Building a smart home that responds in less than a second is no joke. Take it from someone who wrestled with Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod to build a smart home that fires commands and automations after a couple of seconds. And that too, if they worked at all.

GPUs today are absurdly powerful, and there's no denying it. Even mid-range cards can brute-force their way through games that would've melted high-end hardware just a few years ago. And yet, despite all that raw horsepower, we're still nudged into tweaking settings just to get the "right" experience. Be it lower latency, smoother frame pacing, better power behavior, or fewer hitches, we all have to dive into our GPU's driver settings, looking for toggles we just found out exist.

Microsoft is testing its much-needed refresh for the Windows 11 Run menu, offering a modern interface that the company says is faster and comes with support for dark mode. The redesign is rolling out now to Windows 11 Insiders in the new Experimental Channel.In a blog post explaining the changes, Microsoft says it decided to drop the Run menu's "Browse" button - a shortcut to user files - after finding "very low usage." Instead, Microsoft added support for a new "~" command, which leads to your user directory.Microsoft says it built the new Run menu using code from Command Palette, a utility available through PowerToys that allows you t …Read the full story at The Verge.

I'm not one to glaze Intel CPUs when they have been mired in controversy and subpar generational improvements for the last two years. Many Raptor Lake CPU owners suffered lasting damage to their chips due to an overvoltage bug, which severely damaged confidence in the company's products. Then, the Arrow Lake CPUs disappointed everyone with poor gaming performance and stability issues. So, you'd be forgiven for ignoring Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs, but it's not hyperbole when I say that these chips are about to break new ground for Chipzilla. Nova Lake is not only bringing record-breaking core counts, but also adopting cutting-edge transistor and power delivery technologies. Moreover, it aims to go toe-to-toe with the Ryzen 3D V-Cache that has given AMD its long-standing edge in gaming. And it also plans to kickstart a new era of longer-lasting Intel sockets, rivaling AMD at its own game.

I'm sure most of us are obsessed with AMD's X3D CPUs at this point. It's an easy recommendation for gamers, and I totally get why. Ever since I ditched my 5900X for a 5800X3D, I've been a huge fan myself because it finally allowed my RTX 4090 to stretch its legs at 1440p. It's why I upgraded to the 9800X3D recently, even though I didn't necessarily need it. When you see that kind of uplift in FPS and GPU usage firsthand, it's hard not to want to chase it again.

Smart home displays like the Echo Show or Google Nest Hub are notorious for being underpowered, laggy, and filled with ads. Without even realizing it, you've got a better alternative: sitting in a junk drawer already at home. Your old Pixel 6 has a Tensor chip, a high-refresh-rate OLED screen, and a battery that also can be bypassed for straight power from the USB port. The Google Pixel is the ultimate sleeper smart home device.

When shopping for a mini PC, there's a lot to look for. CPU is a large part of the equation, and it's one of the things I look at first, but it's not the most important one. A powerful CPU is great, but the latest and greatest from both Intel and AMD don't always have the most PCIe lanes, even if they have the best performance. The biggest differentiator between mini PCs now is expansion space, and one of the things that's bit me hard in the past is ignoring PCIe lane count—the lifeblood of a mini PC's ability to expand.

Jellyfin is one of those self-hosted apps that can look simple at first glance, especially if you only use it as a place to dump movies and TV shows.

For more than two decades now, Adobe has unilaterally dominated the image and video editing space, and it bothers me as a hobbyist photographer. Photoshop, Lightroom CC, and Lightroom Classic are the industry standard for photo management and RAW file processing, and I wouldn't mind paying per download, but no. Adobe milks its users with a monthly subscription fee.

Apple's Mac Mini now starts at $799 after the company pulled the $599 option with 256GB of storage from its online store, as spotted earlier by MacRumors. The model's discontinuation comes just one day after Apple CEO Tim Cook said during an earnings call that a chip shortage will impact its Mac products in the coming months."If you look forward to June, the majority of our supply constraints will be on several Mac models," Cook said. "We think looking forward that the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio may take several months to reach supply-demand balance." He added that both devices saw "higher-than-expected demand" as well, with many people b …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you need a high-performance gaming monitor on the cheap, then this one from Asus is going to be right up your alley. It features a 380Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms response time, along with a host of other features that should make gaming a true pleasure.

If you're someone who loves to read, an e-reader is an absolute must. It's way easier on the eyes when compared to a phone or tablet, and the battery life can last for weeks at a time. While I used to use a Kindle, I recently switched over to a Kobo Libra Colour.