Google Mail is not like other email services and people either love it hate it. One of the ways in which it is different is that it doesn’t have a preview pane. Many email programs and online web mail services show the inbox as a table showing the sender, subject and date/time, and either below… 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
Yesterday Microsoft launched the Surface Pro 3 and it is already a market leading product that blows away all competitors. That is because it is very nearly the only product in its market and there aren’t many competitors. I have seen one or two similar products, but the Surface 3 is better than any of… 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
USB flash memory drives (thumb drives or pen drives as some people call them), are great for carrying files from one computer to another, such as from work to home, or even from your desktop to your laptop. Unfortunately though, they are very easy to lose. Someone could find your drive and simply plug it… 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
Create a new document or file in an application in Windows 8, then go to the Save facility and you might find that it always defaults to the same location - OneDrive. It might be irritating if you don’t want to use that location and it is possible to turn off this feature. Not all… Read More
Microsoft Office is the standard when it comes to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It is used in millions of offices around the world and the file format has become a standard way to exchange documents. It runs on Windows and Apple Mac OS X, but sadly not Linux. However, there is a way to… Read More
Some web pages are so cluttered that it is hard to read the actual content. There are menu bars, banner and skyscraper adverts, sharing buttons, links to other pages, comments and more. To make matters worse, many page elements trigger effects as the mouse moves over them, such as pop-ups, pull-downs and slide-outs. Readability, a… Read More
People do strange things in Word and if you work with documents created by others you will find odd things like lots of extra spaces at the end of lines and paragraphs, extra carriage returns where none is needed, multiple tabs, section breaks and more. How do you search Word for invisible characters? Do you… Read More
Do you use sticky notes or Sticky Notes? The first kind are those paper notes with a sticky strip at the top that you can stick to your monitor, desk, fridge door and other places. The second kind is the computer version in Windows that lets you create and stick notes to the desktop. You… Read More
Adding a file attachment to an email is very easy and there is always a menu option or toolbar button to select a file on disk. Some email programs even support drag and drop. It all goes horribly wrong if you try to attach an executable program though. You cannot send someone a utility program… Read More
Is your webcam wonky? A problem that some people have is that when they take a photo using their webcam the resulting image is flipped. What can be causing this strange behaviour and how can it be fixed? Is it a hardware or a software problem? The answer is simpler than you might imagine. This… Read More