Tech Questions & Answers Archives - Page 2 of 258

Q&A: Why can’t I remove the Antivirus app from my computer?

Posted on February 15, 2025

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Question from Dale: Hi, Rick. I have a problem that I hope you can help me with.

I just bought a new antivirus app for our computers. I read your post about only running one antivirus app at a time and I’m trying to uninstall AVG Antivirus before installing the new program.

I was able to remove AVG from my wife’s computer with no problems at all, but when I try to uninstall it from my laptop it gives me an error and the uninstall fails.

Can you tell me what I need to do to remove AVG from my computer? [Read more…]

Q&A: Do surge suppressors actually work?

Posted on February 13, 2025

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Question from Ana: I bought a new iMac from Best Buy a couple of years ago.

I also bought a surge suppressor to go with it because the salesman said it would prevent the computer from being damaged by lightning.

We had a thunderstorm last night and our power went off. It came back on a couple of hours later but now my TV, dishwasher and iMac are all dead. None of them will do anything when I turn them on.

My question is, do surge suppressors really work?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Is it ok to use Gmail for my business email?

Posted on February 12, 2025

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Question from Gabe: I recently retired after a long career in public service and I’m planning to start a second career as a professional photographer.

I’ve already lined up a few shoots through word-of-mouth but I’m planning to put up a business page on Facebook and have some business cards printed to promote my photography services.

The question I have is do I need a private email address (something like [email protected] where example.com is my own domain name) or will a Gmail address suffice?

[Read more…]

Q&A: How do I set Google Play to only auto-update apps over Wi-Fi?

Posted on February 12, 2025

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Question from Kara: I have an Android phone that loves to auto-update my apps over my cellular data connection without any warning.

The problem is I sometimes use up my data allotment before the month runs out.

I realize that downloading app updates doesn’t use up a lot of data, but they do use some, right?

How can I set my phone to only auto-update my apps when I’m connected to Wi-Fi? [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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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…]