Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Bill: I was reading the manual that came with my new IP camera and it referred to both public IP addresses and private IP addresses.
I got the camera working just fine but now I’m curious about the difference between public and private IP addresses.
Can you clear it up for me?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Dawn: Rick, Are there any keyboards which have keys that don’t wear off like the old days when they were baked on?
I’m tired of replacing keyboards because for some reason my body oils take the paint off the keys.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Brenda M.: I took my laptop to the shop because the screen stopped lighting up. They checked it out and told me the screen was bad.
They said it would cost almost $200 to replace the screen. I told them I couldn’t afford that so they told me I could still use the laptop by hooking up an external monitor.
I bought a monitor and hooked it up to the laptop with an HDMI cable, but I can’t get the monitor to show anything besides a blank screen.
How can I get the external monitor to work this laptop? [Read more…]
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who subscribe to broadband Internet service through Xfinity, Charter or another Internet Service Provider (ISP), you most likely rent your modem (or Internet gateway) from them.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, even though you can opt to purchase your own modem if you want to.
When a modem needs to be replaced, most customers who rent their modems simply accept whatever device the technician pulls out of the truck and installs for them without even giving it a second thought.
Well, that can be a very big mistake. Why? Read on and I’ll explain… [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Glen: A while back I read your post about replacing a computer’s hard drive with an SSD and it sounded like a pretty good idea.
I finally ended up buying a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD to replace the hard drive in my old Acer laptop, but the laptop’s screen went bad before I had a chance to make the switch.
I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money to have the Acer fixed so I just replaced it with a new Dell laptop.
The new Dell has a 1TB hard drive so I don’t really need the SSD at this time. Can I put the SSD on a shelf and keep it for a backup in case the hard drive ever fails, or will it go bad after a while if I don’t use it? [Read more…]