Should You Disable Windows Services to Speed Up Your PC?

Did You Know? Several U.S. coins have ridges around the edge, knowing as “reeding”; the number of reeds varies among coins–dimes have only 118, but the much larger, “regular” dollar coins have 198 (the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins have 133). Geek Trivia Whether Wood Is Considered “Hardwood” Or “Softwood” Is Determined By? Seed Type → Leaf Type → Wood Density → Grain Direction → Advertisement Download 2016 Ultimate IT Security Kit (over $25 value!) FREE for a limited time Kit includes "Mobile Security: How to Secure, Privatize, and Recover Your Devices" plus 3 other resources to help you understand IT security. Click here to download Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles By popular request, we're including a quick list of the daily articles at the top of the daily email as well as the regular format near the bottom. How to Use the Google Drive Desktop App to Sync Your Files Anywhere How to Find a Lost iPhone’s Owner by Asking Siri Should You Disable Windows Services to Speed Up Your PC? How to Control Your Home Theater PC with a Logitech Harmony Remote How to Set a Screen Time Limit on Your iPhone or iPad With Guided Access How to Use the Alexa Voice Assistant on Your Amazon Fire TV How to Add Nest Thermostat Presets to Your Phone's Home Screen How to Control Your Sonos with Your Apple Watch How to Factory Reset Your Android TV How to Manually Calculate Only the Active Worksheet in Excel How To Install .deb Packages Without “Ubuntu Software” in Ubuntu 16.04 How to Access Your iPhone’s Field Test Mode (and See Your Real Signal Strength) How to Password Protect Documents and PDFs with Microsoft Office Geek Comic Today's Tech Term TTL TTL (short for Time To Live) is a mechanism/parameter that sets a time limit in network packets in order to stop them from propagating endlessly through a network. The TTL value is reduced each time the packet “encounters” a router, and when it reaches zero, the packet is discarded. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Hulu will reportedly challenge cable companies with its own internet TV service Live streams of ABC, Fox, and ESPN could be coming early next year. [The Verge] From Paintbox to PC: How London became the home of Hollywood VFX All it took was talent, fortuitous insight, and 30 years of relentless tech advances. [ArsTechnica] How Games Are Changing the Museum Experience Museums are applying mobile gaming principles and gameification theories to engage visitors in new and novel ways. [Motherboard] How to Use the Google Drive Desktop App to Sync Your Files Anywhere Google Drive has become one of the premiere cloud storage options for millions of computer users over the past few years. But it isn’t just about Google Docs and Slides–you can also use it to sync your other files across computers, and access them offline, without a browser. Read This Article → How to Find a Lost iPhone’s Owner by Asking Siri You found somebody’s lost iPhone. They were cautious enough to enable a passcode, so you can’t root around in their contacts looking for the owner. If Siri is enabled, though, she can help you get the iPhone back to the right person. Read This Article → Should You Disable Windows Services to Speed Up Your PC? Windows comes with a bunch of services running in the background. The Services.msc tool allows you to view these services and disable them, but you probably shouldn’t bother. Disabling the default services won’t speed up your PC or make it any more secure. Read This Article → How to Control Your Home Theater PC with a Logitech Harmony Remote So you’ve got a fancy new Logitech Harmony remote, ready to control your entire home theater–but one of your devices is a home theater PC. Don’t worry: Your Harmony can control your PC too, it just isn’t immediately obvious how. Read This Article → How to Set a Screen Time Limit on Your iPhone or iPad With Guided Access Guided Access allows you to set a screen time limit on your iPhone or iPad. This is great if you have a child–they can only play games for as long as you choose. The iPhone or iPad will be automatically locked after the time limit expires. Read This Article → How to Use the Alexa Voice Assistant on Your Amazon Fire TV Unbeknownst to many Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick owners, you can easily access Amazon’s powerful voice assistant, Alexa, right from your Fire TV device. Read This Article → How to Add Nest Thermostat Presets to Your Phone's Home Screen One big feature of the Nest Thermostat is the ability to automatically adjust the temperature for you by learning your patterns over time. But if you’d rather have total manual control over the Nest, here’s how to add some quick and easy temperature presets to your phone’s home screen. Read This Article → How to Control Your Sonos with Your Apple Watch While we like our Sonos player for its excellent functionality and usability across an abundance of devices, it unfortunately is missing an official Apple Watch app, which would really round things out. Read This Article → How to Factory Reset Your Android TV There comes a time in every user's life when they have to reset something back to its factory default. Perhaps the device is acting wonky and needs a fresh start, you're getting rid of it, or you want a clean slate for some other reason. The good news is that it's incredibly easy to factory reset your Android TV box, regardless of the manufacturer. Read This Article → How to Manually Calculate Only the Active Worksheet in Excel If you have large workbooks with a lot of formulas on the worksheets, recalculating the workbooks can take a long time. By default, Excel automatically recalculates all open workbooks as you change values in the worksheets. However, you can choose to recalculate only the current worksheet manually. Read This Article → How To Install .deb Packages Without “Ubuntu Software” in Ubuntu 16.04 Ubuntu 16.04 is the first version to include the new replacement software app, GNOME Software–and it already has a show-stopping bug. Currently, in Ubuntu 16.04, it is not possible to install third-party applications using the Software app. Read This Article → How to Access Your iPhone’s Field Test Mode (and See Your Real Signal Strength) The iPhone has a hidden “field test” mode that shows all kinds of technical details about signal strength, cell towers, and more. Most of it is not very useful to the average person, but you can make it show you your phone’s actual signal strength instead of just how many bars you’re getting. And that can be useful. Read This Article → How to Password Protect Documents and PDFs with Microsoft Office Microsoft Office lets you encrypt your Office documents and PDF files, allowing no one to even view the file unless they have the password. Modern versions of Office use secure encryption that you can rely on–assuming you set a strong password. Read This Article → Advertisement Download 2016 Ultimate IT Security Kit (over $25 value!) FREE for a limited time Kit includes "Mobile Security: How to Secure, Privatize, and Recover Your Devices" plus 3 other resources to help you understand IT security. Click here to download