Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
If you get your high speed Internet service via Comcast (aka Xfinity), your wonderful unlimited monthly bandwidth allotment will be coming to an end.
How soon Comcast will begin capping your monthly data usage depends on where you live, and that time-frame ranges all the way from “soon” to “any time within the next five years“. [Read more…]
A portable USB DVD burner can come in handy in lots of situations. For example, you might have a PC with a bad optical drive that you need to install a piece of software on. Or perhaps you want to listen to a CD on occasion.
As you know, there are still CDs and DVDs out there, and sometimes we do need to use them. Yes, even in this age of ubiquitous digital downloads, we still need access to a good optical drive from time to time.
That being said, in my opinion a portable DVD drive isn’t something that you need to spend a lot of money on. In fact, I believe that $30 or so is plenty. [Read more…]
If you’re trusting Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender to keep your PC free of malware, I strongly recommend replacing them with something more effective.
I applaud Microsoft for trying to do the right thing by providing malware protection to Windows users for free, but the protection they offer has been falling short of late.
Quite a few malware-laden PCs running either Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender have found their way into my shop of late, and the number of infections found on those machines is nothing short of staggering. [Read more…]
Question from Gary M.: I have my photos and Lightroom catalog on my USB drive and move them from my laptop to desktop. It would make my life easier if it presented as the J: drive every time it’s plugged into either machine.
How can I force my external USB drive to present itself as the same drive letter every time it’s plugged in no matter which PC I plug it into?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Another day, another scam. This one is perpetrated via an email that claims to be from Google – but it isn’t.
The subject line of the scam email varies, but it usually is something like “Lookout Notice” or “Mail Notice“. If you happen to accidentally open the email, you’ll see text similar to this: [Read more…]