15 Super-Charged Alternatives to Built-in Windows Apps

December 10, 2022

Did You Know?

The prehistoric shark megalodon could bite down with up to 182,000 newtons of force—approximately ten times more force than the bite of a great white shark.

Hope you’re having a great weekend so far! 2023 will be the end of the line for Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, and other web browsers on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. If you’re still on one of those operating systems and absolutely can’t upgrade, now is as good of a time as ever to check out Firefox.

In unrelated news, Paramount+ has brought back its 50% annual plan deal, bringing down the price of the cheapest plan to just $25 for an entire year.

– Corbin

It’s great Windows ships with a pile of included apps for everything from taking notes to viewing media files, but they usually aren’t the best options out there. Here are our favorite alternatives to the default Windows applications. Read More »

Everyone needs fast and reliable wireless service, and this holiday season, you can get more for even less. Buy 3 months of Mint Mobile for $15 a month and receive three additional months for free. That's $45 for half a year of unlimited talk and text, plus 4 GB of monthly 5G and/or 4G LTE data. This offer is only available for a limited time, so act now before it's gone.

NVIDIA’s graphics drivers now offer a “Ultra-Low Latency mode” intended for competitive gamers and anyone else who wants the fastest input response times in their games. This feature is available for all NVIDIA GeForce GPUs in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Read More »

It’s always helpful to have a headlamp around. You can’t always hold a flashlight while trying to look under the counter or fix something under the house, and headlamps are a simple solution to free up your hands while getting the light you need.

But it’s important to get a headlamp that’s easy to recharge—if the battery is dead when you need it, what’s the point? Alipret’s headlamps fit that bill! This rechargeable headlamp charges via USB-C and gives up to 10 hours of light on a charge.

Intel is slowly building up its own line of dedicated graphics cards, under the “Arc” brand. The company recently pushed a driver update focused on DirectX 9 performance, giving older games and apps a big boost. Read More »

Everybody loves a quick fix and, thankfully, a lot of simple Windows optimizations are easy to apply. If you’re dealing with a sluggish Windows PC, you owe it to yourself to try one (or all!) of these tweaks. Read More »

Packet loss can play havoc with your network connection. Fortunately, testing for it is relatively straightforward on both a local connection and over the internet. Here’s what you need to know before you complain to your ISP. Read More »

Paramount+ is the streaming service owned by the newly-merged CBS and Paramount, with a sizable library of new and classic movies and TV shows. The service has now brought back its best deal: a year of service for 50% off. Read More »

When it comes to recreating the bombast of a theater in your home, audio is as equally important as a big screen. Finding the best home theater system to match your TV can be difficult, with different speaker sets vying for your attention and space. Read More »

The light heavyweight title is on the line at UFC 282, broadcast from Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena on December 10, 2022, at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. ET. Here’s how and where to stream it live. Read More »

We’ve finally established that 640K of memory isn’t quite enough for anyone, but the correct amount of RAM remains a hot debate topic. RAM isn’t cheap, but the time may finally be here to move on to 32GB of memory. Read More »

Bluetooth is great for music or audiobooks, but as soon as you’re watching videos or gaming, it can introduce latency that makes everything look like a bad dub. Bluetooth speakers and headphones will always have lag, but there are ways to minimize it. Read More »

Windows 11 isn’t perfect out of the box — no software is. Tweaking it to make it your own can be the difference between an acceptable user experience and a great one. Here are a few of our favorite registry hacks for Windows 11 that you should try. Read More »

Stable Diffusion is a popular AI-powered image generator that you can run on your own PC. But what are the minimum specs to run Stable Diffusion, and what components matter the most? Read More »

In November, a friend challenged me to watch all six classic Star Trek films starring the original cast before the end of the month. Of course, I accepted, and by the time I finished, I came away with the notion that the series’s final film was the best. Here’s why. Read More »

Microsoft brought back widgets with the release of Windows 11, which are now in a panel accessible from the taskbar. The company isn’t done with widgets, though, and a significant fix is on the way. Read More »

Working at Wing’s delivery drone command center is pretty similar to being an air traffic controller, except it’s drones carrying things like toothpaste, and not planes with hundreds of people. So way, way fewer lives are at stake. Read More »

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and a few other web browsers still support Windows 7. Nearly three years after official support ended for Windows 7, Chrome is preparing to say farewell, and other browsers are following suit. Read More »

Do you want to enjoy your favorite Netflix shows and movies with your friends? If so, one way to do that is to stream Netflix on your Discord server. You can do this even when you’re on Discord’s free plan. We’ll show you how. Read More »

You’d probably be shocked at just how many items we use every day started life in a NASA lab. Sometimes you’re trying to get astronauts home safely, and in the process, you invent something that belongs in every home or toolkit. Read More »

Windows 11 includes animation and fading effects that add eye candy but can make your PC feel sluggish for some by adding a slight delay to certain actions. For a more snappy experience, it’s easy to turn animations off. Here’s how. Read More »

Some apps can only be found on Apple’s storefront, which makes it all the more frustrating when the App Store is not working on your Mac, and it’s not clear why. Here are some fixes you can try to get the Mac App Store working again. Read More »