Articles by Jerry Hildenbrand

OnePlus makes phones as good or better than any other company, but so far the company hasn’t been able to break through to the world of Apple and Samsung.

Most of us don’t buy electronics the same way a typical consumer does. We’re enthusiasts who like to read websites that bring news and commentary about the products that interest us and a list of something like the best Android phones include offerings from companies like Google and OnePlus in addition to Samsung.

Making the best product isn’t enough to sell the most phones.

But if you walk into a retail store that sells phones, you’ll quickly notice a lack of diverse products that we all know are really great. Instead, everyone is either buying an iPhone or a Samsung phone. That’s fine because both companies make great products that appeal to people for more reasons than just the name.

But every one of the companies that aren’t in that elite tier when it comes to sales, like OnePlus or Xiaomi, would love to be there. What …

Switch to the right carrier with as little pain as possible.

Changing your phone carrier can be stressful. There are a lot of reasons to change your carrier whether you’re looking to find better coverage or just save some money on your plan. Shopping around and seeing so many different choices and prices can be overwhelming but once you know what to look out for, it can be a smooth process. If you’re ready to move on to a new carrier, here are five things you need to know.

Switching carriers Coverage, coverage, coverage

Any time we talk about carriers and their service, coverage gets mentioned. That’s because it is the single most important thing you need to consider before you sign or buy anything. There is no value in paying for a service that doesn’t work for you.

Start by looking at online coverage maps. These are never 100% accurate (the providers even acknowledge this) but can be a good starting point. If you’re shown in an area of full coverage and not on the fringe of s…

Google tells you exactly what to expect when you open an incognito tab in Chrome, but that’s just not enough.

A federal judge has denied Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) request to dismiss a class-action lawsuit over Google’s Chrome incognito mode, citing that the company “did not notify users that Google engages in the alleged data collection while the user is in private browsing mode.”

Google products are secure, but that doesn’t have anything to do with privacy.

There are plenty of things that may come to mind when hearing this ruling. Google never claims that incognito is private and even warns you that your web activity is still visible to any website on the internet, including ones that use Google’s advertising services. But what matters right now is the opinion of an appointed federal judge.

Google, of course, disagrees and, in a written statement to Bloomberg says, “We strongly dispute these claims, and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them. Incognito m…

Google has us use the cloud for everything, so why did it take this long for your phone to work better with your Chromebook?

Chromebooks are now 10 years old and Google recognized the milestone with an announcement about some features that a lot of us have been wanting for a while. Some, like an expanded clipboard that can hold more than one copied item at once, were nice surprises but there are two features that should have been part of Chrome OS since it launched: Phone Hub and Nearby Share.

In the end, the best features are the ones you’ll enjoy using.

Yes, both are newish ideas “borrowed” from Microsoft Windows and Apple’s macOS, but they are ideas that are so Google-like I can’t believe they didn’t originate in the Mountain View thinktank.

In case you aren’t sure what these are and what they can do, they are ways to make your Chromebook communicate with your Android phone. Phone Hub for a Chromebook is a little different than how it’s done between a Windows 10 PC and you…

The best wireless security cameras can be really great tools to have throughout your home. Not only can you use one to keep an eye on your valuables inside and outside of your home, but they are also used in sensitive environments like hospitals and police stations. They’re like an extra set of eyes that never blink or fall asleep on the job.

Smart security cameras can be great tools when properly used and secured.

Most of these types of cameras transmit video to some sort of cloud account where you can view them at your leisure from any device with an internet connection, and that can become a problem as seen in the latest “hack” of over 150,000 cameras from Verkada.

Hack isn’t really the right word to use here but the results amounted to the same thing. Apparently, an administration login was found on the internet that allowed a group of hackers to view some footage that should never have been made public. Videos from hospital intensive care units, from the production line a…

You absolutely do not need 18GB of RAM in your phone, but having it there doesn’t hurt anything. Plus it’s kind of cool!

Yep. The new ASUS Republic of Gamers Phone 5 Ultimate (that’s a mouthful) has up to 18 GB of RAM under the hood. That’s enough to store over 19 billion ASCII characters if you were writing the longest email ever or even enough to play Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing enabled if it were on your video card, so it’s a lot.

Unneccessary? ✔️ Cool anyway? ✔️

It’s also completely unnecessary but so very cool. Don’t ask me why I think it’s so cool because I don’t really have an answer other than “you can have 18GB of RAM inside a phone and that’s so cool!” but I know there are at least a few people out there that agree with me on that.

Enough about the cool factor, though. The real question would be how practical it is to have 18GB of RAM inside a phone, no matter if it’s sold as a gaming phone or not. That one is easy to answer — it’s not practical at all…

Most RPi4 or Raspberry Pi 400 owners pair their new kits with one of the best Raspberry Pi screens, prioritizing touch controls and portability over display size. What you may not know is both systems support dual monitor output for up to 4K resolution at 60Hz, making them great as DIY media centers or retro gaming consoles. Whether you care more about resolution, refresh rate, color fidelity, or other specs, here are the best monitors for the Raspberry Pi.

Easy on your eyes

Asus VP28UQG 28″ Monitor 4K/UHD

Staff Favorite

ASUS hits the right price with an affordable 4K gaming monitor in the 28-inch range. You’ll get a 1ms response time and max 60Hz refresh rate, plus ASUS’s awesome Eye Care tech that lowers the blue light and reduces flickering. It’s great for a retro gaming emulator that’ll keep your games running smoothly and protect your eyes.

$250 at Amazon

Autoadjustment Engage

BenQ EL2870U 28 inch 4K Monitor for Gaming

BenQ’s 28-inch EL2870U is a 1ms dual-HDMI …

Best answer: The Raspberry Pi 400 uses a unique mainboard to house all the components and connectors that isn’t sold separately at this time so repairs aren’t something you can do yourself.

There aren’t many parts

If you watch a teardown video of the Raspberry Pi 400, you’ll see that inside there are really only two parts outside of the plastic casing itself: a mainboard and a heatsink. The heatsink spans the length of the keyboard and also keeps the board and the whole keyboard from flexing too much, so it does double duty. And that’s it. Really.

That means “repairing” a Raspberry Pi 400 would be removing a mainboard that’s gone bad and replacing it. It’s actually really easy to open the casing and removing those two parts is just as simple. The problem is that you can’t buy one separately. At least right now.

On the official Raspberry Pi forums, James Hughes, the principal software e and forums moderator for the company answered the question about making the mainboard availab…

The Raspberry Pi 400 is a great little light-duty desktop PC on its own and makes a great DIY Chromebox thanks to the developers of FydeOS. While it might not have the same processing power as the best Chromebox out there, most of us will find it’s more than adequate for running Chrome OS — or ChromiumOS, in this case. Best of all, since everything lives on an SD card you’re not losing any functionality — swap cards and boot back into a standard Linux distribution any time.

Products used in this guide

All-in-one keyboard PC: Raspberry Pi 400 Kit ($160 at Amazon)
Your storage: SanDisk 128GB Ultra MicroSDXC card ($20 at Amazon)
An SD to USB adapter: Anker USB 3 SD card reader ($14 at Amazon)

You’ll also need access to a “regular” PC to download the image and flash it to your SD card using a program called Etcher.

Install the software

Visit the Chromium on Raspberry Pi Github page and download the prebuilt system image.
Insert the SD card into the computer you plan on using …

Google is simply doing what it does best — keeping its extras to itself.

I’ve seen something being shared around that looks like terrible news for anyone who loves the way Chrome can render a web page but hates the extra bloat that’s baked into Google’s browser. According to It’s FOSS — a web site dedicated to all things open-source and a site I read regularly — third-party browsers that use Chromium are being locked out of certain features because Google is worried about market share.

That would be a devastating loss to you, me, and the internet as a whole if it were the case, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the market share of Chrome or that Google really cares about the particular features in play here. It’s just Google making sure that only you and it have access to sensitive information stored in your Google account.

What is going on here?

Starting on March 15, 2021, developers writing Chromium-based browsers like Brave or Microsoft Edge can no longer ha…