Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Anita: Rick, I use Internet Explorer 9 on a laptop running Windows 7 (I know, everyone tells me I need to use Chrome, but I like I.E.). I like having my photos open in I.E. when I click on them but I hate it when they open in a window that’s already open and replace the web page that’s already there.
I hope you can tell me how to make my photos always open in a brand new window when I click on them?
Rick’s answer: I can Anita, and here’s what you need to do… [Read more…]
If it seems like you’re prompted to update Adobe Reader more often than you visit the grocery store, there’s a reason: It’s an inherently insecure program that requires more patches than a NASCAR driver’s racing uniform in order to keep hackers from breaking into your system.
Yep, hackers love Adobe Reader – which means you shouldn’t.
The good news is you don’t really need Adobe Reader on your computer at all, even if you tend to read lots of PDF files. If you use Google Chrome or Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, those browsers now display PDF files by default without having to load Adobe Reader at all. [Read more…]
Have you ever been in a quiet room and had your phone ring so loudly that half the people around you nearly jumped out of their skin? Or perhaps you were in a place so noisy that you missed an important call because you couldn’t hear your phone ringing?
Android phones have a feature that automatically adjusts the brightness of the screen to match the ambient light level, and now a free app called Intelligent Ringer does the same thing for the ringer volume.
Intelligent Ringer won’t change the ringer volume when your phone is in vibrate-only or airplane mode and you can adjust the sensitivity and minimum volume level to your own preference, making it conform to your own personal hearing capability.
You can read more about Intelligent Ringer and download it for free in the Google Play Store.
I recently downloaded and began testing a Chrome browser extension I read about called Grammarly Lite, and let me tell you, it’s awesome! Once you install the extension you’ll see a little green “G” in the lower right-hand corner of every text box letting you know that Grammarly Lite is loaded and on the job.
Grammarly Lite works in real time, highlighting misspelled words and punctuation errors on the fly. Simply hover your mouse over the underlined word or text snippet and Grammarly Lite will suggest a short list of possible fixes. Click on the appropriate one and the error is fixed right then and there. If the highlighted word is correct but unrecognized by Grammarly Lite, adding it to the dictionary is as easy as clicking “Remember this word”. [Read more…]
If you ever find yourself needing to have a cracked laptop screen replaced, you can save quite a few bucks by ordering the replacement screen yourself and then taking the new screen along with the laptop to a repair shop for installation.
If you allow the shop to order the replacement screen on your behalf, they’ll most likely order it from a company called ScreenTek. They’ll tack on a hefty profit and then charge you a labor charge for installing it.
The labor charge is a no-brainer (unless you have the skills required to replace the screen yourself), but why pay the repair shop a premium for the replacement laptop screen just to have them order it for you? You can order the screen yourself and save a bundle! [Read more…]