Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
For a while now I’ve been recommending a fantastic free service called Speedtest.net for checking the actual download speeds on your Internet connection.
After all, some ISPs are notorious for not delivering the speeds their customers are paying for.
I have always found Speedtest.net to be quite accurate with their test results, and I still recommend them highly. But there’s an easy way to get a “second opinion” thanks to our friends over at Netflix. [Read more…]
Question from Cal: I’ve had the same Internet service through Charter for 4 years with no problems whatsoever.
But a few days ago the strangest thing started happening.
I’ll start playing a game and after exactly 3 minutes (I timed it) the Internet will disconnect and it’ll say “Attempting to reconnect”.
Every time this happens I always have to restart my computer in order to re-establish the connection.
It only does this when I’m playing a game, but it does it with every game I play. It doesn’t disconnect at all when I’m using the Internet for other things or watching Hulu.
Any idea what could be causing this?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Ronnie M.: Hi Rick. I have a really strange problem that I need help with.
We’ve had Xfinity Internet for years and the Wi-Fi has always worked perfectly until recently.
A couple of weeks ago my Dell laptop started causing our Wi-Fi network to completely shut down every time I turn it on.
The Wi-Fi can be working perfectly on our other computers, on our phones and on the kids’ Xbox, but within 5 minutes after turning on my laptop the Wi-Fi stops working on everything in the house. The devices still show an active connection but we can’t do anything on the Internet.
The crazy thing is I don’t even have to be using the Internet on my computer for this to happen.
In fact, I don’t even have to have a web browser open. It just happens. But the Wi-Fi starts working again on the other devices just as soon as I shut my laptop down.
Do you have any idea what could be causing this? I thought it might be a virus but I have three antivirus programs running on my computer and none of them are finding anything.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
As you well know, the Internet is a massive repository of information on virtually any topic you can think of.
In a nutshell, whatever it might be that interests you, you’re sure to find plenty of websites and blogs that cover it in various levels of detail.
Like you, I have a short list of favorite places on the web that I visit regularly for the latest news, information and tips on the topics that interest me the most.
I thought you might be interested in some of them, so I have listed my top six favorites below (and surprise – not all of them are tech related): [Read more…]
One of my biggest pet peeves is audio that starts blaring from my computer’s speakers just as soon as I visit a web page.
It makes no difference whether its coming from an ad, a cute video or simple background music, if it starts playing on its own, I don’t like it.
In fact, I dislike it so much I immediately hit my browser’s “Back” button when music or some other sound starts playing just as soon as the page loads unless I REALLY want to view the content on the page. [Read more…]