Episodes

There are good reasons for hiding your list of Facebook friends on your Facebook public profile. You’ve seen those posts from your Facebook friends: “I’ve been hacked! If you get a friend request from me, it’s a fake!” But, as I’ve written before, this is not a “hack”. Their Facebook account has not been compromised. The scammer has just created a new Facebook account, using your friend’s name and profile picture, and they’re pretending to be your friend. The plan for this scam is that they wi...

You might see a notice pop up on your computer that Adobe Flash Player is being discontinued, and asking if you want to uninstall it from your computer. Here’s what to do. I’ve had several clients ask me recently about this message they’ve gotten on their computer: The questions that come up… What is Flash? Do I need it? Should I uninstall it? What is Flash? Flash is a programming language that used to be very common. Websites used it to display some of their content, such as animated imag...

This is a trick you can do with MS Word, that very few people know about. It can be handy in certain situations. What we’re talking about is being able to select and highlight certain text in a Word document. You already know that if you double-click on a single word, that word is highlighted (selected). You might also know that if you TRIPLE click, the entire paragraph is selected. (If you didn’t know that, there’s a bonus tip for you this week.) You can click on a certain word and drag the c...

Shopping online for a used car? You need to be able to identify the scam ads – and there are a lot of them. Everyone wants to score a great deal when they buy a car. If you go to a car dealer, you might be able to negotiate a fair price. But if you shop around and look for a car being sold by an individual, you might get a REALLY great bargain. Sometimes people have a car and they just want to get rid of it, and they aren’t really worried about getting the price that it’s really worth. That’s w...

I used to have a routine whenever I would open Word and create a new document. I would always start by changing the font to one that I like, and also the font size. What a waste of time! The default font in Word, if you don’t change anything, is Calibri. The font size is 11. It looks like this: It’s not a bad font. Pretty clear and easy to read. But what if you want all of your documents to be in Times New Roman, size 14? It’s also a nice font, very classic style. You could type your whole do...

Sometimes it’s the little things, you know? Why does Chrome, by default, only show part of a website address in the address bar? I don’t know, but here’s how to fix that. This one is pretty simple. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about here, just open Chrome and go to any website. As an example, we can visit my own website, ComputerTutorFlorida.com. The actual, full website address is this: https://ComputerTutorFlorida.com. But this is what is shown in the address bar in Chrome: Why doesn...

If you’re looking to buy something from an individual, one of the best places to find a bargain is on Craigslist. But what if you want to shop on Craigslist outside of your local area? You have another option! I have made a LOT of purchases over the years on Craigslist (craigslist.org). It was the original online classified ads site, and it’s still going strong (even though there are some other good options such as OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace). If you’re looking for something like a lawnm...

With some recent updates, you might see a new icon on your screen – the icon for Microsoft Edge. What do you do with it? In case you didn’t know, Microsoft Edge is the web browser that comes with Windows 10. Microsoft doesn’t want you to use Chrome or Firefox (the high-quality web browsers) – they want you to use their crappy browser, Edge. That’s why, sometimes after a Windows Update, you might find that your default browser has been changed to Edge. Here’s an interesting bit of information. ...

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve most likely seen the posts talking about the Jayco RV company having a promotion and offering to give away a free RV to some lucky winner. Well… I have some bad news for you. The Facebook post that you see was most likely shared by one of your friends. And they shared it because they saw one of their other friends share it. It’s crazy how fast these things blow up. The original post reads like this: With a lot of people out of work and Covid-19 keeping them out o...

Did you know that the Windows 10 Start menu is re-sizable? It’s really easy to do too. Microsoft seems to be obsessed with making the Windows 10 Start Menu be so large that it takes up much of the desktop screen. Of course, it doesn’t help that they fill it by default with a bunch of junk like XBox games and Candy Crush and Bing News. But we can fix all of that. There are actually a couple of ways you can configure it so that the Windows 10 Start Menu takes up less space on your screen. First...

Quick tip today – big Windows Update is coming, so be ready for it by backing up your computer. This update was actually released a few months ago, and is referred to by two names: The May 2020 Update Windows 10 version 2004 Even though it is called both names, it’s the same update. Some Windows 10 computers have already received it, but many have not. Here’s how to check to see if your computer has already received it: Hold down the Windows key on the keyboard, and tap the letter “r” In ...

If you read this blog or listen to my podcast regularly, you should probably by now be pretty good at spotting a scam. Or at least being suspicious enough to investigate further. But what if the scammer shows that he has your actual password? This is one that I get calls about pretty regularly. Many of my long-term clients and readers of this blog or listeners to the podcast can catch when a scam is fairly obvious, but this one makes them think twice. Or in some cases, they believe that the mes...

Want to avoid getting into trouble with your computer? Here are some things you DON’T want to do. Don’t have Chrome (or any browser) store your passwords. Yes, it makes it really easy to access all your website accounts. But it’s also really dangerous, because if your computer ever got hacked into, or lost, or stolen, all of your passwords are right there in plain text. Don’t use the backup software that came with your portable or external hard drive. Every company that makes hard drives also ...

If you have never visited Reddit, you are missing out on one of the biggest and most popular sites on the internet. Today we’ll talk about a few of the unknown corners of that world. What is Reddit? Basically, it’s a social media site. But this is no Facebook. One big way it’s different is that most people don’t use their real name on Reddit like they do on Facebook. So the relative anonymity creates a “freer” environment for discussion. And of course, that can be good or bad. Another differen...

Today I’ll show you the absolute quickest way to get to all of your important files on your Windows computer. You might already know that you can click on the little “file folder” icon at the bottom of the screen to open Windows File Explorer. It looks like this: That opens a window (File Explorer) that shows some of your personal folders such as Documents, Pictures, etc. But it doesn’t show ALL of your personal files and folders. So how do you see all of them? It’s easy to do this: Hold dow...

If you order anything online (and don’t we all?) you definitely should be using this Chrome extension. It will save you money. I’ll tell you this up front – I don’t usually get involved with this kind of thing. In many cases – actually I would say in MOST cases – if you get something that pops up asking you to install it and promising to save you money on all your purchases, it’s just junk. When you install it, you’re likely to get all kinds of bad stuff added to your computer, and you definite...

Today we’ll learn about a free service that let’s you talk into your computer, and have those words made into a document. Since I type on my computer keyboard all the time, I’m able to type pretty quickly. I haven’t measured my typing speed lately but I do okay. Which is kind of funny, since I absolutely despised typing class in high school. But here is something that’s true for me, and probably for almost anyone: you can talk faster that you can type. So if you would prefer to just talk to y...

Today we’re talking about three things that a lot of people believe to be true about computers, but in fact they are not true. Myth #1: Turning the computer off, then powering it up again, is a restart. FALSE I always tell people, you need to restart your computer every day or two. This resets the uptime counter, refreshes the memory, just gives the whole thing a fresh start. And often when I tell them that, the response is, “Oh, I do that every night!” Meaning, they turn the computer off at ni...

If you do Facebook on your desktop or laptop computer, you probably see a lot of posts that have a bunch of comments that are just animated GIFs. I find nothing more annoying than that. But now I don’t see them any more! There are actually a lot of things that I find really annoying about Facebook: People who create a new post that says something like, “Well, here I am at the emergency room again!” with no context or details. It’s like they want all their friends to immediately comment, “Oh no...

If you buy a brand new computer, there’s a chance you might turn it on and find that it’s not just running Windows 10. It might be running Windows 10 in S Mode. Most people don’t want that. Here’s how to get out of S Mode. What exactly IS “S Mode” anyway? You could think of S Mode as being sort of Windows 10 in “Lockdown”. Maybe with the recent Coronavirus situation, “lockdown” might not be a good term to use. But it’s accurate though. Windows 10 S Mode means you cannot install the software th...

Fun topic today! I watch a bit of Youtube each night before I drift off to sleep. I have a few channels that I subscribe to, and these are some that I think you might find entertaining as well. I’ll tell you about them below, and include one of my favorite videos from each one. Warning – some videos have swearing. Favorite #1: The Lock Picking Lawyer View it here Subscribers: 1.38 million I’ve always had a minor interest in lock picking (as a hobby, not anything sketchy). For those that are mo...

If you have any kind of vision challenge, or if your eyesight is just gradually getting worse over time, you aren’t the only one. One nice feature of Windows 10 – you can make everything bigger and easier to read. I grew up wearing glasses since I was 8 years old. I could see things fine up close, but everything was blurry far away. About 12 years ago I had LASIK surgery to correct my vision. LASIK stands for “laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis” and it’s amazing. The whole procedure lasted a...

It’s one of the big frustrations with MS Word – you hit the Enter key, and the next line in your document is a DOUBLE space down from the last line. There are two ways to fix this. You know what I’m talking about. You open a new blank document and start typing a letter, and the first time you hit Enter, there’s that huge space between the lines and it looks like you are double-spacing the whole thing. Why does Microsoft set that as the default? Are there that many people who are actually double...

Microsoft Outlook is the most popular email software in the world. But there’s one thing about it that sometimes frustrates users – the search function. Today we’ll talk about a common way to fix Outlook’s search process when it doesn’t seem to be working. You know how it’s SUPPOSED to work – you type something in the little search field, and Outlook is supposed to find the emails that match that search: And they give you that nice drop-down menu so you can limit where you are actually searchi...