.

I’ve accumulated quite a few Android games over the years, playing them on phones, tablets, and occasionally a TV—but I've recently discovered my favorite way to play them, yet!

Did you know that Ryobi has been manufacturing power tools since 1968? The company, which started in Japan, eventually expanded into a global operation, launched its 18V line in 1996, and is still going strong today. As a result, you can find all sorts of unique products from Ryobi, including power tools that are blue, green, and even black.

Here's something phone reviewers never tell you: we play favorites. I've reviewed dozens of the best smartphones over the last 13 years, but only a few were truly memorable. Here are five phones I couldn't put down after my reviews were published.

Activate that sense of wonder (or just plain morbid curiosity), it's the weekend, and this hat trick of Netflix documentaries covers a bit of twisted glamour, brainy competition, and true crime.

I always say the reason I have a bright-colored vehicle is so I can find it in the crowded Meijer parking lot after my Sunday afternoon grocery runs. As a fun experiment, take note of the vehicles you see and their colors while you are driving or walking through a parking lot. If everything appears grayscale, that’s not your imagination.

Are you looking for some more Home Assistant projects to get your teeth into this weekend? Why not organize your life by setting up a shared calendar, make Home Assistant visual with a color E-ink display, or use some 300-year-old math to get your home to the perfect temperature on time?

If you've paid for antivirus programs in the past, you know how it goes—pop-ups about the company's other products. Pop-ups about the last time you did a deep scan. Pop-ups about how your membership is expiring soon. Pop-ups about pop-ups.

The debate on whether HDDs are more reliable than SSDs never seems to end. There's no easy answer, but the reality is that any old drive is a hazard. HDDs may appear to be immortal, what with their cold storage properties and how bulky they are, but they're really anything but, and you may not see it coming when they finally fail.

One of the most interesting things about modern "smart" hardware is that the machine you buy today may become a very different product a few years down the line. Since the manufacturer can update the firmware of your device, they can fix bugs and add new features.

Plugins are the best and easiest way to improve and upgrade your Jellyfin experience. These are my favorites, that give me everything from better subtitles to useful server statistics.

It’s no secret that AI is being added to everything. The companies doing this want us to believe it’s making our lives better, but AI is obviously being used in nefarious ways, too. A new discovery shows that Google’s own Gemini AI is being used to help malware run on various Android devices.

February is heating up on Amazon Prime Video, and you're going to want to keep the popcorn handy. Between its steamy new releases and diverse selection of bingeable shows to watch, it’s easy to spend more time perusing through titles and reading show descriptions than it is to settle on something. If you’re shaking your head in agreement, not to worry—I’m here to help.

Are you intimidated by git’s command line-based interface? It can be a bit much—trying to memorize commands and how they work. That’s why I use the GitHub Desktop app, and why I think it’s the simplest workflow for using git on your computer.

I love finding cool and useful apps to use on my Linux PC, and this week I found some real gems. They include an icon generator, a classic games launcher, and a storage use analyzer.