Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
The folks at Google are constantly working to improve their extremely popular Gmail service, and one of the most recent enhancements is a “full screen” New Message window.
To call it a “full screen” window is quite a stretch because it isn’t even close, but it is indeed a vast improvement over a message box that’s so tiny that it makes you feel like you’re typing your message on a smart phone.
Want to give Gmail’s “full screen” message window a try, here’s how: [Read more…]
It’s a fact of life: Sooner or later there will come a time when you’ll need to re-install Windows on your PC.
Whether it’ll be due to a hard drive failure, a virus attack or just the desire to re-install the operating system from scratch and start over fresh, you most likely will have to refresh your Windows installation at some point.
If you have a set of recovery discs, re-installing Windows from scratch is easy. If you don’t, it’s virtually impossible. But what if you can’t find your recovery discs (or never had a set in the first place)? Well, you have three options:
1 – Order a replacement set of recovery discs for your specific PC model directly from the support section of the manufacturer’s website. This option can be (and in most cases is) fairly expensive.
2 – Purchase a full retail version of Windows, either on discs or via direct download. This option is even more expensive than the first one.
3 – Create your own Windows 7 or Windows 8 installation media. This option is virtually free (you’ll need either a blank, writable DVD or a blank USB thumb drive).
If you choose to go with option 3, here are the steps you’ll need to take in order to create your own Windows 7 or 8 installation media: [Read more…]
If your PC was either purchased used or “inherited” as a hand-me-down system, you probably keep seeing the previous owner’s name pop up from time to time as the “Registered Owner”. And I’m guessing that you probably find that a bit irritating.
It’s actually pretty easy to change the Registered Owner setting in the Windows Registry. But before I show you how to do that, it is incumbent upon me to tell you the following… [Read more…]
Have you ever wished you could easily switch from one email provider to another without losing any of your stored emails, attachments or contacts?
For example, lets say you’ve heard that Gmail is the best thing since sliced bread, and you’d like to ditch your Yahoo Mail account and transfer all of your existing emails, attachments and contacts from Yahoo to a new Gmail account (or vice versa).
A great online service called YippieMove will complete the transfer for you in the background while you use your computer for other things. [Read more…]
If you’re one of the relatively few seasoned Windows users who have made the switch to Windows 8, you have probably already noticed that Microsoft’s Music App is now the default player for MP3s as well as most types of video files. But by changing a single setting you can have your music and videos open in Windows Media Player instead.
Of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having the Music App set as your system’s default media player, but most people (myself included) tend to prefer Windows Media Plater. If you’re one of them too, you can follow these steps to set Windows Media Player as the default app: [Read more…]