Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
HP has just announced the recall of approximately 6 million power cords belonging to HP and Compaq laptop owners in the USA and Canada.
The reason? They tend to overheat, leading to melting insulation – and even fires in some cases.
The “brick” section of the power cord and the wire that’s permanently attached to it appear to be fine. It’s the cord that plugs into and detaches from the “brick” that’s defective. [Read more…]
Google has finally released a 64 bit version of their popular Chrome web browser, and after putting it through its paces it appears to be a lot faster and more stable than the 32 bit version that we’ve all been using for so long.
Let me tell you, this is one fast browser!
There are other enhancements in the new version as well, one of my favorites being much crisper text on high-DPI monitors. But the increases in speed and stability are by far the most important of all the enhancements. [Read more…]
Apple has just announced that some iPhone 5 smart phones were shipped with defective batteries that won’t charge up correctly and lose their charge too quickly.
The defective batteries were only shipped in a relatively small number of phones, but if yours is one them, Apple will replace the battery for you at no charge.
The first thing you need to do is determine if your iPhone 5 is on Apple’s list of phone’s that shipped with the bad battery. If it is, I recommend that you take advantage of Apple’s free battery replacement program right away. [Read more…]
There’s an insidious scam making the rounds that could possibly target you or someone you know. Here’s the scenario:
You’re having a conversation with a friend when he tells you that a mutual friend has been talking trash about you. You tell your friend that you know that person well, and you don’t believe he would ever say anything like that about you.
“Hold on”, he says, “I have proof!” [Read more…]
Accepting credit and debit cards is essential for most small businesses today, but purchasing a card swipe terminal and paying the sky-high processing fees are tough hurdles for many of them to get over.
But now a new service called Amazon Local Register makes it cheap and easy to accept card payments using an iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire or one of a number of select Android devices!
What’s more, the tiny secure card reader that Amazon will send you costs just $10 and you’ll even get that right back in the form of fee credits! The only other fee you’ll pay is a small “Swipe Fee” every time you swipe a customer’s credit or debit card. [Read more…]