How-To Geek - Are Black Friday TVs Really a Scam?

November 18, 2022

Did You Know?

In decades of service, the SR-71 “Blackbird” long-range reconnaissance aircraft was never hit by an enemy missile thanks not only to its stealthy profile, but its speed. When targeted by a missile, the standard operating procedure was to simply accelerate (the craft is capable of exceeding Mach 3) and leave it behind.

Happy Friday! Google is making a few announcements to finish off the week. New search filters and view modes are rolling out to Google Maps, better food searching is coming to Google Search, and YouTube on TVs now has a Netflix-like intro sound.

We’re now one week away from Black Friday, which means more sales are popping up. Google’s Pixel phones are still up to $150 off, the latest iPad is $50 off, and Google’s Nest Audio smart speaker is half-price right now.

– Corbin

Televisions are always one of the hottest items when Black Friday sales roll around. Many people wait until the holiday season to buy a TV. The deals sometimes sound too good to be true, but is that actually the case? Read More »

Did you know you can fax important documents directly from your smartphone? It’s easy! Just download the eFax app for iOS and Android and sign in. From there, view incoming faxes in your inbox, upload documents with just a photo, add your digital signature with a swipe, and send files off to wherever you’d like them to go. That’s it! Sign up for a 14-day free trial of eFax to get started today.

PC gamers who want to make the most out of their graphics card often need to spend time fine-tuning a game’s settings. But is there a better way? NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience might be your best solution for optimizing games. Read More »

Oftentimes, a smaller phone charger can’t provide the power to juice up your laptop or MacBook. Instead, you need to carry around a separate, often bigger and more cumbersome charger to top them off. However, with Anker’s USB-C charger, you can power your phone, tablet, and anything else you need without any extra clutter.

This charger is capable of 30W of output, which is enough to charge all of your devices, including the MacBook Air and laptops. At $30, it’s a great price for a compact and useful wall charger.

There has been a noticeable trend with laptops over the past few years: you don’t have to compromise as much with budget models anymore. Acer has now released a series of laptops that deliver performance without breaking the bank: the new Aspire 3. Read More »

Cord cutting—ditching a traditional cable subscription—has never been easier. However, there’s no shortage of options when it comes to how you can cut the cord. For the cord cutter in your life, you have plenty of gifts to consider. Read More »

As good as the latest releases of Windows are, the old ones have a charm to them that new versions just can’t quite match. A big part of it is its old games — Minesweeper, Solitaire, you name them. Now, you can play them all over again, thanks to Microsoft Teams. Read More »

If you’re a certain type of person, it might feel like Twitter is where everything’s happening on the internet. That is very much not the case. Outside of the bubble, most people simply do not care about the bird site. Read More »

When you watch a movie or a show on Netflix, you can always hear Netflix‘s iconic chime before it begins. It has no purpose other than serving as an auditive cue letting you know you’re watching Netflix, but it’s neat. YouTube is also adding a jingle of its own, hoping it becomes similarly iconic. Read More »

Robot mops make it easy to keep your floors clean while spending less of your valuable time mopping. So if you need help finding the right one for your home, here are the five best robot mops of 2022. Read More »

Your computer’s RAM (random-access memory) is the speedy short-term memory the PC uses for running applications and open files. The more RAM your computer has, the more you can do at once. Here’s how to check how much your system has installed. Read More »

The 22nd FIFA World Cup kicks off on November 20, 2022, from Qatar, and games will be played through December 18. Here’s how you can stream every World Cup soccer match online in the U.S. Read More »

If there’s one constant in the tech world, it’s big companies gobbling up smaller companies. There have been some massive acquisitions in the last decade. From Elon Musk to T-Mobile, let’s take a look at some of the biggest. Read More »

Most of us love to start the day with a cup of coffee. Maybe you indulge in decaf to limit your caffeine intake. But have you ever wondered what happens to the caffeine from your decaf coffee beans? Read More »

The days feel longer, and the sun sets earlier. Come mid-day, you might need a little pick-me-up, and typically, that means a trip to the coffee shop. But thanks to an Amazon early Black Friday sale, you can get your needed jolt and be your own coffee shop. Read More »

Beauty and tech. It might seem like an unexpected combination, but it produces gorgeous results. The world of at-home beauty gadgets ranges from LED face masks to innovative hair dryers and stylers. Each one makes it a little easier to look and feel great. Read More »

As of October 2021, Windows 11 doesn’t let you move your taskbar to the top of the screen with an official setting (unlike Windows 10). But we’ve figured out a way to make it happen by editing the Registry—and you can do it with just a few clicks. Here’s how. Read More »

If you’re shopping with the intent to expand a friend’s stable of smart home devices or bring a relative’s home into the 21st century, you can’t beat these gifts. Read More »

The holiday season is a time of giving, getting closer to friends and family, and not least importantly, tasty food. Google’s Search component, which is still the company’s main product, is now making it easier to look up food and places to eat it. Read More »

The holiday season is nearing. Christmas involves a lot of commuting — whether we’re talking about getting gifts for someone or simply visiting family or friends. Google Maps wants to make things easier for you and for those trips, which is why it has just added a bunch of new features. Read More »

It would be nice to one day stand under a cloud on Mars with a loved one and romantically ask what it looks like to them, only to see their eyes bulging out like Schwarzenegger in Total Recall because they forget their helmet. Read More »

The Nest Audio is Google’s top-tier smart speaker, with the ability to pair two to create a stereo setup. Now you can get one (or two, or three) of them for $49.99, a discount of $50 from the usual price. Read More »

Artificial Intelligence (AI) art is currently all the rage, but most AI image generators run in the cloud. Stable Diffusion is different — you can run it on your very own PC and generate as many images as you want. Here’s how you can install and use Stable Diffusion on Windows. Read More »