Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
I’m often asked if I’d be willing to recover the photos and other files from a “dead” laptop or desktop computer.
I typically refer them to this post that explains how to retrieve their files themselves, but some folks prefer to pay me to do the job for them because they don’t want to take a chance on accidentally trashing their files.
I provide this service because I know how important precious photos and other irreplaceable files can be to their owners.
Here’s the deal… [Read more…]
Many of the posts I publish on this blog are warnings about scams and hoaxes that happen to be making the rounds at the time.
Well, this post is sort of the opposite of those “Scam Alert” posts.
I’ve had several people message me to ask whether the “Time to Shift” notices from Microsoft are real or if they’re a hoax.
If you haven’t seen one of these notices yet, you surely will before long. The wording can vary slightly, but they typically read something like this: [Read more…]
Question from Missy: The battery in my Toshiba Satellite C655D-S520 laptop has gone bad. Where can I get a good deal on a replacement battery?
I checked with Best Buy and Office Depot and they can order one for me but they want a small fortune for it!
I’ll be happy to consider a third-party laptop battery instead of one from Toshiba as long as it’s reliable and safe (as in it won’t burn my house down or damage my laptop!).
Rick’s answer: Hi Missy. As with most things electronic, I always buy my laptop batteries at Amazon because of their excellent selection, great prices and outstanding customer service. [Read more…]
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Question from Summer G.: Hi Rick. I’m really worried that my Acer laptop is going to burn itself out.
After it’s been on for just a few minutes it gets so hot I can barely stand to touch the keyboard. And if I leave it on for as little as 15 to 20 minutes it shuts itself off.
What could be causing my laptop to get so hot? Thanks in advance for your help!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Regular readers of this blog know that I often recommend replacing your computer’s hard drive with a super-fast solid state drive (SSD).
As I explain in this post, SSDs have several advantages over spinning hard drives.
But unfortunately they’ve always had one major disadvantage as well: SSDs have always cost a lot more than hard drives with the same storage capacity.
Well, thankfully that’s rapidly changing.