Rick's Daily Tips

How to install a Solid State Drive (SSD) in your laptop

Posted on July 18, 2018

A while back I wrote a post explaining the benefits of replacing your hard drive with a Solid State Drive (aka SSD).

Of course the greatest benefit is the amazing speed increase you’ll gain by replacing your hard drive’s spinning platters and read/write heads with an SSD’s lightning-fast memory chips.

You might recall that in that post I recommended paying a PC Tech to swap out the drives for you, but since then I’ve had a couple of emails from folks who really wanted to try upgrading their laptops themselves, prompting me to decide to write this post explaining the procedure.

But before we get to that, if your laptop was made in such a way that the entire case has to be partially disassembled in order to access the hard drive, I still strongly recommend that you hire a qualified PC tech to remove the hard drive and install the SSD for you. Just sayin’.

On the other hand, if your laptop’s drive bay is easily accessible via a small removable cover you can swap out the drives out yourself. Just follow the instructions below.

[Read more…]

Get this handy TP-LINK Wireless Travel Router at a great price

Posted on July 15, 2018

A while back I wrote a post explaining why it’s a good idea to take along a power strip when you travel.

But what I forgot to mention is that it’s also a good idea to have a wireless travel router (#ad) available as well for those times when your hotel room only has a wired Ethernet connection and or spotty Wi-Fi. [Read more…]

How to restore the ‘View Image’ button on Google Images

Posted on July 13, 2018

A while back Google removed the “View Image” button from the photos they display on Google Images due to some kind of deal they made with Getty Images.

I don’t know about you but I really liked being able to view an image directly from Google’s own server instead of having to visit the original website just to check it out.

Why is this is important? Because it’s easy to download malware to your computer simply by visiting an untrusted website, even if it’s just to display an image that’s contained on one of the site’s pages.

Well, apparently lots of other folks really miss the “View Image” button as well because there’s now a fantastic browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that restores the missing button.

The extension is called “View Image” and it works like a champ. If you’d like to give it a try just follow the steps below that match your preferred web browser. [Read more…]

Review: 2018 High Performance HP 17.3″ Laptop

Posted on July 9, 2018

Long gone are the days when we had to choose between the convenience of a laptop and the speed of a desktop computer.

Many modern laptops are plenty fast enough to run even the most demanding software without bogging down under load. And some models even out-perform most desktop PCs.

I recently had the opportunity to check out one such machine…

The 2018 High Performance HP 17.3″ Laptop (#ad) comes packed with plenty of power for running your favorite applications, streaming HD video and more, all at a price that would have been unheard of just a year or two ago.

Here’s a quick look at the specs: [Read more…]