Rick's Daily Tips

Speed up Windows 10 by disabling ‘Pretty’ features

Posted on November 29, 2020

If you’re like me you want your computer to respond to your clicks and perform its tasks as quickly as possible.

By default, Windows 10 has several features enabled that are designed to make the user interface look pretty.

For example, have you noticed how menus slide into view instead of just popping immediately onto the screen? Or perhaps you’ve noticed the cute little shadow that is displayed under your mouse pointer?

There are actually well over a dozen of these features that spiff up the user interface in Windows 10, and most of them are enabled by default. Unfortunately, all of those “pretty” features slow your system down by varying degrees.

[Read more…]

How to clone the contents of a hard drive onto a new hard drive or SSD

Posted on November 29, 2020

There are times when we need to copy the entire contents of one hard drive onto another hard drive.

This process is called “cloning”, and it is most often done when upgrading to a larger drive or replacing a drive that is about to fail.

Cloning a hard drive isn’t all that difficult. All you need is both drives connected to the computer at the same time and a copy of a good hard drive cloning utility (I use and recommend Clonezilla because it works well and is available as a free download).

Here’s how to use Clonezilla to clone the contents of one hard drive onto another: [Read more…]

How to install extensions for Microsoft Edge from the Chrome Web Store

Posted on November 28, 2020

As you probably know, Microsoft was never really able to gain any traction with the Edge browser they developed from scratch.

While there were other reasons for Edge’s failure to catch on with the masses, it was primarily due to the extreme lack of browser extensions that were available for it.

Microsoft eventually gave up on their proprietary version of Edge and developed a totally different Edge that is built upon Google’s ultra-popular Chromium browser code.

And guess what? Since Edge is now essentially Chrome at its core, it can now run Chrome extensions!

[Read more…]

Make your laptop’s battery last longer with a Power Efficiency Report

Posted on November 23, 2020

Does it seem like your laptop’s battery charge runs out sooner than it should? Well, it seems like they always do to me.

Assuming that the laptop battery isn’t defective, there are a number of power settings that you can tweak in order to make a charge last as long as possible.

The key is determining which settings to tweak in order to gain the most benefit without hampering your ability to use your laptop effectively.

[Read more…]