On Computers

We downloaded Microsoft’s “Creator’s Update,” for the latest and greatest in Windows 10. It’s Microsoft’s way of giving you a look at the wonderful things that are coming up for Windows. Why do we do these things? It’s our duty. So the latest update of Creator Updates took an hour to install and trashed our Windows 10 computer. Programs like PowerPoint and Word wouldn’t start. Nor could they be reinstalled. Dead icons appeared everywhere. It wasn’t a virus, it was a look at future Windows updates. Thanks. In the Windows “Recovery” center, there’s a helpful hint saying we should revert to a previous version of Windows 10. We clicked that and reverted. It was like reverse digital evolution. We got […]

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Filed under: anti-virus, health, video, Windows | 1 Comment »

This comes up pretty regularly. A reader writes to ask if it’s worth paying $70 a year for anti-virus protection, or should he use Windows’ own built-in support? A large surge in so-called “Ransom Ware” infections has exacerbated the problem. RansomeWare locks up your files, and the sender, naturally, demands a ransom to unlock them. Typical demand is $300. This can be blocked. Microsoft says their own free program, Windows Defender, offers enough protection for Windows 8 and Windows 10 users. Perhaps so. Research on the web found that Microsoft Defender caught 94.5 percent of threats. But the sample size was 1517 threats, which meant that 83 went through. It’s that extra 5.5 percent that gets ya. The answer, says […]

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Filed under: anti-virus, Google, Mac, security, TV, virus | Comments Off on THE WEB AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Is your computer hyper tense? Does it suffer from anxiety, mood shifts, lethargy or even narcolepsy? You can get a free checkup at Belarc.com. Belarc Advisor tells you about your dear machine’s hardware, software, security settings, and whether or not you need updates. Our diagnosis: updates of six programs were deemed “critical.” But updating programs in intensive care is a hassle. Have you been to the Adobe site lately? It’s hard to find the update section. We had two copies of Adobe Flash, which is built into Chrome; we got rid of both. We also got rid of something called “Adobe Air.” Then there’s “Java.” Do we really need Java? We looked it up and the answer came back “No!” […]

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Filed under: apps, computers, Internuts, VoIP | Comments Off on YOUR COMPUTER’S HEART BEEPS

If your inbox is cluttered with junk mail, you can fix that.  Unroll.Me lets you unsubscribe from all those mailing lists you never knew you were on and have no idea how you got there. It rolls them up into one message, which still has links to all that stuff if you want it. Go to Unroll.me to start and sign up using your Google, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL or other account. When Joy did it, Unroll.Me found she had 242 subscriptions in her Gmail account and 76 in her AOL account! What? Who were these people and how did they get here? A mystery wrapped in an enigma, as Winston Churchill used to say. They all appeared on a list, […]

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Filed under: Android, email, Google, Internuts, photos | Comments Off on UNROLL ME

The latest version of Windows 10 has a “Night Light” feature. It allows you to adjust the screen color from the regular bright white on a sliding scale from a light tan to orange. It’s free and you can get it if you search for “Windows 10 Creators Update.” Heaven only knows we need it. At least Bob needs it. He uses a tiny program called “Pango Bright,” from Pangolin Laser Systems that allows the user to scale down the screen brightness from 100 percent to 20 percent. Dealing with the fully bright screen is especially annoying at night or in darkened rooms. We owe this to Steve Jobs, who was the first to give us the bright white screen […]

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Filed under: Android, apps, health, Internuts, maps, tablet, video, Windows | Comments Off on THE RIGHT LIGHT FOR NIGHT