At Tom’s Hardware, we’re proud of all of our articles, but unfortunately not all of them receive equal attention from our readers. Whether it’s because we didn’t get great search placement in Google, other news took attention away from them or the right readers just didn’t find them, there were a few features this year we really wish more people would read.
Fortunately, all of these articles are as relevant today as they were when we wrote them a few weeks or months ago. So, without further ado, we humbly re-present our 10 favorite features you may have missed in 2018.
1. World’s Fastest Boot Time! How We Booted Windows 10 in 4.9 Seconds: We challenged our storage writer, Sean Webster, to boot Windows in less than 5 seconds, and he delivered in a huge way. Nobody keeps official records of boot times, but we believe that, for Windows 10, this is a world record.
2. How to Get Windows 10 for Free or Cheap: Microsoft hits PC builders with a very harsh tax, potentially charging $90 or more for an operating system that the software giant sells to OEMs for a fraction of that price. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to get the OS either for under $30 or even free.
3. I Turned My Six Year Old Into a Robot-Building STEM Fan. Here’s How: If you’re a parent, you probably want to share your love of technology with your kids, while helping them grow their STEM skills. In this story, we broke down how to do both while having fun.
4. Components to Cash - How to Sell Your Used PC Parts: If you’ve recently upgraded your computer, chances are that you have an old graphics card, CPU or hard drive hanging around. Don’t just stick it in a drawer; trade it for real money with this advice.
5. 23 of the Strangest RGB Products: Sure, your computer has RGB fans, RGB RAM and even an RGB SSD, but you probably don’t have RGB hair extensions an RGB toilet or an RGB face mask.
6. How to Play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with Low-End Hardware: It’s one of the most popular games of 2018, and even if you have an ancient computer, you can run it...if you know what settings to tweak.
7. Want to Be a Competitive Overclocker? How to Get Started: Sure, you can squeeze some added performance from your processor and RAM, but are you ready to go pro?
8. 15 Cool Raspberry Pi Projects to Do as a Family: From fart detectors to photo booths, these are great maker projects to share with your kids.
9. Adult Cams, Blackmail and Hacked Payrolls: IT Pros Tell All: You would think that, when using a company computer or network, employees would maintain their professionalism.But you’d be wrong.
10. Paint it Black: 15 Ways to Dark Mode Your PC: A lot of people like having light text on a dark background, and there are so many ways to do it on Windows 10.
