Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
The other day I wrote a post in which I discussed how the upcoming USB 3.1 specification is going to call for USB cables that will plug into the socket either way without having to worry about “which way is up”. In my opinion, that will be a huge step forward.
Well, an alert reader sent me an email this morning letting me know that Tripp-Lite already sells a line of reversible USB 2.0 cables that you can buy right now – and they’re surprisingly inexpensive! [Read more…]
Question from Denise: Rick, I know it sounds silly but I sometimes have trouble locating my “Downloads” folder. I know, I can be a little dense at times lol.
I’d like to set it up so that all downloads go into a “Downloads” folder that’s located in the root of the C: drive where I can find it in a jiffy without having to think about it. How do I do that?
Rick’s answer: Hi Denise. I can understand why you might want to move your Downloads folder to another location, and there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t.
Follow these steps to change the location of your Downloads folder: [Read more…]
Yesterday, Google completed their first Toolbar PageRank Update since February 2013.
Many bloggers who had created their blogs early in the year had been wondering why the PR of their blogs’ home pages were still stuck at zero, but now they can finally see where their sites stand in the eyes of Google.
For several years a website’s PageRank was a major determining factor that Google’s ranking algorithm used to determine where a given web page should rank against other pages on the web for a given search term. In general, the higher a page’s PR, the higher it would be displayed in the search results for a given search. [Read more…]
As you might already know, Microsoft stops selling new retail licenses for a particular version of Windows one year after it’s successor has been released.
Well, it’s been a little over a year since the release of Windows 8, and the company has just updated its website to let everyone know that they will no longer be selling Windows 7 retail licenses.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t still buy a genuine Windows 7 DVD. In fact, most major retailers have plenty of them on hand, and they will probably still be selling them for quite some time. [Read more…]
Question from Marc E.: Hi Rick. I hope you can help me with a keyboard issue that I’m struggling with on my Lenovo ThinkCentre 3493GPU desktop computer with Windows 7 Pro.
It all started when I downloaded a game on to the desktop PC for my 5 year old to play while I’m working on my laptop. Now the number keys on the numeric keypad won’t work. When I press a key the mouse cursor will move just a tiny bit, but nothing shows up on the screen. The rest of the keyboard works fine.
Whatever happened seems to have just affected the numeric keypad and nothing else. Even the number keys located above the letter keys are working.
Uninstalling the game didn’t help, and neither did a System Restore. Do you have any ideas about what I can do to fix this? Thanks in advance for your help.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]