Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Judy D:. Is there any way to tell if a phone charger is bad? The wall charger that came with my phone seems to work ok but it takes forever to charge my battery.
It usually takes a little over 2 hours to charge my phone completely up when the battery is really low, but the charger that came with my sister’s phone will do it in about an hour.
Do you think I need to buy a new charger?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Dorean W.: Hi Rick! I’m teaching myself how to use Microsoft Excel and I’ve run into a problem.
I used to be able to use the arrow keys on my keyboard to move from cell to cell, but all of a sudden that has stopped working. Now the arrow keys cause the entire page to move either up and down or side to side.
Can you tell me how to fix this? My computer is running Windows 10.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Anita L.: Hi Rick. I hope you can answer a computer question for me.
I’ve been using computers for over 30 years, but believe it or not I just bought my very first laptop. Yay me!!
Long story short, I love the laptop but absolutely hate the keyboard!
I know that I can buy a new USB keyboard and plug it in and it will work, but I have an old Cherry PS/2 style keyboard that I’ve had for many years. I’d really love to use that keyboard because I love the feel and sound of the mechanical keys.
The problem is my laptop doesn’t have a PS/2 keyboard connector. Is there any way I can make this keyboard work with my laptop? Some kind of adapter maybe?
Thanks for your help. Love your site by the way!!!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Darla: I bought a new laptop from Best Buy a couple of days ago. It cost a little over $800.
The laptop seems to work fine but there’s one problem. Well at least I think it might be a problem and I need your advice/opinion about it.
The power cable doesn’t seem to fit into the laptop’s power connector very well. It just seems to be “loose”.
When I wiggle the connector around it moves quite a bit but the laptop never shuts down or blinks or anything.
Every other laptop I’ve ever owned had a well-fitting power connection. Do you think this one is defective or is that normal for some laptops now?
I would just return it but I know that Best Buy charges a 15% restocking fee, which in this case would be $120! That’s why I’d rather not return it unless you really think I need to.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Rhonda A.: Hi Rick. I have a question for you.
I recently bought a new computer and I just love the pictures that Windows 10 puts on the Lock Screen.
Is there any way to copy those pictures to my hard drive so I can use them as background images? I tried right-clicking on them and that doesn’t bring up a menu or anything.
If you don’t know of a way to do this it’s ok. Thanks for your help.
Rick’s answer: I love those Lock Screen images too, Rhonda. And yes, there is indeed a way to copy them to your hard drive.
There’s a neat little free app in the Windows Store that was designed specifically to download Windows Spotlight photos to your hard drive.
It’s called SpotBright, and here’s how to install and use it: [Read more…]