Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Do you own a Samsung Galaxy S4, S5 or S6?
If so, there’s a good chance that a flaw in your phone’s keyboard software has left your phone vulnerable to a hacking attack.
Fortunately, the vulnerability seems to only be an issue when the phone is connected to the Internet via an unsecured Wi-Fi connection. [Read more…]
Now that we are living in an era of $200 laptops, it’s good to know that we can still pay a bit more and get a much faster and more reliable machine.
The truth is you don’t have to settle for an Atom or Celeron CPU when you can have a laptop that’s equipped with a fast Intel Core i5 without breaking the bank!
The Toshiba Satellite C55-C5240 is a fantastic laptop that easily offers a computing experience far above what you could ever hope to get from any $200 machine. It’s fast, and it comes with a sharp, crisp 15.6 inch screen and plenty of RAM and hard drive space. In fact, it comes with all of this and more: [Read more…]
Question from Derick T.: Hi Rick. I had been wanting to add some USB 3.0 ports to my HP desktop PC for a while now. I finally broke down and bought a USB 3.0 expansion card
The new USB ports work fine with my USB mouse, keyboard and printer, but when I plug my Seagate external USB hard drive into it I can’t get the computer to recognize the drive. I know it should work because the box the drive came in said it works with USB 3.0. Am I doing something wrong?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Mobile devices are becoming more powerful by the day, and I am continuously amazed at how much computing power and functionality they can pack into such small devices.
Well, now fully-functional desktop PCs have become truly portable as well. A perfect case in point is the awesome Quantum Access Windows 8.1 Mini PC Stick. (#ad)
In a nutshell, this is a fully functioning desktop PC contained within a tiny package that looks somewhat like an over-sized USB flash memory stick. But instead of a male USB connector, it features an HDMI connector that allows you to plug the computer directly into your monitor’s HDMI port without having to use a cable.
Since the device plugs directly in to the monitor, all you have to do is plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and then get right to work!
Check out everything you get with this tiny machine: [Read more…]
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Do you ever worry about forgetting to log out of Facebook and having someone else gain access to your Facebook account? Well, if you haven’t you should because it happens all the time.
Even if you close your web browser you aren’t automatically logged out of Facebook. Someone else could sit down at your PC, open your browser and visit Facebook with your account already logged on for them.
And what if you don’t close your browser at all? If you leave your browser window open while you go into another room or run to the corner market, Facebook will happily sit there and await your return.
But what if something comes up and you can’t get back to your PC for a while? Someone else could easily come along and read your private messages and even chat with your friends while pretending to be you. Or worse. The possibilities for mischief are endless! [Read more…]