Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Should I buy a PC with a stand-alone graphics card?

Posted on February 22, 2013

Question from Kim F.: Hi Rick! I really love your daily tech tips, especially the questions and answers. Now I have one of my own…

I’m in the process of shopping around for a new desktop computer and I’m pretty much up to speed on the advantages of more memory and faster CPUs, but there’s one thing I’m unclear about.

Does it really pay to spend more for a computer with a stand-alone graphics card rather than one with integrated graphics? Thanks in advance for your reply!

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Prey – A great free app for recovering your lost or stolen laptop or mobile device

Posted on February 21, 2013

prey Every day thousands of laptops, tablets and smart phones are lost or stolen, and relatively few of them are ever recovered and returned to their rightful owners. But a free app called Prey can tilt the odds greatly in your favor.

Prey is a small, discrete app that “hides” on your laptop or mobile device and lies dormant until you need it. Then if the device is ever lost or stolen you can easily “wake it up” with a remote signal sent by you either through the Internet or via an SMS message. Once activated, Prey gets right down to business by performing the following actions: [Read more…]

Best Buy claims they are no longer ‘Amazon’s Showroom’

Posted on February 19, 2013

best-buy A while back I wrote a post about how Best Buy was losing tons of business to Amazon and other large online retailers by serving as their local “showroom”. Well, now the company claims that a new price matching policy will effectively end “showrooming” for good.

Beginning on March 3, 2013, Best Buy will immediately match the prices of 19 major online competitors and all local retail stores in all product categories and on virtually every in-stock item – but only when a customer asks them to.

It’s that last part that has me a bit skeptical. Unless the stores decide to display huge honking banners letting customers know about the new price matching plan, how many of them will even know to ask? Time will tell I suppose.

Anyway, here is a list of the 19 online competitors that Best Buy plans to match beginning on March 3: [Read more…]

Charge your iPad from any computer with a USB port

Posted on February 18, 2013

meritline-usb-ipad-charger The USB ports in a typical laptop computer simply cannot supply enough current to charge an iPad, but now there’s an awesome little device from Meritline allows you to charge your iPad from any computer’s USB port, including your laptop.

As you can see in the photo, the dongle looks somewhat like an over-sized USB drive. Just plug it into a USB port, then plug in your iPad and you’re all set!

While I haven’t tried it personally, the customer reviews I’ve read on the Meritline website give it high marks, and independent testing by at least two national computer magazines seem to confirm that the praise is warranted. And the best part is you can get your hands on one for just $4.99 – and that includes the shipping fee!

Click here to check it out at the Meritline website.

Q&A: Why does Chrome take forever to start loading a page?

Posted on February 17, 2013

Question from Judy L: I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary web browser for about 3 months now and I really like it. But a couple of days ago it started taking forever to begin loading a web page. What could be causing this?

Rick’s answer: Judy, when you try loading a page, does it say “Resolving proxy” in the lower left-hand corner of the browser? If so (and I’m sure it probably does), something or someone has configured Chrome to access websites through a web proxy.

If you’re the only person that uses this computer I’m guessing that your system has malware on it that initiated the change without your knowledge. The first thing you need to do is adjust the settings in Chrome to prevent it from using a web proxy. Here’s how: [Read more…]