It seems that, after years of complaining about the Windows 11 Start menu (and most of those complaints coming from me), Microsoft is finally planning to give it the TLC that it deserves. We already know that Microsoft plans to fix those weird Start menu search results you get from time to time, but it seems the company isn't done yet. A recent report claims that the Redmond giant will add a ton of customzation options to the Start menu so you can make it truly yours.

Two years ago I attended a picturesque outdoor wedding in August where the hot and humid weather had guests occasionally ducking into their cars to enjoy a blast of AC. Dyson’s new $99.99 handheld fan would have provided some much-needed relief then, although I’m not sure I would have been comfortable powering it up during the service or reception. The HushJet Mini Cool is as slim and sleek as Dyson’s recent thin vacuum and hair dryer, but it’s not quiet enough to earn the name “Hush.”That’s unfortunate because the HushJet Mini Cool is yet another product Dyson has redesigned to look and perform better than what’s already on the market. All of its components — including the motor, 5,000mAh rechargeable battery, and spinning blades — are safely contained inside a cylindrical body 38mm in diameter that’s easy to slip into a pocket. Many handheld fans use flexible or folding blades that are left exposed and not ideal for kids, or they stuff the moving parts into a bulbous section on top that limits pocketability.Dyson HushJet Mini CoolWhere to Buy: $99.99 at Dyson $99.99 at Amazon $99.99 at Best BuyAt 208 grams the HushJet Mini Cool is about the same weight as an iPhone 17 Pro, so it’s not a terrible burden to schlep around when temperatures soar, and it’s incredibly easy to use. A toggle switch turns the fan on and off, while a rocker button lets you step up and down through five different fan speeds indicated by a strip of five small white LEDs. There’s also an even stronger Boost Mode that’s only activated while you’re holding down the “plus” side of that rocker button.The only learning curve was remembering to grip the fan above the vent that wraps around its base so as not to block the airflow. Some added texture on the outside of the HushJet Mini Cool to naturally guide where your hand should grip it would be welcome.Dyson claims up to six hours of battery life at the fan’s lowest setting, but at its highest speed (not Boost Mode) it died after 62 minutes. I was still impressed, because I didn’t expect the fan to last that long at full power. The remaining battery life is displayed using the fan’s five white LEDs, but only when it’s turned off. Being able to track how fast the battery level drops with the fan running would be a useful way to estimate how much cooling time you have left.The HushJet Mini Cool is bottom-heavy and can be used as a self-standing fan, and Dyson includes an accessory to widen the base and improve its stability. It helps, but it’s also an accessory that’s easy to lose. And while you can power the fan indefinitely by connecting it to a power source over USB-C, you’re limited to the lowest speed setting. At that setting you’ll need to stay within about 5 feet of the fan to feel anything.Dyson’s marketing for the fan, including the HushJet branding, emphasizes how it’s engineered to be quiet. “Dyson’s obsession with acoustics means tonal comfort: with the HushJet nozzle, we’ve lowered frequencies, eliminated high-pitched whirring, and silenced the sound of whining motors,” the company said in a press release. But it was definitely not as quiet as I expected it to be.It doesn’t get anywhere near as loud as Dyson’s cordless vacuums or hair dryers, but the HushJet Mini Cool isn’t whisper-quiet, even at its lowest setting. The handheld fan also has a similar high-pitched whine as those other Dyson devices, despite its tiny electric motor spinning at less than half the speed of theirs.For the past year my family has been using Nitecore’s izzCool 10 Pro fan to beat the heat whenever AC isn’t available. Its design makes it harder to slip into a pocket, and at full power its blast is nowhere near as strong as Dyson’s — even at half power. While both fans were similarly loud at their lowest settings (measured using the NIOSH Sound Level Meter app on my iPhone), Dyson’s was well over 10 decibels louder at full power. That’s not surprising given Dyson’s fan far outperforms Nitecore’s, but the sound of the HushJet Mini Cool was generally far more noticeable, since it produced noise at higher frequencies.At a noisy outdoor music festival, crowded carnival, or bustling state fair I can see myself comfortably pushing the fan’s speed to its third or fourth speed setting without worrying about getting too many annoyed looks. But in quieter settings, like that stifling-hot outdoor wedding I attended, I would be hesitant to fire up the HushJet Mini Cool. At least until the wedding DJ took over.Compact electric air dusters like the Wolfbox MF100 are stronger and cheaper than the HushJet Mini Cool, but they’re typically much louder because they’re designed to be pointed at keyboards covered in Doritos crumbs, while fans are designed to be pointed at your head. Dyson’s HushJet Mini Cool is better at balancing size, performance, and battery life. If used nonstop it can last half a day at an amusement park. You can definitely find a quieter alternative, but I doubt you’ll find a more powerful one this size.Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge

If you're looking for a simple pair of wireless earbuds that won't break the bank, the Skullcandy Smokin’ Buds are going to be a good choice. The brand has been around for over two decades, delivering affordable and reliable audio products.

In my early years as a PC gamer, I looked at monitor arms as one of those optional accessories that made builds look better for a Reddit post, but didn't actually change how your setup felt to use. I was under the impression that as long as my monitor stand didn't take up much space on my desk and wasn't wobbly, there wasn't really anything to fix. I never questioned whether the way my monitors were positioned was actually ideal because I had just gotten used to working around whatever their built-in stands allowed.

With a vacation comes a big choice: What game should I focus on during the trip? I thought about grinding out the harder levels of Super Meat Boy 3D, but I was looking for something more chill. I could have dabbled more with Slay the Spire II, but I already know that's a game I'll be playing for a long time. I wanted something that I could really get lost in and finish in a little over a week. People of Note, a new music-focused RPG from Annapurna Interactive and Iridium Studios, turned out to be exactly what I needed.In the game, you play as aspiring pop singer Cadence. What starts as a journey to outperform a popular boy band turns into …Read the full story at The Verge.

I work with documents all day. Drafts, research dumps, client briefs, and messy meeting notes that someone insists count as a deliverable. At some point, I got tired of assuming which AI tool actually handles that kind of work well, so I tested it properly by pasting real, ugly, long-form content into Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity's free tiers and seeing what came back.

Before all this, I was blaming everything apart from the router. Swapping out smart bulbs, thinking they were the problem. I reset my camera more times than I can count. I even questioned whether smart home tech was just inherently unreliable. But the one device I never seriously considered replacing or even troubleshooting properly was the router sitting quietly in the corner, doing its job… or at least pretending to be.

A Raspberry Pi looks like the perfect NAS starter kit when you're just starting out. It's small, quiet, cheap to run, and backed by a community that has turned the little board into just about everything. I had drives, I had spare time, and I had the kind of optimism that usually shows up right before a project gets weird. On paper, it felt like an easy win.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 124, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send me your Coachella fits, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about restaurant bread and GLP-1s and Lenny Rachitsky and Artemis II fashion, watching the new boy band doc because I will always watch a boy band doc, also watching every clip I can find from Justin Bieber's Coachella set, filling the Schitt's Creek-shaped hole in my heart with Big Mistakes, getting increasingly excited about The Mandalorian and Grogu, and watering my new lawn so it …Read the full story at The Verge.

If someone wants to try Linux, but they're unsure if they want to wipe their computer for it, people often recommend dual-booting it with Windows. That way, you keep the familiar OS while also checking out your shiny new Linux distro, and if you don't like it, you can just nuke the Linux partition, and no harm is done to your Windows one.

I've never much questioned the tools I use on a daily basis, especially when they work as well as the Nvidia App. It's clean, it's modern, and it most certainly feels like an upgrade over what used to be the GeForce Experience. Sure, the Nvidia Control Panel still reigns supreme when you need the most amount of control, but the App is pretty darn good, especially thanks to features like one-click GPU overclocking and per-app optimizations.

There's a version of local LLMs that lives in my head from how they were a couple of years ago. That they’re slow, clunky, need expensive hardware to run anything worth using, and outputs that feel like a worse version of what you already have in your browser. That mental model made sense at the time because local models really were like that for a while, and the barrier to entry was high enough to write them off if you weren't a serious tinkerer.