Dropbox is a successful online cloud storage and file synchronisation service that has been around since 2008. I must have started using it not long after and have been using it for years. However, it is time to move on and I wonder if other people are thinking the same way. Is it over for… Read More
Google drive provides 15GB of storage space for free and 100GB at a ridiculously low monthly subscription fee and it is tempting to make use of it to store lots of files. What’s more, you can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations too and it is an online office suite. But how do you back up… Read More
Dropbox is an excellent utility and one of the useful things it does is back up files on your computer and sync them with your other computers. Sometimes though, it doesn’t sync and different computers can have different files. What is going on and how do you fix this? The problem can be caused by… Read More
There are several ways that viruses can get onto your computer and one is through email. A malicious program can be attached to an email message and if you open it, you risk infecting your computer. Malware can lock your PC until you pay a fee to unlock it, it can corrupt files, and it… Read More
Desktop gadgets was a great feature of Windows 7 and it enabled small utilities and information panels to be displayed on the desktop. Unfortunately, Microsoft abandoned widgets and they are no longer in Windows 8. In some ways Rainmeter is like desktop gadgets, only more flexible and more powerful. It is hard to describe Rainmeter… Read More
Do you use Microsoft’s Outlook.com email service for your messaging? How do you delete an email? This is not a trick question. Even if you delete an email and then empty the Deleted folder, it can be recovered. This could be useful if you accidentally delete an email, but scary if you really want to… Read More
If you are a Google Mail user, you will have noticed options to archive email messages. There is a button to archive the currently selected message in the toolbar for example. What happens to emails you archive? Where do they disappear to and how do you get them back if you change your mind? There… Read More
When you are working on your computer or simply browsing the web for fun, you will occasionally need to temporarily store information. One way of doing this is with sticky notes apps and there is no shortage of utilities, but Google Keep now runs on the desktop. Google Keep is a handy note-taking app that… Read More
For many years computer monitors, and televisions for that matter, were square. They roughly measured the same horizontally as they did vertically and having a taskbar at the bottom of the screen made sense. Today’s monitors are not square and the bottom of the screen may not be the best place for the taskbar. Nearly… Read More
If you have ever manually run Windows Update to see if there is anything new, you might have noticed an optional item called Bing Desktop. What is this extra and do you need it? After seeing it for what seems like years, I finally succumbed and installed it. It is odd that Bing Desktop is… Read More
There is nothing like a picture to brighten up a page and if you are creating a website, writing a report, or a project for school or work, you should consider using one. It has to be relevant of course, but even with a tenuous link, it can work wonders. It makes a page of… Read More
Action Center is a feature of Windows that aims to bring to your attention potential problems with the computer, such as no antivirus software installed, no firewall or it is turned off, no spyware protection, and so on. Here’s how to take control of those pop-up messages.
It is a shame that Microsoft abandoned desktop gadgets because they were a great feature of Windows 7. They partly died out because few people used them, but this was because Microsoft gave little support. Other developers created some fine gadgets and a few are still available today for people continuing to run Windows 7.… Read More
Security is a constant worry and when you are using the internet there is always someone, somewhere that is watching you. Mostly it is harmless and advertisers are always trying to get better information about the people that see their adverts, websites want to know who their visitors are, and so on. That is understandable,… Read More
OneDrive, or SkyDrive as it used to be called, is Microsoft’s online cloud storage facility and it is very useful for storing documents, photos, work files and so on, especially if you use multiple computers and/or devices. Have you found that certain backup software can run into problems when you are backing up the disk… Read More
There are tens of millions of websites on the internet, but how do you discover them? Many people know the popular sites for news, sport, their favourite hobby or interest and so on, but obviously these are not the only sites that cover these topics and there must be many more alternatives. There may be… Read More
Windows already has a firewall, so why would you need another one? That’s a bit like saying Windows comes with Paint, so why get a photo editor, or it already has WordPad, a word processor, so why bother with Word? Windows Firewall is simply very basic and there are far better alternatives that are much… Read More
Computers work with IP addresses rather than the names and URLs that people use. Your computer has an IP address, your router has an IP address, a NAS (network attached storage) drive has an IP address, even wireless printers have IP addresses. How do you find out the IP addresses of devices when you need… Read More
Windows Live Mail is a reasonably good email client that can be used for standard POP3 mail or online webmail like Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo! Mail. If you are used to Outlook Express running on XP, it makes sense to switch to Windows Live Mail when you upgrade. It has lots of useful features, such… Read More
Sometimes you want to know the minute a website or web page changes and it could be because of a breaking news story, concert tickets for your favourite artist going on sale, a new job listing you have been waiting for, and so on. Having to visit the site in a browser every few minutes… Read More