Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Why won’t my LG G3 phone connect to the Internet?

Posted on September 8, 2015

Question from Gina: Hi Rick. I need help!!! I have an LG G3 phone with 4G-LTE. For the last few days I’ve been unable to connect to the Internet over the Sprint network.

The phone gives me an error message stating that it’s unable to connect to the network. I can make and receive phone calls just fine and I can use the Internet with Wi-Fi. It just won’t connect to the Sprint network.

I’ve checked all the settings and nothing seems to be set incorrectly. Can you tell me how to fix this?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

If you’re staying with Windows 7 or 8.1 to avoid Windows 10’s privacy issues, you need to read this.

Posted on September 2, 2015

snooping By now you have probably heard that by default, Windows 10 is pretty nosy about your browsing and computing habits. After all, the new Windows’ privacy issues have been well documented.

If you’ve made the decision to skip the upgrade to Windows 10 in order to avoid those privacy concerns, guess what? A handful of recent Windows Updates have brought some of Windows 10’s nosy “tracking features” to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. [Read more…]

Review: Dell Inspiron 15 i5548-2500SLV 15.6-Inch Laptop

Posted on September 2, 2015

dell-inspiron-15-i5548-2500slv These days it’s easy to find a laptop for as little as $200, and if all you need is a basic laptop for Internet use, most of them would probably serve you pretty well.

But if you need a machine with more oomph for running Photoshop or some other resource intensive task, you’ll be better off getting a laptop with a faster, more powerful CPU, more RAM and a larger hard drive.

The Dell Inspiron 15 i5548-2500SLV 15.6-Inch Laptop meets that need quite well.

This superb machine has everything a power user needs. In addition to its powerful Core i7-5500U 2.4 GHz CPU, 8Gb of RAM and 1TB hard drive, it also comes with all of the following: [Read more…]

Awesome news: New update to Chrome kills auto-playing Flash ads

Posted on September 1, 2015

Don’t you hate it when you have several Chrome tabs open and all of a sudden one of them starts playing a video ad at full volume?

I sure do because those stealthy (and irritating) video ads that pop up out of nowhere are often startling and almost always difficult to track down and pause.

Well, thankfully auto-playing Flash ads are now a thing of the past in Chrome (or at least they soon will be on your machine). [Read more…]

Review: CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Premium 8th Edition

Posted on August 30, 2015

a-plus-exam-guide-cover I can tell you from personal experience that passing the exams to become an A+ Certified Computer Technician is no walk in the park. Although I passed the exams on my first try, I had to prepare for them by reading every A+ training guide I could get my hands on.

But if I had to study for the A+ exams today, I would only need one training package. It’s titled the CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, and it truly includes everything you need in order to pass both of the A+ exams (220-801 & 220-802).

This amazingly comprehensive book contains almost 1,600 pages of PC troubleshooting theory and instructions as well as practical tips for troubleshooting virtually every possible computer hardware and O.S. problem imaginable.

But there’s a lot more to this package than just the book. You’ll also get a virtual media library that includes the following: [Read more…]