Windows comes with a few media player apps built in that are usually "good enough." However, I'm not really a fan of any of them for one reason or another. If you're looking for a media player that is different, more powerful, or just not Microsoft, here are 5 great alternatives for you.

Everyone wants to get the best performance for their PC that they can afford, and NVMe SSDs are a tempting—and easy—way to improve how quickly your PC responds. Unfortunately, the real world isn't a benchmark, and the actual performance gains you get aren't as simple as the speeds advertised on the drives suggest.

Self-hosting is a great way to save money on subscriptions and take control of your data, but getting everything running smoothly on one system can be difficult, especially if you have incompatible dependencies.

BitLocker is the most common way to encrypt your Windows PC to protect it against data theft in the event that someone steals your PC, but it isn't the only option. If your PC doesn't have BitLocker and you want something more fully-featured than Device Encryption, VeraCrypt is probably the tool for you.

Self-hosting your own services is one of the best ways to save money on subscriptions and increase your privacy. Since you're running the services on your local network, no one else ever sees the data.

I use all sorts of software when I travel: a VPN, streaming music apps, cloud storage, and more. I turned my Raspberry Pi into a one-stop-shop travel router that combines all of those uses into one device, so I don't have to worry about them individually on my phone, laptop, or console.

RSS feeds used to be the premiere way to get personalized news delivered directly to you from your favorite websites prior to the rise of personalized algorithms on social media. Despite the fact that RSS feeds aren't quite as popular as they used to be, they are still my favorite way to keep up to speed on topics I'm interested in. Here are three RSS Feed apps from Windows.