Eliana Willis

Kerry Wan/ZDNETThere’s one immutable law of PCs: sh*t happens. And when it does, there’s usually a way to fix things, if you had the foresight to create one essential recovery tool first.Booting from a USB recovery drive allows you to perform basic troubleshooting repairs on any Windows system. And by adding Windows installation files to your bootable recovery drive, you can easily reinstall Windows and get back to work.Also: How to upgrade your ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 in 2025)You can use Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool to create a bootable USB flash drive with the latest Windows installation files. Go to the Download Windows 11 page, find the “Create Windows 11 Installation Media” section, click Download Now, and follow the prompts.You can also use the free, open-source Rufus utility to create a bootable installation drive for Windows 11, as long as you already have an ISO file.Also: Can your old PC handle the Windows 11 upgrade? How to find out – before you tryHowever, if you just want to use the tools built into Windows, I recommend a slightly different approach. Download the Windows 11 installer as a disk image file (in ISO format), use the built-in Windows Recovery Media Creator utility to create a bootable recovery drive, and copy the Windows installation files to that drive.The entire process takes four steps. More

Jason Hiner/ZDNETApple is exploring the connections between technology and health more deeply. On Wednesday, the tech giant launched the Apple Health Study, which explores how its iPhones, Apple Watches, AirPods, and other third-party wearables can impact health advancements.What is the Apple Health Study?The study, conducted with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, examines the connection between mental health and heart rate, sleep and exercise, and more, according to the press release. Unlike clinical studies, which are confined by a limited number of participants, timeline, and data capture, the Apple Health Study utilizes a base of more than 350,000 participants and builds on other studies launched in the Research app.Also: Your next Apple Watch or smart ring could have a feature that transforms healthcareWearable health technology, like the Apple Watch or Oura Ring, has improved in recent years. These products were once merely step counters and sleep trackers, but in recent years, brands have developed features within their smartwatches and smart rings that monitor and predict illness and provide data users can bring to their doctor for diagnosis.Take the AirPods Pro 2, for example. The earbuds received FDA clearance to be used as hearing aids in 2024. In the comfort of their homes, people can now take a hearing loss test on their phone with the earbuds in, receive a diagnosis, and then bring that data to a doctor.  More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Sabrent USB SSD 4-bay docking station is available now on Amazon for $89 This docking station makes adding external drives to your system a total plug and play affair The case is plastic, so it feels a bit cheap but that doesn’t get in the way of performance. more buying […] More

ZDNETLast fall, Apple TV+ came to Android and Google TV devices in a roundabout way when it became available as an add-on to Amazon Prime Video. Now, Apple has finally announced the official streaming support for Android phones.Also: Apple is launching a giant new health study – here’s why and how to joinThe Apple TV app is available in the Google Play Store for Android devices, letting users subscribe to either Apple TV+ or MLS Season Pass on their phones, TVs, tablets, and other Google-operated devices. Foldable phones will support the new app, too.Before the Amazon add-on last year, you had to use either an Apple TV streaming box or a web browser to watch on your TV, neither of which were convenient options. Now, Apple TV+ will be just as widely available as other popular streaming services.  More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Chipolo One Point and Card Point are available starting at $22. They’re highly accurate, robust, and integrate well into the Google ecosystem. However, the One is only splashproof, and the Card version has a non-user-replaceable battery. –> What’s the deal? Chipolo is offering an exclusive 10% off all tags to […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The InfinaCore 2024 has a Qi2 MagSafe charging pad and two other pads for the Apple Watch and AirPods. The charging stand is strong, stable, and minimalist. It doesn’t come with a wall charger, so you’ll need to provide one. –> I’ve tested many wireless charging stands over the years, and […] More

ZDNETThere are many lightweight Linux distributions on the market, many of which are outstanding options for bringing aging hardware back to life with speed, flexibility, and security that those old computers might never have known. That’s part of the beauty of Linux — it’s not only flexible, reliable, and secure, but it’s also perfectly capable of performing like a champ on machines that modern Windows iterations would cripple.Also: How to use Linux without ever touching the terminalOne such distribution is WattOS. This no-frills, lightweight desktop operating system will feel immediately familiar to you and will make that ten-year-old computer feel brand new again.But before you dive in, let’s talk about WattOS for a bit. WattOS system requirementsThis Linux distribution is specifically designed to be lightweight, which means it uses a desktop environment that won’t hog system resources. That desktop environment is LXDE, which is modular and performs well on everything from your ancient computer to a Raspberry Pi. The system requirements for WattOS paint a very obvious picture:192MB RAMAny Intel or AMD CPU700MB disk spaceEven on a PC with such low resources, WattOS performs very well. And because the desktop is laid out in a very familiar fashion (start button, panel, system tray, desktop icons), anyone who’s used any iteration of Windows should feel right at home.Also: If you’re ready to break up with Windows, this is the Linux distro I suggest for new usersI installed WattOS as a virtual machine on VirtualBox, with more than enough system resources (3GB of RAM, 2 cores, and 100GB of internal storage), so you can imagine that my VM performed like a Ford Tempo with a rocket engine.It’s fast.Very fast. More

Apptronik AI-powered humanoid robots that co-exist with humans to help our workloads may seem like the plot of a sci-fi movie, but companies have been working on them for years. Case in point: Apptronik, a robotics lab founded in early 2016, has been working on a 5-foot 8-inch, 160-pound, general-purpose humanoid robot named Apollo. The […] More