Tech Questions & Answers Archives - Page 111 of 258

Q&A: How can I stop my neighbor from stealing my electricity?

Posted on March 2, 2022

Question from William: I have a detached garage that has a 120 volt electrical outlet that’s accessible from the outside.

On cold nights (which we have lots of here in Wisconsin) my jerk of a neighbor likes to plug his diesel truck’s block heater into that outlet with a long extension cord.

I’ve told him to stop doing this on three different occasions because I don’t like him running up my electric bill.

He’ll stop, but then a few days later he goes right back to doing it.

I’m thinking about temporarily connecting 240 volts to that outlet (which would be very easy to do in the garage’s breaker panel) to destroy his truck’s block heater and teach him a lesson. Do you think that would work? [Read more…]

Q&A: What’s a good replacement for Windows’ Photos app?

Posted on March 1, 2022

Question from Barbara: I bought a new computer with Windows 11 on it and after using it for a while I’ve decided that I despise the Photos app.

Can you recommend a good replacement for it?

Free would be great but I don’t mind paying if I have to in order to get a good one. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is my computer’s RAM really running at half-speed?

Posted on February 28, 2022

Question from Jimmy: A few years ago I paid a computer tech to build a gaming PC for me.

This machine has a Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3-CF motherboard and 8GB of Patriot Viper DDR4-3000 RAM in it.

That means the RAM should be operating at 3000 MHz, right?

After reading your post about Speccy I decided to install it and run it just to see all the specs of my system at a glance.

Speccy is reporting the DRAM speed to be 1496 MHz instead of 3000.

Is my RAM actually operating at that speed or is Speccy just reporting it wrong? [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I protect the files on a flash drive from accidental deletion?

Posted on February 25, 2022

Question from Tim: I have three semesters worth of very important notes stored on a USB flash drive.

My friend wants to borrow that drive so he can use the notes to study for a certification exam.

I can’t afford to lose those files for any reason because they cannot be re-created or replaced.

Is there some way to prevent my friend from accidentally deleting the files from the drive? [Read more…]

Q&A: How do I cancel my ‘Amazon Music Unlimited’ subscription?

Posted on February 25, 2022

Question from Iris: A while back I signed up for Amazon Music Unlimited and I used it every day for a while.

One of my wo-workers turned me onto Spotify and now I prefer using that instead.

Can you tell me how to cancel my Amazon Music Unlimited subscription?

I just don’t see the point in subscribing to two music services. [Read more…]