Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Glenn P.: I have a couple of questions for you Rick. My desktop computer is a Gateway, but Belarc Advisor says the motherboard was made by ASUS.
Question 1: Did I get ripped off when I bought this computer? I’d hate to think that a company like Gateway would pull a fast one on their customers.
Question 2: If not, is ASUS a good brand?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Ever since I was a teenager I have loved shopping at Radio Shack. Yes, I’ll gladly admit it – I was a “geek” even back then.
They were indeed a little pricey, but if I needed a resistor, capacitor, potentiometer, vauum tube or some other electronic component, chances are the local “Shack” would have it.
But not anymore. The shelves and wall racks containing “parts” used to take up half the store, but now their stock of those items barely fills a small corner of the room. I do realize that times have changed. Nowadays all of those items can easily be purchased online for less money. But as is usually the case in situations like this, there’s more to the story than just that. [Read more…]
It seems that the scammers of the world are working overtime these days in an effort to separate you from your money and steal your identity.
The latest scam making the rounds is targeted at users of the popular Netflix streaming video service. This ploy is apparently a part of a concerted effort among fraudsters to expand their pool of potential victims to users of mainstream online services.
The Netflix scam works something like this: [Read more…]
Question from Craig H.: I’ve finally decided to update my iPhone 4 to iOS 7 but it won’t let me. The phone freezes up at the “Checking for updates” screen, and it remains frozen no matter how long I let it try.
Should I try updating it some other way? Am I doing something wrong? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Rick’s answer: Craig, I’m guessing that your iPhone has been jailbroken. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to install the update for iOS 7 until you un-jailbreak it.
Luckily, that’s real easy to do by simply restoring your phone to the factory default settings. Here’s how: [Read more…]
Question from Barb T.: Hi Rick. I have a simple question for you. Whenever I press the Enter key to go to the next line while typing in Open Office Writer, it automatically capitalizes the first letter of the first word on the line I just completed.
The thing is I write poetry, and I type everything in lower case. How can I prevent Open Office Writer from capitalizing the first letter on every line?
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]