Rick's Daily Tips

Beware of fbDOWNLOADER, a free app for downloading your Facebook pics to your PC

Posted on September 8, 2017

If you ever receive an offer or recommendation to download a free Facebook app called fbDOWNLOADER, I strongly recommend that you don’t.

The “pitch” sounds so tempting: “Download all of your Facebook photos and albums directly to your PC at one time. Even download the ‘public’ pictures of your Facebook friends and other photos that you have been tagged in.”

Sound like a great app, right? The pitch sounds so good in fact that a very well-known tech expert fell for it and recommended this app on her weekly radio show and on her website. [Read more…]

How to listen to your favorite ‘Talk Radio’ show over the Internet

Posted on September 3, 2017

Do you always seem to miss the local broadcast of your favorite “Talk Radio” show due to work, school or some other scheduling conflict?

Did your local talk radio station drop your favorite show, making it impossible to listen to it in your local area?

Well, now there’s an easy way to listen to your favorite talk radio personality at most any time of the day, regardless of where you might happen to live. All you need is an Internet connection! [Read more…]

Scam alert: Don’t fall for the ‘Help Hurricane Harvey Victims’ scams that are making the rounds

Posted on August 31, 2017

By now you’ve surely seen the heartbreaking images and videos coming out of the Houston, Texas area. Hurricane Harvey has almost completely devastated that area, and it isn’t finished yet.

Sadly, dozens of our fellow citizens and an untold number of pets are already known to have lost their lives in the flood, and those numbers are only expected to grow as the waters eventually recede.

What’s more, the scope and scale of the property damage is absolutely staggering. Hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee their homes and many of them will never be able to return. [Read more…]

Review: WD 1TB Black My Passport Portable USB 3.0 External Hard Drive

Posted on August 30, 2017

These days no computer system is complete without an external USB hard drive. These handy gadgets are simply perfect for making local backups and for handling so many other handy mass storage tasks.

External hard drives used to be quite expensive, but their prices have now dropped to where they are easily affordable, even with today’s massive storage capacities.

I recently had a chance to check out the WD 1TB Black My Passport Portable USB 3.0 External Hard Drive (#ad), and it didn’t take long to figure out why it’s the best selling external USB hard drive on Amazon.

This awesome drive from Western Digital easily fits in my shirt pocket, yet it’s super fast and stores a full terabyte of data. Thanks to its speedy USB 3.0 interface, it made quick work of backing up both the 120GB SSD and 750GB hard drive on my Desktop PC. [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it safe to max out my RAM’s clock speed in the BIOS?

Posted on August 28, 2017

Question from Nathan P.: I just finished building my first computer from a bare-bones kit.

Everything worked fine from the moment I first powered it up, but the BIOS says the RAM is running at 1333 MHz even though the RAM sticks are rated at 1600 MHz.

My CPU is an Intel Core i5 and the RAM sticks are Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 / 1600 MHz. Is it safe to bump up the clock speed in the BIOS to match the RAM’s rating of 1600 MHz?

This is my first build, and I seriously don’t want to fry anything by overclocking the RAM if there’s some reason the motherboard is running it at a slower speed..

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]