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If you’ve ever scrolled through your list of installed programs in Windows, wondering why there are so many versions of the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable on there, you’re not alone. Join us as we take a look at what these things are and why there are so many installed on your PC. What Is a Visual C++ Redistributable? Microsoft Visual C++ is a integrated development environment (IDE) used to create Windows applications in the C, C++, and C++/CLI programming languages....

Many consumer SSDs claim to support encryption and BitLocker believed them. But, as we learned last year, those drives often weren’t securely encrypting files. Microsoft just changed Windows 10 to stop trusting those sketchy SSDs and default to software encryption. In summary, solid-state drives and other hard drives can claim to be “self-encrypting.” If they do, BitLocker wouldn’t perform any encryption, even if you enabled BitLocker manually. In theory, that was good: The drive could perform the encryption itself at the firmware level, speeding up the process, reducing CPU usage, and maybe saving some power....

Your smarthome devices might be running smoothly now, but at any time, a forced update or a change by the manufacturer could potentially break your device, either temporarily or permanently. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Most mainstream smarthome devices on the market rely on cloud connectivity, which means they need to be connected to the Internet and maintain contact with the manufacturer’s servers to receive updates and support....

Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up. Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically. Speed Up the Steam Web Browser RELATED: 5 Tips and Tricks to Get the Most Out of Steam...

More and more Internet connections are being filtered, from public Wi-Fi and workplace connection filtering to ISP and country-level censorship. However, there are still ways to get around this filtering and view blocked websites. Some of these methods may be restricted by harsh filtering. For example, the Great Firewall of China is now interfering with outgoing VPN connections, although VPNs were left alone for years. RELATED: Why Do Streaming Sites Geo-Block Their Content?...

Google Voice has been out for years, but many people in the US still haven’t given it a try. Google Voice offers many features you can’t get elsewhere, and almost all of them are free. There are ways to sign up for Google Voice outside of the US, but even if you manage to do so you’ll be left with a US number. That’s a bit awkward if you live outside the US....

It might seem like CES 2020 just started, but How-To Geek’s editorial team has been running all over Las Vegas for the past week, checking out the latest and greatest product announcements. After careful deliberation, the team has awarded the following 15 products with How-To Geek’s Best of CES 2020 awards. Best in Show: Roland Go:Livecast If you’re looking at the photo above and wondering why that product won Best in Show, it’s because Roland took the difficult task of setting up a live streaming studio and compacting it into an easy-to-use box....

RELATED: What Is DNS, and Should I Use Another DNS Server? Where To Buy a Domain Name When you buy a domain name, you do so through a “Domain Registrar” that manages the registration of that domain name. For most registrars, you’ll buy the domain from them and then use a hosting provider to manage the website. Some companies provide both services. Google Domains is a great tool for finding domains and integrates well with Google’s mail services....

Seriously: We installed Windows 8.1 and used it for a few hours so you wouldn’t have to. You Give Up a Better Start Menu It’s almost easy to forget, but Windows 8.1 didn’t have a real Start menu. Instead, it had a Start Screen. Windows 8.0 introduced the Start Screen with the hopes of ushering in an era of Windows tablets. It didn’t work well, and Microsoft capitulated, but only slightly....

By default, Alexa will automatically launch when you start your PC. It must launch and run in the background to listen for the “Alexa” wake word. Say “Alexa” out loud and start speaking to use Alexa on your PC. To disable hands-free mode and save some battery power, open the Alexa app and click or tap the “Hands-free” button to the right of the blue Alexa button. You can still open the Alexa app and click the Alexa button to start speaking with Alexa....

With over a billion users and billions of hours of video, the fact that YouTube’s algorithm manages to deliver what you want to watch when you visit the site is a testament to software engineering. So, how does it work? The short answer: Nobody knows the details—not even YouTube, to an extent. YouTube’s algorithm uses machine learning to suggest videos, which means there are no set rules we can tell you....

All the tools you need are bundled with macOS (give or take a cable or two, or an external drive). And, if you buy a new Mac, Apple will move your data over for free. Apple Will Migrate Your Data for Free If you don’t want to transfer your data yourself, an Apple employee can do it for you. You just have to bring your old Mac with you when you buy its replacement....

If you find yourself not needing as much Apple iCloud storage for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac—or if you’d simply like to save some money—it’s easy to cancel your iCloud storage subscription. Here’s how. How to Cancel Your iCloud Storage Subscription on an iPhone or iPad Canceling your iCloud storage plan on an iPhone or iPad is fairly simple, but the option to do so is buried in a hard-to-find place, and it’s called “downgrading....

You’ve probably been happily reading ebooks on your Kindle (or the Kindle app) for years, accruing a nice digital library full of interesting titles. But what if, for some reason, someone else needs to see that library of yours…and there are some items within that you’d rather they didn’t? Say, perhaps, one of those steamy romance novels that makes up a massive 34% of fiction sales in US? Removing Downloaded Books vs....

To convert a PDF’s pages to JPG on Windows 10, you can either use Adobe’s online conversion tool or take a screenshot of each page of your PDF and save that as JPG. We’ll show you both these methods. Using Adobe’s Online PDF to JPG Conversion Tool Adobe offers an online tool that you can use to convert your PDF files to JPG. Use this method if you want to turn all pages of your PDF into JPG files....

With so much of our lives spent online, we’re often bringing things from the real world into the digital space. Google Photos makes it easy to copy and paste text from a photo and it works for iPhone and Android. Google Photos is easily one of the best photo management apps out there. You don’t have to back up your photos to use Google’s great features, either. The ability to detect text in a photo is thanks to Google Lens abilities being built into the app....

Desktop icons should be simple, but they’re not on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and newer releases like Ubuntu 19.10. Follow these easy steps to get desktop shortcuts for your favorite applications, just like on other operating systems and other Linux desktops. Yes, It Should Be Easier Dropping shortcuts on the desktop is one of those things that Windows users do without overthinking about it. It’s unfortunate, but a newcomer to Linux can find doing that simple task a frustrating struggle....

Gmail’s Snooze function is handy, but the default times might not be suitable for you. Here’s how you can customize and change the snooze times. When you use Snooze in Gmail, the default options change depending on the time of day and week, but there are three default times: morning, afternoon, and evening. These are set to 08:00 (8:00 a.m.), 13:00 (1:00 p.m.), and 18:00 (6:00 p.m.), respectively. You can set this to any date and time manually, but it’s a bit frustrating, not to mention inefficient to do so for every email....

The stock Touch Bar on Apple’s MacBook feels a little bland. If you’ve ever wanted to spruce it up a bit with things like custom buttons and widgets, the BetterTouchBar app lets you do just that. BetterTouchTool is an app designed primarily for customizing trackpad gestures, but it also has a very powerful Touch Bar customizer built in. While the app isn’t free, $6.50 is not a bad price for such a powerful app....