TL;DR: Import your data from TurboTax and file your State and Federal taxes with H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe while it’s only $32.99. Well, here we are: the last day before the tax deadline. If you’ve been putting off doing your taxes because it’s tedious, annoying, and expensive, that’s actually good news because H&R Block just dropped the price on their Deluxe Tax Software that does all the hard parts for you. It even migrates your information over from TurboTax, Quicken, and other big tax platforms. Pick it up for your State and Federal return this year for only $32.99 (reg. $59.99). H&R Block Deluxe is built for people who want to finish their taxes without all the frustration. It walks you through more than 350 deductions and credits step-by-step, helping you uncover money-saving opportunities you might otherwise overlook. It’s especially helpful for homeowners, investors, and people with a mix of income sources since it can handle everything from real estate tax breaks to stock and retirement income. The software includes five free federal e-files and one state program, with an option to e-file your state return for a small fee. It also supports importing your documents from past returns or other tax platforms. If you run into trouble, you’ll get access to H&R Block’s support center with over 13,000 searchable articles and in-person audit help at no extra charge. Use code FILEEASY by April 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT to get H&R Tax Software Deluxe on sale for $32.99. H&R Block Tax Software Deluxe + State 2024 for Windows/Mac [Online Code]See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

If you want a proper high-performance gaming laptop, then you can’t overlook the Asus ROG Strix G17 that’s on sale at B&H right now. Normally priced at $1,999, you can now snag it for just $1,529. That’s a hefty savings of $470 on a powerful machine that’ll last you years. This is an absolute beast in terms of hardware and capability, running on a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX processor and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. You also get a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, which is more than fast enough for media and gaming. But of course it’s the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU that’s the star of this show. It can handle just about any modern 3D game with high quality settings at a decent FPS. And can we talk about the screen? It has a massive 17.3-inch IPS display with a 2560×1440 resolution and a gaming-ready 240Hz refresh rate. Simply gorgeous, and spacious enough to provide an immersive gaming experience and plenty of screen real estate for productivity benefits. Overall, this is a stellar machine for everything ranging from streaming Netflix to video editing, from creative hobbies to modern gaming. B&H has marked this one as “limited supply at this price,” and we expect gaming laptops to jump up significantly in price once we start feeling the effects of the Trump administration’s tariffs. Grab it now for $1,529 while you can because deals like this won’t last. Buy now from B&H Read...

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Right now, I’ve got twelve open programs on my Windows 11 taskbar, plus four more pinned apps—and even on my ultrawide monitor, they’re taking up a lot of screen real estate. On my laptop, I have to be a lot more conservative with my apps. But a new feature might fix that by automatically making taskbar icons smaller as necessary. The Windows Insider blog details the new feature on the latest Beta and Dev versions of the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build, spotted by BleepingComputer. The new tool gives you three options: icons that shrink and compress only when the taskbar is full, or smaller icons that are permanent, or completely disabled. Given that it’s appearing in two Insider builds simultaneously, I’d say that it’s a pretty solid bet that this will show up in the general release of Windows 11 sometime this year. That’s on top of a lot of changes to the Start menu that are currently in the testing phase and somewhat less likely to get the green light. While I appreciate that Microsoft continues to improve the experience… I feel like they’re also tweaking a lot while ignoring core functionality that existed back in Windows 10. Three and a half years after the release of Windows 11, I still need a registry tweak or a third-party program just to get my taskbar on the top of my screen. Read...

If you’re still on a 1080p monitor, it’s high time you upgraded to something bigger, better, and badder. I’m talking about a proper 4K monitor from a reputable brand—and it doesn’t even have to be expensive, not when you can score a deal like this one. Right now, Samsung’s 32-inch 4K monitor is only $220 on Amazon. That’s a solid 35% discount off its typical $340 price, representing a savings of $120 on a large, gorgeous, yet affordable display. At 32 inches, the ViewFinity UJ59 provides ample screen real estate but isn’t so large that you’ll have to crane your neck or strain your eyes to look your way around it. It’s all the space you need for working on documents, playing games, watching movies, or browsing the web. That’s doubly true with its 3840×2160 resolution, giving you a crisp 4K visual experience that elevates everything you do on your computer. And this monitor has built-in upscaling tech that automatically converts whatever you’re watching up to near-4K quality. Just note that this monitor’s refresh rate caps out at 60Hz, so you’ll have to make do with at most 60 FPS when gaming. The ViewFinity UJ59 does come with a Game Mode, though, which selectively boosts and optimizes screen contrast, allowing you to see more detail in dark areas. That means easier spotting of your enemies in multiplayer games and finding of items on the ground in RPGs. AMD FreeSync helps sync up your monitor with your PC hardware, and there are several ports to connect with, including two HDMI and a DisplayPort. This is a fantastic monitor for the price. If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your workstation to 4K, jump on this deal before it expires and get this 32-inch Samsung display for just $220! Save 35% on Samsung`s 32-inch 4K monitorBuy now at Amazon Read...

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It’s tiny, it’s powerful, and it’s on sale! We’re in the middle of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale event and this Geekom AX8 Max mini PC is down to $569 with Prime. The listing is slashed down by 20%, plus there’s an extra 5% discount at checkout. Don’t have Prime? You can still score this amazing deal if you sign up for a free 30-day Prime trial. Whether you need a home media center, a productivity workstation, or a compact gaming setup, this mini PC can do it all. The Geekom AX8 Max is packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS processor, a solid 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and plenty of storage space thanks to its 1TB SSD. And it’s pretty decent for gaming, too, with its ?AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics with 8GB of RAM. Just don’t crank your settings up too high. What’s notable about the Geekom AX8 Max is how future-proof it is. Not only are the memory and storage upgradeable—up to 96GB RAM across two slots and up to 4TB SSD in a single slot—but it has two cutting-edge USB4 ports capable of 8K@30Hz each, plus two other full-sized HDMI 2.0 ports that can handle 4K@60Hz each. That’s a quadruple high-resolution display setup that’ll maximize your screen real estate. You also get four more USB-A ports on the front and two more on the back alongside two 2.5Gbps Ethernet connections. This thing has more than enough connectivity for all your peripherals and more. Take advantage of this fantastic Prime Spring Deal and grab the Geekom AX8 Max mini PC for $569! That’s an absolute bargain. The Geekom AX8 Max is at the lowest price it`s ever beenBuy now at Amazon Read...

Isn’t it about time to ditch your dual-monitor setup and get yourself a proper ultrawide OLED display? Like this 49-inch monster of an OLED monitor that’s only $800 on Amazon. That’s 20% off and down to the best price we’ve ever seen for it. Both ultrawide and curved, this Innocn display will dazzle your eyes while offering strain-free comfort for long sessions. With its 5120×1440 resolution on 49 glorious inches of screen real estate, you’ll be immersed like never before—and with its 1800R curvature, it’ll wrap around your vision so you can effortlessly see all from edge to edge. The cutting-edge OLED panel guarantees vibrant colors and deep contrast for picture-perfect streaming, and the 144Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms response time are ideal for gaming. If all of your entertainment happens on your PC, then this is an upgrade you won’t regret. Connectivity is no issue here, either. You get three full-size HDMI (two 2.1 and one 1.4), a 90W USB-C for charging your laptop, two USB-A for peripherals, a USB-B, an Ethernet, and 3.5mm audio ports. All in all, this massive ultrawide OLED monitor is a steal for $800 compared to similar OLED displays from other brands. Go ahead and save 20% right now while this deal lasts! Note that this is a Prime-exclusive deal, so if you aren’t a subscriber, start a 30-day free trial of Prime to score this special price. And while you’re here, you might as well check out the amazing early deals we found ahead of Amazon’s Big Spring Sale event! $800 for a 49-inch ultrawide 1440p OLED display is a stealBuy now at Amazon Read...

Roku has sunk to a new low in the streaming wars, with an experimental ad format that blocks your home screen behind an auto-playing video ad. Roku players recently started playing a trailer for Moana 2 instead of loading the home screen they were turned on. While Roku says the ad is just a test, and that users could manually dismiss the ad instead of watching the whole thing, it still represents a new obstacle to basic control over your device. (Reddit users initiated the backlash, as spotted by Ars Technica.) Roku isn’t alone in seeing what kinds of advertising annoyances it can get away with, but it’s crossed a line by putting an ad wall in front of its home screen and requiring extra clicks to get rid of it. Test or not, it’s a disappointing sign of what’s to come. Roku’s response Here is Roku’s official statement about the ads: “Roku delivers the best value and experience for our 90M and growing TV streaming households. This has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products. Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience.” And here’s the context behind that statement: Despite being in 90 million homes, Roku still loses money every year. The company is trying to turn a profit by the end of 2026, which means it needs to add more users while also making more money from each one. Roku executives have repeatedly pointed to the home screen as a path to the latter goal. In its latest earning call, CEO Anthony Wood referred to the home screen as “a key asset” for the company, adding that “making better use of the assets is a big part of our strategy to grow platform revenue.” If we view the Roku home screen not primarily as a way to help users navigate their streaming content, but rather as a way to show more ads and sell more subscriptions, this once-sacred ground for Roku will naturally become more annoying over time. Boiling the frog Roku’s left sidebar ad leaves less room for actual menu options.Jared Newman / Foundry Roku has been moving in this direction for a while now. Last year, it brought video to the large banner ad on the right-hand side of the app grid. It also put a new ad in the left-hand sidebar, leaving less room for menu items, and it’s been giving brands such as McDonald’s more space in its default screensaver. A row of content recommendations now appears in the app grid as well, with Wood noting those are intended to “drive more monetization.” Still, other streaming platforms have gotten even more aggressive. Google TV and Amazon Fire TV have used the top carousel of their respective home screens to advertise earbuds and chicken tenders, and Amazon inserts full-screen ads into its screensaver mode. Last year, Amazon took things a step further, with auto-playing video ads that take over the entire Fire TV screen at power-on unless you immediately scroll downwards. Roku can no longer resist mucking up its own home screen in response. As Wood told investors, the Roku home screen is what half of U.S. broadband customers see when they turn on their TVs. “We are making better use of our home screen to drive more engagement and to drive more subscriptions and to drive more ad revenue,” he said. Roku’s app grid ad plays video now.Ben Patterson/Foundry So here we are, with Roku testing full-screen ads that block immediate access to your device unless you proactively dismiss them. This is a failure of imagination on Roku’s part—a way to boost revenue that’s as obvious as it is ham-fisted—and while it shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, that it did is entirely unsurprising. What Roku should have said Instead of making excuses, Roku should have immediately recognized its error and made clear that it will never hinder basic navigation for the sake of ARPU (average revenue per user). Otherwise, there’s not much reason to consider Roku over anything else (including streaming devices with ad-free home screens or even a PC plugged into your TV). With that in mind, I’m going to do my best impression of PR speak and tell you what Roku’s response should have been: “We’re always looking for ways to connect our customers with new and exciting content, including from our advertising partners, but our recent test missed the mark. We recognize that Roku should never stand in the way of what customers want to watch, and our future experiments with new advertising formats will better-reflect that goal.” And here’s what that would look like translated back to plain English: “Look, we need to turn a profit, but hiding the home screen behind an ad wall was a bad idea, and we won’t be doing that anymore. Sorry!” Will such assurances happen? I doubt it. Roku’s primary customers are no longer the ones who pay for its smart TVs or streaming players, but rather the advertisers who pay Roku for the coveted real estate on its platform. There will be no apology or concession, only continued experiments to see what else people will put up with. Are you a Roku user ready to look for an alternative device? Take a look our most-recommended media streamers. And sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV insights. Read...