Computer Tips Archives - Page 10 of 230

Real-Time vs. On-Demand: Antivirus protection explained

Posted on August 16, 2025

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I’ve been receiving questions from folks who are confused about the terms Real-Time and On-Demand in regards to antivirus protection, so I thought it might be helpful to explain the difference between them here.

Both real-time and on-demand antivirus protection are important for keeping your computer free of viruses and other forms of malware, but while they are closely-related, they operate in very different ways. [Read more…]

How to safely clean your computer or mobile device

Posted on August 16, 2025

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If you’ve been reading my tips for a while you know how often I stress the importance of keeping viruses and other forms of malware off of your computers and mobile devices.

Malware is the number one cause of sluggish system performance. Even worse, it can cause you to suffer monetary loss and even identify theft.

But as you might imagine, it’s just as important to keep your devices “clean” in the physical sense – and that includes the inside of a desktop computer or laptop.

[Read more…]

Icons8: The platform that actually broke the icon curse

Posted on August 15, 2025

Icon Libraries Are Currently Having Their Villain Era

Listen bestie, the icon situation is absolutely unhinged right now and everyone’s just acting like this digital hellscape is totally normal.

Most platforms are creative dumpster fires where designers yeet whatever they sketched during their 3am breakdown and pray someone thinks it slaps. You’re building interfaces that look like they were designed by people who communicate exclusively through passive-aggressive Slack reactions.

The whole ecosystem has big main character energy where every icon thinks it’s starring in its own Netflix adaptation. Someone drops a house icon serving clean minimalist excellence, another designer creates a settings gear giving full cyberpunk breakdown vibes, and somehow these are supposed to coexist without starting beef over visual hierarchy. [Read more…]

How to quickly save an email as a PDF

Posted on August 14, 2025

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You probably know how to print important emails to create a hard copy record of the correspondence, but here’s something you might not know…

You can also save emails as PDF files and then open them at any time in your default browser or PDF viewer. [Read more…]

Want a battery backup that will power your computer for hours instead of minutes?

Posted on August 13, 2025

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Regular readers of this blog know I’m a huge proponent of Battery Backup devices.

Truth be told, they are absolutely essential if you live in an area that’s served by an unreliable power grid, especially if you work from home and need to keep your computer gear up and running during frequent outages.

But as awesome as battery backup devices are, all consumer-grade models share one major disadvantage… [Read more…]