Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
If your PC is running Windows 8, there is a free update to Windows 8.1 waiting for you in the Windows Store. And if ever there was a free update worth installing, in my opinion, this is it!
Some users have trouble installing the Windows 8.1 update however, and most of the time it’s because their Windows 8 installation is either infected with malware or not completely up-to-date.
With that in mind, here is my simple step-by-step guide to installing the free Windows 8.1 update: [Read more…]
A while back I wrote a post alerting users that Facebook is removing the messaging feature from the popular Facebook Mobile app and encouraging everyone to download the Facebook Messenger app to use in its place.
Since then several people have asked me if there are any alternatives to the Facebook Messenger app, so I decided to do a little research to see what’s available and which apps are the most popular among Facebook users.
As it turns out, there are several third party messenger apps that can stand in for Facebook Messenger. Below I list a couple of the most popular ones along with links to each app in both iTunes and the Google Play Store. [Read more…]
By now you’re probably familiar with all the security holes that keep popping up in Flash, Java and other popular software, providing easy ways for hackers to install malicious software onto your computer.
In fact, Java alone is so insecure that I completely uninstalled it from my PCs a long time ago, and I recommend that you do the same. [Read more…]
Question from Jules P: Hi Rick. I stopped using Internet Explorer and switched to Firefox a couple of years ago because IE was crashing all the time. I like Firefox, but after trying Google Chrome I noticed that it loads the pages I visit a lot faster than Firefox.
My question is now that I’ve started using Chrome, how can I transfer my bookmarks and stored passwords from Firefox into Chrome?
Rick’s answer: Chrome is a great browser for sure Jules, and I’ve used it as my primary browser for some time now. It’s easy to import your bookmarks, stored passwords and other settings from Firefox into Chrome. Here’s how: [Read more…]
You might have noticed that when you have two or more windows open at once, in order to scroll the contents of an inactive window you have to first click it to make it the active window. This can be quite annoying if all you want to do in that window is scroll the contents up or down a bit.
Well now there’s a nifty little free download that will make your mouse work the way it should have worked all along. It’s called WizMouse, and once it’s loaded your mouse wheel will scroll the contents of the window that’s directly under the mouse pointer without making that window active! What a time-saver! [Read more…]