What’s the Difference Between the “Program Files (x86)” and “Program Files” Folders in Windows?

Did You Know? By the 1890s, the Pinkerton Detective Agency, a privately owned network of detectives and security agents, had 2,000 detectives and 30,000 reserves—more men than the standing army of the United States. Geek Trivia The Oligodynamic Effect Is A Phenomenon That Describes? Biocidal Metals → Knee Hyperextension → Symphonic Harmonization → Noodle Elasticity → Advertisement Download: Free Tips and Tricks Guide The Microsoft Office Toy Box - 5 Programs, 50 Tips This guide covers tips and tricks courtesy of Microsoft Certified Trainer Melissa Esquibel. The 5 programs included are: Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel and OneNote. 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. The Best Bluetooth Mechanical Keyboards How to Block Calls from a Certain Number on an iPhone How to Use Multiple Apps at Once on an iPad What's the Difference Between the "Program Files (x86)" and "Program Files" Folders in Windows? Hosted Telephony: What Are the Benefits? [Sponsored] Don’t Believe What You Read: Social Media Screenshots Are Easy to Fake How to Automatically Block Spam Calls on an iPhone How to Download Files with Your Synology NAS (and Avoid Leaving Your Computer On at Night) How to Measure Distances in Google Maps for Running, Biking, and Hiking How to See Twitter Notifications For Mentions, But Not Likes or Retweets How to Set Your Preferred Autofill Manager in Android Oreo How to Set Up a Facebook Page How to Enable Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad Drivers on Your Laptop Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Line Editor A Line Editor is an outmoded text editor that only allowed a user to edit one line of a file at a time. 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. The Keepers of the Cannon How franchises like Star Trek maintain continuity in an age of ever-expanding fictional universes. [Slate] iPhone 8 Teardown A detailed look at what's inside Apple's latest smartphone. Display and battery look easy to replace, but that glass panel on the back does not. [iFixit] Sears's History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing One hundred years ago, a retail giant that shipped millions of products by mail moved swiftly into the brick-and-mortar business, changing it forever. Is that happening again? [The Atlantic] Microsoft and Facebook just laid a 160-terabits-per-second cable 4,100 miles across the Atlantic The cable is capable of transmitting 160 terabits of data per second, the equivalent of streaming 71 million HD videos at the same time. [The Verge] The Best Bluetooth Mechanical Keyboards It’s odd that, given their booming popularity among all kinds of computer users, mechanical keyboards still have so few wireless options. Between gamers, computing purists, and pragmatists, there doesn’t seem to be much desire for Bluetooth mechanical boards. But if you’d like a mobile-friendly keyboard, or just a more aesthetically pleasing one for your desktop, there are a handful of options out there. Read This Article → How to Block Calls from a Certain Number on an iPhone If you keep getting calls from someone (anyone) you don’t want to talk to, the best thing you can do is block them. There are a few different ways to do this on the iPhone, and we’re going to take a closer look at how to manually keep those people out of your life. Read This Article → How to Use Multiple Apps at Once on an iPad iOS 11‘s new multitasking features make the iPad even more powerful. The ability to access the dock in any app allows you to more easily launch apps in split-screen mode. iOS 11 also adds a new drag-and-drop feature that allows you to move content between apps. Read This Article → What's the Difference Between the "Program Files (x86)" and "Program Files" Folders in Windows? There’s a good chance you have both the “C:\Program Files” and “C:\Program Files (x86)” folders on your Windows PC. If you poke around, you’ll see that some of your programs are installed in one folder, and some are installed in the other. Read This Article → Hosted Telephony: What Are the Benefits? [Sponsored] Hosted Telephony: What Are the Benefits? Read This Article → Don’t Believe What You Read: Social Media Screenshots Are Easy to Fake I want to show you a Tweet my coworker Justin Pot sent out. Read This Article → How to Automatically Block Spam Calls on an iPhone Nothing is quite as annoying as receiving spam calls, especially when you don’t know it’s a spam call in the first place. However, thanks to a free app, here’s how you can detect spam calls before you answer them and just plain block them altogether. Read This Article → How to Download Files with Your Synology NAS (and Avoid Leaving Your Computer On at Night) If you have a Synology NAS, you can easily configure it to download large files for you, allowing you to shut down your PC and let the NAS hum away in the background. Let’s look at how to start and schedule those downloads now. Read This Article → How to Measure Distances in Google Maps for Running, Biking, and Hiking Getting directions in Google Maps lets you easily see how far away the destination is. However, if you want to know the distance between point A and point B on a hiking or running trail, here's how to do that in Google Maps. Read This Article → How to See Twitter Notifications For Mentions, But Not Likes or Retweets If you’ve ever posted a highly-favorited tweet or been part of a popular thread, you’ve probably known the mild annoyance of having your phone overflow with dozens of notifications for retweets and favorites. If this behavior is affecting your enjoyment of Twitter (you social media wizard, you), you’ll probably want to restrict those notifications. Read This Article → How to Set Your Preferred Autofill Manager in Android Oreo One of the best new features in Android Oreo is the system-wide autofill service. Basically, if you store passwords and form data in Chrome, this information now syncs across the system for use in apps and the like. Read This Article → How to Set Up a Facebook Page Facebook Pages are a great way to promote your business, a cause, or just your hobby. Unlike Groups, which are more of a community feature, Facebook Pages work mostly like a regular Facebook Profile. You can use them to share posts, photos, videos, and whatever else you want. You can also send and receive messages. It's basically just a profile but for something that's not human. The biggest difference is that any number of people can Like and Follow the page. Read This Article → How to Enable Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad Drivers on Your Laptop Microsoft has been trying to improve the touchpad experience on Windows 10 laptops. Laptops with “Precision Touchpads” are optimized by Microsoft, support standard gestures, and can be configured from the Settings app. Unfortunately, PC manufacturers can opt out of using Precision Touchpads. Now, there’s a way to install Precision Touchpad drivers even on laptops that don’t ship with them. Read This Article → Advertisement Download: Free Tips and Tricks Guide The Microsoft Office Toy Box - 5 Programs, 50 Tips This guide covers tips and tricks courtesy of Microsoft Certified Trainer Melissa Esquibel. The 5 programs included are: Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel and OneNote. Click here to download