Home Office Setup & Equipment

We may earn a commission from links on this page. You know what’s nice about social media? It takes the guesswork out of gift-giving. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, you can glance over your partner’s shoulder to see what kinds of products the algorithms are serving them ads for, watch influencers demonstrate the trendiest items, or just search for what’s hot. Here’s what to get your lover for Valentine’s Day, based on what's going viral. #1: Personalized jewelryThe first thing I've been getting a lot of videos about lately is personalized jewelry. Granted, a lot of these videos are coming from manufacturers or boutiques themselves, but I'm only seeing them because they're get…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Push-ups are a great exercise, and almost everyone can find a starting point to train them. But if you’re running into problems because of discomfort in your wrists, here are some things you can try. I’ll suggest quick fixes for positioning, drills that can make your wrists more comfortable, and stretches that can help you to have an easier time with this wrist position in the future. For a quick fix: use push-up handles, or do push-ups on your knucklesIn a standard floor push-up, our hands are at a 90-degree angle to our forearms. This is a position that most of us will eventually be comfortable in, but it’s OK if you wan…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I've scoured the February releases on Amazon's Prime platform to find the best new and new-to-streaming movies and shows. This month sees the premiere of Clean Slate, a series created by Norman Lear. There's also a third season of Reacher to enjoy, and an Amazon retelling of the story of King David on tap. So February is pretty eclectic over on Prime. Clean Slate This Amazon original series was dreamed up by the late, great Norman Lear, a man who was known for spinning comedy gold from hot-button social issues with grace. Clean Slate stars actress and trans activist Laverne Cox as Desiree, who returns to her home…

There's nothing worse than opening a PDF and realizing you can't use the search function or even highlight text. This typically happens when a PDF was created by scanning a paper document—it's just a series of images. Most modern scanning software uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) so that words are both searchable and selectable but sometimes you'll run into documents where this didn't happen. In those cases, the free and open source OCRmyPDF is perfect to have around. This is a command line application that quickly converts any PDF file into a PDF/A file complete with optical character recognition, meaning you'll be able to search the text. Even better, it's compl…

Your clothing and accessories can either clog up your closet for free or go out there, get a job, and earn its keep: I recently found an app that helps you to rent out your clothes and accessories (and borrow other people's), and maybe even help you declutter in the long run. Let me explain why I love Pickle. What does Pickle do?As I have explained, I have a low threshold when it comes to what will inspire me to download an app. Typically, I see an ad, tap on the App Store link, and install on sight. The other day, I saw an ad for one called Pickle, which is a peer-to-peer clothing and accessory rental service—like DoorDash for fashion. I attempted to download it only to…

Android, unlike some phone operating systems, allows users to install software from outside the default app store (even if you don't live in Europe). And that's good, because there's all kinds of great software that you can't get on Google Play. The game Fortnite is a prominent example—that game's developer, Epic, doesn't want to pay Google a cut of sales and as such isn't available on Android's main app store. Other apps aren't available because of Google's interests—for example, there's an ad-free, privacy respecting YouTube client that you can't find on Google Play. If you've never installed Android software without using Google Play, however, you might not know where …

A recent software update meant to stabilize battery performance on the Pixel 4a has had an unexpected side effect: Some Pixel 4a owners are reporting that their phones can now barely hold a charge. There's a particularly egregious example on Reddit, where a user reported that their phone is down from seven hours of screen time on a single charge to just 30 minutes. Pixel 4a's battery performance issuesEarlier this month, Google published a detailed document explaining the Pixel 4a software update to Android 13. The company says that some people are experiencing a degradation in the battery's capacity, runtime, or performance, as is expected with lithium-ion batteries of a…

It's hard to escape AI these days. Apple just made Apple Intelligence opt out, and Google Workspace users are now seeing big, hard-to-dismiss Gemini buttons all over their apps. The world's biggest tech companies are doing their best to sell you on a generative AI future, but even when you can't turn AI off, there are steps you can take to fight back. Even outside of Workspace, Google is one of the most egregious AI pushers around. The company has tried to push its Gemini AI in almost all of its properties, even though it's shown inaccurate search results recommending everything from eating rocks to adding glue to pizza. Even if you have no interest in AI search results, …

"Don't Google yourself" is terrible advice. If there's personal information about you floating around on the web, you should be aware of it—because, despite common misconceptions, the internet is not written in ink. If your info is popping up on Google Search, you might be able to get rid of it. On Wednesday, Google announced its redesigned "Results about you" tool. This feature, first rolled out in 2023, looks out for your personal information on Google Search, including your name, phone number, email addresses, and home addresses. The tool then tries to remove any information it does find. Note that this doesn't necessarily delete that information from the website in …

The grand Samsung Galaxy S25 unveiling was also the first time anyone got a good look at One UI 7, Samsung's take on Android 15—it's now available on the Galaxy S25 handsets, and will be making its way to older models as well in the coming months. Among the many new features the software update ushers in, one of the most useful is the Now Bar. The Now Bar works a bit like the Live Activities shown on the iPhone's Dynamic Island, which was introduced with iOS 16. It builds on the existing persistent notifications feature that Android already has—those notifications that stick on screen if you've got music playing, for example, or if you're running a timer. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. While there is something special about a physical book, e-books are a great alternative for reading on the go (and building a library that doesn't take up any space). If you want to read on your phone, tablet, or e-reader, there are a number of options for finding millions of titles to borrow or buy. Your e-reader choice doesn't necessarily limit where you can get e-books, as some of the best e-readers (Kindle and non-Kindle) support a wide range of document formats, which you can convert back and forth using a service like Calibre and Adobe Acrobat, with some limitations. (If you're in need of an e-reader, we've broken d…

I'm a full-screen apps guy on my Mac. I love sending each app to its own workspace and swiping between them to use the one I need. When I'm writing, it helps me focus on the task at hand, and it's not hard to use three and four-finger swipes on my trackpad get to my other productivity apps as I need them. However, messenger apps like WhatsApp and Slack are an exception. I need to be able to check these out at a moment's notice, like when I'm using my browser in full-screen. Luckily, that's where the Opera sidebar comes in. This handy tool is home to social media apps, messengers, and even some streaming services, keeping them from getting lost in separate tabs and letting…

Text replacement tools, also called snippet managers, are one of those productivity tools everyone needs even if they don't know it. They let you paste any text you want in just a couple of keystrokes and are perfect for anyone who finds themselves typing the same information again and again (so basically, anyone who uses a computer). Whether you answer the same customer question multiple times a day for work or find yourself constantly telling friends about the parking situation at your house, it's handy to have a quick way to paste long bits of information. The Mac has a decent text replacement tool built in, which I mentioned when I talked about how I fixed my worst wr…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Handheld gaming consoles are no longer dominated by Nintendo; PC games entered the handheld industry market with competition from Valve and ASUS. Valve’s Steam Deck was the best budget option available until ASUS released the ASUS ROG Ally Z1 in 2023, which is the budget version of the more powerful ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. During Best Buy's 48-hour Flash Sale, you can actually get the more premium ASUS ROG Ally Extreme for cheaper than the basic Rog Ally. It's currently $449.99 (originally $649.99), currently the lowest price I have seen over the …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There was a time when I would confuse the terms “Dutch oven” and “slow cooker.” I couldn’t tell you why, but it was probably because I had never really operated either of them before and these vague, old-timey titles fused together in my mind. (I envisioned a cauldron over a fire.) Well, let the record show that they’re not the same. Not only are they completely dissimilar in appearances, but they specialize in somewhat different cooking tasks. H Both cookers are known for their slow and steady cooking properties, and due to their deep shape, the Dutch oven and slow cooker are both good candidates for high-moisture foods. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Have you ever switched gyms and tried to do your usual workout, only to find that the machines are a lot harder—or maybe a lot easier? Before you start questioning your strength or your training, you need to know something: you can’t trust the numbers on the weight stack, and you shouldn’t expect them to match from gym to gym or even machine to machine. What do the numbers on the weight stacks mean? When you’re looking at a cable machine, or any type of strength training machine with a stack of rectangular weights, there is probably a little sticker on each plate with a number. Sometimes those numbers are in pounds, and …

Building a Spotify playlist isn't exactly difficult, but it can be tedious, especially if you want to assemble a mix with dozens or even hundreds of songs. Spotlistr is a free tool that can do the work for you—it can automatically turn any list of songs into a Spotify playlist, even if it's just in simple text format. You paste the text containing your list of songs, let the app run, check that the tool identified the right songs, and click a button. A playlist appears. Even better, Spotlistr can convert a playlist for pretty much any other music streaming service, including YouTube, Soundcloud, Reddit, and Last.fm. To get started, go to Spotlistr.com and sign in using …

Owning a home is great, except for the utility bills that come along with it. The average cost of gas and electricity in the U.S. is $206.22 per month, and if you're eager to pay less, you’ve probably done the obvious stuff—conserving your use, sealing (or replacing) your windows and doors, or even using your appliances at off-peak times. But if you’ve covered the basics and your bills still seem too high, it’s time to dig deeper. Sometimes the reasons behind an unusually large utility bill aren’t obvious at all, and have nothing to do with your behaviors or usage patterns. Here are six unexpected—but not entirely unlikely—causes for a higher bill. Your appliances are old…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There is a surprising number of products that come with into your home with stubborn stickers. A lot of stores still use price stickers, for instance, and glassware almost always has a sticker that gives you some kind of information about your item. Peeling them off is laborious and can leave residue behind—but I found a couple of tips on social media, both of which work fabulously. Adhesive removal hack 1: The melamine spongeI don't even remember where I first heard that you should use a melamine sponge, like a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, to quickly do away with stickers and adhesive residue, but I do know it was somewhere o…

If you get an email from PayPal, proceed with caution: Scammers are using a legitimate PayPal address to send fraudulent purchase notifications to users in an attempt to gain remote access to your computer by convincing you to download malware. The phishing emails are being sent from service@paypal.com, which makes them seem real—but as Bleeping Computer reports, scammers have managed to exploit PayPal settings in order to trick recipients. How to spot the PayPal scamUsers targeted for this scam are receiving emails from PayPal notifying them that they've added a new mailing address to their account. According to Bleeping Computer, users who received this message did no…

Setting up a free email account has never been easier. You now have many great options that promise lots of storage or convenient features, although there are a few things to keep in mind when picking one. The rule of thumb is that if you're getting a free email service, you're probably paying with your privacy, because the company has to make money at the end of the day. Depending on the company, it could use your emails to serve ads, track you across the web, or even use the text in your emails to train AI. However, there are exceptions to that rule, specifically when it comes to end-to-end encryption. It's a tough balance. In general, you’ll have to pay real money to a…

One of the annoying things about using PowerShell in Windows, if you're used to Linux, is having to run it as an admin in order to make system changes. The simplest way to do this is right-clicking the application in the start menu and clicking "Run as administrator," which isn't exactly elegant. It's particularly frustrating because most Linux distributions fixed this a long time ago: the sudo command. Basically, on Linux, if you need to run a single command as an administrator you can just put "sudo" at the beginning and run it—you're asked for an administrator password and the process runs. It's such a useful feature that it even inspired one of the most famous XKCD co…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Jabra Evolve2 65 headphones, which earned an Editors' Choice and an Outstanding rating from PCMag, are currently $203.31 (down from $301). (Note that this is up from yesterday's price of 149.99, their lowest price ever on Amazon, according to price trackers, so the price may go down again. Also, the price seems to be fluctuating slightly depending on location.) Jabra Evolve2 65 UC Wireless Headphones with Link380a …

We know that cars are better connected than ever before, which is great when you want to remember where you parked or start defrosting the vehicle windows while you're still in bed—but this modern tech comes with security and privacy concerns, as a new hack of Subaru cars and their Starlink software has shown. Security researchers Sam Curry and Shubham Shah explain in a blog post how they were able to remotely hack into the Starlink connected vehicle service run by Subaru. Specifically, they targeted software on Curry's mom's car, but the same platform operates across Subaru vehicles in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. With access to the driver's surname and their at…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Housing is getting smaller and more expensive—which means many of us are putting our mental energy into making our existing homes work for us even if they’re bursting their seams with stuff. From storage unit strategies to time-honored ideas like making sure every stick of furniture comes with bonus storage capabilities, we’re all trying to cram two houses’ worth of stuff into one house. If your house appears to be at full capacity and you just don’t have any more room for shelves, cabinets, or anything else, you have one move left: Start literally carving storage out of the bones of your house. There are hidden voids ever…