MakeUseOf

8 USB generations, ranked from pointless upgrade to game changer

Gavin Phillips — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 15:01:12 GMT

There are four main USB generations, spanning USB 1.0 to the latest, USB4. Within each generation, different implementations typically deliver better specs, faster speeds, better connectivity, and so on, until the next full generational jump.

Windows 11's Dev Drive made my work folders faster, and almost nobody has turned it on

Afam Onyimadu — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:30:12 GMT

Most "free performance" tweaks for Windows end up making little measurable difference. I was skeptical about the free Windows setting that's supposed to speed up development folders, but I still tried it on my developer folder. It was surprising to see how much of the frustration of waiting on installs and builds it took away. The feature is called Dev Drive, and it's sitting unnoticed in your Settings.

Google Messages lets you edit texts now but the fine print matters

Brady Snyder — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:01:12 GMT

Google Messages users have been able to edit their chats for over two years, but there's always been a big caveat. Message editing only works for chats that are sent using Rich Communication Services (RCS), not those sent via SMS or MMS. Previously, RCS adoption wasn't widespread enough to count on the message editing feature in Google Messages. Now that many phones and carriers natively support RCS in Google Messages, there's a good chance that the app's message editing button will actually do what you expect it to.

Windows Media Center was ahead of its time, and Microsoft let it fade

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:00:13 GMT

Mention Windows Media Center today, and you will probably be met with a shrug, assuming it is not confused with Windows Media Player. Yet the fragmented home-entertainment systems many of us assemble now, where Plex, Jellyfin, and Kodi all solve the same basic television problem in slightly different ways, resemble the unified experience Microsoft tried to place behind one interface in 2002.

The real story behind Jobs' 1979 PARC visit is way stranger than the theft narrative

Rob LeFebvre — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:01:12 GMT

In December 1979, 24-year-old Steve Jobs walked into the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and, according to the version of the story everyone tells, stole the future of computing in an afternoon. The real story is both stranger and perhaps a bit more prosaic than that. Jobs didn't actually steal anything, as Xerox went into the transfer of tech openly and willingly.

This free app isn't a VPN, but it encrypts everything my phone sends

Gregory Gibson — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:00:13 GMT

Most privacy apps make their purpose pretty obvious. They offer a map full of server locations, a long list of features, and typically a monthly subscription tying your name to the service, anyway. I only use a VPN to get back onto my home network, so Cloudflare WARP really felt like a different sort of tool.

I found 6GB of hidden Android cache I could delete with zero risk

Pankil Shah — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:00:12 GMT

Cache isn’t something worth losing sleep over, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it completely, especially when your phone is low on storage and you don’t want to give up on your favorite apps or photos. The tricky part is that Android doesn’t make it easy, so you have to rely on third-party apps like SD Maid. I used it recently, and it helped clean up 6GB of cache I didn’t know my phone had.

Your 20,000mAh power bank is lying to you, but not how you think

Oluwademilade Afolabi — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 23:00:13 GMT

Charge your phone from a brand-new 20,000mAh power bank and do the arithmetic. If your phone has a 5,000mAh battery, that brick should fill it four times. Instead, it manages two and a half, perhaps three, before giving up. It's easy to blame cheap cells or an inflated marketplace listing, but a legitimate power bank may genuinely contain the advertised capacity.

Linux makes old computers feel faster, not actually faster

Yadullah Abidi — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 22:00:12 GMT

Linux is often hailed as a magic fix for performance issues, especially on older hardware. Dust off a decade-old laptop, slap on a Linux distro, and suddenly your machine will start feeling brand new. There is some truth to this, and compared to Windows, Linux will make your older machines feel much snappier, but responsiveness isn't the same as newfound performance.

5 household repairs a 3D printer fixes that you'd normally toss the whole thing for

Rob LeFebvre — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:00:12 GMT

When something breaks around the house, my instinct has always been to replace it: a new fridge shelf, a new chair foot, sometimes maybe even a whole new appliance. The only problem is, most of the time it's not the whole thing that's broken. It's one small plastic part, like a clip, a gear, a chair foot, and once I started digging into what a 3D printer can actually fix instead of making it from scratch, I found five repairs people make all the time instead of throwing the whole thing out.