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The back of a generic ISP router on a table.
4 reasons your networking gear should never be plugged straight into the wall (and what to do instead)

Networking gear isn't cheap, but that's not even the biggest problem

A crucial SSD inside of a motherboard for a gaming PC.
The M.2 slot under your CPU is in the worst possible place, and manufacturers are never going to fix it
SSD

Your SSD gets the fastest connection possible, but only if you can actually reach the slot.

Cloudflare DNS homepage and Windows Ethernet settings displayed on a computer monitor.
Your ISP can still see everything, even with encrypted DNS—here's what actually stops them

Encrypted DNS can lull you into a false sense of security and privacy

3
A Canon printer with a scanner.
Please stop buying cheap printers: The ink is a scam

Don't fall for that $40 printer "deal."

2
An ASUS Wi-Fi 6E router placed on a box.
I assigned static IPs to my devices, and managing my network got much easier

Letting my router make all the decisions from the start was a mistake.

ITX PC tower on desk with warm light
4 PC storage and Wi-Fi mistakes I’m tired of seeing after 10 years of reviewing tech

It’s been a decade in the industry, and I still see people making the same mistakes.

1
Samsung 850 EVO SSD with M.2 SSD and SATA hard drive.
SATA SSDs aren’t dead—this is where they still beat NVMe drives
SSD

Practical strategies for repurposing SATA SSDs as fast external drives and bulk storage on a budget.

A Wi-Fi Extender 05
6 reasons your Wi-Fi extender is ruining your entire network

Whoever told you to buy a Wi-Fi extender owes you money now

1
An 8TB HGST hard drive with a 2TB WD_BLACK NVMe SSD sitting on top of it.
Stop storing everything on your main SSD: A guide to Hot vs. Cold data

Your messy file storage habits are actually putting your PC at risk

An AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT installed in a desktop PC.
Why AMD's latest drivers make ditching NVIDIA actually worth it
GPU

And I say that as an NVIDIA GPU owner.

ASUS RT-BE96U Wi-Fi 7 Router
Don't suffer through dorm Wi-Fi—these 7 tools actually work

I wish I thought about any of these when I was still in college

A tiny USB attached to a keychain.
I turned this tiny $16 USB drive into the ultimate PC rescue tool
USB

It's like having a tiny IT department in my pocket.

5
The EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 SSC GAMING ACX 2.0 graphics card sitting on a desk.
I stopped saving up for a new GPU after optimizing my CPU's graphics performance

Who has the money to buy a new GPU right now, especially when the CPU can help?

usbccables4-2
Your 10-foot USB-C cable is hiding 6 flaws that nobody likes to talk about

Is a longer cable really worth all the trouble?

Person holding a thumb drive
Stop buying USB sticks: An M.2 SSD in a $15 case is infinitely better
SSD

It's time to let them rest.

10
A laptop with a broken display running Linux Ubuntu.
Skip the mini PC for homelabbing and buy a laptop with a broken screen instead

Who needs a mini PC when the laptop nobody wants gets the job done?

Closeup of the self hosted internet status page reading The internet is fine and asking if the user is the problem with Router Pihole and Internet all showing Up.
I built a self-hosted internet status page so my family knows when the outage isn’t my fault

I'm not always to blame, just mostly.

2
Huawei MateBook X Pro beside 9.7-inch iPad Pro front view.
These laptops were effectively banned 7 years ago, and nothing's really matched them since

The 2019 Entities listing cut off software partnerships and sidelined a laptop that reshaped Windows expectations.

A USB Ethernet adapter on top of a Raspberry Pi 4.
The best homelab investment I made wasn't expensive—it was just simple

Moving critical services off a do-it-all server made the setup easier to maintain.

A Western Digital hard drive in a drive bay.
The weird story behind why hard drives spin at such oddly specific speeds

A complicated blend of physics and economics steered drives toward a few RPMs as air turbulence and heat rose.

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