Rick's Daily Tips

Tired of Solitaire? Play Pacman instead!

Posted on April 24, 2013

pacman Note: The extension mentioned in this post have been discontinued.

Are you old enough to remember the classic Pacman game from back in the golden age of video games? Did you enjoy gobbling up pellets and battling those colorful little monsters as much as I did? If so, you can do it again for free, right in your Chrome browser!

The classic Pacman game is available as a neat little extension to the Chrome web browser. And installation couldn’t be easier. Simply ~~click this link~~ with your Chrome browser and click the Add to Chrome button.

Pacman will be installed instantly, and a yellow Pacman icon will be displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the Chrome window. Just click on that icon at any time to start playing one of the most popular video games of all time!

Crucial Memory now selling a 1TB Solid State Drive (SSD)

Posted on April 21, 2013

Crucial Memory is now selling the world’s first consumer-grade 1TB SSD. It’s dubbed the M500, and at $600 you get all that massive storage for a mere 60 cents per gigabyte!

SSDs are quickly becoming standard in new laptop PCs, but their problem has always been limited storage space compared to traditional hard drives. Models in the half-terabyte range have been available for a while now, but their prices have kept them pretty much out of the mainstream.

But now that Crucial is selling this monster of an SSD for such a relatively low price, I look for the prices of smaller drives to drop in order to remain competitive in the market place. Could the traditional “spinning platter” hard drive soon go the way of the floppy drive? I think it very well could if SSDs keep getting larger and their prices per gigabyte keep dropping.

Click here to see Crucial’s complete line of solid state drives, including the 1Tb M500.

Q&A: Can I use a USB 3.0 Flash Drive in a USB 2.0 socket?

Posted on April 21, 2013

Question from Daneen: Hi Rick. I bought a couple of USB Flash Drives last night to put baby pictures on and give to my mom and mother-in-law, but I noticed after I got home that they’re USB 3.0 drives.

Will these drives work in USB 2.0 sockets or should I return them and buy USB 2.0 drives? I don’t want to damage my computer, and I REALLY don’t want to damage theirs! Thanks a lot for your help.

Rick‘s answer: [Read more…]

How to fix “USB Device Not Recognized” error

Posted on April 19, 2013

microsoft-windows If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows for a while you have surely seen the “USB Device Not Recognized” error balloon pop up after plugging in a USB device.

This happens fairly often, and most of the time unplugging the device and plugging it back in will fix the problem. But what if you start getting this error every time you plug in a USB device?

If all of your USB devices start generating this error when you plug them in, there is an easy fix: [Read more…]

How to create a Desktop shortcut to any folder

Posted on April 18, 2013

microsoft-windows Do you open the “Computer” utility and navigate to the same folder on a regular basis? If so, why not create a shortcut to that folder and place it on the Desktop?

One the shortcut to your favorite folder is on your desktop, you can double-click on it Windows will open that folder immediately instead of you having to navigate to it every time.

This might seem like a trivial matter, but if you open the same folder several times a day, having a shortcut to it can be a real time saver.

Here’s how to create a Desktop shortcut to a specific folder: [Read more…]