In recent years it seems monitor product announcements and reviews have grown increasingly rare. Occasionally at events like CES we’ll see a company or two bring an interesting display with them, but these are typically ultra-widescreen or ultra-HD affairs that don’t make it to market—at least, not in a timely fashion or at a consumer price level. In the meantime more and more devices are coming with integrated screens, meaning you settle for whatever you get and don’t really consider the display separately from the rest of the product. But on the desktop PC side of technology, monitors remain a very important investment for everyone to make, whether you’re into creative productivity or gaming or really anything else. While the monitor we’re here to take a look at today is by no means the best and fanciest out on the market (and it doesn’t claim to be), all things considered HP has struck a pretty great balance with the Pavilion 22bw/25bw, addressing a wide variety of needs in a single...

If you’ve frequented this website for any length of time, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I am no great fan of Apple. However, despite my frustrations with their devices, I’ve long been a fan of iTunes as a digital distribution platform. Sure, there are far better music and video players out there, but when it came to downloading content for those alternative applications to munch on, iTunes was my go-to source for years. Unfortunately, after so long of Apple holding this one last mark on my good side, they have finally struck the death blow to our relationship, and as it turns out, they’ve done me a great favor. I will probably never put my own money into iTunes ever again (I’m still open to gift cards—you know, just FYI), but contrary to my prior expectations, I also don’t think I will ever miss it at all. Why? My iTunes Experience Well, it all began a few months back when I booted up iTunes one day to find that, lo and behold, my account was practically empty. Three rando...

It’s been well over a week since Microsoft first went public with the next version of the world’s most-used operating system, dubbed Windows 10 because apparently Microsoft feels the leap is so big as to warrant two integers and also because the release pattern will be changing from here on out to a quicker, incremental update system akin to Mac OSX or Linux. In fact there’s more than one thing about Windows 10 that is reminiscent of Linux distributions—a strange, but refreshing change for the Redmond-based company. While pre-release versions of Windows 8 were aimed squarely at developers, even the language in the name ‘Windows 10 Technical Preview’ demonstrates Microsoft’s shift to a consumer and business focus, and it shows in how they’ll be building the OS from now until release just one year from now. This time around they are genuinely open to feedback, and the Windows 10 preview is something of a playground for people of all types to explore and return their experiences on what w...