AirPods are one of the most-given tech gifts of the holidays, and this year the choice changed. In September 2026 Apple replaced AirPods 4 with AirPods 5, which bring the strongest noise cancellation Apple has put in an open-fit earbud, at $129 or $149 with a wireless charging case. AirPods Pro 3, Apple’s in-ear model, lists at $249 but...
Buying for a gamer is harder than it looks. The games they want are often already on their wishlist, consoles are expensive, and gaming gear is full of jargon about polling rates and Hall effect sticks. The safest gifts are the ones that improve how they already play: a better controller, a comfortable headset, a way to charge or protect what they...
Most music distributors want money before your song is even on Spotify: a yearly subscription, a fee per release, or both. RouteNote is the major exception. Its Free plan sends your music to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube Music, Amazon and dozens of other stores for nothing, keeps it there for as long as you like, and simply takes 15% of...
DistroKid is the biggest name in independent music distribution, but it isn’t right for everyone. It has no free plan, many useful extras cost more per release, and if you stop paying the yearly fee your music is taken down from Spotify, Apple Music and every other store unless you’ve paid extra per release to keep it there. In 2026 it...
Getting your songs onto Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and YouTube Music takes a distributor, and DistroKid and RouteNote are two of the most popular. They take opposite approaches. DistroKid charges an annual subscription and lets you keep 100% of your royalties. RouteNote is free: no upfront cost and no yearly fee, in exchange for 15% of what your...
Microsoft 365 now costs $99.99 a year for one person, and plenty of people who just need to write documents, open spreadsheets and edit the occasional PDF are looking for something cheaper. WPS Office is one of the most popular alternatives: a free office suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation app and PDF tools that opens Word...
Windows’ built-in Disk Management can create and delete partitions, but it cannot do most of the jobs people actually need: move Windows to a new SSD without reinstalling, resize a partition that sits next to another, merge two drives into one, or convert a system disk from MBR to GPT for Windows 11. AOMEI Partition Assistant does all of...
Every day people talk about brands, products and services without tagging them: a Reddit thread asking for a recommendation, a complaint on X, a blog post comparing tools, a news story. Social listening tools find those conversations so you can respond, spot problems early and learn what customers think. The well-known platforms such as Brand24...
DVD players are disappearing from living rooms and laptops, but many of us still have shelves of discs: family videos, concert recordings, TV box sets and films bought years ago. A DVD ripper copies a disc’s video into a file you can keep on a hard drive, a media server or your phone, often in a fraction of the space. The good news is that...
Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com have made website building a monthly subscription: stop paying and your site goes offline. WebSite X5 takes the opposite approach. It is a Windows program from Italian developer Incomedia that you buy once, use to design sites on your own computer, and publish to any web host you like — and it includes...
