Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
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…]
If you have recently upgraded to Windows 8.1, you have probably noticed that both the address bar and tabs list in the “modern” version of IE 11 (the app that loads when you click the Internet Explorer tile on the Start screen) keep disappearing every time you load a new web page.
If you find the disappearing address bar and tabs as frustrating as I do, follow these steps to force them to remain visible for you: [Read more…]
AVG Antivirus is one of the most popular antivirus programs on the market. When you go to download the software from the AVG website, you have a choice between a free version and a paid version which comes with some extra bells and whistles.
Many users opt to download the trial version of AVG Internet Security, then decide to switch to the free version when the trial period ends. This is fine (it is actually what I recommend), but that means uninstalling the trial version and then installing the free version from scratch.
But now there’s a better way to “downgrade” from AVG Internet Security to AVG Free. Simply download the AVG Downgrader utility from the AVG website and run it. The fast and simple process explained below will make the conversion for you without having to jump through a bunch od complicated hoops. Just follow these directions: [Read more…]