The Essentials is a reoccurring column where I talk about what I use to write, work and honestly, survive the week. A few weeks ago, I learned that I will spend $100 to not get off of the couch. Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but in my pursuit to find the…

It should have been straightforward: I was updating The Windows 10 Field Guide last weekend and wanted to choose a chapter that would be easy to update. The Backup and Recovery chapter seemed like an obvious choice: Surely these age-old tools haven't changed in any meaningful way between the last two Windows versions. Right? Wrong. Microsoft,…

Our experience with cable TV has been hugely negative. And after struggling with various issues, we've decided to go back to a cord-cutting service. Yep. We're doing it again. But then I always figured we'd come back. It was simply a matter of timing. And of the services improving. As you may recall, we eventually…

Google will announce today that it is expanding the YouTube TV channel lineup. But it is also raising prices a bit too.

As you may know, my family has been trying to cut the cable TV cord since before our move to Pennsylvania last summer, but with little success. Services like YouTube TV, Sony PlayStation Vue, and Hulu with Live TV have their advantages, for sure. But the downsides are enormous and, I think, still unsolvable for…

Amazon adds two key features to Live TV with the latest Fire TV update as the company pushes forward with its cord-cutting service.

In 2017, we moved to Pennsylvania and underwent what I think of as Phase 1 of our smart home makeover. For 2018, I have bigger plans. To recap, here is what we accomplished---and failed at---from a smart home perspective in 2017: Lighting and electric. This wasn't so much "smart home" as it was just "smart":…

Happy holidays and thank you, as always, to those who wrote in with questions. A bit shorter than usual this week, but that makes sense. It feels like short holiday week even though it sort of wasn't. Microsoft ToDo will asks: What is going on with Microsoft Todo? Since its launch earlier this year there…

If you're getting an Xbox One X anyway, you'll find that it is one of the most versatile devices you can put in your living room.

Ironically, YouTube TV has never offered an elegant way to get its content on your TV. But that's about to change.

As many predicted, and as I had feared, streaming TV services simply aren't ready for prime time. So we've gone crawling back to cable TV. It wasn't supposed to be this way: As I've written over several articles now in this series, Paul's Tech Makeover: Preparing to Cut the Cord, Paul's Tech Makeover: A Cord-Cutting…

I couldn't be less happy with our TV situation, which is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to achieve at the new house. And I don't see this one having a satisfying conclusion. Three months ago, I wrote about my decision to rethink the personal technology we use as part of the move to…

Previously available on mobile and some living room devices, the Hulu with Live TV service is now available on PC and Mac via the web too.

YouTube TV is now available in 14 new markets. That covers over half of all U.S. households, according to reports.

We're still about a month away from our move to Pennsylvania, but I've started planning for our cord-cutting future. And a big part of that is choosing which online service---or, more likely, services---we'll use to replace cable TV. This isn't something that will be decided today. But with two weeks of downtime before our home…

In a second, special edition live episode of First Ring Daily, Andrew Zarian guests and we discuss cord-cutting and the mooch generation.