Rick's Daily Tips

Galaxy S5’s ‘Download Booster’ feature disabled by Sprint, Verizon and AT&T

Posted on April 15, 2014

galaxy-s5-download-booster The awesome Samsung Galaxy S5 smart phone comes with an equally awesome feature called “Download Booster”.

In a nutshell, Download Booster does just as its name implies by using a cellular signal and Wi-Fi connection simultaneously to speed up large file downloads to your phone.

Sounds great, right? Well, it is. But don’t count on using it if your cellular provider is either Sprint, Verizon or AT&T.

Those spoil-sports have apparently instructed Samsung to disable the Download Booster feature on Galaxy S5 phones that will be used on their networks and completely remove the option from the phones’ settings menus. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why won’t my Acer laptop boot into Windows?

Posted on April 14, 2014

Question from Daniel W.: I have a 2 year old Acer laptop with Windows 7. I can’t get it to boot up anymore. When I turn it on it beeps and displays this message:

“No Bootable Device — Please Restart System”

What could be causing this? I hope it’s not a bad hard drive but I suspect that it is. This just started last night and it’s very aggravating.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Find out instantly if the site you’re visiting is affected by the Heartbleed bug

Posted on April 14, 2014

By now you probably know about the dangerous Heartbleed bug that’s affecting millions of secure websites. It’s a pretty nasty vulnerability that must be avoided at all costs.

A few days ago I wrote about a great tool developed by the folks at LastPass that lets you check to see if a particular website is affected by Heartbleed. Well, now there’s another tool that’s even faster and easier to use. [Read more…]

Sony recalls Vaio Fit 11A Laptop due to a potential burn hazard

Posted on April 13, 2014

sony-vaio-fit If you own a Vaio Fit 11A laptop, Sony is requesting that you immediately unplug the AC adapter, turn off the machine and wait for instructions from them about having the unit repaired or replaced.

It seems that the built-in, non-removable batteries in certain models are prone to over-heating, causing some units to catch on fire. Not a good thing, especially if you happen to be holding it on your lap at the time (which you should NEVER do by the way). [Read more…]

Check your favorite websites for the ‘Heartbleed” vulnerability

Posted on April 10, 2014

Are any of the websites that you visit affected by the dangerous “Heartbleed” bug? If so, your login information as well as your personal and financial info could be at risk of being stolen by hackers.

Thanks to our friends at LastPass, you can easily check to see if any of your favorite websites are affected by Heartbleed. Simply visit this page and type in the URL of the site. Repeat for each website you’d like to check.

Note: You only need to do the Heartbleed check for sites that use SSL encryption.