Popular Mechanics: Technology: Tech How-To Central

How to Quiet Your Loud Personal Computer

Anything that moves makes noise. And your personal computer is an assemblage of whirring, spinning, vibrating parts. Depending on your particular machine, this can amount to a comforting white noise, or an irritating background drone.

How to Set Up the Ultimate Desktop Recording Studio

With the right software and a few plug-in instruments, anyone (really, anyone) can be a rock star in his own home. Here's how to use a MIDI keyboard and software like M-Powered Essential and GarageBand to become the next Beck.

The (New) Home Theater Setup Guide

Just when you thought you'd mastered the mess of wires, plugs and ports required for HDTV and multichannel sound, the new era of networked home entertainment is changing everything-again. Here's what you need to know to hook up the ultimate home theater.

The Cable Guide: Know Your Computer and TV Wires

The lines between data, audio and video cables now completely blurred. And many devices can now communicate wirelessly. But that doesn't mean the world of wiring is simpler. There are more cables than ever-here's how to use them.

How to Convert a Netbook Into a Touchscreen PC

Tablet PCs may be the next big thing in computers, but netbooks are cheap and widely available now. Why wait for Apple (or TechCrunch) to do it for you? Here's how to make your own touchcreen PC, starting with an off-the-shelf netbook.

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How to Sketch By Computer (For Cheap)

The technology to translate doodles, sketches and ideas into detailed drawings is surprisingly affordably and acceptable. Here's what you need to get started-and tips to become a pro.

Does Cold Weather Injure Cell Phones? Abusive Lab Test

You know that cold weather can make your cell phone sluggish, or make a fully charged one read low battery. But can cold weather damage to your phone? We subjected six phones to progressively lower temperatures until they stopped working.

How to Get Dust off a DSLR Sensor: Digital Clinic

If your digital SLR camera doesn't have a function that removes dust automatically, over time, you may notice intrusive dots in your photographs. Here's how to clean your camera's image sensor without damaging it (or spending a lot of money).

How to Build a Powerful Home Theater PC for Less Than $500

Building a dedicated home theater PC used to be expensive and time-consuming. But today, the process is a lot easier-and cheaper. Here's how to build a tiny, loaded HTPC for less than the price of most off-the-shelf Blu-Ray players.

How to Eject Discs from Mac Pro Towers: Digital Clinic

A reader who no longer uses his Apple keyboard is having trouble ejecting CDs and DVDs from his Mac Pro. Here are several workarounds for the eject button-less computers.

How to Ditch Wi-Fi for a High-Speed, Ethernet-Wired Home

To take full advantage of your high speed Internet, you should hook up your networked appliances with Ethernet cables instead of slower Wi-Fi connections. PM shows you how to wire your home so that all your devices get real high-speed Internet.

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How to Get a More Connected, Intelligent Home Theater

HD was just the beginning. New screens, networked devices, remotes and video gear change what we watch and how we see it. Here is how to chase the ultimate home theater upgrade-and avoid buyer's remorse.

How to Use Less Energy in Your Home Theater

Surround sound systems are great for movies, but they can drain power and be overkill if you're just watching the weather report. Here's how to save money on your electricity bill without losing the immersive experience that your AV equipment provides.

How to Get Your Gadgets Off the Grid

Senior technology editor Glenn Derene shows that with a small wind turbine, generator, solar charging kit and two very powerful batteries, you won't have to abandon your gadgets (or beer fridge) after an emergency.

How to Install In-Wall Surround-Sound Speakers: DIY Tech

Speakers should be heard and not seen. So when PM tech expert Anthony Verducci decided that his standing home theater speaker towers took up too much space, he replaced them with five nearly invisible in-wall speakers. Here's how he did it.

How FIRST Competitors Plan to Face 4 Key Bot Challenges

The six-week build portion of the 2010 FIRST Robotics competition has come to an end. PM spoke with teams from schools across the country to learn what strategies will be key at regionals, and at the FIRST championship in mid-April.

Robonaut2 Shows Real Workplace Potential For Humanoid Robots

GM and NASA unveil the latest upgrades to the torso-bot, Robonaut2. The new R2 shows off impressive design, flexes complex abilities and, finally, brings real-world job skills-in the factory or at the space station-to the humanoid bot.

The Uncertain Future For Social Robots

Humans have feared a robotic uprising since the machines first appeared in science fiction. Today, experts caution against a more insidious threat: We might like living with them too much.

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The 8 Evil Forms of AI That Gave Robots a Bad Name

It's not the hardware that makes the evil robot one of western culture's most powerful myths. It's the software-namely the artificial intelligence-that turns machines into monsters. Here is a timeline with the most iconic examples of malevolent AI and the fears each inspired.

Asimo Headlines at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival (With Video!)

Popular Mechanics sat down with Barbara Ponce, Manager of Corporate and Diversity Advertising at Honda, just after an Asimo demonstration at the Sundance Film Festival's Village at the Yard.

The Truth About Robots and the Uncanny Valley: Analysis

An oft-cited theory in robotics, the uncanny valley, refers to that point along the chart of robot-human likeness where a robot looks and acts nearly-but not exactly-like a human. But there are holes in the data. Does the theory make sense?

Game On for Students in FIRST Robotics

This Saturday, thousands of high school students around the country learned how they'll spend the next six weeks: building robots that can kick, climb and slide under barriers for a game of high-tech soccer. Here's how this year's bot-throwdown will work.

New Underwater Explorers Go Where Scientists Can't

Recently, an unmanned robot completed a 3300-mile trek across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. By employing everything from robots to, yes, tadpoles, scientists hope to learn more about how climate change and pollution are affecting the earth's water.

10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009: The Ball-Shaped Robot

Greg Schroll's robot isn't your regular pendulum-powered spherical bot. With Schroll's unique design this ball bot can roll, dodge and even climb stairs.

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3 New Farm Bots Programmed to Pick, Plant and Drive

Intelligent, manned machines aren't just for warplanes and border guards-they can be found on the farm too. Increasingly, agro-bots are taking laborious tasks out of the farmer's helper's hands, and saving time and money in the process.

Autonomous Autos: New Kit Converts Any Vehicle Into a Robot (With Video)

There are many ways that the unmanned vehicle revolution can reach beyond the frontlines. Why not retrofit existing vehicles? The Pronto4 Strap-On Autonomy System can transform any steered vehicle into an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle.

5 Useless Robots (And Why We Love Them)

Robots are made to assist us. But in the history of robotic development there have been as many epic failures as incremental successes. Here, PM editorial adviser, author and roboticist Daniel H. Wilson corrals five of the most useless robots.

Robots That Dress Like Animals for Science

To better understand animal behavior, scientists are dressing up data-gathering robots in animal garb. By fitting in with their unsuspecting friends, robot bees, turkeys and lizards are recording intimate details of habitats that were never before seen.

Diving Robots Could Recover Air France 447's Black Box

As more details of Air France 447's final minutes become known, deep-sea technology experts are saying that the recovery of the aircraft's black boxes will be difficult, but not impossible, with the help of deep-sea-diving robots.

Robotic Task Force: A Two-Robot, Bomb-Defusing, Riot-Controlling, Firefighting Team (With Video!)

Two robots can defuse dirty bombs, take on riots and fight fires-giving their controller a comfortable distance from dangerous situations. Here is an up-close look from the show floor of Robobusiness 2009.

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Top 8 Skyscrapers That Will Push the Limits of Design

This month, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai climbed higher than any other previous structure ever built. But architects won't rest there. Here are eight building plans trying to capture the title as the next tallest tower.

Dubai - List of tallest buildings and structures in the world - Building - United Arab Emirates - Skyscraper

Mega Vehicles: PM Rides 5 of America's Largest Moving Machines

These monster trucks and wheel loaders include a front-end loader that scoops 75 tons, a 950-hp fire truck and more. We hitched sky-high rides and took some of these intimidating rides for a spin.

Inside the Coast Guard's Dirtiest Job (with Video!)

Buoys guide ships into port--but who maintains these crucial floating beacons? PM spent a night and two days on a Coast Guard boat off the coast of New York watching a young crew labor to keep our maritime infrastructure afloat.

Scientists Go Indoors to Test Next-Gen Hurricane Hunter

NOAA's Hurricane Imaging Radiometer will scan the ocean floor for microwave reflections that predict storm strengths. When it comes to testing such high tech weather sensors, researchers enter an electromagnetically quiet room.

3 Large Hadron Collider Headaches (So Far) and How to Fix Them

Somewhere along the way to uncovering the "God particle" and quieting doomsayers, a trio of setbacks put the LHC out of commission. Here's what went wrong, and what the CERN team plans to do about it.

High in Andes, World's Next Super Scope Takes Shape: First Look

Teams from across the globe are racing up the Chilean Andes to erect ALMA, which will become the largest and most advanced radio telescope when it's completed in 2012, with 10 times the power of Hubble.

The 10 Next Hot Skyscrapers You Won't Find in Dubai

As Burj Dubai officially becomes the world's tallest building, here are our 10 favorite skyscrapers under construction whose radical designs and eco-friendly architecture make up for a lack of height.

5 Things You Need to Know About the Large Hadron Collider Now

Why are people without physics degrees counting down until the first proton beam travels the ring? Is it because the bad science of the machine's supposed doomsday potential traveled faster than quantum mechanics? Or because there's never been a more powerful mega-gadget like it?

Inside LHC Launch Party, Not End of World & Scientists Feel Fine

Scientists and students put aside the doomsday talk for what may have been America's nerdiest slumber party of all time, gathering at a national lab outside Chicago to gawk at shooting particles and revel in the mysteries they might unlock.

30-Ton Metal Sphere Spins for Magnetic Fields (With Video!)

Researchers have constructed a 30-ton sphere that spins at more than 90 mph to generate magnetic fields. The 10-ft.-dia. sphere is filled with 13.5 tons of liquid sodium to mimic the Earth's liquid-iron center core.

4 Steps to Moving a Founding Father's House ... Vertically!

In June, New York City residents were treated to a strange sight: the home of founding father Alexander Hamilton, elevated high above its foundations. The national landmark was being relocated one block away for restoration.

Large Hadron Collider Turns on Sept. 10, Tests Beam on Weekend

CERN has announced the start date for the LHC, at which point researchers will activate particle beams within the 17-mile-long ring, and the world's most powerful particle accelerator will begin collecting data.

To Test Houses vs. Hurricanes, Lab Will Simulate 155-mph Storm

As hurricane season presses on, Miami researchers are developing a new extreme technique for pinpointing how big storms damage infrastructure: Smack a full-scale, spinning test home with a Category 4 "Wall of Wind"-coconut catapult and all.

Inside New York City's Waterfalls Installation (With Video!)

At four points along New York's East River, Olafur Eliasson's massive scaffoldings house 300-hp Thompson drain pumps to pull water from the earth, send it over a double-trough filter, and dump it back down into intake-filter pools-while keeping it green.

10 Gonzo Machines From Rogue Inventor Buckminster Fuller

From super-efficient cars to encapsulated cities, Buckminster Fuller's works made Frank Lloyd Wright look positively normal, and his prescient engineering foreshadowed the current movement toward green design and prefabricated housing.