Rick's Daily Tips

Printing from your Smart Phone or Tablet

Posted on January 19, 2013

smart-phone-printing Many of us use our smart phones or tablets more than our computers these days, and while these gadgets sure are handy, printing from them often isn’t. But there are ways to do it, and most of them involve downloading an app.

Some devices are able to connect directly to a printer via a USB cable using software that came pre-installed on the device. Check your device’s user manual to see if yours is one of them. If not, or if you prefer to print wirelessly, you’ll probably need to download an app written just for that purpose. [Read more…]

Onlive Desktop – A Windows Desktop and Apps for iPad and Android

Posted on January 18, 2013

onlive-desktop Have you ever thought it would be nice to have a Windows Desktop on your iPad or Android tablet? How about the ability to create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files?

Onlive Desktop is a free download/cloud-based service that allows you to mimic the Windows experience right on your tablet, at speeds that make it hard to believe that you’re actually working in the cloud instead of natively on your tablet. Also included is 2GB of cloud storage. [Read more…]

How to add Shutdown and Restart tiles to the Windows 8 Start Screen

Posted on January 18, 2013

As I explained in a previous post, when Microsoft designed Windows 8 they made drastic changes in the way we have always performed a number of common tasks. One of the most irritating of these changes is in how we initiate the Shutdown/Restart procedure.

With Windows 8, instead of needing just a couple of simple mouse clicks to shut down or restart our PCs, we now have to go through a frustrating process that’s about as intuitive as learning how to pilot a 747.

If you’d like to be able to shut down or restart your PC in a hurry again, here is a fast and easy way to add a pair of Shutdown and Restart tiles right to your Windows 8 Start Screen:

1 – Right-click on a open area of the desktop, then select New > Shortcut.

2 – In the “Location” box type shutdown /p and click Next.

3 – Name your new shortcut Shutdown and click Finish.

4 – Find your new Shutdown shortcut on the Desktop, right-click on it and click Pin to Start. You now have a Shutdown tile right on your Start Screen! Clicking on this tile will shut the system down right away.

5 – Repeat steps 1 – 4, replacing shutdown /p with shutdown /r /t 0 and naming the shortcut Restart. Finish up by repeating step 4. Now you now have a Restart tile on your Start Screen as well.

WiGig routers now on the horizon

Posted on January 15, 2013

wigig The IEEE Standards Association has recently approved a new wireless Internet technology known as WiGig (that’s 802.11ad to you technophiles out there).

What makes this such big news is the blazing fast speeds at which WiGig wireless routers and other networking equipment will be able to transfer data over a Wi-Fi connection. The newly approved WiGig standard is theoretically capable of wirelessly transferring data at the mind-boggling rate of 7 Gbps, a speed that will make the Wireless N speeds that we currently use seem like a snail’s pace. [Read more…]

How to access a Shell Prompt on a Chromebook

Posted on January 15, 2013

Google’s Chrome operating system is billed as the OS that moves the computing experience into the “cloud”, but there is still an easy way to access a Command Line and Shell Prompt: Simply press the CTRL+ALT+T keyboard combination to get to the command line, then type Shell to get a shell prompt.

Most users would be well advised to stay away from the Chrome command line since a misstep could seriously break your Chrome installation. But if you enjoy tinkering and don’t mind taking a risk, have at it!