Both the Radeon RX 7900 XT and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX are now available for purchase… sorta. The 7900 XT starts at $900, while the 7900 XTX starts at $1,000. Both cards are competitors to the NVIDIA RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090 respectively, and while testing shows NVIDIA’s alternatives still have a slight edge in a number of games and scenarios, AMD’s cards are clearly the more sensible options....

Wait, Isn’t that what Lifehacker is For? If that’s what you were thinking when you read the announcement, you’re absolutely right—Lifehacker is the king of helping you get things done with geeky downloads, news, and tips, but there’s just no place there for geeks to really get into a more involved discussion about any subject that you’d like to bring up. This site is our attempt to provide a great place for you to do just that, and bring some of the How-To Geek network benefits to the table—we’ve already got an active group of readers that use How-To Geek to learn about how-to topics, and I hope this can be a place for some of you to discuss how you really use your PC for actual work....

Backup and Restore Center The Windows Vista Backup and Restore Center introduced to Windows users the ability to backup your entire computer: files, programs, settings, registry – everything. Running The program created a VHD file – an image of your entire C drive. In the event of a theft or hard disk failure, your system could be restored to the exact state it was in when the last backup was taken (using the Windows Recovery Environment on your Windows installation DVD)....

Compacting/Shrinking a Database [/Compact] There are several factors which contribute to the physical disk space a SQL Server database uses. Just to name a few: Over time as records are added, deleted and updated, SQL is constantly growing and shrinking tables as well as generating temporary data structures to perform query manipulations. In order to accommodate the disk storage needs, SQL Server will increase the size of the database (usually by 10%) as needed so the database file size isn’t constantly changing....

Google’s Search Console is a tool that gives website owners a look into how Google is indexing and handling their site. It’s crucially important that you submit a sitemap so that all of your URLs will be properly indexed. The search console also contains many useful analytics tools, allowing you to view which queries bring in the most traffic, and how your pages are ranking in Google’s index. Additionally, the search console will show you if Google has found any problems with your pages, which is especially important for AMP and mobile sites that need to be very optimized....

If you often use removable USB devices like a flash drive, you are probably already familiar with the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon that sits in the system tray. The problem for many people is that the icon is tiny, and clicking it just right to bring up the menu is a pain. Can’t we just make a shortcut to bring up the dialog? Of course you can, and it’s really quite easy....

Choose Your Options Once you install the extension the first thing that you should do is go into the options. There are three categories of settings for you to sort through. At this point it is very much like a shopping spree…all that you need to do is select or deselect options to best suit your personal needs. The “Tabs Area” allows you to decide tab behavior, tab closing actions, tab clicking options, tab bar options, and tab opening style....

Download and install Media Center Studio. (Download link below) You’ll also want to make sure you have Windows Media Center closed before running Media Center Studio. Many of the actions cannot be performed with Media Center open. Once installed, you can open Media Center Studio from the Windows Start Menu. When you first open Media Center Studio you’ll be on the Themes tab. Click on the Start Menu tab....

UBoom is a relative newcomer to the portable Bluetooth speaker market, but don’t let that deter you. I tested the UBoom L in my yard as I tackled projects, dropped it in my car for music on the go, and used it as a replacement for my laptop speakers. I was wowed by its performance, especially considering its relatively low price point. What did I like and didn’t like with this Bluetooth speaker?...

Just for some background, let’s walk through what we’re talking about. Normally, when you’re browsing around your files, you’ll see thumbnails for pictures and videos that you are viewing. These thumbnails are all generated, and stored in a cache to make browsing files faster. But sometimes… the cache gets corrupted, and we need to rebuild them. Here’s an example of what happens when it goes out of whack… Rebuilding the Windows 7 Thumbnail Cache...

Fluent Notepad There is no installation required so you can run it from a flash drive as well. Download the zip file and extract it to a directory such as Program Files then run the executable. When it launches you will immediately see the difference in the UI compared to the traditional look of Notepad. From the Ribbon UI you can easily customize the fonts for your text. it operates just like the Ribbon UI in new versions of MS Office....

What Is Pen Testing? Penetration testing, often referred to as pen testing, is a form of ethical hacking in which cybersecurity professionals attack a system to see if they can get through its defenses, hence “penetration.” If the attack is successful, the pen testers report to the site owner that they found issues which a malicious attacker could exploit. Because the hacking is ethical, the people performing the hacks aren’t out to steal or damage anything....

If you’ve purchased a new computer that came with Office in a different language than your preferred language, you may have difficulty using it. Most English speakers would have trouble using a version of Office in another language, but native speakers of other languages may feel just as out of place with a English copy of Office. Even if you prefer to use Office with the interface language you already have, you may want to use the proofing tools for another language....

Set Up Focus Modes First Many automations depend on the Focus modes Apple added to iOS 15 in 2021. Apple further expanded these Focus modes in the iOS 16 update. The first thing to do is spend some time setting up the Focus modes that are relevant to you. RELATED: What’s New in iOS 16 for iPhone Head to Settings > Focus to get started. If you’ve previously automated Do Not Disturb mode, you’ll already have one Focus mode enabled....

Sure, you can point and laugh about why we’re not using a better database, like maybe PostgreSQL, but since our sites are based on WordPress, we’re stuck with MySQL and have to make the best of it. Luckily I remembered that command-line arguments exist, and looked to see if there was a way to export only a single table using mysqldump, and sure enough, there was. The syntax goes like this:...

DigitalOcean’s Managed Databases allow you to create database clusters within a few minutes. You can scale clusters at any time to add capacity as server load grows. The product incorporates automatic failover and backup capabilities. Managed Databases is a commercial product with pricing starting at $15/mo. You will accrue charges on your DigitalOcean account if you follow this tutorial. Billing is by the hour so you can spin up a cluster, briefly look around and then destroy it without paying more than a few cents....

Let’s face it: Windows can be seriously annoying sometimes, but thankfully there’s also usually a workaround or third-party utility that fixes the issue. We’ve rounded up the ten things that annoy us most, along with how to fix them. Note: this article was originally published a year ago, but we figured we’d add some more annoyances to the list and feature it again. Messy Windows Context Menus, and How to Clean Them Up One of the most irritating things about Windows is the context menu clutter that you have to deal with once you install a bunch of applications....

Whilst many Desktop enabled Ubuntu computers have a handy GUI configuration cool, this does not help when configuring headless (i.e. screenless) instances like servers. Find out how to setup a timezone from the terminal, using .bashrc. What Is .bashrc? The .bashrc file is a hidden Bash-shell specific file sitting in the root of you home directory, i.e. it’s location is ~/.bashrc. The ~ (tilde) is a shortcut to your home directory, which has a longer path, like for example /home/roel....

Note: This isn’t a new trick to most serious geeks, but it’s something useful that quite a few people don’t know. The Scenario So there you are, minding your own business and wasting time on Facebook, when Windows pops up a message telling you that you need to reboot right now… and you accidentally choose Restart now. While you’re learning new stuff, you should check out our article on how to Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer, to make sure that Windows doesn’t automatically restart on you while you’re away from your keyboard....

Brainstorming for Ideas Brainstorming is usually the first thing that we do to get ideas on our essay topic. Find a quite place and keep your mind open to any possible ideas during brainstorming. Feel free to ask your peers to give you feedback to stimulate our mind and start writing any ideas that comes to our mind without any particular organization on a paper or better yet as a ‘Mind Map’ with a simple general idea in the middle of it....