Like last year, Verizon will give you the NFL Sunday Ticket for free, making it easy to watch endless NFL football this season. But as usual, there are strings attached. If you want to buy a new smartphone or switch to Verizon Wireless, you’ll be eligible for this deal and can save $480. Football is back! While it’s only preseason right now, things will start to get serious in early September....

There is so much to love about mini PCs. These tiny little boxes pack all the capabilities that used to require a bulky desktop tower. I want one, I really do—I’ve just never had a practical need. Even Tiny Desktops Aren’t Mobile Enough I’ve only owned a desktop computer for a few years of my life. I was in high school, and it wasn’t that big a deal that I had to be in one place to get online....

Summary Linux can sort of run Windows apps but not without jumping through multiple hoops. Imagine an operating system that is designed from the ground up to run Windows apps natively. That’s the promise of ReactOS. What is ReactOS, and Why Should You Care Meet ReactOS. It’s a free andopen sourceoperating system developed from scratch to run Windows drivers and software. It’s not Linux. It’s not Unix. It’s actually a reverse-engineered Windows clone....

Intel has unveiled the new Core Ultra 200S Arrow Lake chips, its next-generation silicon platform for desktop computers billed as an official successor to Lunar Lake. The five new chips in the series include the base 245K and 245KF versions (Core Ultra 5), the more powerful 265K and 265KF (Core Ultra 7), and the flagship 285K (Core Ultra 9). Intel designed the Core Ultra 200S series to accelerate graphics, compute, and AI workloads, sporting a thermal design power of 125W and a 159-250W power draw (varies by chip)....

Need more speed? Kingston just introduced the FURY Renegade G5 SSD, a super-fast PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive designed for gamers, video editors, and software developers. Equipped with a modern PCIe Gen 5x4 controller and 3D TLC NAND, theFURY Renegade G5 SSDboasts sequential read speeds of 14,800MB/s and write speeds of 14,000MB/s (that’s over 14 gigabytes per second). Random read speeds clock in at 2,200,200 IOPs, and the drive featuresDDR4 DRAM cache, meaning that file retrieval should be incredibly fast, even when working with large media databases or asset-heavy games....

Quick Links You may already know the name Kubuntu as a popular Linux distribution, but Kubuntu is also a company selling computers with the Kubuntu operating system preinstalled. I spent some time with the first generation ofthe Kubuntu Ir14 Focuslaptop and found it worth the price but not without fault. Targeted at developers, the “Focus” branding speaks to the product line’s emphasis on productivity. Compared to the M2 and XE models, the Ir14 is a more slim all-rounder....

Linux Mint 22.1 is now available in beta. It’s a fairly substantial upgrade with several new features and improvements, including the new Cinnamon 6.4 desktop environment. Cinnamon 6.4 provides improvedWaylandcompatibility, meaning that there should be fewer bugs and visual inconsistencies across the Mint operating system. Apps and features that require admin privileges, including some system settings, should be more reliable than in the previous Mint release. Plus, Cinnamon 6.4 unlocks a new default theme, updated dialog boxes, and additional visual preferences....

The Chromium-based Edge browser started off as a sleek and fast alternative to Google Chrome, but Microsoft hasadded more unnecessary features over time. One feature reportedly in development could be the worst example yet: a crypto wallet. Twitter user Albacore, who has a history of turning on and documenting in-development features in Windows and Microsoft apps before they are announced, shared screenshots of acrypto walletin development for Microsoft Edge. The feature advertises itself as having “integrated security features to protect you from unsecure addresses or apps” and “simplified experiences that make Web3 easier to interact with....

Summary An operating system is the most personal part of a “personal” computer, and it used to be that as a Windows user I didn’t feel like I was renting my computer from Microsoft, but in recent years that feeling has all but evaporated. To me, Windows feels cheaper and more commercial than ever, and that’s not a recipe for a good user experience. The Offline Glory Days of Windows The first version of Windows I ever used, coming from MS-DOS, was Windows 3....

Quick Links As a long-time Redditor, I’ve tried and tested various ways to experience the “front page of the internet.” Desktop, mobile site, official mobile app, third-party apps, desktop version on mobile–you name it. So, when it comes to the best mobile experience, which one takes the cake? Deep Dive Into the Reddit App If you’ve ever spent time on Reddit, you know howaddictivescrolling through memes, AMAs, andniche subredditscan be. The official Reddit app takes this experience and tailors it to mobile users with a modern and intuitive design....

Have you heard the term “self-hosting” and thought, “That’s not for me, I don’t know how to manage networks and servers!” What if I told you self-hosting wasn’t just for nerds and network engineers anymore? Here’s why I think you should care about self-hosting. In the Digital Age, Privacy Is Expected but Rarely Given Let’s face it, we use the internet for just about everything. We even use the internet for sensitive things, be that banking, sending sensitive data, or just storing our photos....

Stardock’s ChatGPT client, called DesktopGPT, now allows you to build and reuse custom prompts through a template editor. No more re-engineering prompts from scratch, just select whatever template you need before starting your conversation with ChatGPT. By default,DesktopGPTcomes with a collection of templates that optimize ChatGPT for certain tasks. There’s a template for writing cover letters, for example, and another for summarizing text. These templates can be called upon by typing shortcuts like/coverletterinto the DesktopGPT prompt window, though they also show up as a list when you start a prompt with a forward slash....

Quick Links The Nintendo Switch isn’t a new console anymore, but we’re still getting fantastic new games released for it every year. Here are some of the best games from 2024 to gift to the Switch gamers in your life. A Note on Gifting Switch Games Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t make it easy to gift digital games through the Switch eShop—and we don’t recommend buying digital game codes from resellers—so we’ve made sure all the games we’re recommending are available as physical releases instead....