Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Portable chargers/external battery packs make it easy to keep our mobile devices charged up and ready for use during times when we can’t plug them into an electrical outlet or car charger.
I have tried a number of different models, and most of them work quite well, but some I like better than others for various reasons.
I recently had the opportunity to check out a CoolReall 5000mAh Portable Charger External Battery Power Bank, and I came away quite impressed. [Read more…]
I wrote a post a while back that explains how to use a great service called Where’s My Cell Phone to ring your lost phone so you can track it down by the ringing sound when you don’t have another phone to call it with.
That service works quite well, but for it to be useful you have to know the general location where you lost the phone (i.e. somewhere inside your home or office). It won’t do you much good if your phone was stolen or lost in a distant place and you have no clue where to go to look for it.
Luckily, if you have an Android phone you can now use the Google search box to determine your phone’s location (within a few meters) and then make it ring so you can find its exact location. [Read more…]
Would you like to upgrade a PC running Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7, but can’t find a Windows 7 upgrade package in the stores?
Or do you have a new computer that came with Windows 8 pre-installed, and you absolutely hate Windows 8 and would like to replace it with a legal copy of Windows 7?
Microsoft has officially moved on to Windows 8 (actually, 8.1 now), but you can still buy legal copies of Windows 7 if you know where to look. [Read more…]
Microsoft effectively killed off Windows XP in about a year ago, and many XP users are trying decide whether to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8.1, dump Windows altogether and switch to Linux, or simply replace their old PC with a new one.
Personally, I think switching to Ubuntu Linux is a great way to go if the PC is used primarily for email and Internet access, but as long as the hardware is new enough to support Windows 8.1, that’s a great choice as well.
If you decide to upgrade Win XP to 8.1, it’s a good idea to prepare for the upgrade before jumping into it. Here are my recommendations: [Read more…]
Most everyone knows that the Internet is an awesome resource that’s filled with information on virtually every topic known to man, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for a good old-fashioned printed book.
Although most of my research is done online nowadays, I still keep a small library of physical books on hand. And one book that has been a great help to me is Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual.
There was a time when every software program you purchased came with a printed manual, and that included MS-DOS and Windows. You not only got a disk, but a book explaining how to use the software as well. [Read more…]