How-To Geek

Most people have a drawer somewhere in their house filled with cables, adapters, and small gadgets they haven't touched in months. Don't let the spring cleaning mood take you from your PC and convince you to throw it all out during a cleanup. There are very few things that are actually too outdated to keep. Some of that gear isn't obsolete; it's just waiting for the moment you actually need it.

It's easy to think that big, unilateral, seemingly bone-headed (Apple would say "brave") decisions are only made by big closed-source OS vendors like Microsoft and Apple. If only!

Look, I'll be the first to blame my ISP whenever possible. (In my defense, I have ISP-inflicted trust issues, so I have a bit of an excuse there). But sometimes, the ISP should be allowed to say: "It's not me, it's you."

I'm one of those people who really cares about how datasets are laid out in Excel. That's partly because I'm a bit obsessive, but it's mainly because getting the structure right makes my life much easier down the line. I've lost count of how many times I've had to reshape an imported or received dataset, but Excel for Microsoft 365 gives me a surprisingly easy way to do it.

Most new cars these days have a built-in screen that works with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. This allows you to tuck your phone away somewhere safe, connected to this external screen. Either using a wireless method, or a plain old cable.

It is common to buy a Raspberry Pi, use it for a week, and then stick it in a drawer, only to forget about it. And while the Pi 5 is the latest and greatest in the series, that doesn't mean that older models are useless—far from it. They can be quite useful if you stick to the right tasks.

Energy costs are up, and the best way to lower your bill is to lower how much you use. There are multiple ways to go about that, and the right tech can help.

Even when you buy a product outright, you may still need to pay a subscription to access all of its features. These subscriptions can soon add up, but thankfully, there are alternatives. You can often avoid subscription fees with an inexpensive ESP32.

"Thriller" is the most overworked word in the movie business. It gets slapped on everything from courtroom dramas and shark movies to high-octane spy pictures to shark movies with tornadoes in them. All these thrills make it tricky when browsing streaming services, and Paramount+, with its cavernous pit of thrillers, is definitely not immune ... which I guess isn't a bad thing?

If you feel like your internet is playing up, what's the first thing you do? A lot of us reach for the same tool: a speed test. Those things catch more than just slow internet; they also note your latency, and if there's packet loss, you'll see it because the speed test will take ages to complete (or it won't complete at all). And as long as it shows a number within our expectations, we shrug and assume the Wi-Fi is just having a bad day.

I've been homelabbing for over five years at this point, and it's safe to say I've run hundreds of Docker containers over the years. However, there are five stand-out containers in my homelab that I've simply never had to repair.

My phone and Android Auto go together like two peas in a pod. I use my phone all day, and the moment I get in the car, Android Auto becomes an extension of it on my dashboard. Maps, music, messages, calls — I’m so used to the two working together that I rarely stop to think about where my phone ends and Android Auto begins.

Linux failed to keep me happy, even after I moved from Ubuntu to Arch, then to Gentoo. I now live comfortably on another little-known OS, one with forward-thinking ideas.

Amazon's Echo smart speakers have been incredibly popular, with sales in the tens of millions at their peak. If you have old Echo smart speakers lying around, don't throw them away just yet; there are plenty of ways to put them to good use.

When your PC's operating system gets corrupted, or if an update fails, or a drive gets damaged, you need to be ready—or be prepared to spend a lot of time trying to get it back up running. Thankfully, it's just as simple as grabbing a thumb drive and getting it up and running as a rescue drive.

As much as I enjoy digital books and comics, there is nothing quite like reading on paper—but I have neither the budget nor the space to amass physical copies of my digital library. This is why I've kept tabs on the state of paper-like Android tablets over the years. After comparing three devices that each take a different approach, here's what I would buy.

I built a capable gaming PC because I wanted a powerful machine that could run all the latest games in 1440p and 4K. The problem is that I spend most of my day writing, browsing, and doing other miscellaneous tasks rather than gaming.

I've been a cord-cutter for years, so over-the-air TV isn't new to me. I've used an antenna during hurricane outages and for the occasional football game when I wanted a local broadcast without worrying about which streaming service carried it. It was always useful, but it never became a big part of how I watched TV.

I’m perfectly happy doing plenty of things on my phone, but Google Maps isn’t always one of them. Ask me why, and I could probably give you 50 reasons. The biggest one? Maps feel far less cramped on my PC. I get a much bigger view of the map, more room to move around, and the freedom to use my mouse and keyboard instead of constantly pinching and dragging on my phone. After using Maps this way, I’ve realized that some tasks are simply more enjoyable — and much less fiddly on a bigger screen.

The iPhone Duo comes a whopping seven years after the original Galaxy Fold. With that much time to prepare, you’d hope Apple would have some fresh, new ideas — and it did. Samsung may have all the foldable experience, but it could still learn a thing or two.