NETWORKING

Jack Wallen/ZDNET ZDNET’s key takeaways The Ridge Bolt Pen‘s starting price of $59 is less than when I bought it, but it’s still a fantastic gift for the writer in your life. It features a grippy design that makes handling a breeze, and the ink moves smoothly across paper. Of course, the one and only caveat with the pen is its price, but I’ve found it to be well worth it. I understand that everyone’s…

Gone are the days of huge PC towers taking up desk space to achieve powerful performance. Computers with abundant power can now be condensed into a slim laptop with a lower price tag than some high-end models. Many of the best laptops under $1,000 are lightweight and offer lightning-fast speeds, highly detailed graphics, and up to 1TB of storage space to meet your creative or professional needs. Also: The best laptops of 2024: Expert tested and…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The Coros Pace Pro is available now in Black, Grey, and Blue for $349 The watch provides flagship features at an affordable price with a brilliant 1,500-nit AMOLED, light weight, long battery life, and a fast processor The plastic band hardware feels cheap, subscription music is not supported, and there are limited wellness metrics. In 2018, Coros launched the Pace GPS sports watch and set the bar for long battery life and…

Stack Social/ZDNET Project management is key for companies, no matter the size, but can be a challenge. Software solutions can help maximize precision and efficiency. Two popular options are Microsoft Project Professional 2024 and Microsoft Visio Professional 2024 for Windows — both of which are currently on major discount through Stack Social. Microsoft Project Professional is a user-friendly option for managing projects from start to finish, and includes pre-built templates, timesheet submissions, and visual representations…

fatmawati lauda/Getty Images My current Linux desktop has one main drive housing the OS and four other drives where I store different data. I have a drive for music, one for video, one for documents, and one for virtual machines. Each secondary drive was purchased new, so they had to be formatted before use. Because my desktop machine has a GUI, I could have used the GNOME Disks tool and formatted those drives without opening…

Cesar Gallardo/Getty Images Sometimes I need to jot down my thoughts but I don’t need a full-blown office suite or a to-do list. I might need to take notes on a book idea, a journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness (a great exercise for writers). Or maybe a configuration file needs to be edited, and an office suite would wreck the formatting. When those times arrive, I always know what tool to turn to — a…

We conduct much of our digital lives on our phones, from online shopping and social media posting to bill paying and work emailing — which requires continuous access to a long list of passwords. The easiest (and most secure) way to keep track of logins, credit card information, and other sensitive data is with a password manager that integrates seamlessly on mobile, and there are a number of password management apps that work well for…

matejmo/Getty Images If you’re an ExpressVPN user, you have access to some new identity theft tools — and won’t have to pay anything extra for them. The company (which topped our list as the fastest VPN service) announced a trio of new services this week aimed at helping you before, during, and after an identity theft situation.  Also: The best VPN services (and how to choose the right one for you) Called Identity Defender, the…