What’s the Best Placement for Wireless Routers? To position wireless equipment for optimal network performance, follow these guidelines. Choose the Best Location for the Wireless Access Point or Router Place the device in several locations to determine the location with the best signal. While trial-and-error may not be the most scientific way to find a good spot for the equipment, it is often the only practical way to assure the best possible Wi-Fi performance....

Overall Findings Deciding whether HomePod or Google Home is the best device for you depends on how you plan to use it. Both speakers can do the same kinds of things—answer questions, set timers, control smart-home devices, stream music—but the ways they do them, and the tools they use, can be different. The Best Intelligent Assistant: Google Is Hard to Beat The thing that makes a smart speaker smart is the intelligent assistant that listens for your voice and responds to your commands....

Live View gives us a peek at the future of augmented reality (AR). You hold your phone up, and the app scans the surroundings through your camera and overlays map data on the live view. The idea is that you can find out more about your surroundings. But does this add useful data to the world or turn the street into one more Google Maps layer? “We’re already so connected to our phones and tablets that we risk accidents on the daily because we’re too busy scrolling to pay attention when walking or driving....

The $129 Nest is a hockey-puck shaped device that aims to save users money by knowing when to raise the temperature inside homes. It uses Google’s Home software and a radar system-on-a-chip to detect if people are physically present, but the extra data scooped up by the thermostat could be a problem, some experts say. “At a minimum, consumers are giving up another layer of personal behavior data that can be cross-pollinated with other data,” Frederick Lane, a cybersecurity consultant, said in an email interview....

Tablet Screen Sizes The screen dimensions determine the overall size of a tablet. The advertised size of a tablet is a diagonal measurement of the screen, so two 10-inch tablets may have slightly different dimensions. Some screens are as small as 5-inches, while some tablet-based all-in-one systems have 20-inch and larger screens. Larger tablets are less portable and typically offer longer battery life and easier-to-read screens. Smaller tablets offer better portability and can be more difficult to use when reading, playing games, and watching movies....

It contains configuration information for Windows and software specific to the currently logged-in user. For example, various registry values in various registry keys located under this hive control user-level settings like the installed printers, desktop wallpaper, display settings, environment variables, keyboard layout, mapped network drives, and more. Many of the settings you configure within various applets in the Control Panel are actually stored in this hive. How to Get to HKEY_CURRENT_USER Registry hives are one of the easier types of things to find in Registry Editor:...

Otter transcribes Zoom and Google Meet meetings in real time, so you can just zone out and read it all later. Or, if you’re the pants-wearing type, then you can follow along and grab those transcribed notes as they happen. Otter isn’t the only tool making it easier to work with audio and video calls, but its advantage is that it works with the video-conferencing apps we’re all using from home....

The new Polaroid Now+ is an analog camera with Bluetooth connectivity and five physical lens filters. The filters can be clipped onto the camera’s lens to change your photos’ contrast or add new effects. The rise of these hybrid cameras is fueling the debate over whether digital or film cameras are superior. “Film gives the photographer a ‘classic’ look,” Paul J. Joseph, a professor of mass communications at Methodist University in North Carolina, told Lifewire in an email interview....

The company HighSpeedInternet.com recently released a study of internet speeds around the country. New Mexico clocks in with the slowest downloads in the country, with an average rate of 72.2 megabytes per second. Experts say that internet speed often depends on the infrastructure in the area where you live, but there are ways to make the best of bad situations. “To make the internet faster in many states requires ISPs to make the necessary upgrades and investments,” Neset Yalcinkaya, a vice president at wireless company Quectel, said in an email interview....

Then I thought about all the recent emails, texts, DMs, and phone calls about buying an EV. A surge in queries based on the absurd gas prices we’ve been encountering. Those people will eventually want to visit us. Summer is coming, and that means BBQs, dinner parties, karaoke jams, movie nights, and just regular visits. You know, how we used to do before 2020? So, what’s the protocol when a friend shows up in an EV with less than 20 percent state of charge?...

How Many Profiles Can You Have on Netflix? A profile on Netflix allows a different member of your household to use the same Netflix account but with different personalized settings. Netflix allows you to create up to 5 unique profiles on your one account. Each profile can customize its own language settings, maturity levels, activity log, subtitle settings, and of course personalized suggestions for movies and TV shows. Each account can use a unique email account so that different users will receive their own Netflix notifications....

John Carmack, a leader at headset maker Oculus, reportedly said recently that the company might have found a solution to prevent motion sickness. He suggested that better calculations about the depth of objects in VR could be the key. It’s one of the growing number of methods that developers are exploring to make VR more comfortable. “Some people can experience physical side effects, including headaches, nausea, motion sickness, and eyestrain,” Scott Stachiw, head of immersive learning at Roundtable Learning, a company that creates VR employee training tools, said in an email interview....

DOCSIS and Cable Modems The Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) standard supports cable modem networks. All cable broadband internet connections require the use of a DOCSIS-compatible modem. Three major versions of DOCSIS modems exist: DOCSIS versions 1.0 and 1.1 became available in the late 1990s. They are obsolete now in most parts of the world. These modems support up to 38 Mbps downloads and 9 Mbps uploads. DOCSIS 2....

How to Check Data Usage on Your Phone Check iPhone Data Usage Tap Settings > Cellular.Scroll down to see your total data usage for the billing period, along with how much data your apps have used, ordered from most to least. Checking data on your phone is fine, but you’ll only have insights as to what is using data on your phone. If you are part of a family or multi-line plan, you’ll need to go a little deeper to see who’s using how much....

Clear the Cache on a Fire TV Stick When an app stops working correctly, one of the most common causes is a corrupted cache. Apps can slow down and underperform due to a too large cache. In both of these cases, the solution is to clear the cache. Here’s how to clear the cache on Fire TV Stick and other Fire TV devices: What Is a Fire TV Cache? One of the most valuable things about Fire TV devices is that you can download apps that let you watch videos, listen to music, and do many other things....

How to Connect Laptop to TV With HDMI Cable Connecting your Windows or Mac laptop to your TV via HDMI is fairly straightforward and should hopefully only take a few minutes to complete. How to Switch From Mirroring to Extending The default setting for a laptop to TV HDMI connection is to have your laptop’s screen be mirrored on the television. This basically just means that whatever you see on your laptop’s screen will be shown on your TV’s screen simultaneously....

The steps are a little different depending on which version of Windows your HP laptop is running. Windows 11 Here’s how to connect your AirPods to a Windows 11 laptop: Windows 10 Here’s how to connect your AirPods to a Windows 10 laptop: How to Use AirPods With an HP Laptop Connecting AirPods to an HP laptop isn’t the same as actually using the AirPods with the laptop. If you want to use your AirPods to listen to music or videos, or video chat, or anything else, you’ll need to switch audio outputs after you have connected the AirPods....

Prevent Automatic iTunes Syncing With Your iPod Before you connect your iPod to your Mac, you must prevent iTunes from syncing with your iPod. If it does, it might delete all the data on your iPod. At this point, your iTunes library on the Mac is missing some or all of the songs or other files that are on your iPod. If you sync your iPod with iTunes, you’ll end up with an iPod that’s missing the same files....

As much as many of us would love to keep cords and wires out of sight, it isn’t always possible—at least not at first. It often takes extra effort to hide speaker wires so that they’re less noticeable. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, some of which will be better suited than others, depending on your home layout. Useful tools to have on hand are wire strippers, a tape measure or ruler, pliers, a utility knife, scissors, twist or zip ties, a bubble level, a staple gun, a cordless drill, a jigsaw, a hammer, and a stud finder....

Choose a Secure Web Browser The vast majority of web surfers can be found on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge. But that doesn’t mean you’re limited to these choices. There are heaps of secure browser alternatives, including Iridium browser, GNU IceCat browser, Tor browser, and more. But no matter which browser you use, remember that there’s no such thing as a 100% secure web browser on its own. Luckily, you can increase security on any browser by locking down the settings and using a VPN (more on that below)....