Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Prior to Windows 8.1, Microsoft Windows included a handy tool that computed something called the Windows Experience Index, a rudimentary calculation of the relative speeds of a particular PC’s various hardware components.
While the WEI wasn’t perfect, it was in fact quite useful. And it was also 100% free. [Read more…]
As many of you may have already noticed, Google recently changed the way Gmail displays images that are attached to the emails in your inbox.
In the past, the email would contain a short notification that the message contains an attachment, along with a link to click to display it. But now images are displayed by default, whether you want to see them or not.
There are several scenarios in which you might not want the messages in your emails to be displayed by default: [Read more…]
The other day I wrote a post in which I discussed how the upcoming USB 3.1 specification is going to call for USB cables that will plug into the socket either way without having to worry about “which way is up”. In my opinion, that will be a huge step forward.
Well, an alert reader sent me an email this morning letting me know that Tripp-Lite already sells a line of reversible USB 2.0 cables that you can buy right now – and they’re surprisingly inexpensive! [Read more…]
If you have recently taken the plunge and replaced Microsoft Windows with Linux, you are probably marveling at the increase in your computer’s speed and appreciating the fact that you don’t have to run an anti-virus program. For sure, Linux offers plenty of advantages over Windows.
One advantage it has never offered however is a simple way to tweak your Linux installation to your liking. You can easily use Google to find command line tweaks for most anything that you can think of, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a GUI system tweaker that uses the mouse instead of the keyboard and command line?
Well, if you’re running the “Ubuntu” flavor of Linux you can now download a very good one, for free. [Read more…]
As you probably know by now, Microsoft made a ton of changes when they designed the Windows 8 user interface, and many of them were quite unpopular to say the least.
Some of the most reviled changes were addressed with the release of Windows 8.1, but there’s one that really irritates me that wasn’t addressed at all: the procedure for printing from a modern app.
Before Windows 8 came along, printing was almost as easy as breathing. All you had to do was either click the Print icon on a toolbar or the Print option on the “File” menu. But since most modern apps no longer have these features we must do it in a completely different way.
Follow the steps below to print from a modern app in Windows 8.1: [Read more…]