Episodes

Have you seen clickable links that show the address as bit.ly followed by some random letters or numbers? Bitly is a legitimate link-shortening service, but you shouldn’t just click on one of them unless you know for sure where it will take you. Here’s how to check it ahead of time. If you’re not familiar with Bitly, what it does is pretty simple. Let’s say you want to send someone a link to an article, but the link is one of those URLs that are just ridiculously long, like this: https://www....

Do you know about the Timeline feature in Windows 10? Most people don’t. Here’s what it is and the steps to disable it, if you want to. You can think of Timeline as being kind of similar to your internet browser history. You know, in Chrome or Firefox (or any browser) you can go back and see all the websites you’ve visited over the last hour, the last day or however long you go back. Unless you have cleared that history at some point. Windows 10 Timeline is kind of like that, but it includes t...

Many times on my blog and podcast I’ve encouraged everyone to make sure they have a backup of anything important on their computer. For most people, the big reason for having a backup is to make sure you don’t lose anything important, like documents and pictures, if your hard drive fails. But there’s another really important reason! Of course you don’t want to lose all your important pictures, and your Outlook emails, and your whole Documents folder, and your music collection or anything else. ...

Today we’re talking about a scam that’s making the rounds but a lot of people aren’t aware of how it works, or even the fact that it IS a scam. But it can cause you some headaches if you fall for it. We’ve all become pretty accustomed to verification codes. If a company or website needs to verify your identity, they will commonly send a text message with a 6-digit verification code, which you then need to enter on the website to prove that you are the person you say you are. (Really, it just pr...

What if I told you that five minutes from now you could have your own website? It’s true. If you have a Google account (a Gmail email account is a Google account), creating and publishing your own website is as easy as creating a Word document. Want to see what’s possible with Google Sites? Here’s a collection of websites that were created with the service: https://sites.google.com/site/gsitesgallery/ You’ll see lots of thumbnail images for websites – just click on each one to view the site its...

One way PC problems can sometimes be fixed is by using the built-in function called System Restore. It’s not the answer for every situation, but in certain situations it can be the perfect solution. But in order for it to work, it has to be set up correctly ahead of time. Here’s what happens. A client will bring me a computer and maybe some malware has wormed its way in or some unwanted software has gotten installed, something like that. The client knows that the problem happened within the las...

I’m kind of picky about where I keep the icons on my desktop screen. Not all of them, but a few that I click on regularly. I have a couple of spreadsheets I use all the time, and a link to run Evernote, and a link to my Google contacts. I keep these icons in a certain place so I know where to find them. But then something happens, and they’re not where they’re supposed to be. What causes this? If you ever play around with your display resolution, that will move your icons to different places. ...

A lot of people use Google’s cloud services to create documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations and forms. Recently, Google introduced a new way to create this things very quickly. And once you set it up, you can literally do it with a single click. Quick summary if you’re not familiar with Google Cloud – If you use Microsoft Word, you know you can create a new Word document and save it on your computer’s hard drive. With Google Cloud, you can create a new document right there on your scree...

All over the globe, there are live cameras set up and streaming the content of whatever happens to be in their view. Here are some of the ones that I think are pretty interesting. The Sea Otter Cam https://www.vanaqua.org/visit/live-cams-sea-otter-cam Watch the sea otters at the Vancouver Aquarium. The Garden Bubble Cam http://andieandmike.org/bubblecam/ Andie and Mike live somewhere in south Florida, and in their back yard, they have a bubble machine. It’s connected to the internet, and rig...

About a year ago I did a blog post and podcast about the absolute best way to protect the valuable personal identity information that’s stored in your credit files. Today I’ll let you know about an update to that, which makes it much easier to take action on this. You can read my last blog post here. But the basic idea of it was this: You should freeze your credit file with each of the 3 main credit bureaus: TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. There are a variety of benefits to this, but the mai...

I’ve been doing my Computer Tutor podcast for over 6 years now. My new podcast, What Was That Like, has been live for just a couple of months and has a steadily growing audience. So I’ve been asked by some of my friends and clients, “How do you start a podcast?”. For that answer, I went to the podcast expert: Dave Jackson. Dave Jackson has been podcasting since 2005 – that’s back when podcasting had barely begun to even exist. Since then, he’s created many shows of his own and they’ve been down...

In the world of computers and security, there are some companies that once had a decent reputation but went downhill and now cannot be recommended or trusted. I would now put CCleaner in that category. Here’s the story. CCleaner was actually introduced in 2003 – 15 years ago. But it wasn’t rolled out under that name initially. Its original name was Crap Cleaner. This was because it was supposed to get rid of a lot of the things that might be clogging up your computer, such as registry errors an...

If you’re working on files in a certain folder and you have to do a restart, would you like to have that same folder open up automatically for you after that restart? It’s possible, and it’s really simple to do. Sometimes I find myself in a predicament. I know it’s been a while since my computer was restarted, so I know I really need to do it. But…I’m working on my blog, or my podcast (or my new podcast) and I have these particular folders open. I know if I restart I’ll have to go back and open...

In a recent blog/podcast, I talked about the importance of restarting your computer in order to refresh the memory and speed it up. But some people actually powered down their computers and powered up again, and the “Up time” counter did not reset. That’s because of the Windows 10 “Fast Startup” option so we’ll talk about that today. Thanks to my friend Larry for reminding me about this feature! If you’re running Windows 10, there’s a built-in feature called Fast Startup. Guess what it does. T...

Back in Windows 7, it was easy to get a “Preview” of an image file that was stored on your computer. Just right click on the file, and choose Preview. That went away in Windows 10. But you can get back the preview option again – and not just for picture files. Honestly I can’t figure out why Microsoft would do away with the ability to “Preview” an image file on your computer. It was so handy. When I started using Windows 10, I couldn’t believe it. If there was a picture file on my computer, and...

Windows has its own search function built in. You just click in the Search field, type a file name or a program name, and hit Enter. The problem is, a search can take a long time – especially if you have a lot of data stored on your computer. But there’s a new way to search your computer now – and it’s a LOT faster than the one that comes with Windows. Thanks to my friend Roger for tipping me off to this great tool, called “Everything”. You can get it (free of course) at voidtools.com. When yo...

Do you know how long it’s been since you restarted your Windows computer? There’s an easy way to check. You probably already know that restarting your computer will often resolve a problem or error that has come up. I’ve often referred to restarting as a “magic pill” for computer repair since it fixes so many issues. And along the same lines, restarting the computer on a regular basis is a good idea to proactively avoid some computer problems that can come up. I recommend restarting the comput...

Everyone wants to find a good deal on Craigslist or one of the other online classified listing sites. But most people just go about it “hit or miss” and hope to be lucky and come across an amazing bargain. For me, I want to make this process as easy as possible, and also increase my chances for getting a deal before someone else does. Here’s how I do that. (Note: if you want to use this system yourself but would rather have me set it up for you, I can do that remotely. Just email me at pctutor@...

Some surprises are fun. Something that is NOT fun is working on a Word document for a while, then a sudden power outage shuts off your computer, and you realize you never saved that document. But there’s good news! You can probably get it back! Actually this alarming situation might happen due to a brief loss of electricity, but sometimes it can happen just because of user error. You create this big document, then you go to close it, and in a brief lapse of focus you click on “Don’t Save”. So g...

I buy stuff from Amazon all the time. A lot of my purchases are things I already know about because I’ve bought them before. But sometimes I’m buying something new, comparing prices, maybe comparing different models of the same item, trying to decide which would be best to buy. It’s great that most Amazon products have lots of reviews – but should you trust them? Here’s the short answer: no. You should not trust the reviews on Amazon. At least not without doing a bit of extra research on your o...

Unfortunately, it’s an accident that happens way more often than it should – a liquid gets spilled on a laptop. Water, soda, wine, beer, lemonade, whatever – obviously none of these things are a good thing for a computer. But then, in some cases, the owner of the laptop makes things worse by trying to “dry out” the laptop with a hair dryer. Makes sense, right? A hair dryer (blow dryer) is designed specifically to blow air and dry things out, so logically it would seem like it’s a good choice to...

When you open Microsoft Word to create a new document, the default font that’s in place and ready to be used is Calibri. But did you know that you can change that, so that a new Word document will start off in whatever font you prefer? This sounds like an interesting 2-part trivia question. Question: What is the default font in MS Word 2016? Answer: Calibri Question: What was the default font BEFORE it was Calibri? Answer: Times New Roman Calibri has actually been around for a while. It wa...

Most people get a new computer every 3-5 years. Sometimes they might go longer than that, but that’s probably about the average. But I see a lot of people that have a stack of old laptops sitting in their office or their garage, just because they don’t know exactly how to get rid of them. What do you do with an old laptop? You have a few options. If it still works: Keep it as a backup If your primary computer dies, it’s good to at least have something you can use while you’re shopping for an...

Did you know you can create a document in Microsoft Word and send it from Outlook as an attachment, and you never even need to click to open Outlook? It’s true, and it’s pretty easy. And why would you want to do this? The main reason is simple: fewer clicks. This makes it faster and easier than the traditional way of attaching a file to an email. Normally, you would create the email in Outlook, then tell Outlook you want to attach a file, then navigate to that file and choose it. None of that i...