Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
If you’re a Windows user you’re probably familiar with Cortana, the personal assistant that Microsoft added to Windows beginning with the initial 2015 release of Windows 10.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Cortana and removing it has always been one of the first things I did any time I got a new PC or reinstalled Windows for some reason. [Read more…]
Question from Trevor: Rick, I have an HP laptop running Windows 11.
When I close the lid it goes into sleep mode, but I’d rather have it just shut down all the way because I’m usually going to just leave it in my laptop bag and not use it for a while.
Is there a way to make it do that? Thanks.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
If you’ve recently started using Windows 11 for the first time you’ve probably noticed that Microsoft has drastically changed the look and layout of the Start Menu.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the changes, but they are what they are.
This post discusses some of the changes Microsoft has made to the Start Menu. It also offers tips for personalizing it to make it easier to use and a generally more efficient tool.
If you use Windows 11 you’ve probably noticed that you receive more notifications than you received from earlier versions of Windows.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because important notifications really do need to seen and dealt with, but getting a steady stream of unimportant notifications while you’re trying to work can be a real problem.
Luckily, Microsoft provides a number of settings you can tweak to limit the types of notifications you receive. [Read more…]
Question from Rita: My laptop has Windows 11 on it and when I turned it on yesterday morning I noticed that it had installed an update.
Ever since the update there’s been a little Weather icon on the Taskbar right beside the Start button.
Every time I move my mouse towards either the Start button or the icon just to the right of the Weather icon a screen pops up showing the weather along with what appears to be about a thousand news reports.
This is irritating me to no end. Is there any way to remove that Weather icon from the Taskbar? [Read more…]