Rick's Daily Tips

ATTN Xfinity Mobile Customers: Your service is about to get a lot worse.

Posted on July 3, 2018

Have you seen the new ads from Comcast promoting their Xfinity Mobile service?

If you have, you probably think it sounds like a pretty good deal.

Well, that “deal” is about to get a lot worse. [Read more…]

Review: Microsoft Edge for Android

Posted on July 2, 2018

With more people now use mobile devices to access the Internet than laptops or desktop computers, I’m always on the lookout for best mobile web browsers.

Opera Mini has been my favorite mobile browser for a good while now, but I’m beginning to re-think that choice now that I’ve used Microsoft Edge for Android for a while.

Microsoft included their new Edge browser as a replacement for the much-maligned Internet Explorer in Windows 10, and I really like it.

Edge is fast, clean and easy to use. I tend to use multiple browsers simultaneously on my work PC because every browser just seems to work better with specific websites that I use on a daily basis. [Read more…]

Review: Intocircuit Portable Charger 26000mAh External Battery Pack

Posted on July 1, 2018

I’ve been testing and writing about external battery packs for mobile devices for years, but the typical model is only good for three or four charges of a smart phone, at most.

What’s more, if you want to recharge multiple devices at once, you’re simply out of luck!

But now there’s something a lot more powerful than the typical portable charger.

Put simply, the Intocircuit Portable Charger PC26000 is a high power / high capacity external battery pack and charger that will charge multiple devices all at the same time. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to keep using a hard drive after doing a low-level format to lock out bad sectors?

Posted on June 29, 2018

Question from Tom J.: I have a 4TB Seagate external hard drive that recently came down with a bunch of bad sectors even though it’s only about 2 years old.

A friend of mine said I could do a low level format of the drive to lock out the bad sectors and the rest of the drive would work just fine.

What’s your opinion on this? I hate to just trash a drive that large when it still has most of its capacity available, but I don’t want to risk losing my files either.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to install a PDF printer on your Windows 10 PC

Posted on June 26, 2018

Did you know that Windows 10 includes a native PDF printer?

Well, it does, and it’s typically installed by default when the Windows installation is created.

To save a document in most any program/app as a PDF file you would simply select Print to PDF (or something similar) from the Print dialog.

However, for whatever reason the default Microsoft PDF printer isn’t installed along with Windows 10 on every PC.

You’ll know that’s the case with your computer if you don’t see the “Print to PDF” option when you click File>Print or press Ctrl–P.

Luckily, it’s very easy to install the default Microsoft PDF Printer on your Windows 10 machine if wasn’t installed along with Windows. Just follow these steps: [Read more…]