laptop Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Try this first if your laptop won’t turn on

Posted on May 5, 2025

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If you ever press the power button on your laptop and it fails to power up, there’s a good chance that you won’t need to replace it or pay for an expensive repair.

A “dead” laptop can be caused by several different issues, but one common cause is a simple transient power issue or some other transient glitch.

If you ever find yourself facing a laptop that won’t turn on when you press the power button, try this before trying anything else: [Read more…]

Save battery charge by hibernating your laptop instead of putting it to sleep

Posted on May 2, 2025

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Like many laptop owners, you probably put your machine into sleep mode every time you shut the lid to transport it to a new location.

But if you constantly find yourself having to deal with a low battery, there is a better way. Hibernate your laptop instead! [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I connect a TV to my laptop for watching Netflix and YouTube?

Posted on March 4, 2025

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Question from Chad: My laptop has a 13 inch screen, and I’d really like to have a much bigger screen to use when I’m watching Netflix or YouTube.

I’ve been thinking about buying a 27 inch computer monitor to hook up to the laptop through the HDMI port, but I think I might have just found a better (well, at least a much cheaper) option.

[Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a really cheap, but reliable SSD for an older laptop?

Posted on February 8, 2025

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Question from Ari: The hard drive in my 6 year old Dell laptop died a few days ago. This has been a great machine and I don’t want to just trash it.

I’d like to replace the bad hard drive with an SSD, but I’d rather not spend a lot of money if I can help it.

After reading your post about replacing Windows with Linux, I’d like to install Linux Mint on this laptop and use it as my primary Internet computer. I won’t need a lot of storage space so a fairly small SSD should be ok.

What I’m looking for a really inexpensive SSD that’s large enough to hold the new Linux installation and maybe a few Chrome extensions. But I’d like the SSD to be as reliable as possible. [Read more…]

How to charge any laptop with your car

Posted on December 18, 2024

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These days it’s hard to imagine taking a long drive without having a car charger on board to keep the battery in your cell phone topped off.

But what about your laptop?

While some modern laptops can be charged with a standard USB-type car charger and a compatible cable, there are plenty of others that can only be charged using the AC power brick that came with the laptop. [Read more…]