TechSpot Features

If it's been a while since you've bought portable flash memory, you might be surprised by the broad availability and affordability of high speed, high capacity microSD cards. Commonly used to expand the storage in devices ranging from smartphones to drones, microSD cards are becoming more frequently purchased than any other SD form factors, although full sized cards remain popular among digital camera owners.

PC has never been a singular platform like, say, PlayStation or Xbox. Instead, it's a series of disparate landmasses sharing the same turbulent sea. PC gaming looks to become more fragmented than it's been in the past few years---for better and worse. More options means more chances for new ideas to flourish and, perhaps, for a new middle class of developers to emerge.

For a long time Windows PCs (OEMs) came with a product key sticker with your license info, but now manufacturers are storing this license within the machine's UEFI/BIOS, so the information is retrieved and applied automatically. Furthermore, your Windows license can now be tied to your Microsoft account. Let us explain.

If you want to know what graphics card you should buy or what's the best CPU for your new rig, we've already got you covered. Today we're discussing something else. Welcome to our second annual hall of hardware shame, where we list what we feel were the worst CPU and GPU purchases of 2018. Some of these products should have never existed, others are just a bit pointless or made promises they did not fulfill.

It can be easy to talk yourself out of standing at a computer desk. Besides parting with your favorite chair, the price of most adjustable models can discourage many. Read on for a practical outlook on what you can expect from your first standing desk, whether you're building something yourself or having one shipped to your door.

Depending on where you live, you've likely seen a house with crazy flashing Christmas lights that change color and dance to music. Almost every neighborhood or town has "that one house" that goes all out for the holidays each year. In my neighborhood, that house is mine.

Enthusiasts have been pushing the limits of silicon for as long as microprocessors have existed. Early endeavors involved soldering and replacing crystal clock oscillators, but evolving standards brought options for changing system bus speeds via motherboard DIP switches and jumpers, while some of the most daring would gain boosts through hard modding. These are but a few of the landmark processors revered for their overclocking prowess.

If you've been in the PC community for a while, you may have heard the name Puget Systems before. They are a custom system builder specializing in workstations and gaming PCs. This includes workloads such as engineering, content creation, 3D modeling, ML/AI, streaming, and more.

Pepsi vs. Cola, Edison vs. Tesla, Star Wars vs. Star Trek, history is filled with famous rivalries, but few have matched the intensity and, quite often, the viciousness that comes when two tech industry giants clash heads. Chartering their path from the dawn of computers to the current digital age, here are the five biggest rivalries in computing history.

Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise and has continued supporting the feature in Windows 10, which can be kept on a pen drive in your pocket as a portable operating system.

Since 2014 updates to Diablo III have been light and sporadic, and four years later, Blizzard's announcement of Diablo Immortal at a time when fans are hungry for any news of a Diablo IV has led to big questions about the future of the franchise. What's really going on with Diablo and what happened to Diablo III's long-term plan?

There's no place like home row, am I right? We have all undoubtedly come a long way from typing our very first letters to the point it becomes second nature, but it's probably safe to say that many of us don't know much about what lies beyond the standard QWERTY keyboard. Well, there's so much more. Let's take a look at some popular and regional keyboard layouts.

If you're interested in replacing your desktop monitor with a 4K TV and want to know what to buy, you've come to the right place. Maybe you aren't quite sure where to start or could use a hand in narrowing your search. Whatever the case, this guide is intended to help steer you in the right direction.

While most people who enjoy music on the go these days are listening from their phones, there are still many reasons someone might want to own a standalone portable music player. Models range from around $1 to more than $3,000, for what is already a niche market, the world of dedicated MP3 players is fragmented into various sub-niches targeting wildly different shoppers.

Finding drivers online for old hardware can range from difficult to impossible. But we discovered that you can export drivers for third-party devices from one copy of Windows to another -- great news if you have a previous instance of Windows where your old device is installed and functional.

For a lot of gamers with demanding jobs, marriages and/or families, the excitement of reading good reviews for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey is tempered by the sinking realization that they'll never have time to play them. How do you make time for a 60+ hour game when you have a busy life?

This a topic that's often raised when we do our CPU gaming benchmarks. As you know, we perform a ton of CPU and GPU benchmarks tests throughout the year, a big portion of which are dedicated to gaming. The goal is to work out which CPU will offer you the most bang for your buck at a given price point, now and hopefully in the future.

In the next weeks we'll dedicate a couple of articles to game streaming and provide you with a definitive answer on what sort of setup is the best, and what quality settings make the most sense to use. Today's investigation is focused on streaming quality settings.

Although the Start menu is supposed to be the fastest way to find local files, software and settings, Windows 10's search indexing service is far from the best. It is not uncommon that a simple query won't return any valid results, no matter how simple or precise your query is. Here's how you can turn things around.

A great background can start your day off on a good mood, today's theme is about tech & geek brands. Whether you are into beautiful landscapes, minimalism, abstract illustrations, or eye-catching designs and patterns, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

A great background can start your day off on a good mood, today's theme is minimalist wallpapers. Whether you are into beautiful landscapes, minimalist illustrations and designs, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

Microsoft has made Windows 10's login screen more visually pleasing than ever by displaying high-resolution images in the background. The pictures are of a good enough quality to be used as the wallpaper on your desktop background and if you've seen one recently that's worth adding to your collection, there's a chance the image is still stored locally.

A great background can start your day off on a good mood, theme is retro wallpapers. Whether you are into abstract illustrations, or eye-catching designs and patterns, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

It's only a matter of time before you'll want to change your Windows wallpaper, however applying your own customizations to a copy of Windows 10 that hasn't been activated may not be so straightforward since Microsoft blocks access to the software's personalization settings without a valid product license.

A great background can start your day off on a good mood, today's theme is nature photography and amazing scenes. Whether you are into beautiful landscapes, illustrations, or eye-catching designs and patterns, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

A great background can start your day off on a good mood. Whether you are into beautiful landscapes, minimalism, abstract illustrations, or eye-catching designs and patterns, with the kind of hours we spend looking at our computer and smartphone screens, why not make them a little prettier?

While tabs have been a core part of web browsers for more than a decade, Microsoft is finally in the process of introducing a tabbed interface to the File Explorer and other applications. But if you don't want to wait any longer, there are a few third-party tools that offer the feature by one means or another.

Do you think of the command line as an antiquated leftover from the past, or an old fashioned way of interacting with a computer? Think again. In Linux, it is the most flexible and powerful way to perform tasks. Let's jump into the basics of the Linux command line including directory navigation, file/directory operations, and more.

When historians look back at the 2010s, I suspect two tech trends will be readily apparent: the rise in popularity of the subscription-based model and the emergence of the gig economy. What may not be immediately evident is that these two movements helped solve a dilemma that has perplexed some of the world's brightest minds for decades.

We've compiled a list of things that you can do in the Windows Command Prompt, including some commands everyone should know for general usage, more advanced ones for tweaking or troubleshooting your PC, as well as lesser known Command Prompt features.