CNET’s Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but free cell service? Believe it or not, …

Boost Mobile, in an effort to pull customers away from other wireless carriers, today announced a limited-time promotion. Effective immediately, Boost is offering discounted rate plans and free phones to subscribers who port their number from competing service providers. The promotion underscores a growing interest in and demand for prepaid wireless providers, which are often more affordable and don’t require …

Amazon’s Echo smart speaker had twins. The e-retailer unveiled on Thursday two new devices powered by Alexa, the same digital voice assistant housed inside the Echo. There’s the $130 Amazon Tap, essentially a portable, battery-powered Echo, and the $90 Echo Dot, which adds Alexa’s brains to any speakers you already have. Preorders started Thursday and the devices are scheduled to …

You don’t have to be stranded on Mars to want the impressive spacesuit worn by Matt Damon in “The Martian.” “MythBusters” co-host Adam Savage admired the NASA spacesuit, which was designed by Janty Yates and brought to life on screen by FBFX special effects studio, so he decided to build a replica of the highly-detailed costume. Related stories ‘The Martian’ …

Sometimes politicians say things they wish they could take back, especially online. And in other cases, their words become the kind of fodder comedians dream of for the perfectly hilarious monologue. But what happens when you have a presidential candidate whose speeches almost sound like an absurdist bot run amok? Related stories Frank Underwood would ‘take Trump down,’ says ‘House …

Watching and processing a constant stream of news can feel like a 24-hour job when you consider how much information is relayed on TV and the Web these days. In his latest Twitter-bot project Glitch News Network, UK-based artist Eric Drass, aka Shardcore, takes advantage of various online news sites to make quick, nonsensical videos. The social-media bot “scrapes various …

With its unlimited free storage option, Google Photos is a great place to store your photo library in the cloud. Despite offering some basic editing tools, it has been less attractive as a photo-editing studio. With a recent update, however, Google Photos is better suited to perform quick edits to your photos. There are two new additions to Google Photos. …

Earlier today, Amazon took the wraps off the Echo Dot, an adorable little sibling to the company’s popular Echo smart speaker. You can pair it with a Bluetooth speaker or just use it as a standalone virtual assistant. The problem is, you can’t preorder one — not unless you already own a full-size Echo. For the moment, the only official …

Have a problem with your iPhone or Mac? You can now hop onto Twitter to seek out a helping hand. On Thursday, Apple unveiled a new Twitter account called @AppleSupport. As Apple describes the new account: “We’re here to provide tips, tricks and helpful information when you need it most, and if you have a question, well — we’re here …

Let’s face it, most of the time our conversations with friends and loved ones are repetitive. They all follow the same pattern — more or less — from beginning to end. Rando is a free iPhone app that wants to help you change that. As the name implies, the idea behind Rando is to be completely random. The app is …

Sharing a PC doesn’t have to be a pain if you give each family member their own personal login. Personal logins allow for separate files, desktops, and browser favorites, and adult family members can monitor and restrict kids’ activity by blocking websites, limiting screen time, and keeping tabs on what sites kids are visiting and what they’re searching for. To …

Other headphones play nice with the Xbox One, but if you have tried to use Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic with an Xbox One controller, it probably wasn’t for long. Because if you plugged in a pair of Apple EarPods to a newer Xbox One controller that has a headphone jack, you were greeted by a high-pitched whining buzzing …

Straight out of London, Simon McBurney’s performance piece “The Encounter” is now playing at the Barbican Theatre, but for a limited time you can stream “The Encounter” on YouTube. McBurney shares the stage with a special binaural microphone “head,” and the sound of his voice and his recordings transports us into the humid depths of the Amazon jungle. Binaural recordings …

Cellular connection or not, I am not a good drone pilot. That’s what I learned from my brief time at telecom-gear maker Ericsson’s booth at the Mobile World Congress trade show last week in Barcelona. I had a chance to pilot a drone more than 1,400 miles away in Stockholm with the help of an Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset and …

There’s more to your digital photos than meets the eye. Embedded in each file is EXIF data, or metadata, that contains information on your camera’s make and model, the time and date the photo was taken, and even GPS coordinates if you happened to take the photo from a camera (or, more likely, a phone) that has geotagging enabled. Luckily, …