Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Sean G.: I hope you can help me. Twice now I have lost work because my computer automatically rebooted after installing Windows Updates. It always catches me off guard and I don’t have a chance to save my work.
This is really driving me up the wall! Is there any way to keep it from happening? My computer has Windows 7 Home Premium.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
These days replacing your computer’s hard drive with a super-fast solid state drive (SSD) gives you more bang for the buck than just about any upgrade you can make.
Most people will tell you that once you’ve owned a PC that boots from an SSD, you’ll never want to be without one again!
I recently received a Samsung 840 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD for review, and I decided to install it in my Gateway desktop PC. In this review I’ll give you my opinion of the drive. [Read more…]
It seems like every time we turn around there’s another critical update that we need to install for Adobe Reader in order to patch a whopping security hole, and there’s another one waiting for us right now.
But this time there’s a bonus: a critical update for Adobe Acrobat as well. You can download the updates for both Adobe Reader and Acrobat on this page.
Or… You can simply uninstall Adobe Reader altogether and install an excellent free replacement called Sumatra PDF. This post explains why and how.
Acrobat is worth keeping in my opinion, but be sure to update it immediately whenever a new update for it is released.
Are you a fan of the band U2? If so, you’re probably delighted that they have teamed up with Apple to place their new album in your iTunes account for free. But if you’re not a fan, you might be wishing there was a way to get rid of it.
I’m a big fan of “free stuff”, but placing any type of content in someone’s account without first asking for permission is a bit presumptuous in my opinion.
Apple seems to have been caught off guard by all the criticism this ostensibly benevolent move has drawn, and they have responded by publishing a page with simple instructions for removing the offending album your iTunes account.
Note to U2 and Apple: We appreciate your generosity, but it might be a good thing to ask for permission in advance next time.
As you probably know, Windows 8 has been a huge flop for Microsoft among laptop and desktop PC users. They simply made too many changes at once, leaving many seasoned Windows users feeling confused, alienated, and even insulted.
Sales suffered as a result, and Windows 8 will almost certainly go down in history as just as big a dud as Windows Vista.
To Microsoft’s credit, they did eventually start paying attention to the flood of user complaints and suggestions, and with the release of Windows 8.1 they mitigated much of the disaster that was plain vanilla Windows 8. In fact, in my opinion Windows 8.1 is vastly superior to Windows 8. [Read more…]