Rick's Daily Tips

Best Buy claims they are no longer ‘Amazon’s Showroom’

Posted on February 19, 2013

best-buy A while back I wrote a post about how Best Buy was losing tons of business to Amazon and other large online retailers by serving as their local “showroom”. Well, now the company claims that a new price matching policy will effectively end “showrooming” for good.

Beginning on March 3, 2013, Best Buy will immediately match the prices of 19 major online competitors and all local retail stores in all product categories and on virtually every in-stock item – but only when a customer asks them to.

It’s that last part that has me a bit skeptical. Unless the stores decide to display huge honking banners letting customers know about the new price matching plan, how many of them will even know to ask? Time will tell I suppose.

Anyway, here is a list of the 19 online competitors that Best Buy plans to match beginning on March 3: [Read more…]

Charge your iPad from any computer with a USB port

Posted on February 18, 2013

meritline-usb-ipad-charger The USB ports in a typical laptop computer simply cannot supply enough current to charge an iPad, but now there’s an awesome little device from Meritline allows you to charge your iPad from any computer’s USB port, including your laptop.

As you can see in the photo, the dongle looks somewhat like an over-sized USB drive. Just plug it into a USB port, then plug in your iPad and you’re all set!

While I haven’t tried it personally, the customer reviews I’ve read on the Meritline website give it high marks, and independent testing by at least two national computer magazines seem to confirm that the praise is warranted. And the best part is you can get your hands on one for just $4.99 – and that includes the shipping fee!

Click here to check it out at the Meritline website.

Q&A: Why does Chrome take forever to start loading a page?

Posted on February 17, 2013

Question from Judy L: I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary web browser for about 3 months now and I really like it. But a couple of days ago it started taking forever to begin loading a web page. What could be causing this?

Rick’s answer: Judy, when you try loading a page, does it say “Resolving proxy” in the lower left-hand corner of the browser? If so (and I’m sure it probably does), something or someone has configured Chrome to access websites through a web proxy.

If you’re the only person that uses this computer I’m guessing that your system has malware on it that initiated the change without your knowledge. The first thing you need to do is adjust the settings in Chrome to prevent it from using a web proxy. Here’s how: [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I buy an external hard drive that works with both my PC and Mac?

Posted on February 17, 2013

Question from Chad: I’m in desperate need of a USB external hard drive that I can plug in to my Mac when I’m at home and then take it to work with me to plug into the Windows 7 PC I use there. The larger the better, but 2TB or larger will suffice.

I’ll be using this drive to transfer large video files that are several gigabytes each. Can you tell me where I can find a drive that meets this requirement? I’ve checked all over the web with no luck. Thanks! [Read more…]

Skitch – The best screen capture tool I have ever used

Posted on February 16, 2013

Like many of you, I have used the Windows Snipping Tool to capture screenshots for quite some time, and I must say that it does what it’s supposed to do extremely well.

But a few days ago a reader (thanks Shirley!) sent me an email recommending that I download and try out a free screen capture utility called Skitch.

After using Skitch for a couple of days I removed the icon for the Windows Snipping Tool from my Desktop and permanently replaced it with the one for Skitch. Read on and I’ll tell you why… [Read more…]