Featured Articles - The Best of How-To Geek

How To Fix the 10 Biggest Windows Annoyances

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, a...

Lowell Heddings Nov 4th, 2010

BitTorrent for Beginners: Share Large Files Using Your Own Private Tracker

Want to share some large files with a few friends, but worried about how you’ll keep the file transfer private? Here’s how to use uTorrent as a simple tracker and share files privately with your friends....

YatriTrivedi Nov 1st, 2010

The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 3: Layers

Your layer panel is one of the most important within Photoshop. Whenever you use Photoshop, you’ll work spend a lot of time working in it.

Eric Z Goodnight Nov 1st, 2010

The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 2: Panels

One of the best features of Photoshop is one of the worst, as well: you are overwhelmed with options. Have a quick look through the default panels and learn more of what Photoshop can do in your hands....

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 27th, 2010

BitTorrent for Beginners: Protecting Your Privacy

Photo by Benjamin Gustafsson

YatriTrivedi Oct 27th, 2010

What is the Linux Kernel and What Does It Do?

A kernel is the lowest level of easily replaceable software that interfaces with the hardware in your computer. It is responsible for interfacing all of your applications that are running in “user mode” down to th...

Justin Garrison Oct 26th, 2010

How to Create a Pumpkin Carving Stencil in Photoshop

Sick of the same boring Jack O’Lantern faces? For something different this year, fire up Photoshop and make your own custom stencils out of Photographs or nearly any kind of image.

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 26th, 2010

The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 1: The Toolbox

Photoshop is one of the most intimidating programs for any beginner, but has powerful image editing ability for any skill level. Look through a fresh install of CS5, and learn the basic tools and info to help you get started....

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 25th, 2010

BitTorrent for Beginners: How To Get Started Downloading Torrents

Image by jacobian

YatriTrivedi Oct 21st, 2010

What’s the Difference Between Pixels and Vectors?

As the basis of nearly every image format worth using, Pixels and Vectors are the broad categories of modern 2D image files. But what are they exactly, and how are they different?

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 21st, 2010

What’s the Difference Between HDMI and DVI? Which is Better?

Are you confused by the barrage of video cables available today? Let’s take a look at the most important video cables today, HDMI and DVI, and see what’s the differences between the two.

Matthew Guay Oct 20th, 2010

Getting Started With the New Windows Live Mesh 2011

Recently Microsoft has been indecisive with it’s Live Mesh / Sync cloud based services. After introducing Live Mesh Public Beta and some renaming, it’s now called Live Mesh 2011, and we’ll show you how to get started wi...

Brian Burgess Oct 15th, 2010

What is Cloud Computing and What Does This Stupid Buzzword Mean?

The other day a reader wrote in asking if cloud computing could help save his hard drive space, which made me realize that it’s time to talk about exactly what this moronic buzzword really means.

Lowell Heddings Oct 14th, 2010

The 10 Cleverest Ways to Use Linux to Fix Your Windows PC

You might not be ready to accept Linux as your desktop yet, but you can still use it to save your Windows PC—whether you need to reset passwords, recover deleted files, or scan for viruses, here’s how to do it....

Lowell Heddings Oct 12th, 2010

Use Photoshop Channels to Elegantly Remove Backgrounds from Images

There are those occasions where the Magic Eraser is just too frustrating to use and there’s an opportunity to remove the background without all of that tedious erasing. In this How-To, you’ll see how to use Channe...

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 12th, 2010

Ubuntu 10.10 Gives Netbooks an Innovative New Look [Screenshot Tour]

Ready to breathe new life into your netbook? Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 includes an innovative new look and feel and support for most netbooks without any extra configuration. Let’s take a look at the newest features....

Matthew Guay Oct 11th, 2010

How to Use Photoshop Smart Objects to Automate Multi-Object Editing

Ever lay out a page of multiple business cards (or other project) to print, only to have to come back to perform dozens of annoying edits? Photoshop Smart Objects can automate this process and turn dozens of annoying steps in...

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 11th, 2010

Ubuntu 10.10 Improves Your Linux Desktop Experience [Screenshot Tour]

Ubuntu 10.10 is the first version of Ubuntu to come with the Ubuntu font family, and it uses it for many user interface elements by default.

Trevor Bekolay Oct 10th, 2010

Quickly Remove Backgrounds in Photoshop Using the Magic Eraser

One of the most common questions I get from inexperienced Photo editors is “How do I remove the background from my picture?” There are probably dozens of ways in any version of Photoshop to do this, and each has its chall...

Eric Z Goodnight Oct 8th, 2010

Ask How-To Geek: What’s Wrong With Writing Down Your Password?

Recently a reader asked me why she wasn’t supposed to write down her passwords—which is a very good question. Ignoring all the geeky password manager talk, why can’t a home user write down passwords? Let’s examine thi...