Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
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These days wireless Wi-Fi connections are the norm, but there are still situations in which we need to connect our computers to a router with a wired Ethernet connection.
In fact, just last month three different people asked me how they can connect a recent MacBook Pro or MacBook Air that doesn’t have an RJ-45 Ethernet connector to their router via an Ethernet cable.
It can be certainly be done, and it’s actually quite easy to do… [Read more…]
Question from Mallorie: I need some advice Rick, and it’s sort of a touchy situation.
We live in a duplex and our neighbor has a 14 year old son who bought a Straight Talk phone from my daughter.
The thing is she didn’t reset the phone before she sold it to him because he said he’d like to just take over her phone number, and she said that would be fine.
This phone still automatically connects to our WiFi network, and I know for a fact that he uses our WiFi a lot because he told my daughter that he does.
My question is do you think he could cause us any problems by piggybacking off of our wireless network? [Read more…]
Question from Debby: A couple of months ago I bought my first smartphone.
I absolutely love it, but I got a huge bill yesterday because they said I went over my monthly data allotment by several gigabytes.
I do watch a lot of videos every day, but I didn’t realize it would cause me to be charged extra.
My daughter said I need to use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data but I don’t want to get hit with a big bill for that too. She said using Wi-Fi is free, but I want to be sure since I can’t afford another huge bill.
So will I be charged extra if I use Wi-Fi to watch my videos? [Read more…]
Question from Kalin: I really love your blog Rick, especially how you answer people’s tech questions.
I know that most of the questions you answer are practical in nature but mine is somewhat theoretical so I hope you won’t mind answering it for me.
The question is this: If you have a choice, do you prefer using a wired Ethernet connection or Wi-FI to connect to the Internet? [Read more…]
I’m often asked if it’s really necessary to put a password on a Wi-Fi connection instead of just leaving it as an open network.
The reason they usually give is they want to make it easy for their guests to use their Wi-Fi during their visits.
I receive some variation of that question at least a couple of times every week, and my answer is always the same… [Read more…]