Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Kimberly: I have Two-Factor Authentication enabled on several of my accounts.
I’m getting ready to buy a new phone in a few days and I’m afraid I’ll have problems when I try to log into those accounts after I switch phones.
What I’m asking is will having Two-Factor Authentication enabled on my accounts cause me to get locked out of them when I replace my phone?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Carla: Is it safe to leave a laptop running in it’s laptop bag while I’m on my way to work?
I often find myself finishing up a project at the last minute and leave my computer running and crunching numbers during my commute.
A co-worker told me it’s a bad idea to carry a laptop while it’s running. Is she right?
Rick’s answer: Yes, I’m afraid your co-worker is right, Carla.
Laptops need proper air circulation or else they’ll eventually overheat and burn up. The damage done to the internal components can be gradual, but if they keep over-heating they WILL fail at some point. [Read more…]
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 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…]