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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Online storage, multi-device sync, and mirroring Fantastically affordable lifetime plans Extremely secure and private Free 2TB account Cons Could use better help and task feedback The backup is actually one-way sync/mirroring Our Verdict Internxt’s intuitively blended web access, file sync, and backup (mirroring) services are impressive. However, the incredibly affordable lifetime plans are by far the most outstanding aspect. The docs, client interface, and backup feedback could be better, but, by Grapthor’s hammer — what a savings! Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price Internxt Free View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Internxt Drive online backup Retailer Price Internxt Free View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Though Internxt Drive rightfully touts its 256-bit encryption and dedication to privacy, there’s no feature in particular that sets it apart from the crowd. As with services such as Dropbox, Sync.com, OneDrive, iDrive, etc. there’s sync and storage. There’s also backup, though it’s not true inviolable backup, but mirroring. Internxt presents its features in a largely intuitive fashion, but what wholly distinguishes itself from the hoi polloi are its incredibly affordable lifetime plans. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best online backup services for comparison. How much is Internxt? When I last reviewed Internxt, I said you might want to hop on its super-affordable lifetime plans before they disappeared. Happily, here we are two years later, and Internxt lifetime plans are still imminently affordable — albeit a bit different than before. Read this discussion carefully. I first tried the free plan with 1GB of storage (formerly 2TB). Sadly, you can no longer increase the free plan’s capacity to as much as 10GB through various actions such as inviting friends to the service. The company Will of course try to upsell you, but you can still have 1GB for free. Beyond that, things have changed a bit since my last look in 2023. Gone are the $0.89-per-month 20GB and $3.49-per-month 200GB plans. Subscriptions now start at $1.65 a month for 1TB and $3.30 monthly for 3TB billed annually. Mind you, these rates are discounted from $10.99 and $21.99 per month, respectively, and might not last. Those prices are also approximate and subject to change as they reflect conversion to dollars from Euros. So Internxt can be a tad pricey on an annual basis when not on sale. But if you’re willing to commit for life (is that even a thing anymore?) Internxt morphs into uber-affordable. See below. (Note that all stated prices are even lower using the links to purchase in this review.) Internxt’s lifetime plans are currently an incredible bargain. Foundry If you’ve priced online storage at any time, these lifetime deals are eye-popping. As mentioned, the 3TB forever plan (assuming the company lasts, of course) is only a bit more per-gigabyte than I pay for 1TB with OneDrive for two years. As to the company lasting, while I hate to be that guy, my job description requires that I point out that Internxt is now only five years old and online storage is a very competitive landscape. That said, I made that same caveat two years ago, when the company was just three years old, and it’s still here. It’s reassuring that the company employs the well-known OVH storage infrastructure. Worst case, your data will still be available for download after any corporate failure, and the lifetime pricing is more than worth a roll of the dice in my book. My being particularly risk-averse makes that a hearty endorsement. Note that features vary with the cost of the plan, not surprisingly. Most notably, the backup function is not available for free accounts. If you’ve priced online storage at any time, these lifetime deals are eye-popping. Internxt Drive features Internxt’s features are basically four-fold: sync, backup, sharing, and a recent addition — antivirus. The first three are located in a menu tree to the left of the web interface, and also the Internxt desktop app which resides in the system tray. The AV is only available in the local client, while sharing is done online. Syncing works like services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. You drag or add files to a local folder/virtual drive that Internxt created, and they’re synced between your devices and the Internxt online storage. There are apps for iOS and Android. The pay plans also let you create a backup plan that will fire off automatically at a rate as granular as one hour. Add any files or folders that you want backed up regularly, set the schedule, and forget about it. Backups don’t sync. You can schedule backups as granularly as per-hour. This is the Mac client. Though I stupidly referred to it as such in my first review, Internxt’s backup isn’t true backup. A true backup is never altered, using versioning to reflect changes. With Internxt, any files that change overwrite older files. This is actually a form of one-way sync known as mirroring. The company is considering versioning (saving older files) but has not implemented it at the time of this writing. I’ve never needed it, and for most users, current-state backup will be fine. As mentioned, Internxt now includes antivirus with the paid plans. On both Windows and my Mac it proved extremely thorough — and aggressive. One scan registered 114 percent when I stopped it. I appreciate enthusiasm, but let’s stop at 100 percent please. This was from the Windows AV scan. 113 percent effort? I clicked on the above notice with some trepidation, fearing it would simply trash files out of hand. However, it only takes you to a list that you can then select items from. There is no quarantine, only remove. Be doubly sure before you remove stuff. There’s also a custom scan that will let you narrow the scope to a single drive or folder. The antivirus is also very aggressive, so be careful — there were quite a few false positives. Actually all them were, though I understand why most were selected. Internxt has ditched the Photo backup I tested for the last review, although you can still upload photos from your phone’s camera roll to the Family folder. For free accounts this is limited to 25 files per operation. Yup, a teaser. There’s also a separate section where shared files are kept—i.e., files shared with others, not among the Internxt sections. The separation reduces user confusion, even if it might waste a bit of space due to duplication. How easy is Internxt Drive? I’ve never seen an easier sign-up than Internxt. Provide your email, enter a password a single time, and you’re online with two sync folders (Family, Personal) ready to go. There’s an email verification to remove the yellow exclamation point next to your account level, but… The layout and overall structure of the website make it very easy to set up and use. As easy, or easier than any I’ve experienced. It’s got a clean look as well. The help that I complained about last time is also improved. But the app, while easy once you know it, is not particularly intuitive. Who looks for the backup function under “Preferences”? Maybe “Settings”… Then there’s “Change folders” for your backup when “Add/Remove folders” would be much clearer. And of course there’s the aforementioned paranoia-inducing “Remove Malware” button. To be fair, these might be translation issues as Internxt is in Europe. So why isn’t Backups on the main menu? Antivirus, a more ancillary function is. Open the Windows app after it’s installed, and there’s an icon to take you to the local Internxt sync folder. It’s on your C: drive in the same location as your user folders (Documents, etc.), but the name is a rather verbose affair with a hash value tagged on — “InternxtDrive – b44b4d7a-a509-4fd8-98d6-14429611abaa” in my case. Internxt should find a more attractive method of hashing it’s virtual drive folders. I suppose the hash is to allow multiple accounts on the same PC, as I logged on as three different users and two more of these folders appeared, but it’s an ugly naming convention. The Internxt web interface is easy to decipher and browse. But gone is the photos section, and you can no longer upgrade the capacity of the free account by inviting friends, etc. Overall, I give Internxt a B+ for its interfaces. They’re good-looking and functional, though there’s certainly room for improvement. How does Internxt Drive perform? Internxt fixed at least one of the bugs I spotted last time. Formerly, when adding the folder “1. Midi files” the folder showed up in the list as “1” and wouldn’t back up because it couldn’t be found. No such error now occurs. I also didn’t see any false error messages during backups. Nice. Sync across devices was generally fine performance-wise, though I didn’t go much beyond 1GB of files. Uploading photos from my iPhone was rather tedious with each one being encrypted. I didn’t see a setting to disable encryption. Backups also went off without a hitch on both Windows and the Mac for over a week, so I give Internxt an A for reliability. This is from the Mac client . Speaking of logs, Internxt keeps them and provides a link in the app, but they contain every operation. There should be a separate log for errors so you don’t have to search through 10MB of text to find them. The Mac client at least divides the logs into separate tasks. Also, I’d love more granular info on what and how much data has been copied. It seemed when I had two folders selected for backup, it considered the job 50 percent complete when one folder was copied, even though it was only 10MB while the remaining one was 7GB. Internxt should also implement bandwidth throttling. Backups came too close to maxing out the upstream traffic for my taste, slowing or creating issues for other tasks on occasion. I connect to the software Test Bed using Microsoft Remote Desktop and I was continually kicked off by Internxt backups. The Windows Internxt system tray popup lets you know that it’s on the ball. One thing I noticed was that Internxt doesn’t copy zero-byte files. If you sometimes use the name of a zero-byte file as a label for the contents of a folder or some such, it won’t be copied. This should be optional. Success is always the bottom line, and all the backups and syncs completed, so good on ya’, Internxt. But more info would be appreciated. Is Internxt Drive worth it? There’s no way around the fact that Internxt’s discounted lifetime plans are the flat-out steal in the industry at the moment. The client software could use some grooming, but hey, it works and it’s the best online storage deal in town for the long term. Further reading: How PCWorld tests cloud backup services Read...

With a brain that’s swimming in a cocktail of neurodivergence, one of my most persistent enemies has always been procrastination. I was once told that my attention span is, on a scale of 1 to 10, either 15 or random. But as hard as it is to overcome—a condition that feels more nature than nurture—it’s something I’m learning to manage. Weeks ago, I decided I couldn’t get arbitrary brain chemistry get in the way of productivity, and so I took matters into my own hands. I needed to stop being so distracted and to change some habits, but I wasn’t going to do it alone. I was going to use technology to help me. Now, a couple of weeks on from implementing these tweaks, I feel like it’s been moderately successful. Here’s what I did. Stop procrastination dead in its tracks The first and most impactful change I knew I could make was to cut out a bunch of social media usage. I’m no voracious user, but I’m a sucker for scrolling through subreddits and diving into deep discussions on the minutiae of my various hobbies and interests. As much as I’ve learned doing that over the years, I’ve also developed unhealthy habits of following politics far too closely—and the news cycle is nothing but a doomscroll hole waiting to happen in 2025. So, I took drastic measures. I installed the BlockSite extension on every web browser (except one, in case I need to check Reddit or Twitter for work) and completely blocked the most distracting sites. I did the same on my phone too, as it’s that little black mirror that’s probably to blame for most of my procrastination. I also installed NoScroll on my phone to block shorts and reels. That stuff is crack to an ADHD brain. I use the BlockSite extension to block distracting sites. The block screen is mildly mocking, but I don’t mind it. I probably deserve it.Jon Martindale / Foundry If you’d rather take a less puritanical approach to managing the sites and services that tempt you to procrastinate, extensions like StayFocusd can make it easier to limit your time rather than block entire sites permanently. If you’re like me, though, excising the whole habit cold turkey is an easier change to make than having a lesser drip feed of it. Whatever the case, cutting out distractions leaves me with little to do but focus on the task at hand—and it works to encourage greater focus. The carrot alongside the stick The first time I sat on the toilet after blocking everything, I had a bizarre moment where I was staring at my phone with my mind telling me there’s something interesting there to do. But I’d blocked everything I usually do. What was I even looking at this thing for? That was a prime opportunity to not just hinder my bad habits but to reward the good ones. How am I going to improve my attention span? By doing things that require greater attention. Mozilla So I stocked my bathroom with a cheap e-reader with a few novels I’ve been neglecting. I also installed Pocket on my phone. While Firefox recently announced that it’s discontinuing Pocket, there are similar alternatives and the premise is all the same: save articles and web content to read or watch later when you have time. Now when I have time to kill, it’s with something more mentally nourishing than Reddit or TikTok. At the very least, I come out of it with less brain rot; at best, I’m developing better attention. Boring and silent are friends of focus Modern electronics and software are designed to grab and hold our attention with colors, lights, quick hits of compelling content, snazzy animations, etc. For me, it wasn’t enough to avoid social media and other distracting sites. A part of me was still drawn to the pretty icons and animations on my phone—so I decided to make it boring, too. Enter Minimalist Phone, a paid app (with a free trial) that turns your phone into a boring brick of black, overhauling the entire OS to look as dull and uninteresting as possible. That means no more icons, only text for everything, and it’s all black and white, yet you can still manage apps and services with ease thanks to its intuitive navigation. Check out my minimalist phone. It isn’t pretty, but that’s the point.Jon Martindale / Foundry But Minimalist Phone goes further than that. It also has an app blocker that lets you restrict certain apps to a schedule, or set mindfulness pauses before running certain apps, or even create an entirely separate work profile with different behavior when you’re “in focus mode.” It can also filter unimportant notifications so you aren’t distracted by alerts. I personally made a point of disabling all unnecessary notifications on Teams, Slack, and other work communication tools. For the ones I kept, I made the notifications monochrome and silent. That means I only know if someone sent me a message when I choose to check in—not when the app wants me to know—and that makes it easier for me to stay on task. Speaking of staying on task, I also have ChatGPT send me occasional reminders using its scheduled tasks feature. It’s just little things like a notice in the morning to start my day or a prompt to make sure I get done a certain task by a deadline. Could I use a traditional reminder app? Sure, but ChatGPT’s organic variations make me less likely to skip them. Plus, I’m already paying $20 per month for ChatGPT Plus. Might as well use it! A better way to procrastinate Breaking old habits isn’t easy. Even with blocks in place, I still feel the urge to procrastinate—and even when I’m reminded not to, I still want to find workarounds. For me, it isn’t plausible to never procrastinate. That’s why I allow myself to procrastinate in better ways. Maybe when I complete a task, I fire up my Chess.com account for a quick game. In between writing projects, I might give myself a few minutes with my preferred idle game: Ropuka’s Idle Island. Yes, it’s still a game, but at least it’s designed for drip entertainment. It doesn’t hook me for hours and hours, and the chill lo-fi soundtrack keeps it mellow. Jon Martindale / Foundry On dog walks, I’m making myself listen to audiobooks rather than shorter-form brain-rot content. And don’t underestimate the power of analog activities! I took up a new hobby in knitting. I won’t pretend it doesn’t feel like a whim for now, but I’m giving it a go as a way to detox from tech and procrastinate in a more productive way. Every second away from my phone helps to train away my urges to procrastinate. Jon Martindale / Foundry Overcoming procrastination is a long-term project, one that will probably remain a struggle for the rest of my life. But I already feel some of the positive benefits of these mitigating techniques. I’m less hooked on scrolling and more content overall. 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TL;DR: Turn ideas into full-length books with AI—lifetime access for just $49. Writing a book takes time—something most of us don’t have between inbox chaos and back-to-back meetings. But what if all you needed was an idea? That’s where YouBooks steps in. This AI-powered tool helps you generate full-length nonfiction books with just a few prompts, and right now, you can lock in lifetime access for $49 (reg. $540). YouBooks pulls from several top-tier AI models, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and combines them with live web research to build out detailed, structured manuscripts up to 300,000 words. Whether you want to write about productivity, startup culture, parenting, or personal finance, feed in your topic and let the AI do the heavy lifting. Why is Youbooks for you? 150,000 credits per month (1 word = 1 credit) Downloadable formats: PDF, DOCX, EPUB Commercial rights so that you can sell, share, or publish your books Custom style options to match your tone or brand It’s a serious time-saver if you’ve been sitting on an idea forever or want to build a content empire without writing every word yourself. Plus, unlike many AI tools, YouBooks gives you full ownership of the content you create. Snag a lifetime subscription to YouBooks for $49 and start turning your thoughts into fully formed nonfiction books: no ghostwriters, no subscriptions, and no gatekeepers. Youbooks – AI Nonfiction Book Generator: Lifetime SubscriptionSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

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ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Further reading: This tiny ChatGPT feature helps me tackle my days more productively Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: Non-gimmicky AI apps I actually use every day Read...

TL;DR: Save 84% on this refurbished Lenovo Chromebook and get free shipping while supplies last. When you just need a laptop that works—no bells, no whistles, no stress—this is it. Now you can get a Chromebook for only $75 with free shipping, making it a smart pick for anyone in need of an ultra-affordable device, a reliable backup computer, or something for their kiddo. At this price, you won’t feel nervous about tossing it in your backpack for a flight or giving it to your child with perpetually sticky fingers. The compact design is built for the basics: web browsing, emails, video calls, and streaming—and it runs Chrome OS for hassle-free setup and all-day battery life. The Lenovo Chromebook features an 11.6-inch anti-glare touchscreen for easy navigation, along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for day-to-day tasks and files. Because this is a refurbished grade “B” refurbished model, expect minor cosmetic wear (like light scuffs or small dents), but fully functional performance. That also means you don’t have to worry about adding more scuffs yourself—it’s a laptop that’s built for whatever you have in mind. Don’t miss this refurbished Chromebook deal, just $74.99 with free shipping before they sell out (reg. $475.99). Lenovo 11.6? 2-in-1 Chromebook 300e 2nd Gen (2018) 4GB RAM 32GB SSD (Refurbished)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...