Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Can you recommend a good USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter?

Posted on August 26, 2021

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Question from Carmen: I have an HP laptop that I use both at home and at work.

I have to connect to our office network via the wired Ethernet port because we don’t have Wi-Fi there (my boss says WiFi is a security risk).

The problem is the laptop’s built-in Ethernet adapter got fried a couple of days ago when a power surge took out my router at home.

My brother gave me an old USB to Ethernet adapter to do in the interim, but I really need to get one that works at Gigabit speed because we transfer large files all the time at work.

Can you recommend a good USB Gigabit Ethernet adapter that won’t cost me an arm and a leg that will plug into a USB 3.0 port? [Read more…]

Review: ON1 Resize 2021 Photo Enlarging App

Posted on August 25, 2021

If you’re like most folks these days, you probably take tons of photos with your smart phone, and maybe even a point-and-shoot digicam or DSLR.

If so, you probably know that it’s very easy to make a photo smaller.

All you have to do is load it into your favorite image editor and either crop it or resize it, and the resulting image is almost always as crisp and clear as the original.

But try enlarging a photo instead and you’ll quickly realize that you have a problem. When you resize a photo to make it larger, you typically end up with an image that’s blurry and pixelated.

In short, you generally end up with a mess. [Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a good online photo editor?

Posted on August 23, 2021

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Question from Roger: Hi Rick. I’d love to have your advice on a good online photo editor.

I have Photoshop Elements on my desktop computer at work, and I use it a lot. I also need to have some way of editing a photo every now and then on my laptop.

The thing is I just can’t justify paying $100 for another copy of Elements. Is there a good free online photo editor that you feel comfortable recommending?

Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]