Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Judy D:. Is there any way to tell if a phone charger is bad? The wall charger that came with my phone seems to work ok but it takes forever to charge my battery.
It usually takes a little over 2 hours to charge my phone completely up when the battery is really low, but the charger that came with my sister’s phone will do it in about an hour.
Do you think I need to buy a new charger?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Apple’s popular iTunes service has millions of active customers, and that make them a favorite target of scammers.
Well, an old iTunes-related scam that tries to trick you into disclosing your iTunes login information by trying to claim a bogus refund from Apple is making the rounds once again.
The scam works something like this: [Read more…]
Question from Dorean W.: Hi Rick! I’m teaching myself how to use Microsoft Excel and I’ve run into a problem.
I used to be able to use the arrow keys on my keyboard to move from cell to cell, but all of a sudden that has stopped working. Now the arrow keys cause the entire page to move either up and down or side to side.
Can you tell me how to fix this? My computer is running Windows 10.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Anita L.: Hi Rick. I hope you can answer a computer question for me.
I’ve been using computers for over 30 years, but believe it or not I just bought my very first laptop. Yay me!!
Long story short, I love the laptop but absolutely hate the keyboard!
I know that I can buy a new USB keyboard and plug it in and it will work, but I have an old Cherry PS/2 style keyboard that I’ve had for many years. I’d really love to use that keyboard because I love the feel and sound of the mechanical keys.
The problem is my laptop doesn’t have a PS/2 keyboard connector. Is there any way I can make this keyboard work with my laptop? Some kind of adapter maybe?
Thanks for your help. Love your site by the way!!!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Guess what? It’s almost time for the kids to head back to school for the new year!
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like their summer vacation gets shorter every year – and this year’s is just about gone.
That means it’s time to start shopping for some new clothes as well as a bushel of school supplies like spiral notebooks, pencils, glue sticks and sanitary wipes.
But the really serious shopping will be for the tech items the older kids will need. You know, the laptop and other goodies that are pretty much required these days.
With that in mind, here are five suggestions to help you get started… [Read more…]