Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Liam: My wife and I recently went to a flea market to look for some things for our house.
I ended up buying a used Lenovo ThinkPad T400 with Windows 7 on it.
It’s obvious that it’s a pretty old laptop but it seems to work well.
I didn’t notice it when it was running at the flea market but there’s a message in the corner of the screen saying “This copy of Windows is not genuine”.
What does that mean? Is it a problem? [Read more…]
Question from Luisa: I’m hoping you can clear something up for me.
I’ve heard some people say we need to stop using Windows 7 now that Microsoft has stopped updating it because it’s no longer safe.
Others are saying it’s perfectly fine to keep using it as long as the computer has an antivirus on it.
This is really confusing to me.
My HP laptop is old but it still works fine even though it has Windows 7 on it. I really hate the thought of having to replace it, but I will if it’s really unsafe to use.
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Kim Y.: I have a 2 year old Acer laptop that’s running Windows 10.
It appears that it’s infected with viruses because it acts weird all the time and it runs really slow.
Also, my Norton software keeps finding two viruses that it can’t remove and I don’t know what to do next.
I’ve heard that resetting Windows 10 will remove all the viruses from the system. Is that true or do you think I should just break down and buy a new laptop?
If you think I can just do the reset can you tell me how do to it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
As you probably know by now, Microsoft will no longer be supplying security updates for Windows 7 after January 14, 2020.
In other words, they’re going to basically abandon Windows 7 and leave users to fend for themselves when it comes to the security of their computers.
Several people have asked me if it’ll be safe to keep using Windows 7 after the updates stop coming down the pike.
Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 in January 2020, and that move will leave Windows 7 users with a very important choice to make.
If you have a Windows 7 PC one of the choices you’ll have available to you is to take your chances and keep using Windows 7 even after Microsoft stops releasing critical security updates for it.
I don’t really recommend that due to the reasons stated in the post I linked to above, but if you decide to forge ahead with Windows 7 anyway you can reduce the significant security risk a bit by using a really good antivirus and anti-malware product.