Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Henry P.: I’ve been shopping online for a new computer and I found out that there are still some Windows 7 computers available. My question is should I buy one?
I really like Windows 7 but I want to make sure I won’t end up buying a headache now that Windows 10 is the norm.
Do you know of any reason why I should buy something with Windows 10 on it instead of Windows 7? Something I’m missing perhaps?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great week!
If you own an Apple device you probably also have an iCloud account that contains a major portion of your digital life. Have you ever considered what could happen if your iCloud were to be hacked?
As with most online accounts these days, you can lock down your iCloud account with Two-Factor Authentication to ensure that no one will be able to log into your account and/or access your stored information unless they have physical possession of your phone.
It’s quick and easy to enable it using either your Mac (running OSX El Capitan or later) or your iPhone/iPad (running iOS 9 or later). Just follow the steps below for your particular device. [Read more…]
Question from Ellen R.: I used Microsoft Office 2003 on my old computer but the hard drive died and I had to replace it.
I still have my Office 2003 installation discs but I can’t get it installed on the new laptop. I’m guessing that it’s just not compatible with Windows 10.
My brother has a copy of MS Office 2010 Professional that’s still in the box and it’s never been opened or registered. He said he would ship it to me from Scotland if it’ll work with my system, but he doesn’t want to waste money to ship it to me if it won’t work.
My question is will Microsoft Office 2010 run on Windows 10? If it will it’ll save me from having to buy a copy of MS Office that I really can’t afford right now.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Did you upgrade your computer from an older version of Windows to Windows 10?
If so, your computer’s hard drive or SSD contains a Windows.old folder that contains the files from the previous Windows installation.
The storage space taken up by this now-unused folder is wasted space, but with today’s massive hard drives that isn’t really an issue for most users.
But that being said, it can be a very serious issue if your PC has a small hard drive or SSD that’s running out of available storage space. [Read more…]
As you probably know, Microsoft continues to provide security updates for older versions of Windows for several years after the next version is released.
Unfortunately, they have to stop supporting those old Windows versions at some point in order to better focus their resources on developing and supporting newer versions of the operating system.
You might recall that Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP back in April 2014. Well, now it’s Vista’s turn.
The final security patches for Windows Vista will be released on April 11, after which there will be no more of them coming down the pike. That means Vista will essentially become an orphan on that date with Microsoft cutting it loose to survive in the wild on its own.
As always happens when Microsoft stops supporting an older version of Windows, it won’t take long for the hackers and scammers of the world to find and exploit previously undiscovered and unpatched security holes in the Vista framework.
What does all this mean? [Read more…]