Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great week!
I write about Windows 10 fairly often, and while I happen to like it a lot, I realize that many of my readers don’t really care for it.
If you have installed the Windows 10 update on your PC (or Windows Update installed it for you) and you simply don’t like it, you have several options for getting rid of it: [Read more…]
Question from Eddie V.: The county I live in had a massive auction of surplus items and I ended up buying 168 Dell OptiPlex 755/SDT desktop computers. They all appear to be identically configured with these specs:
I know that older computers aren’t worth a lot these days, but I thought these were worth a bid simply because there were so many of them. I ended up winning the auction and paying $216 for the lot.
My big concern is they might not be worth anything at all since Microsoft has officially killed off Windows XP. What do you think I could do with these computers to make a little bit of money from this deal?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Glenn W.: I have an old, but awesome 2008 era Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop that came with Windows Vista. It still works great except for the hard drive which just died on me with no warning.
I found out that I can buy a brand spanking new replacement hard drive for less than $50, but I don’t have a set of Windows Vista restore discs.
If I replace the hard drive can I also install Windows 8.1 in place of Vista? (I would actually prefer Windows 7 but they don’t sell it anymore.)
Or is this machine so old that only Windows Vista will work, which would mean I’m out of luck either way?
Sorry for the multiple questions, but this is all very confusing to me. I hate to throw away a perfectly good laptop just because the hard drive died.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Microsoft effectively killed off Windows XP in about a year ago, and many XP users are trying decide whether to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8.1, dump Windows altogether and switch to Linux, or simply replace their old PC with a new one.
Personally, I think switching to Ubuntu Linux is a great way to go if the PC is used primarily for email and Internet access, but as long as the hardware is new enough to support Windows 8.1, that’s a great choice as well.
If you decide to upgrade Win XP to 8.1, it’s a good idea to prepare for the upgrade before jumping into it. Here are my recommendations: [Read more…]
Question from Todd H.: The hard drive went out on my HP Pavilion dm1-4010us Notebook computer.
I replaced the bad drive with one that I had taken out of an older laptop but I had to order a Windows Restore DVD from HP so I could put Windows back on it.
When the Restore DVD arrived I went to install it and found out the screen is bad too. After considering all my options, I decided that I’d like to just trash the laptop and build a desktop computer from scratch. If I do that will I be able to install the Windows 7 from the HP Restore DVD onto the new computer?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]