Actually Tested AI

How to Use AI to Study for a Certification Exam Without Burning Out Three weeks into studying for the AWS Solutions Architect exam, I caught myself reading the same paragraph about VPC peering for the fourth time at 11 PM, retaining absolutely nothing. I'd been doing this for two hours. That's when I finally admitted the traditional study approach wasn't working — not because I'm lazy, but because my brain had clearly checked out somewhere around page 47. So I started experimenting with ChatGPT as a study partner. Not to cheat, not to skip the work, but to find a way through the material that didn't make me want to throw my laptop across the room. After six weeks of trial and error — and ultimately passing the exam — here's what actually worked and what was a complete waste of time. The Thing That Didn't Work At All My first approach was obvious: dump the exam objectives into ChatGPT and ask it to explain everything. I figured I'd save ho...

Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT for Office Work — I Used Both for a Month Last Tuesday I was three hours into a quarterly report when Copilot crashed mid-sentence and took my unsaved edits with it. That's when I realized I'd been testing these tools wrong the whole time — treating them like separate apps instead of what they actually are: very different philosophies about how AI should fit into your work. The Setup Nobody Talks About I went into this thinking the comparison would be simple. ChatGPT is the standalone brain. Copilot is the embedded helper. One you visit, one lives inside your apps. Easy enough. Except that's not how office work actually functions. In real use, the distinction matters way less than you'd expect — and way more in specific situations that are hard to predict ahead of time. My test was simple: one month of actual work tasks split between both tools. I'm talking email drafts, meeting summaries, data analysis in Excel, presen...

Last month I did something I'd been avoiding for a year: I added up every AI subscription hitting my card. ChatGPT Plus. Claude Pro. Gemini. Perplexity. A Midjourney plan I forgot existed. The total made me put my coffee down. Here's the trap nobody warns you about — each one is "just $20." Individually painless. Together they quietly clear $1,300+ a year , and half of them do the same job. So I built the exact tool I used to find the overlap. Check the ones you pay for, and it'll show you your real annual spend and how much you're double-paying. 📌 The 3-line version In July 2026 the standard tier converged at ~$20/mo : ChatGPT Plus $20, Claude Pro $20, Google AI Pro $19.99, Perplexity Pro $20, SuperGrok $30. All five standard plans together run about $110/month — roughly $1,320 a year. Most people only need one general chatbot. Paying for two or three is the single bi...

I tested every AI grammar tool and this is the only one I still open Last Tuesday I caught myself pasting the same paragraph into Grammarly, then ProWritingAid, then LanguageTool, then back to Grammarly — and realized I'd spent twelve minutes editing one sentence about coffee subscriptions. That's when I knew something had gone wrong with my workflow. I've been testing AI writing assistants for about two years now. Not reviewing them — actually using them daily for client work, blog posts, emails, the occasional angry letter to my HOA. At various points I've paid for premium subscriptions to Grammarly, ProWritingAid, LanguageTool, Wordtune, Hemingway Editor, QuillBot, and whatever that one was called that shut down last year. I've installed browser extensions, desktop apps, and mobile keyboards. I've let them all see my worst drafts. And after all that, my daily driver is the one I expected to hate. What I thought before I actually tested I was...

Holding off on exchanging US Dollars for Korean Won thinking, "I'll wait a bit more for a better rate"? That 'little bit' will be decided in just two days . The Federal Reserve's July interest rate decision comes out on July 29 (Wed) at 2:00 PM EDT (July 30 early morning KST). It is a day when the USD/KRW exchange rate swings dramatically on a single announcement. Moreover, current exchange rate movements are already unusual — after reaching 1,530 KRW in early July, it recently hovered around 1,470 KRW, strengthening the Korean Won by nearly 60 KRW in a month. Whether this trend solidifies or reverses will be determined by this announcement. Calculating after the news drops is too late. Check now how your exchange amount varies across different scenarios. 📌 3-Line Key Takeaways The US FOMC July interest rate decision will be announced on July 29 at 2:00 PM EDT (...

How to Use Claude to Actually Understand a Long Boring Document Last week I had to read a 47-page municipal zoning variance report for a project I'm consulting on. The kind of document where every paragraph feels like it was written specifically to make you stop reading. I'd been putting it off for three days when I remembered: this is literally what Claude is supposed to be good at. The Obvious Approach That Didn't Work My first instinct was lazy. Copy the whole thing, paste it into Claude, type "summarize this." The summary I got back was technically accurate and completely useless. It told me the document was about a zoning variance request for a mixed-use development. Yeah, I knew that from the title. The problem with "summarize this" is that Claude doesn't know what you actually need from the document. It gives you the Wikipedia version — the facts without the judgment. For a 47-page zoning report, that meant I got a neat little ...

The Perplexity AI Feature That Makes It Better Than Google for Certain Searches I was trying to figure out which USB-C hub would actually work with my specific laptop model for dual 4K monitors, and after 20 minutes of clicking through Google results, I had twelve open tabs, three contradictory Reddit threads, and a growing headache. Then I asked Perplexity the same question. What happened next made me rethink how I search for anything technical. The Feature Nobody Talks About Properly It's called Sources, but that undersells it completely. Every claim Perplexity makes comes with a clickable citation. Not buried at the bottom. Right there, inline, as it talks. Here's why that matters more than it sounds. When Google gives you an AI Overview, you get a summary. Maybe it's right. Maybe it's confidently wrong. You have no idea which until you dig. Perplexity shows its work. I can see it pulled that spec from Tom's Hardware and that compatibility note fr...

The ChatGPT Setting Most People Never Change That Makes Answers Way Better I spent three months getting mediocre ChatGPT responses before I accidentally discovered I'd been ignoring the one setting that actually matters. Not temperature. Not the model selector. The custom instructions panel that's been sitting there the whole time, quietly waiting for me to stop being lazy. Where This Setting Actually Lives Click your profile icon. Then "Customize ChatGPT." Two text boxes appear. The first asks what you want ChatGPT to know about you. The second asks how you want it to respond. Most people glance at this, think "I'll fill that out later," and never come back. I know because I did exactly that. For months. Every single conversation started from zero. I'd re-explain that I'm a writer, that I hate corporate speak, that I need practical examples not theory. Over and over. It was exhausting and I didn't even realize it was exhausti...

When Not to Use AI: The Tasks Where It Actually Makes Things Worse Last Tuesday I spent three hours using ChatGPT to write a condolence card to my friend whose father died. Three hours. The final version I sent? I wrote it myself in four minutes, after throwing away everything the AI gave me. That's when I realized I'd been using AI wrong for months. Not because the tools are bad — I've tested dozens and many are genuinely useful. But I kept defaulting to them for tasks where they actively made my work worse. Slower. More generic. Sometimes embarrassingly off. Here's what two years of obsessive testing taught me about when to close the ChatGPT tab entirely. Tasks That Require Actually Knowing Someone The condolence card was the obvious example. But it's part of a bigger pattern. Anything that requires understanding a specific human being — not humans in general, but this one person — AI fails at hard. I tried using Claude to help me write a weddi...

How to Use AI to Read and Summarize a Contract Before You Sign I was about to sign a freelance contract last month when I realized I'd spent more time picking a coffee order that morning than actually reading the eight-page document in front of me. That's when I wondered if ChatGPT could do what I clearly wasn't going to do myself — actually read the thing. What I Actually Did (And Why It Almost Went Wrong) My first attempt was embarrassingly simple. I copied the entire contract, pasted it into ChatGPT, and typed "summarize this contract." What I got back was technically accurate but completely useless. A list of what each section contained. "Section 3 addresses payment terms. Section 4 covers intellectual property." Thanks, I could see that from the headers. The problem was I asked the wrong question. AI summarizes what you give it, but it doesn't know what you're worried about. So I tried again with something more specific: ...

Last Sunday I finally did the thing I'd been avoiding for months: I opened my bank statement and searched for every AI charge. ChatGPT Plus. Claude Pro. Google AI Pro that I upgraded to in March for one project and forgot about. Total damage: $59.99 a month. That's $719.88 a year — quietly, automatically, whether I used them or not. And here's the uncomfortable part: in 2026, the big providers have converged on nearly identical $20 tiers, which means most of us are paying two or three times for capabilities that overlap heavily. So I built the audit I wish someone had handed me. 📌 Quick answer · The standard AI tier in 2026 costs about $20/month : ChatGPT Plus $20, Claude Pro $20, Google AI Pro $19.99, Perplexity Pro $20. · Budget tiers now exist: ChatGPT Go is $8/month and Google AI Plus dropped to $4.99/month in June 2026. ...