Why buying last year’s flagship phone is usually the smarter move
The gap between one generation of flagship phone and the next has been narrowing for years. The gap in price has not.
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How reusing one password puts your entire digital life at risk
I would like everyone to stop reusing passwords. I have been saying it for a decade and I understand perfectly well why people do it, so let me explain the specific mechanism…
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How many times can you restart a failing laptop before it dies
Restarting fixes a great deal, which is why it is the first thing anyone in support asks you to do. It also hides things, and the hiding is what eventually costs you.
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Do you actually need the titanium model of the latest phone
Almost certainly not, and the reason is that the material of the frame is one of the least important things about a phone you keep in a case.
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Why your home Wi-Fi drops out at the same time every day
If your wireless fails at roughly the same time daily, that is a gift. A predictable fault is a solvable fault, and you can find it yourself in about a week.
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How to tell if a budget smartphone is actually worth buying
Budget phones have got remarkably good. They have also got remarkably good at looking good while cutting the things you cannot see in a shop.
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Is the newest model of your streaming stick actually any faster
Usually yes, and usually not by enough to matter, and the cases where it does matter are specific enough to name.
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How phone carriers hide the true cost of a free upgrade
I managed a phone store in Portland for four years, so I have delivered this pitch several hundred times. Let me explain what I was actually doing.
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Why you keep getting text messages about packages you never ordered
The delivery text is the most effective phishing message currently in circulation, and the reason is timing. Most people are waiting for something. The message arrives and it fits.
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Why modern dishwashers take twice as long to run as older models
A customer told me last spring that her new dishwasher was broken because a cycle took three and a half hours. It was not broken. It was doing exactly what it was designed to do,…
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Why printer ink cartridges stop working before they are empty
You shake the cartridge and you can hear liquid in it. The printer says it is empty. Both of those things are true at once, and the explanation is less conspiratorial than people…
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Why foldable phones still feel like a work in progress
I have handled several and I have not bought one. That is not a verdict on the category, it is a statement about where it currently sits, and I want to be specific about why…
