Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Do you still have a laptop or desktop PC that’s running Windows Vista? If so, you’ll soon have to decide whether want to keep using it or not.
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows XP about a year ago, and Vista is scheduled to get the boot on April 11 of this year.
What does this change mean for Vista users?
Well, your PC won’t simply stop working on April 11. In fact, you won’t notice any change at all from your perspective as a user. But there’s a problem… [Read more…]
Question from Bobby E.: I bought a computer at an estate sale a few days ago. The lady told me her dad had built the computer himself a couple of years ago but she didn’t know anything about it. I think I got a good deal because it only cost me $30.
Apparently there’s no operating system on the hard drive, and I’d like to install Windows 10 on it and use this PC as a backup Internet-only computer.
What I’d like to find out is if the CPU is a 32 bit or 64 bit chip. If it has a 64 bit CPU I’d like to install the 64 bit version of Windows 10. How can I find out?
I really appreciate your help. Thanks in advance.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
There was a time when I built PCs from scratch and sold them at a profit, and I was able to generate a pretty decent side income from it. In total, I built and sold right at 200 computers before I moved on to other interests.
Today, computers are mass-produced commodities, and that makes it pretty hard to purchase all the individual parts required to build a PC at prices low enough to make a profit when selling the assembled unit.
After all, it’s hard for the little guy to compete with the big guys these days due to economy of scale.
That being said, there are still some benefits to be derived from building your own computer instead of purchasing one at retail. Here are a few of the reasons why some folks still build their own PCs: [Read more…]
Question from Andy S.: My Dell Inspiron 1300 has only 512 Megs of RAM. The machine is now very slow, I suspect that it’s due to lot of paging.
Would it make sense if I buy an Expresscard to USB 3.0 adapter so then I can add a USB 3.0 SSD, Flash Finger or M.2 to the machine? Would it improve the performance?
Thank you very much.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Chuck H.: A while back I bought a Windows 8.1 retail package (#ad) that contains two discs, one for Windows 8.1/64 bit and the other for Windows 8.1/32 bit.
I installed the 32 bit disc on my old HP laptop after Microsoft abandoned Windows XP. I have never used the 64 bit disc.
My question is can I install Windows 8.1 from the 64 bit disc onto my desktop computer? I had to replace the hard drive and I don’t have a set of recovery discs.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]