Rick's Daily Tips

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

Posted on July 13, 2023

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell Inspiron 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 Linux Mint I’d like to install it 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 is the cheapest SSD I can get 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…]

Q&A: How do you reset the password on a Mac?

Posted on July 13, 2023

Question from Charlotte: Rick, my family is dealing with some issues right now, and I’m hoping you can help me resolve one of them.

My daughter loaned her Macbook Air to her cousin a few weeks ago. When she finally got it back she discovered that it now has a password on it.

I won’t mention any details, but the cousin is upset with my daughter and she refuses to give her the password.

I really need your help with resetting the password on my daughter’s Macbook Air. Can you tell me what I need to do? [Read more…]

Q&A: Do WiFi cameras still work when the Internet is down?

Posted on July 12, 2023

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Carl: I’m thinking about hiring someone to install some WiFi security cameras around my house.

The way I understand it they’ll communicate with my PC via my router’s WiFi connection.

What I’d like to know is will the cameras still work when my Charter Internet is down?

[Read more…]

Get detailed information about your PC’s hardware with HWiNFO

Posted on July 11, 2023

There are several handy free utilities out there that will tell you what hardware is inside your PC.

One of the best I’ve ever used is HWiNFO.

Like Speccy, HWiNFO is a free program that provides tons of details about your system’s CPU, motherboard, memory and such.

But HWiNFO also provides a live snapshot of the CPU temperature and various system voltages, great information to have if you’re a computer tech or system builder. [Read more…]