Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Of all the upgrades you can make to a modern PC, the one that will provide the most bang for the buck, by far, is replacing your existing hard drive with a Solid State Drive (SSD).
If you’ve never used a computer that has an SSD, you’ll be absolutely amazed at how much faster your PC will boot into the operating system and load your programs.
Samsung’s 840 EVO-Series 250GB SSD (#ad) 
If you visited the popular financial news website Forbes.com between November 28 and December 1, 2014, your PC might possibly be infected with a virus.
First the good news: If you are diligent about keeping Internet Explorer up to date by installing all available updates as soon as they become available, you should be in the clear.
And still better news: If you use Firefox, Chrome, or any other non-IE browser you were definitely safe from this particular attack. [Read more…]
Question from Stephen Y.: I recently upgraded my computer from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 and I keep getting this message whenever I’m on the Desktop:
SecureBoot isn’t Configured Correctly
I’ve tried everything I can think of and I can’t find a way to fix this. Can you tell me what I need to do to get rid of this annoying message?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Do you always have a hard time deciding on a great Valentines Day gift for your sweetheart? If so, you’re certainly not alone.
While flowers and fine chocolates are pretty much mandatory, most folks want to give their sweetheart a little something extra. Something special that only they will love and appreciate.
If you struggle with this each and every year, read on… [Read more…]
Question from Lexie: Rick, I have Photoshop Elements and I love it, but I have this one image file that I can’t get to load.
I’ve tried opening the file by right-clicking on it in Windows Explorer and selecting “Open with > Photoshop Elements” and by using the “File > Open” dialog from within Elements. It simply refuses to load and I get an error message every time.
I only have this problem with one photo that I desperately need to edit and print. All other photos load correctly, and even the one that won’t load into Elements opens fine in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.
Any idea why this might be happening? This is on a Dell Dimension desktop PC with Windows 7.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]