Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Rick’s Daily Tech Tips Update for Friday, October 7, 2022
• Q&A: Can you recommend a good source for info about converting to solar power?
• Here’s a simple tip for faster typing on your smartphone
• Why natural light is perfect for portrait photography
• Q&A: Why don’t car insurance premiums go down as the car depreciates?
Hiking, camping, and just enjoying the great outdoors are wonderful ways to get back to nature for a while, but if you need to keep your mobile phone, tablet or GPS charged up while you’re out there, good luck!
But now our friends at Amazon have an awesome new device that makes it easy to keep your mobile devices charged up while you’re out someplace in the boonies.
The Anker 14W Solar Panel Foldable Dual-port Solar Charger provides up to 5v at 2 amps to your USB charged mobile devices. This is plenty of power to keep your batteries “hot” and ready for use whenever you need them. [Read more…]
If you live in an area plagued by frequent power outages, keeping your cell phone and other mobile devices charged can be a real challenge.
I wrote a post a while back explaining how a spare battery backup unit is a great tool for keeping your devices charged up.
But if you’d rather not have to deal with keeping another battery backup charged and at the ready, there is a great alternative available: a solar powered USB charger
One major advantage of solar chargers is the obvious: As long as the sun shines you can keep a charge on your devices’ batteries. Of course that’s also the main disadvantage – no sun, no charging. But most models have a built-in backup battery for charging your devices during times of darkness or heavy cloud cover. [Read more…]
Note: All the links in this page are affiliate links.
I’m frequently asked to recommend a specific tech item that I trust and feel comfortable recommending to others.
Since I receive so many of these requests I thought it might be a good idea to create a page featuring the products I recommend most often.
Note 1: If you click on a product link and find that the item is sold out, please let me know so I can update it. Thanks a bunch!
Note 2: Amazon’s user reviews are extremely helpful when it comes to choosing the best item in its category, but only if you know how to properly evaluate the reviews. I strongly recommend that you read this before making a buying decision based upon competing reviews.
This laptop is very affordable, yet well suited for typical home/student/Internet use.
It comes with Windows 11 Pro instead of Windows 11 in S mode (that’s a huge plus). It also comes with a 15.6″ screen, which is larger than the screens you’ll find on many budget laptops.
This nice Dell is for those who need a little more horsepower than you typically find in a budget laptop, but in a machine that won’t break the bank.
It has a great combination of RAM and fast SSD storage to go along with its very capable Intel i5 CPU. I believe it’s a really good deal for the money.
If you’re looking for a machine with speed and power to spare, this could well be the best value you’ll find in its price range.
Its ultrafast AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 Processor, 16GB DDR5 RAM and spacious 1TB SSD and other advanced features make this a fantastic choice for a less-than $1,000 laptop.
This quickly became my favorite gaming laptop after it was introduced – and it still is.
ASUS ROG machines are quite popular with gamers thanks to their reputation for high quality and power at a very reasonable price. This particular model is fantastic.
This is an excellent machine for everyday Internet, social media, home and business use.
If you’re looking for a good, but very affordable desktop PC that’s capable of most any typical home computing task, this is it.
This little gem is about the size of a brick, but it has about as much processing power, RAM and SSD storage capacity as some mid-range laptops.
This tiny PC is roughly the same size as the brick-sized GMKtec machine above, but it’s packed with tons of computing power.
If you want a desktop PC that doesn’t take up a lot of desk space but is absolutely packed with computing power, storage and general awesomeness, this is the one.
This laptop is perfect for students or most anyone else who wants to move into the Apple world without spending a ton of cash.
It comes with all the usual advantages found in Apple products and it’s quite fast when performing most every tasks.
This machine fits into what I consider to be sweet spot when it comes to Apple MacBook laptops, providing a great balance between price and performance.
High performance rules the day with this high-end MacBook Pro. This is a top-seller for Apple, for good reason.
Like it’s MacBook Air cousin, this popular iMac is an excellent machine for anyone wanting to move to the Mac world.
It’s compact all-in-one design is a real space saver, and it packs plenty of punch for the price.
If you’re looking for top performance in a desktop Mac, you can’t go wrong with this gem.
I believe this is the best Chromebook deal going at the moment and it’s the only one I’m currently recommending.
This little gem is still an excellent value for the money!
More power and speed. Well worth the upgrade.
If you’re looking for a tablet that rivals the power of a laptop, this one is fairly close.
I’ve used more expensive Android tablets but I really like this one for an everyday tablet.
If you need something a bit faster and more responsive, this is a great choice.
I don’t have a recommendation for this because I really can’t justify the extra expense for an Android tablet that costs more than $500.
One of my most frequent recommendation requests is for a really cheap monitor that’s still dependable and gets the job done. This is it.
This is my primary work monitor. I love it!
This is one of the best-selling gaming monitors on Amazon. Try it for 15 minutes and you’ll find out why.
I have used Brother printers for years, with great success. This is the laser printer that one I use on a daily basis and I love it.
Again, I have to go with Brother… This is a really good one.
This could well be the best value for a reliable backup storage drive, period.
I believe this is the best deal going right now for a really good, and really fast external SSD.
I have had three of the units protecting my work computers and TV for quite some time. They work flawlessly.
Unlike a typical WiFi extender, this three-node mesh system provides much better coverage even though it’s very close in price to what you would pay for a quality extender.
This system supports Gigabit speeds and great coverage, without the premium price tag.
This kit features the latest WiFi 7 technology with support for up to 5 Gbps speeds and expanded coverage (up to 6,000 sq. ft.).
This system provides reliable backup power for extended power outages (or when you’re camping). It will keep your CPAP machine, your refrigerator and your other essential gear powered up any time you don’t have available grid power.
If you only need to keep your phone and other small gadgets powered up during power outages or when you’re on the go, you don’t really need a full-blown solar generator. This little gem is all you really need.
This is probably the easiest digital picture frame to use, period. And it works like a champ.
This little gem will keep you updated right to the very second with what’s going on weatherwise in your very own neighborhood (indeed, in your very own back yard).
This thing is simply amazing. Plug it into any existing 120V electrical outlet and you’ll have the equivalent of a 5 outlet surge protector and 4 USB charging ports in one very compact unit. I have three of them and I absolutely love them.
This will protect everything in your entire home from power surges and lightning strikes., including your major appliances that cannot be plugged into a standard surge protector.
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Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Question from Travis: I’m building a cabin on the back side of my parents’ ranch that my wife and I will be staying in several times a year when we visit them.
We’ll be staying several days on each trip so I’ll need to be able to work from the cabin. And it looks like that might be a problem. [Read more…]