Rick's Daily Tips

Review: Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series i5567-1836GRY Laptop

Posted on January 25, 2019

There are lots of Windows 10 laptops to choose from these days, and as you might expect, some are better than others.

I’ve spent some time checking a few of them out, and my favorite moderately priced Windows 10 laptop so far is the brand new Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series i5567-1836GRY. (#ad)

This is a very capable machine, offering plenty of power and functionality for most any computing task.

This stylish laptop has a beautiful 15.6 inch 1366×768 LED Backlit Display as well as plenty of speed and performance thanks to its powerful Intel Core i5 7200U CPU and built-in AC class Wi-Fi. Here is a detailed list of the specs: [Read more…]

Netgear WiFi Analytics – Tune your WiFi network for better performance with this fantastic free app

Posted on January 25, 2019

Does your WiFi network seem slower than it should be?

Do you struggle with poor, unstable connections?

Are you unable to use your devices at all in a distant room?

Many wireless networking issues can be fixed simply by making a tweak or two to your router, but the trick is knowing exactly what’s causing the issue and what you need to tweak.

Our friends at Netgear have developed an awesome free app for your Android devices that can help take some of the guesswork out of diagnosing and fixing many WiFi networking issues. [Read more…]

Q&A: I was kicked out of my own Facebook group. How can I regain control of it?

Posted on January 24, 2019

Question from Daniel: I’m in desperate need of your help with recovering a Facebook group that was stolen from me.

Back in 2015 I started a group about camping. I worked real hard at promoting the group and over time it grew to over 32,000 members.

I used this group to sell camping gear that I would ship directly to the customers from my brick and mortar store.

About 7 months ago I was approached by a woman who runs a fitness website asking if we could cross-promote each other’s products in our two groups.

I agreed and granted her admin access to my group and she reciprocated by granting me admin access to her group.

Her group only has about 12,000 members but I was making several sales a week from my posts in there.

All was well until this morning when I discovered that I’m no longer a member of either group.

I tried logging in with my email address and password and neither group will accept them.

It appears that this person has hijacked my group and kicked me completely out of it. Can you tell me what I need to do in order to regain control of it?

I reported the theft to Facebook but so far I haven’t heard anything back from them.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Review: Pawtec External USB 3.0 Aluminum 8X DVD-RW Optical Drive

Posted on January 22, 2019

pawtec-external-usb-aluminum-dvd-drive2 — (#ad)

Many new laptops now come without an optical drive built-in, and that’s fine if you no longer have a need to play music or movies from DVDs, install software that’s distributed on discs, or back up your data onto blank writable DVDs.

But what if you still need access to an optical drive on occasion?

The easiest way to solve this problem is to purchase an inexpensive external USB optical drive. Just like external USB hard drives, these drives simply plug into an open USB port, allowing you to do everything you could do with an internal optical drive without the burden of the extra weight.

I recently had the opportunity to check out the Pawtec External USB 3.0 Aluminum 8X DVD-RW Optical Drive (#ad), and I really like it. [Read more…]

YouTube takes action to ban dangerous ‘prank’ and ‘challenge’ videos from their site

Posted on January 18, 2019

For years people have been making dangerous “prank” videos and sharing them on YouTube hoping to see the videos go viral.

A lot of those dangerous videos did end up going viral, inspiring thousands of copycats to attempt to recreate the prank.

As one might expect, many of those copycat pranksters ended up getting seriously hurt while filming their own versions of the stunts.

Things became even worse when the prank video makers started actually challenging viewers to make similar videos of their own.

[Read more…]