Rick's Daily Tips

Rick’s Daily Pick: Calculated Industries 4065 Construction Master Pro Advanced Construction Calculator

Posted on February 10, 2025

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

My “Pick” for today is this super-handy Calculated Industries 4065 Construction Master Pro Advanced Construction Calculator.

Do you love building things but hate doing calculations like roof pitch and all the other important calculations required for designing and building a strong and durable professional quality structure? This little gem makes all of those complex calculations a piece of cake.

Click here to check out the Calculated Industries 4065 Construction Master Pro Advanced Construction Calculator at Amazon.

Picture of the Day: “Sunrise at Cabo de Palos”

Posted on February 10, 2025

Today’s POTD features a very colorful sunrise view of Spain’s Cabo de Palos and the iconic lighthouse that decorates its rocky shore. I hope you like it.

Enjoy these “Pictures of the Day”?

Monthly Tech Giveaway – February 2025

Posted on January 31, 2024

Note: The links on this page are affiliate links.

February’s winner will receive this fantastic CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC 1500VA/1000W Sinewave UPS System.

This is one of my favorite UPS systems. It provides a clean sinewave output and it’ll keep your computer gear up and running long enough for you to save all of your open files and perform a normal shutdown when your power goes out.

All subscribers to the Standard edition of my Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter have an equal chance to win.

Premium subscribers have two chances to win (their email addresses are added to the “pot” twice).

Not a subscriber? Just enter your email address in the form on this page. Once subscribed you’ll be eligible to win each month’s drawing – starting with this month. Better yet, opt for a Premium subscription for double the chance to win!

The drawing for this month’s prize will be held on February 28 and the winner will be notified by email. The winner will be selected at random.

Good luck!

Quickly get all of your PC’s technical specs and info with Speccy

Posted on February 8, 2025

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Unless you enjoy “popping the hood” on your PC and getting to know its innards on a first-name basis, you probably have no clue what all is inside there.

Sure, you know there’s a CPU, a motherboard, a hard drive or SSD, RAM sticks and a number of other components, but you probably don’t know many of the technical details about those components.

Computer parts such as the ones listed above vary greatly in terms of speed, capacity, and software compatibility so it pays to have a handy reference just in case you ever need to call Tech Support or install a new piece of software (or even upgrade to a new version of Windows). [Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a really cheap, but reliable SSD for an older laptop?

Posted on February 8, 2025

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Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell laptop died a few days ago. This has been a great machine and I don’t want to just trash it.

I’d like to replace the bad hard drive with an SSD, but I’d rather not spend a lot of money if I can help it.

After reading your post about replacing Windows with Linux, I’d like to install Linux Mint on this laptop and use it as my primary Internet computer. I won’t need a lot of storage space so a fairly small SSD should be ok.

What I’m looking for a really inexpensive SSD that’s large enough to hold the new Linux installation and maybe a few Chrome extensions. But I’d like the SSD to be as reliable as possible. [Read more…]

6 ways a chatbot can help with your marketing efforts

Posted on February 8, 2025

Artificial intelligence has changed the way businesses conduct marketing. One of the most common applications of AI is through the use of chatbots.

With many teams having AI-powered chatbots in their arsenal, marketing processes have become more efficient, from aiding in customer service to achieving scalability.

Read on to review the different chatbot functions that have made an impact on marketing. [Read more…]