Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Betty: I have an Acer laptop that came with Windows 8.1.
I updated it to Windows 10 and now I’m having a problem with it.
When I finish using the laptop I can click the Shutdown icon and it shuts down just fine.
The problem is if I close the lid it doesn’t shut the laptop down like it did when it had Windows 8.1. It goes into Sleep mode instead.
Is there a way to force this my laptop to shut down automatically when I close the lid? [Read more…]
Those of us who use Windows have long been accustomed to having to make two or three mouse clicks just to shut down our PCs, but there is actually a much easier way…
Simply press the Power button!
Of course that doesn’t work by default on most systems because the Power button is typically programmed to place the PC into Sleep mode.
Luckily, it’s extremely easy to reprogram the Power button to shut the computer down instead of putting it to sleep. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Question from Charlene: My friend bought a new Dell laptop a couple of months ago but she hates it because she can’t get used to Windows 10.
She went and found another laptop with Windows 8.1 on it and she offered to sell me the one with Windows 10 for half what she paid for it.
The problem is the screen dims every time you unplug the charger and I’m afraid something might be wrong with it. She says it’s normal for a laptop to dim the screen when the charger is unplugged, but my old laptop never did that.
I have two questions for you. First, do you think something’s wrong with this laptop, or is this normal?
And second, if there’s something wrong with it, will Dell fix it for me under the warranty even though I’m not the person that bought it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Marcel Q.: My old HP laptop stopped working a few days ago and I decided it was time to replace it instead of having it fixed (again!).
I bought a new Lenovo laptop and I like it OK, but making the leap from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 is turning out to be a pain. It’s so different from earlier versions of Windows!
For 3 days now I’ve been trying to figure out how and where to adjust the power options. Can you tell me how to find them?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]