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
It is easy to dismiss the Photos app in Windows 8 as a lightweight that doesn’t offer very much and it is true that the original wasn’t that impressive, but the latest version with Windows 8.1 has more features than you might think. It has filters that enable you to apply effects to your digital… Read More
We all take crooked photos occasionally and if you aren’t careful with the camera and hold it exactly horizontal, the resulting slope of the landscape can ruin a good photograph. This is most obvious where the horizon is horizontal, such as when you take a photo at the beach and you can see the sea,… Read More
Windows used to come with a built in Backup program that could be used to back up your files to a second disk drive, such as a USB disk. Windows 8 doesn’t have this facility and instead it has File History. What you may not realise is the large amount of space that File History… Read More
The Windows 8 Start screen does not show every app and program that is installed and instead, it shows a small selection. The tiles are large and sometimes they have no name, so you can’t fit many apps on the screen or tell what they are if you make them small. Down at the bottom… 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.
File History is a new way to back up your files in Windows 8 and it replaces the old backup facilities that were in previous versions of the operating system. The problem is that people never bothered to back up. This one is simpler, you don’t need to be an administrator to set it… 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
Do you use the News app on the Windows 8 Start screen? If you haven’t yet explored its capabilities, you might be surprised by what it can do. For example, it can be configured to fetch only the news you are interested in and it can filters out the stories you don’t want. Here is… Read More
An odd thing happened recently and I noticed that the fan on the computer was working harder than it should be. It wasn’t going flat out, but it was clearly audible when it is usually very quiet. This is a sign that the computer is working hard on something and the higher the workload, the… 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
If you are experiencing problems accessing the Windows 8 Store using the Store tile, if you cannot update Windows 8 apps, or if Windows 8 live tiles don’t update on the Start screen, here is a collection of possible solutions. Most people don’t have problems with the Windows Store, Windows 8 apps and live tiles,… 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