Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Have you taken the plunge and purchased one of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smart phones that recently hit the market?
If so, it has just been recalled due to what has been described as a very serious battery issue.
Apparently the defective batteries are subject to overheating, and some of them have actually exploded and caught on fire. Not a good thing to say the least!
Here is Samsung’s official statement concerning the recall: [Read more…]
Question from Brandon H.: I make some of my WordPress posts sticky, but sometimes I forget to go back and “unstick” them when they no longer need to be stuck to the home page.
I find it irritating to see a sticky post hang around after it no longer deserves to be sticky, and I’m sure my readers do as well.
Do you know of a way to make the “sticky” status of a post expire after a certain length of time or on a certain date? If you can tell me how to do this, my life will become a lot easier lol.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
The inherent insecurity of sending email messages over standard, unencrypted email systems has been dominating the news of late thanks to the baffling actions of a certain Presidential candidate.
As you probably already know, any information that’s transmitted over an unencrypted email system is wide open to anyone who might happen to intercept it while it’s on its way to the recipient’s computer or mobile device. And trust me, it happens all the time.
While maintaining our own personal email server and using it to encrypt our emails is probably not a realistic option for most folks, you can still easily send your emails to their intended recipients in secure encrypted form. [Read more…]
Question from Eric P.: My dad is going to help me build a gaming PC. He’s already built one before so he knows what he’s doing, but we’re both confused about something.
The money I’ve saved is just enough to buy one of the following:
1 – An Intel Core i5 CPU
2 – A Core i7 CPU
Basically, if I go with the i7 I’ll have to use the motherboard’s integrated video.
My question is which CPU should I buy for the best gaming performance given the fact that if I go with the i5 I’ll be able to add a stand-alone video card?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
I’m often asked if it’s still possible to buy a new PC that comes with Windows 7, and the answer is yes. A perfect example is the excellent Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 20B20011US (#ad) laptop.
Actually, this laptop gives you a choice between two operating systems: Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
It comes with Windows 7 Pro pre-installed, but it also comes with a Windows 8 installation DVD and license. You can always replace Windows 7 with Windows 8 at no additional charge, then update Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 for free.
But the flexibility you get in terms of the operating system isn’t the only great thing about this machine. The hardware is quite capable (and expandable) as well. In a nutshell, this is what you get: [Read more…]