One of the first steps after setting up a PC and optimizing the BIOS/UEFI is installing all the programs you need. This can include the browser, Steam, MSI Afterburner, VLC, and PowerToys, among others. While these programs are essential on any gaming PC, some users can get carried away and install performance-hungry bloatware that does little to help their PC. Whether they are first-party bundled programs or needless third-party apps, you're better off without them. After building PCs for almost 20 years, I've learned not to waste my time with 5 particular types of PC programs.

The talk of the town right now is RAM. Thanks to memory shortages, DRR5 kits are at an all-time high price point and that's if you can get your hands on a set of sticks at all. If you're hoping to upgrade to 64GB of RAM or pick up a brand-new gaming rig or laptop with a whole load of 'future-proofed' memory, then let me stop you right there.

It's been five years since Capcom revealed Pragmata, their brand-new sci-fi game. The game was initially supposed to come out in 2022, and it's certainly seen its fair share of delays, but thankfully, we can finally get a taste of it through a rather fantastic demo that Capcom just put out exclusively on PC.

The holiday season is when many different sales on video games start to pop up. The Steam Winter Sale is one of the best ones for gamers looking to increase the number of titles in their library, especially when the deals are fantastic and too good to pass up. For PC players, there's an abundance of sales on classic and new Star Wars video games that have ridiculous discounts for those who may have missed playing them before. But the best one that Star Wars fans can get now is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor while it's on sale on the Steam Winter Sale.

I have built just enough PCs in my lifetime to know that while I don't have all the answers about what you must do, I am painfully familiar with what you shouldn't do. One mistake that I do keep seeing in builds is skimping out on the SSD that runs the operating system. It's an understanding temptation given the state of the hardware market recently, and some budget drives do look good on spec sheets and make perfect sense for bulk storage. So, what's the harm in saving a few bucks?

I've been using Unifi Protect for a while. It's the backbone of my home security system, and I opted into it because it seamlessly slots into my Unifi Wi-Fi set up as well. At this point, the entire set up is so well integrated into my home that it is effectively infrastructure, and I plan to stay within the ecosystem. And for the most part, it works great. It'll record 24/7, notify me when something moves within my selected frame, and keep my footage stored safely. Basically, everything a security system is supposed to do. Well, almost.

For all the genuine progress in PC hardware over the last decade in things like performance and reliability, one other attribute has quietly regressed, and that's how understandable failures are. Older systems tended to fail decisively, with diagnoses that were easy to come by. A bad stick of RAM meant no POST. A dying hard drive clicked itself into an early grave. Power issues shut the system off, full stop. Modern PCs, by contrast, are fantastic at almost working. And that makes troubleshooting far harder than it used to be.

Looking back at the blur that was 2025, it was a banner year for artificial intelligence. We saw models get faster, "agents" become more than just a buzzword, and multimodal capabilities explode. Yet, amidst the noise, Google’s NotebookLM remains largely unrivaled in its specific niche. The second half of the year also brought several important changes for users, such as Gemini 3 support, Infographics, Slide Decks, and Deep Research that scours the web so we don't need to. The core reason for this tool's success over all others remains unchanged: an AI fiercely loyal to the supplied documents, and nothing else.

A NAS has a lot of moving parts that come together to form a storage system that feels complete. With centralization of data, backups and redundancies in place, and cross-platform file availability set up, the NAS feels like a clear upgrade over having files scattered across laptops and external drives. Having done so much to get the setup in place, you start to think that once the NAS is up and running, the hard part is done.

Buddy’s in space. When your kid starts showing a preference for one of their stuffed animals, you're supposed to buy a backup in case it goes missing. I've heard this advice again and again, but never got around to buying a second plush deer once "Buddy" became my son's obvious favorite. Neither, apparently, did the parents in Google's newest ad for Gemini.It's the fictional but relatable story of two parents discovering their child's favorite stuffed toy, a lamb named Mr. Fuzzy, was left behind on an airplane. They use Gemini to track down a replacement, but the new toy is on backorder. In the meantime, they stall by using Gemini to create images and vid …Read the full story at The Verge.

Whether you're waiting for a product to get back in stock or for a sale, you've probably wanted a tool that lets you know when there are updates to a certain website. And that's just one of the more typical use cases; there could be many more reasons you might want to be notified of any changes to a website, whether it's because you're waiting for some news to drop or anything else.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog, and in the world of computing, nothing comes closer to the definition than a mini PC. Sure, they're littered around enterprise workstations and used as POS devices, but the average computer buyer still imagines a large mid-tower chassis when they think of a desktop. In the past decade, these diminutive boxes have become engineering marvels that shrank a computer down to the basics, eliminating excessive RGB lighting, wind-tunnel fan configurations, and the functionally unhelpful glass panels. This makes mini PCs great secondary mobile workstations that shuttle your workflow between a home setup and workplace without the leaden heft of a 16-inch laptop.