Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Callie: I bought a new Windows laptop (an Acer) that has a camera built into it.
I don’t ever plan to use the camera for anything and I’d like to completely disable it.
I don’t want to just prevent apps from accessing the camera. I want to disable it completely.
Is it possible to do that? If it is, can you tell me how to do it? [Read more…]
Safe Mode is a powerful tool that can help resolve software and hardware issues that are often difficult to identify while a full-blown Windows installation is running.
In a nutshell, booting a machine into Safe Mode typically loads only the operating system kernel plus just a few basic hardware device drivers.
This is basically a stripped down version of the operating system that isn’t affected by any auto-loading programs or advanced device drivers. [Read more…]
Many of the tips I post include a step that involves pressing the Windows key on a PC’s keyboard.
Every time I post one of those tips I receive several messages from folks asking me where the Windows key is.
I guess we “geeks” tend to assume that all Windows users know about the ‘Windows’ key, but we really shouldn’t.
After all, no one knows everything about the behemoth that is the Windows operating system, and not everyone has the same level of experience with using it.
That’s why I decided it might be a good idea to write a post explaining what the Windows key is – and just as important, what it looks like and how to find it. [Read more…]
As you probably know, YouTube hosts billions of videos on pretty much every topic under the sun, and the vast majority of them can be viewed at any time for free.
This is why I wrote a post a while back explaining why YouTube is one of the best sites on the Internet for helping you quickly learn how to do something you’ve never done before.
As you also probably know, many of the videos on YouTube contain some type of “adult” subject matter that you might not want to see – or allow your kids to see.
(Yes, as a Google property YouTube has a minimum age requirement but we all know how well those work in practice.)
Luckily, YouTube has a “Restricted Mode” setting that will block the vast majority of videos containing adult subject matter to prevent them from being viewed on any device that you have it enabled on. [Read more…]
When a loved on passes on, there are many issues that the deceased’s loved ones must deal with, some of which must be dealt with in a hurry.
While it’s far from the most important thing on the list, something that does need to dealt with as soon as possible is the future of the deceased’s Facebook account.
While it isn’t anywhere near as important as burial and financial issues, your departed loved one’s Facebook account needs to be “memorialized” as soon as possible in order to prevent hackers and malicious acquaintances from taking control of the account.
This is what happens when Facebook memorializes an account: [Read more…]