Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Ken L.: Rick, I need help big time my friend. I accidentally deleted all the files from my USB pen drive and I REALLY need to get them back. I checked the Recycle Bin and they aren’t in there. Is there anything I can do to get them back?
Rick’s answer: There’s a good chance that you’ll be able to recover at least some of your lost files Ken, and maybe even all of them if luck is on your side. Here’s what you need to do: [Read more…]
Before I begin, let me be upfront and tell you that I love Adobe’s photo editing software. In my opinion, while they tend to be a little pricey, Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom are the best image editors out there. That’s why I downloaded Adobe Photoshop Touch with high expectations.
Photoshop Touch promises to bring many of the most used (and most useful) features of the full-blown Photoshop program to your mobile device, and Adobe pretty much succeeded in that regard. But that being said, I found several important features and tools difficult to use on a tablet and smart phone. [Read more…]
If you’ve been computer shopping recently, you’ve no doubt noticed the plethora of laptops priced around $200. It seems they’re everywhere these days, and even the big name-brands are selling them.
If you’re wondering how the computer manufacturers can afford to sell a Windows laptop for $200, it basically boils down to one reason: Microsoft’s release of Windows 8.1 with Bing.
At its core, Windows 8.1 with Bing is exactly the same operating system as the standard Windows 8.1, but two things differentiate Windows 8.1 with Bing from standard Windows 8.1: [Read more…]
Question from Eric J.: I have an older Gateway desktop computer that came with a 320Gb hard drive, which is now full. I bought a new Seagate 1TB drive and installed it in the computer.
How do you recommend that I back up the smaller drive onto the larger one? Can I just copy my files from the small drive onto the new one and then delete them from the old drive to free up some space?
I want to make sure I do this right because I don’t want to lose any of my files. I’ll really appreciate any advice you can give me. Thanks.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
TRIM is a feature in Windows 7 and above that immediately frees up the space on a solid state drive (SSD) that was previously occupied by a deleted file.
This allows Windows to re-use those no longer needed memory locations right away instead of having to search for unused locations elsewhere on the drive.
In a nutshell, having TRIM enabled keeps your SSD from slowing down with regular use, and it makes the drive last longer to boot. [Read more…]