Home Office Setup & Equipment

AI is a divisive technology. Some of us can't stand it, and avoid it at all costs. Others are AI-curious, and dabble with certain apps or features; still others still embrace it with enthusiasm, and use the tech for as many purposes as possible. Still, though I'm aware of this AI spectrum, I'm struggling to understand who exactly would want to connect their Starbucks account to ChatGPT—so, naturally, I connected mine. Starbucks rolled out this collaboration on April 15 as a "natural, personal, and fun" way to discover new drinks to order. As someone who only ever orders a plain coffee with cream, or maybe an iced espresso, perhaps this would finally be my opportunity to b…

When we lift weights, do yoga, or perform exercises of any kind, there’s often an instructor chiming in to tell us to “engage our core.” But what does that really mean? It turns out there are two different ways of doing it and they produce opposite results, so it’s important to know which one you need to work on to accomplish your fitness goals. Here are the two ways, why they're different, and how to know which one you should do. Method 1: Pull your belly button to your spineThis one is probably familiar if you’ve ever done pilates or physical therapy. You’re told to pull your belly button toward your spine, or to think of “hollowing” or “drawing in” your stomach muscl…

Figuring out how to structure your days so they're as productive as possible is a challenge, which is why there are so many different techniques for doing it, though they're all best suited to different kinds of people. And then sticking to a plan once you've made it? Even harder. This is where RPM can help. The Rapid Planning Method, or RPM, can help you streamline your daily planning process and get started working on your action steps sooner, making you more productive overall. Plus, since RPM is fairly straightforward, you're more likely to stick with it. What is the Rapid Planning Method (RPM)?This technique comes from famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who o…

Your flexible spending account (FSA) funds expire soon, and if you don't use them, you lose them. In fact, roughly half of FSA holders in recent years have ended up forfeiting funds to their employers, according to the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). First, make sure to double-check with your employer about your FSA's Dec. 31 deadline, along with any potential rollover or grace period. After that, it's time to scan your medicine cabinet, make a list of anything you need to stock up on, and click "add to cart." The FSA store is an obvious choice for making the most of your remaining funds, but you can also turn to your go-to retail giants. Amazon, Ta…

When your internet isn't as fast as it should be, it can be helpful to check a network speed test tool. If the results are slower than expected, you'll know it's your network that's acting up. If it's performing well, perhaps it's the website in question, your web browser, or the device itself that's in need of a tune up. You have plenty of options across the internet to choose from, of course, but if you have a PC, you're about to get one built right into the OS—at least, in theory. Windows' "built-in" network speed test tool is really a shortcutAs part of the latest Release Preview Channel update for Windows 11 Insiders, Microsoft rolled out a network speed test tool, t…

If you're of a certain age, you might remember mixtapes: cassettes made up of a series of tracks you or a friend think work well together, or otherwise enjoy. (They took some work to put together, too.) Digital music sort of killed mixtapes, but, in their place, came playlists. You could easily put together a collection of your favorite songs, and either burn them to a CD, or, as streaming took over, let the playlist itself grow as large as you wanted. Anyone can make a playlist, but there's an art to it. Someone with a keen ear for music can build a playlist you can let play for hours. Maybe you have a friend who's good at making playlists, or maybe you're that friend i…

Season's greetings and all that. In honor of this most special time of the year, I'm taking a look at commonly held Christmas myths and misconceptions. I busted a ton of Jesus myths a couple weeks ago, then got secular and finally revealed the truth about Santa Claus, so this week I'm doing a round-up of seasonal misinformation, both religious and secular. Religious Christmas mythsJesus was born in a stableThe Gospels aren't specific about where where Jesus was born, other than "Bethlehem." Here's how Luke 2:4–7 is traditionally translated: "And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room f…

Microsoft Teams is a multi-use platform for chatting, calling, video conferencing, and collaboration, which means it has a lot of features, as well as integrations with other Microsoft 365 apps. If your workplace relies on Teams, there are several hacks you need to know to work more efficiently and get the most out of the platform. Use email forwarding to send attachments directly to a Teams channelIf you receive an email (and email attachment) that is relevant to a conversation happening in Teams, you don't need to send it to others' inboxes, copy and paste, or download and upload to the correct chat or channel. Instead, you can forward it directly from Outlook to Teams…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. 2025 was a great year for handheld gaming, with the Nintendo Switch finally getting a sequel and older handhelds like the Nintendo DS getting unofficial successors from companies like AYN and Ayaneo. Steam Deck fans did take a bit of a hit towards the end of the year, when Valve announced it was discontinuing the $400 Steam Deck LCD, but for gamers on the other side of the price spectrum, Lenovo just announced the most powerful SteamOS handheld yet. It's technically not a new device, but instead, a reissue of a handheld from last year. Called the Lenovo Legion Go 2, it packs up to an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, up to 32GB o…

Many of us choose to upgrade our smartphones every two or three years, while others pick up the latest model every year. But just because it's the norm to swap out your smartphone on a regular basis, that doesn't mean all of us do. Smartphones can last a long time, especially if you maintain it with the occasional battery replacement. But no piece of technology lasts forever. Eventually, something gives out—even if it's just the company that makes it. Even Apple, which usually offers its iPhones a number of years of updates after their original release, drops support for new features after some time. That's why your iPhone XS can't run iOS 26: Apple drew the line here thi…

Scammers frequently target shoppers who are looking for a good deal or a rare find (or both). As holiday sale season winds down, the Better Business Bureau is warning buyers about a scheme in which fraudsters charge you for "out of stock" goods and fail to refund your money. The out-of-stock purchase scam is simple: After you buy a product online, scammers send you a notification that said item is no longer available, cancel your order, and tell you that you'll get your money back. Obviously, the refund never arrives, and no one ever responds to further inquiries. As the BBB points out, in most cases, the item you thought you bought probably never existed in the first p…

To manage your inbox, you need dedication. You need a plan. You need acronyms. One such acronym is RAFT, which will literally keep you afloat in the sea of emails you receive every day. You can combine it with others, like LIFO and 4D to maximize its benefits, but first you need to know what to do with it on its own. What is RAFT email management?RAFT stands for the following: Read Act File Trash. Easy! With this management system, you take the time to read an email first, then act on it however you need to—if you need to, that is—before either filing it away somewhere or deleting it. That’s basically all there is to it, but it works because it requires you to focus on e…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Last weekend, I strapped two Garmin running watches to my wrists and raced a 10K—the top-of-the-line Forerunner 970 on one arm, and the budget-friendly Forerunner 165 Musicon the other. Whether you're toeing the line at your first 5K or chasing a marathon PR, one thing I learned is that even the most powerful running watch in the world won't help you on race day if you haven't set it up properly beforehand. Here's the checklist I wish I'd had before race day. Garmin Forerunner 970 $649.99 at Amazon $749.99 …

It’s well-established that physical clutter impairs your productivity and focus, going as far as to make you exhausted, stressed, and burnt out, which is why decluttering your workspace is key component in a lot of productivity techniques. In this day and age, though, your "workspace" isn't always (or, in some cases, even) an office or desk. Your phone and computer are your workspace. That's where you spend most of your work day looking and interacting—and when it's cluttered, you can feel discombobulated, the same as you might with a messy cubicle. It's time to stop thinking only about decluttering the physical world and make a better plan to keep the digital one in good…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There's something extra satisfying about starting a new year with an upgrade that actually makes a difference in your daily routine. After years of relying on my traditional percussive massage guns, I've made the switch to the Rally Orbital Massager. And one by one, my friends have started following in my footsteps to make the same move. Hey, there's something validating about watching people you trust independently come to the same conclusion. Why I love the Rally Orbital MassagerDon't get me wrong—my Theragun still serves me well. It's been a reliable companion after workouts, helping ease tension and speed up recovery.…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I just got back from CES 2026, and you can see my real-time reports on some of the best and weirdest things I saw in our CES 2026 live blog. I tried on six(!) different exoskeletons, perked up my ears whenever I heard about a new smart strap, and looked in vain for new models of familiar fitness tech like watches. Here are the biggest trends I noticed and some notes on what was conspicuously missing. I've included prices where possible; anything without a price is likely too far from market to have one yet. The number of non-Whoop smart bands just doubled …

If you have a Microsoft account that uses SMS for two-factor authentication, you may soon have to choose a more secure method for logging in. As reported by Windows Latest, the company is ditching text-based authentication codes for personal accounts, stating that these are "now a leading source of fraud." Users will be prompted to set up a passkey instead. Microsoft is trying to eliminate passwordsMicrosoft has already started moving toward a password-less environment—last year, the company made passkeys the default on new accounts at setup. Now, it is phasing out SMS codes for 2FA and account recovery in favor of passkeys, authenticator apps, and verified backup email …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Prime Video's Fallout, an adaptation of the popular video game series of the same name, is set more than two centuries from now on an Earth still devastated by a long-ago nuclear war between the United States and China. The protagonist, Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), emerges from the underground fallout shelter where she's lived her entire life in search of her father, and a fuller understanding of the world above, a wasteland is dominated by warring factions and freakish mutants. It's a gutsy, hilarious adaptation of out-there source material, and it's wild to consider that, in the space of a couple of years, we've gone f…

Apple's latest crop of updates was met with a bit of a mixed reaction. While some users love the new Liquid Glass design across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, others decidedly do not—which is likely what led Apple to introduce a dedicated setting to control the intensity of the effect. I'm partial to it, but I understand for some users, it's a tad too much, especially if it makes certain UI elements more difficult to see. But Liquid Glass isn't the only thing Apple users have complained about, especially with regards to macOS Tahoe. Mac users reported various problems with performance and stability across macOS 26.0 and macOS 26.1, and have criticized design choices like overly …

Nothing lasts forever. Devices lose support, standards are replaced, and software becomes obsolete. So it is with Microsoft Lens, whose days are numbered. Keen observers have known about this since August, when Microsoft first announced that Lens would be retired in September and removed from app stores in November. That obviously didn't happen, as the company adjusted the deadline to Dec. 15, which also came and went. Microsoft kicked the retirement can down the road—that is, until now. Microsoft Lens was Microsoft's solution for anyone in the mid-2010s who didn't own a scanner. Rather than buy an expensive piece of hardware to digitize documents, Lens allowed people to…

If you're in the Apple ecosystem, AirPods Pro are just about the best earbuds you can buy. They sound great, work across your various Apple devices, and ship with features like Adaptive Transparency and a built-in heart rate sensor. They're even FDA-certified hearing aids. Not bad for $249. But all those perks don't mean Apple's AirPods Pro are perfect. In fact, you can ask any of the customers complaining of a static noise coming from their AirPods Pro 3, when nothing is actually playing at all. As reported by MacRumors, it appears this is affecting some AirPods Pro 3 users when using Active Noise Cancellation, Adaptive Transparency, and Transparency modes, but only when…

If you have a Family Account through Google, you might assume you can control what your child can see or do on their device. You can, but, as it happens, only up to a certain point. When your kid turns 13, Google will send them an email, letting them know they can choose to disable your supervision over their account. You get an email too, but they don't need your permission to lock you out of their device. Once they decide they're ready for a relatively complete Google Account experience, it's their choice to make. Despite being Google's official policy, this situation was not common knowledge. Following a relatively viral LinkedIn post about the subject, parents were p…

The security of a popular wifi router brand is under scrutiny from multiple federal agencies, and devices could be pulled from shelves in the United States in the future. According to reporting from the Washington Post, the US Department of Commerce has proposed a ban on routers from TP-Link Systems, a move that has now received support from Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense. What is the issue with TP-Link?The proposal reportedly stems from security concerns with routers sold by TP-Link Systems, which is in California but was spun off from the Chinese-based TP-Link Technologies. Commerce officials have warned that the devices handle sensitive data an…

It probably goes without saying at this point, but your conversations with AI chatbots aren't private—everything you type or upload to Gemini, ChatGPT, and other models might be read and used in a variety of ways. If you wouldn't send a document or repeat information to someone you don't know, you shouldn't include it in a chatbot prompt either. Researchers at Stanford reviewed the privacy policies of the six U.S. companies that developed the most popular AI chatbots, including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT, and found that all of them use chat data by default for training purposes. Some retain said data indefinitely, and most merge it with other information collected fro…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The latest AirPods Pro are a big step up from the first generation buds. The third (and newest) generation comes with OTA updates that the AirPods Pro 2 also got to enjoy—but considering the second and third generations are the same price right now, why not go with the newer version? If you want the latest Apple has to offer, this is a great time to do so. The AirPods Pro 3 are down to $199 (originally $249.99) for the first time since their September release—the lowest price yet, according to price tracking tools. …