Recent What I Use Stories

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When I started my writing career in the mid-1990s, my mentor Gary shared with me some tips for being more productive.

I’ve been using a desktop PC of some kind at a desk of some kind for over 25 years. So transitioning to a more mobile setup is problematic.

With an eye on a more mobile future, I’ve been experimenting with alternative PC setups for both productivity and entertainment.

While traveling this past week, I noticed that Momentum Plus, the paid New Tab extension that I use, added a new Soundscapes feature.

We drove through the desert in a car with no name. We rode in a hot air balloon. We sailed down some canals. Yep. We’re in Mexico, instead of our usual home swap.

For our first international trip in almost two years, we’re visiting Mexico City, which can stand proudly alongside Paris as one of the world’s greatest destinations.

It’s been an interesting few months of tentative travel after spending most of the previous year stuck in and near my home.

On the surface, it’s not at all fair to compare the flagship OnePlus 9 Pro to the mid-range Google Pixel 4a 5G. But I have my reasons.

I’ve added a OneDrive feature I call Folder Backup to my daily workflow, which lets me sync some folders outside of OneDrive between my PCs.

Some will be amused by this, and I suppose some will even be outraged. But there is just something special about the new iPad Air.

This is when a review gets personal, when my mind narrows from its focus on the greater user base to what kinds of problems the product might solve for me.

What a difference a pandemic makes: With our vaccinations scheduled, we’ve started plotting some long-delayed travel.

About a month ago, my wife and I began plotting our first real travel in well over a year. We decided to start small, and semi-local, with a drive. To Washington D.C.

We recently switched from Roku to the Chromecast with Google TV, and now I’m sorry I waited for so long.

In March 2020, I switched from Google Fi to Mint Mobile, and I’ve saved several hundred dollars over the past year by doing so. Now what?

My approach to file management has evolved over the years, guided by both my own special form of OCD and by major improvements to cloud-based storage services.

At the end of every year, tech blogs lazily pump out “best of” lists culled from back-end site queries. And, yeah, we’ll get to that here soon enough.

The iPhone 12’s display is gorgeous but it’s also a bit small, especially with that intrusive notch. Is there even a display size sweet spot anymore?

The web is awash with ideas about how we can optimize our smartphone home screens to be more efficient and less distracted.

For the first time in over six months, I’ve had to think about which personal tech I would need for a trip away from home.

With the HP Envy 15 up and running in a quick-and-dirty fashion in my home office, it’s time to move towards a cleaner configuration.

For years, I’ve resisted using a docked laptop, but with a recent lightning strike taking down my desktop PC, I’m forced to give it a shot.

Or the cloud service provider of your choice. With a bit of organization, you can minimize the data you need to sync to each PC you use.

Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging service championed by privacy advocates. But I have some questions.

With pandemic emphasizing what’s really important, I thought this might be an interesting time to take another look at what I use every day.

Here’s a look back at the audiobooks and podcasts---especially podcast serials---that I enjoyed in the second half of 2019.

A new web browser extension will allow you to view Thurrott.com---and most of the web---in dark mode. It works with all popular browsers