The Pros and Cons of Buying Phones from Your Carrier

Did You Know? J.K Rowling, author of the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise, was a self-made female billionaire (as a heart-warming aside, she is no longer a billionaire due to extensive charitable donations). Geek Trivia Before Star Trek, Multiple Cast Members Appeared On Another Space-Themed Show Called? Atom Squad → Space Patrol → Men Into Space → Space Command → Advertisement Dashlane - Never Forget Another Password Dashlane has a slick Web 2.0-type interface with a host of similar features--like syncing, password auditing, assisted automatic password changes, and alerts in case of security breaches. Dashlane has definitely led the pack in the good interface department 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 How to Embed Fonts in a Microsoft Word Document What Is an eSIM, and How Is It Different From a SIM Card? How to Turn Your iPhone On and Off Without Using the Power Button The Pros and Cons of Buying Phones from Your Carrier How to Create and Manage Lists with Alexa What Is trustd, and Why Is It Running on my Mac? How to Remove “3D Objects” From This PC on Windows 10 How to Enable or Disable “Now Playing” on the Pixel 2 How to Disable Handoff on Your iPhone and Mac How to Avoid Fake and Scammy Amazon Sellers Today's Review Geek Articles Thank God You Can’t Blowup Your iPhone By Double Charging It Best Travel Pillows for On-The-Road Comfort The iPhone 8’s All-Glass Design Makes It (Shockingly) Hard to Drop Geek Comic Today's Tech Term OP OP (short for Original Poster) is an abbreviation used in forums to refer to the person who starts a discussion thread. 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. Tech Goes to Washington Facebook was questioned by US Senators this week; here are the highlights with some commentary. [Stratechery] Microsoft, Porsche, and Siemens invest in metal 3D printer company Markforged Metal 3D printing is coming, and could change manufacturing forever. [Quartz] NASA investigates invisible magnetic bubbles in outer solar system Mercury's magnetic field is much weaker than Earth's; Jupiter's is bigger. NASA is sending out probes to understand them all. [Phys.org] Cosmic rays reveal mysterious void in Egypt's Great Pyramid Thousands of years later there's things we still don't know about those structures; scientists are detecting cosmic rays interaction to get a better look. [The Washington Post] How to Embed Fonts in a Microsoft Word Document When you email someone a copy of your Word document or PowerPoint presentation and they don’t have a font installed, Microsoft Office shows that document with the default font instead. This can mess up the whole layout and make the document look completely different, but you can fix this by embedding fonts into your documents. Read This Article → What Is an eSIM, and How Is It Different From a SIM Card? With the launch of the Apple Watch 3, the term “eSIM” has been thrown around a lot. And now, Google’s Pixel 2 is the first phone to use this new technology, it’s time we take a closer look at what it is, what it does, and what this means for consumers moving forward. Read This Article → How to Turn Your iPhone On and Off Without Using the Power Button Apple has gradually started removing every breakable, physical button on the iPhone—like the Home button, which isn't even a real button on the iPhone 7 and 8. There are, however, still a few physical buttons that remain: the volume buttons and the Power button. Read This Article → The Pros and Cons of Buying Phones from Your Carrier I’m sure you’ve heard it a hundred times: don’t buy phones from your carrier. The thing is, it’s not that black and white. There are legitimate reasons why it’s okay to buy from your carrier…on top of the reasons you may want to avoid it. Let’s talk about the pros and cons. Read This Article → How to Create and Manage Lists with Alexa Until recently, Alexa would only let you create a shopping list and a to-do list. Now, you can create any kind of list you want. Here’s how to make it happen. Read This Article → What Is trustd, and Why Is It Running on my Mac? So you found something called trustd running on your Mac, and are now wondering if it can be…trusted. The good news is you have nothing to worry about: this is part of macOS. Read This Article → How to Remove “3D Objects” From This PC on Windows 10 Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update adds a “3D Objects” folder to This PC. It even appears in File Explorer’s sidebar. Microsoft is clearly trying to promote Paint 3D and Windows 10’s other new 3D features, but you can hide the folder if you don’t like it—you just need to dig into the registry. Read This Article → How to Enable or Disable “Now Playing” on the Pixel 2 The Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL bring a lot of cool new features to Android users, including an awesome Now Playing utility that actively listens for music in your environment and displays the current track on the ambient display. Read This Article → How to Disable Handoff on Your iPhone and Mac Handoff is a really great feature of iOS and macOS if you're the only person who uses your devices. It lets you seamlessly move from doing something on your Mac to doing it on your iPhone, and vice versa. Read This Article → How to Avoid Fake and Scammy Amazon Sellers Amazon is one of the biggest direct-to-consumer marketplaces on the planet. And not just of its own goods and services: though the company operates huge warehouses all over the world, it also lets smaller companies sell harder-to-find items on its marketplace, including individual sellers of new and used items. But with a relatively wide-open policy towards third party sellers, a few with less than noble intentions are sure to slip through the cracks. Here’s how to spot them. Read This Article → Advertisement Dashlane - Never Forget Another Password Dashlane has a slick Web 2.0-type interface with a host of similar features--like syncing, password auditing, assisted automatic password changes, and alerts in case of security breaches. Dashlane has definitely led the pack in the good interface department Click here to download