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5 ways to waste money when buying a new computer

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dell-inspiron-i15ztLet’s face it, times are tough these days, and the last thing we need is to do is spend more money than we have to when it comes time to shop for a new computer.

The key to getting the computer that best matches your needs at the lowest price possible is knowing exactly what those needs are and what you’ll need in order to adequately fill them.

And it also helps to know which common pitfalls to avoid.

Here are five things that could cause you to waste money when you’re out shopping for your next computer:  [Read more…]

How to see a list of the people who ‘Follow’ you on Facebook

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A while back I wrote a post discussing the extremely irritating “Why are all these strangers following me?” hoax on Facebook.

In a nutshell, that hoax tells you to type the words “following me” into the Facebook search box to see a list of all the people who are following you.

Of course the people who come up in the search results aren’t really following you at all. They simply have the words “following me” written somewhere on their Facebook profile.

The goal of the hoaxers is to cause unsuspecting victims to waste a bunch of their time blocking users they have absolutely no connection with on Facebook in the first place.

Since I wrote the post exposing that hoax several people have written in asking if there’s a way to view a list of all the people who truly are following them.

Well, the answer is yes, and it’s very easy to do. [Read more…]

Why I love keyboard shortcuts (and here are a few of my favorites)

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Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts.

I spend several hours every day working with a variety of computers, and using the keyboard to accomplish common tasks saves me a ton of time because I rarely have to take my hands off the keyboard.

In a nutshell, keyboard shortcuts let you accomplish tasks that would often take several mouse clicks with just a single tap of a key (or key combination). They also save you time by not requiring you to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, then back to the keyboard again.

There are dozens of keyboard shortcuts for the various versions of Windows, and I know that remembering all of them would be pretty close to impossible.

But the good news is you don’t have to.  [Read more…]

How to hide the ‘Search Box’ and ‘Task View’ button from the taskbar in Windows 10

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Windows-10-logoMicrosoft made a number of changes to the visual user interface in Windows 10.

I found many of those changes to be good ones, but some of them could have benefited from a little more forethought.

Two great examples are the ‘Search Box’ and ‘Task View’ button that are displayed on the taskbar by default in Windows 10.

While it’s true that these items can come in handy at times, many users (myself included) prefer to keep them hidden from the taskbar.

If you’d prefer to hide them as well, you can easily do so.  [Read more…]

Get detailed information about your PC’s hardware with HWiNFO

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hwinfo-logoThere are several handy free utilities out there that will tell you what hardware’s inside your PC, and one of the best I’ve ever used is HWiNFO.

Like Speccy, HWiNFO is a free program that provides tons of details about your system’s CPU, motherboard, memory and such.

But HWiNFO also provides a live snapshot of the CPU temperature and various system voltages, great information to have if you’re a computer tech or system builder.

Here’s a screenshot of the HWiNFO Summary page:  [Read more…]

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