Attack of the AI browsers

The AI browsers are here. Should you care?

Plus: Verizon’s home internet expansion, digital sticky notes, and my giant new surge protector.

Jared Newman   |   October 28, 2025

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a longtime tech journalist, and you’re reading the free edition of Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up to get it every Tuesday.

Earlier this morning, I had AI handle all of my grocery shopping.

Using Perplexity’s Comet browser, I provided a link to my shopping list on Google Keep, then asked it to put everything in my cart for a Kroger pick-up order, making sure to select previous purchase items when multiple options are available. Within a few minutes, Comet had picked out all the correct items—including the taco shells and fake meat we usually get for taco night—and plopped me onto the check-out page.

This kind of scenario explains why so many AI companies are now trying to build their own browsers. Perplexity’s Comet and The Browser Company’s Dia both became widely available without an invite earlier this month, and OpenAI launched its own ChatGPT Atlas browser for MacOS last week. Opera has started previewing an AI-powered browser called Neon, and Microsoft Edge has an experimental “Copilot Actions” feature that can browse the web on your behalf.

These browsers all promise to automate away the mundane aspects of navigating the internet, and there are moments—like when it deals with your grocery list—in which that seems pretty compelling. But these AI browsers also bring some serious security, privacy, and usability trade-offs that make me cautious about using them.

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News in brief

Verizon’s home internet expansion: Verizon is bringing wireless home internet to more places, but with some major caveats. The new “Lite” plan offers 25 Mbps download speeds for the first 150 GB of monthly data, with unlimited use at 10 Mbps after that—barely enough for streaming. The sticker price is $60 per month, but customers can knock that down to $25 per month by bundling phone service, setting up autopay, and signing up by the end of this year. (The cost without bundling mobile is $40 per month.)

By comparison, Verizon’s standard 5G home internet plan has download speeds up to 100 Mbps with no data caps for $35 per month after the same autopay/mobile discounts. The Lite plan is targeted at folks who can’t get Verizon’s 5G or fiber services where they live.

More notable reads:

Gadget of the week

Giant surge protector: Until reading this piece by my pal (and PCWorld editor) Brad Chacos, I didn’t realize how many outlets one could pack into a single surge protector. This one from the fantastically-named SUPERDANNY has 22 outlets and six USB ports, and I now have two them in my office.

My office power strip situation was previously a mess, with four smaller surge protectors across a pair of duplexes, everything twisting asunder beneath my feet. Between my Beelink Mini PC, Mac Mini, HDHomeRun networked tuner, cable modem, Eero router, ethernet switch, desktop speakers, desktop charging station, a pair of external hard drives, a garage door opener hub, a couple of smart speakers, a TV, a soundbar, and a plethora of streaming devices, there was a lot of demand for power and I often had to juggle things.

Maybe you’re less gadget-afflicted and don’t have this problem, but in my case the $22 per surge protector was worth it for a much neater setup that still has outlets to spare. (It currently goes for $27, so consider setting up a price watch for whenever it goes on sale next, or look at this similar option from the less-wonderfully-named TROND.)

Try these apps

Screenshot

Synced sticky notes: FiveNotes provides up to five sticky notes to cycle through on your Mac desktop. You hide them with the menu bar icon or a keyboard shortcut, or pin them so they always appear on top of other apps. This scratches an itch for me as I often need a place to stash snippets of text and find TextEdit too slow and clunky.

The Mac app has a 30-day trial and is an $8 one-time purchase after that, with a $4 mobile app that syncs notes to your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. (Another nice find from Hulry.)

Play some DOS games: DOSBox Pure Unleashed is a DOS software emulator for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with an emphasis on ease-of-use. Instead of having to mess with the command line, you can just drag-and-drop old DOS files into the app. There’s also a built-in controller mapper for using a gamepad instead of a mouse and keyboard.

The app is free to download with an optional donation. If you don’t have any old DOS software sitting around, MyAbandonware is a great place to start.

Spend wisely

The excellent Anker 737 Power Bank has dropped to its second-lowest price ever. Amazon has it for $75, or you can get it for $65 from Best Buy in “Excellent” open-box condition. (There were a couple hours in April when it sold for $50, but I think that was a mistake; it’s never been that cheap otherwise.)

I have this power bank myself, and it rules. The 24,000 mAh battery is big enough to charge a laptop with speedy 140W charging, but it’s also small enough to be cleared for carry-on air travel. The on-board display for battery life and charge speeds is neat, and I appreciate the flexibility of both USB-C and USB-A ports.

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Thanks for reading! Catch you next week.

Until then,
Jared

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