Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Travis H.: You give away some great prizes for your monthly tech giveaways. I’m a subscriber to your newsletter and I see them listed in every issue.
If you don’t mind my asking, where do you get the items that you give away every month? Just curious.
Rick’s answer: That’s a great question Travis, and I’ll be happy to answer it for you.
I typically get the items that I give away at the end of every month in one of three ways: [Read more…]
Hello again! I hope you had a great week!
As you probably know by now, Microsoft’s offer of a free upgrade from either Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 has now officially expired. But there are still a couple of ways to get Windows 10 for free:
1 – If you don’t mind living on the cutting edge of Windows technology (for both good and bad), you can sign up for the free Windows Insider Program.
As a Windows Insider you’ll be able to install latest experimental “Preview” version of Windows 10 for free, and it will remain free forever. You will also receive experimental updates just as soon as they’re released, and that can be as frequently as every day.
This is Microsoft’s way of getting feedback on new Windows features and suggestions about upgrades. In exchange for your testing and feedback, they give you Windows 10 for free! Just be sure to read and understand the caveats mentioned in the post I linked to above. [Read more…]
Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great week!
Facebook has approximately 1.5 billion active users, making it by far the most popular social media community in the world.
As I’m sure you already know, the numerous features of the Facebook website make it easy for that vast community of users to share photos, news and information with one another, and indeed with the world.
Unfortunately, all of those features tend to make the Facebook user interface both non-intuitive and frustrating at times.
As luck would have it, there are several fantastic extensions for the Chrome web browser that can help mitigate some of Facebook’s biggest annoyances. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about three of my favorites. [Read more…]
Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great week!
Technology is advancing at breakneck speeds these days, and I believe we’re on the verge of seeing some truly amazing breakthroughs in the tech world before 2016 comes to an end.
With that in mind, here are a few predictions:
1 – Larger and faster solid state drives (SSDs) will render traditional spinning hard drives obsolete. In fact, SSDs that store more data than a typical hard drive are already here, but as of now they are extremely expensive. But that will change, and relatively soon.
Thanks to new technologies for producing non-volatile memory, manufacturers will soon start selling SSDs with speeds that approach the blistering speed of RAM while storing dozens of terabytes of data. Look for them to start showing up by the end of the year. [Read more…]
Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a great week!
I’m a huge fan of Windows 10, but I realize that many of you are still wondering whether you want to install the free upgrade or not.
Here are a few reminders for you to consider:
1 – If you do want to give Windows 10 a try for free, you’ll need to do it fairly soon.
Microsoft’s free update from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 offer will expire on July 29. If you haven’t installed it before then you’ll have to pay over $100 if you ever decide to upgrade to the new Windows. Read this post for more info. [Read more…]