Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Ann H.: Hi Rick. I have an 8 year old HP ENVY 14 laptop.
It worked fine until a few days ago when it stopped charging the battery. The computer works fine as long as it’s plugged in, but dies immediately if I unplug it.
How can I figure out if it’s the charger or the battery that needs to be replaced?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
The popular travel website Orbitz has just announced a major security breach that allowed hackers to steal the personal and financial information on almost 900,000 customers.
The data theft affects virtually all Orbitz customers who used the site to book a trip in 2016 and most of 2017.
This is the customer information that was stolen: [Read more…]
These days many laptops are shipped without a built-in optical drive. And in my opinion, that’s a good thing since our video and musical entertainment is now streamed to us instantly over the web.
Not having to include an optical drive means the computer manufacturers can sell their laptops for less while also reducing the laptop’s over-all weight.
That being said, many folks still have program installation files, music and movies on CDs and DVDs. If you’re one of them, you know that not having an optical drive at all is simply not an option for you. [Read more…]
Question from Chris D.: I bought a tablet with Windows 10 on it, and I love it. But there’s one thing about it that’s driving me absolutely batty.
Every time I type a character on the onscreen keyboard it makes a clicking sound, and it’s quite loud when I’m using it in class.
Can you tell me how to make it stop making those clicking sounds when I’m typing?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Is your blog encrypted with an SSL/TLS certificate? If it isn’t, it really needs to be, and quick!
But that’s a story for another day. This post is a warning about the security certificate that you could be using on your blog right now.
Google has announced that their Chrome browser will soon stop trusting certificates issued by Symantec and several Symantec-owned companies (Thawte, VeriSign, Equifax, GeoTrust, and RapidSSL).
In a nutshell, if your blog is secured by certificates that were issued by one of these companies your blog won’t be displayed in the upcoming versions of the Chrome browser.
What’s more, the other major browsers are expected to quickly follow Chrome’s lead.
Instead of seeing your blog, your visitors will see this warning in Chrome (or something similar if they’re using a different browser): [Read more…]