Rick's Daily Tips

Review: Anker 14W Solar Panel Foldable Dual-port Solar Charger for USB-charged Devices

Posted on April 18, 2015

anker-14w-foldable-solar-charger Hiking, camping, and just enjoying the great outdoors are wonderful ways to get back to nature for a while, but if you need to keep your mobile phone, tablet or GPS charged up while you’re out there, good luck!

But now our friends at Amazon have an awesome new device that makes it easy to keep your mobile devices charged up while you’re out someplace in the boonies.

The Anker 14W Solar Panel Foldable Dual-port Solar Charger provides up to 5v at 2 amps to your USB charged mobile devices. This is plenty of power to keep your batteries “hot” and ready for use whenever you need them. [Read more…]

Review: CoolReall 5000mAh Portable Charger External Battery Power Bank

Posted on April 18, 2015

coolreall-5000ah-portable-charger 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…]

Use Google to quickly locate your lost or stolen Android phone

Posted on April 18, 2015

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…]

Great deal: Get the full version of Windows 7 Home Premium at a great price!

Posted on April 14, 2015

windows-7 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…]

How to prepare a PC running Windows XP for an upgrade to Windows 8.1

Posted on April 8, 2015

xp-to-8-1 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…]