Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
Question from Earl: I hope you don’t mind but I need help with something about Windows.
I’m 78 years old and my fingers are stiff and in almost constant pain from arthritis.
I can use a mouse fairly well but I have a hard time using a keyboard.
I know how to lock my computer using a keyboard shortcut but is there any way to do it using the mouse instead? That would be a big help to me if it’s possible. [Read more…]
Question from Don: I have a 2TB external hard drive that I’ve used to back up my MacBook for a while. I just bought a 6TB drive to replace it.
I want to give the old drive to my nephew because he needs one and he can’t really afford to buy one.
How can I securely wipe that drive to make sure it’s completely empty before I give it to him? [Read more…]
Question from Marion.: Why are computers made by Apple called Macs?
That seems like a really odd name for a computer.
It actually sounds more like something you’d find on the menu at McDonald’s.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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Question from Kerrie: I have a MacBook Pro and don’t own a Windows computer.
If I copy files from my MacBook Pro onto a thumb drive will my sisters be able to copy those files from that same thumb drive onto their Windows PCs?
If you have a Mac and your user account has administrator privileges, you’re able to access things and perform actions that aren’t available to users that don’t have admin accounts.
But even accounts with admin privileges are limited in the things they can access and do on a Mac.
However, there’s a special user account with the username “root” that you can use to access and make changes to any area of the file system that isn’t write-protected by your Mac’s System Integrity Protection system. [Read more…]