Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Ellen: I need to purchase a new laptop. What are your thoughts on an SSD drive vs a regular hard drive?
Costco has two HP computers going on sale both with 12GB of memory. Both come with an Intel i5 CPU.
The difference between the two machines is the first one comes with a 512GB SSD and the other one comes with a 1TB hard drive.
They both are coming with Windows 11 (which I’m not thrilled about).
Which drive do you recommend? [Read more…]
Question from Charley: Before I ask my question I want to thank you for everything you do to keep us informed and help us use our computers better.
You really are such a great help to people who are clueless like I am.
Now, I have a problem I hope you can help me with.
I recently bought my first Windows 10 computer (an HP laptop). I like it ok except for all the notifications that pop up in the lower right corner of the screen.
Is there a way to limit the notifications to just the ones that I really need to see? [Read more…]
Question from Bill: I have an Acer desktop PC with 4 GB of RAM that I updated to Windows 10 back when the update was free.
When I have all the programs and browser tabs that I normally use open at the same time the Task Manager says there is approximately 1.2 GB of RAM not being used.
I recently bought a brand new Dell desktop with 8 GB of RAM and Windows 10.
When I have the same exact configuration of programs and browser tabs open on the new machine it says there is still less than 2 GB of RAM that’s not being used.
How can this be? [Read more…]
Question from Sherry: Hi, Rick. I was typing a homework assignment in Microsoft Word when the doorbell rang.
It was the pizza delivery guy with the pizza I had ordered for dinner.
Anyway, I was away from the computer for maybe 2 minutes but when I got back my 2 year old was playing with it.
I about freaked out when I saw her playing with the mouse, but as it turned out my Word document was just fine.
The thing is she somehow managed to move the Taskbar from its usual place at the bottom of the screen all the way to the top.
She’s only 2 years old! How in the world could she have done that?
Can you tell me how to move it back to where it belongs? [Read more…]
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Question from Kelly: I’m thinking about buying a new Apple MacBook Pro but I need a bit of advice first.
The reviews I’ve read were great, but they said this machine doesn’t have any old-style USB ports, only the new USB-C.
If I buy this laptop will I have to replace my external hard drive and other USB devices with new ones that have USB-C connections?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]