Rick's Daily Tips

Create your own ebooks for free with Papyrus

Posted on December 23, 2013

Have you ever wanted to create an ebook to sell or just give away to your friends? Most of us have, and there’s a great web tool called Papyrus that will help you do it for free!

Papyrus is a one-stop web shop that lets you do everything from edit and/or import the text and images for your ebook to create beautiful “covers”. They even assist you in selling your completed ebooks! You can easily create beautiful ebooks in kindle, pdf, and epub formats, which pretty much covers 95% of the ebook formats in use today. [Read more…]

Q&A: Does Windows 8 really come with a built-in Antivirus program?

Posted on December 22, 2013

Question from Caroline E.: I just bought a new computer with Windows 8 on it and the salesman told me it comes with a free anti-virus program that’s actually a part of Windows.

Is that true? And if it is, do I have to turn it on or is it already enabled? I’d really like to use it if at all possible because it’s free! lol

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Review: HP Pavilion 17-e079nr Laptop

Posted on December 21, 2013

HP laptops have served me well over the years, and I’m always eager to check out the new models when they become available.

Today I’m going to be discussing the HP Pavilion 17-e079nr, a full-featured laptop that offers a lot of power and plenty of great features for the money.

The Pavilion 17-e079nr comes with a stunning 17.3 inch color display and an AMD A8 Quad Core CPU, which together make for an excellent user experience even when watching DVDs and playing games. You’ll also find the large screen quite enjoyable when surfing the Internet, checking email, and performing most any visually challenging task. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why won’t my new laptop let me upgrade to Windows 8.1?

Posted on December 20, 2013

Question from Shannon W.: I bought a brand new Gateway laptop with Windows 8 based on the promise that I could upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free. But when I go to the Windows App Store I don’t see any way to download the upgrade.

I called Microsoft Tech Support and they’re apparently unable to help me. I’d just return the laptop and buy a different one, but the return period has expired.

Can you tell me what I need to do in order to upgrade my laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Hackers steal the credit card info of 40 million Target shoppers. Are you one of them?

Posted on December 20, 2013

Target has announced that approximately 40 million customers who shopped at one of their brick and mortar retail stores between November 27 and December 15 have had their credit card or debit card information stolen during one of the most successful hacking attempts in history.

If you shopped at Target during that time frame and paid for your purchases with a credit or debit card, you are quite possibly one of the victims.

If you think this might apply to you, I recommend that you do the following ASAP: [Read more…]