If you're not looking to go all out with your desktop PC, playing graphically intense games, or doing heavy photo and video editing, the chances are pretty high that you're going to be happy with an affordable mini PC. It's pretty easy to dismiss these products since they're so small, but most models today pack plenty of power that can easily handle most things you throw at it.

Remote access has become an essential tool, whether for troubleshooting a family member’s computer, managing a server from afar, or collaborating with colleagues across different locations. While TeamViewer has long been a dominant player in the remote desktop space, its increasing costs have left many users and small businesses searching for a viable, free alternative. Among them, two strong contenders have stood out from the crowd – RustDesk and AnyDesk.

I recently did something sort of unusual: I went to a preview event for a game that's been out for almost three years.I've played around 400 hours of Pokémon Scarlet, according to my Nintendo Switch, since it was released in late 2022. It's safe to say I know the game pretty well. And yet, when I was invited to preview Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on the Nintendo Switch 2 ahead of the new console's launch, I gladly took the opportunity to see three-year-old games I already own. I wanted to find out just how much they'd improved.I have a high jank tolerance with games - it builds character - but I'm well aware of Scarlet and Violet's shortcomings on the original Switch. There's lag. The frame rate is… inconsistent. There are online connectivity issues. For a lot of people, performance problems overshadowed what was otherwise a great new generation of Pokémon games. With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, and the accompanying free performance update for Scarlet and Violet, that might finally change.View LinkStarting up the demo of Pokémon Scarlet on the Switch 2 at The Pokémon Company International's office in Bellevue, Washington, I knew immediately where I wanted to go firs …Read the full story at The Verge.

Network-attached storage (NAS) devices have become central to home labs and small office setups, acting as backup solutions, media servers, self-hosted Docker app platforms, and whatnot. But in the rush to set them up and get them running, we often overlook basic security hygiene. While NAS makers have improved default configurations quite a bit in recent times, we often tend to leave some gaps that could potentially expose our data. Whether you have a branded NAS or an old PC brought back to life with TrueNAS, it’s worth finding and reconsidering the blind spots.

Out of all the components in your computer, if you were to rank order them by their impact on performance, RAM would not be very high on the list. Its impact on performance isn't linear, and you'll start seeing diminishing returns sooner than you would with other components. Despite that, I've upgraded my system to 64 GB of memory, far beyond what I actually require for my day-to-day workflow. I can see the comments already. "What a waste!" "What a stupid upgrade!" Your cries of "too much RAM" are not being heard. I love my 64 GB of RAM for one key reason: it allows me to be lazy, and you should give it a try.

If you haven’t signed into your Samsung account for a couple of years, then you should probably do so if you want to keep it. Samsung has started to notify customers that it considers any accounts that haven’t been used or signed into for two years as “inactive” and they will be “subject to deletion” after a new policy comes into effect on July 31st.“If an account is deleted, access to the account will be restricted and all data linked to the account will be deleted,” reads an email issued to customers on Wednesday. “Accounts and data that are deleted cannot be restored.”That could be a pain if you were previously a Samsung user and want to switch back in the future without losing your account data. The Galaxy Store and proprietary Samsung apps for things like Health and Galaxy Wearables also require a Samsung account to sign in, meaning you risk losing access to the data connected to those services. Some data may be retained after account deletion, but Samsung says this is only in accordance with legal requirements.The new inactive account policy makes exceptions for registered family accounts, accounts with “a record of accumulating/using reward points,” and accounts used to purchase products on Samsung’s website, all of which will be considered active. For anyone who falls outside of those exceptions, account deletion is thankfully easy to evade — according to Samsung, all you have to do is have “at least one” usage or activity detected for the account every two years. This includes account creation itself, logging into the Samsung account, or using a connected service while signed in.If you have no intention of ever switching back to Samsung, however, you could allow the company to nuke your account and data instead of doing it yourself manually. Just make sure you won’t be locked out of connected apps in the process.

Moving can be a huge headache. Throw in a bunch of connected gadgets that you need to factory reset or uninstall, and things get even more painful. Deciding what to do with your smart home when you move adds a whole other layer of complexity to an already difficult process.Go through your entire place and decide what should stay and what should goDo you take your smart lock or leave it? Should you uninstall your smart lighting system or leave it and provide a detailed manual for your buyer? Is it better to replace the Nest thermostat with a non-smart one or leave it and buy a newer version for your new home? What about sensors? Speakers? Smoke alarms? The list goes on. You'll need to go through your entire place and decide what should stay and what should go, all while considering your new home: where your old gadgets will fit in and where you might want to buy new ones.In this guide, we'll look at which devices make sense to take with you and what is probably easier to leave behind. I'll also discuss what to do with each gadget: how to decommission it in your old place and recommission it in your new home - or how to reset it if you plan to leave it behind.Take a smart …Read the full story at The Verge.

The one company in the video game industry with an unprecedented history is Nintendo. The company, which once started as a small hanafuda playing card maker in 1889, has stood as a foundational pillar of the industry for many years. Many people, young and old, know the name Nintendo even if they've never played a video game before. However, those who grew up playing games at a very early age know of the many releases from Nintendo that impacted pop culture. Throughout the decades, different home consoles and iconic video game series have been tied to the company, and they have helped inspire generations of game designers and bring joy to many gaming fans.

Xbox Game Pass is one of the most popular subscription services in gaming, offering 100s of games for a monthly fee. That's an overwhelming number of games, with even more getting added throughout 2025 and beyond, but we have collected a handful of special games to give you a place to start. This list includes a combination of indies and AAA, across several different genres. Game Pass has continued to expand its offerings, adding bonus in-game goodies for free-to-play titles like Call of Duty Warzone and adding a selection of retro games to stream. While more excellent games will come to the service in the future, here are seven excellent games on Xbox Game Pass.

Well, we're rapidly approaching four months until Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10. At that point, people still on the older operating system have a few choices: they can either buy a new PC, upgrade their current PC to Windows 11 (if their PC supports it), force-install Windows 11 on it (if it doesn't), truck on with Windows 10, or install a different system. And one such "different system" is Linux.

AI Darth Vader was a huge hit in Fortnite, and now Epic plans to let creators make AI-powered NPCs for their own in-game experiences. But a senior Epic exec says that creators should expect a "learning curve" when using them - something Epic had to figure out on its own.The AI Vader that Epic made lets users talk to the character using their voice and hear an AI-generated version of James Earl Jones's Vader voice talk back. It was the "culmination of a very intense effort for a character everybody understands," Saxs Persson, Epic's EVP of the Fortnite ecosystem, tells The Verge. But Epic couldn't just set an AI chatbot loose - "a lot" went into defining how Vader reacted and dialing in the voice. The work was worth it, though; in-game, Vader's voice sounds just like the movies, and when he's on your team, he's a menacing, aggressive force. Persson says that Vader was ultimately "integrated into gameplay in a way that every player could understand" and he hopes creators are able to make similar things.Vader's rollout wasn't perfect; a popular streamer, Loserfruit, was able to get Vader to swear, which Epic fixed shortly after it happened. Persson says that it was a "learning …Read the full story at The Verge.

For a while now, I've wanted to move away from Google services and also test out more open-source and self-hosted software. Immich meets both these goals by being a Google Photos alternative that I can self-host on my own device. In fact, some people argue that Immich is better than Google Photos.