Posted on July 8th, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
A reader writes in to share his regret over buying a Windows 10 computer. “Here’s my issue,” he says. “I have never been a big fan of Microsoft and was a Mac-aholic until Mac OS 10.4.1 when the Mac OS was no longer backwards compatible.” It would have cost him more to make his documents and applications compatible than to become a Windows user. It was hard-slogging at first. Then, he writes, “when Microsoft finally arrived at Win 7, it produced an OS that was reasonably stable and NOT buggier than a wino’s beard… hooray!” Then came Windows 10. “I despise Win 10 and all the hoops (and $$$) I’m gonna have ta go through to get this machine integrated […]
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Filed under: Amazon, gadgets, security, troubleshooting, video, Windows | Comments Off on A READER TAKES A STAND
Posted on June 3rd, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
We finally turned off a feature in Gmail that’s been there since the beginning and has been driving us crazy. It’s called “Conversation View.” We didn’t know you could turn it off. In conversation view, new messages show up at the bottom of the thread. If you have a ton of them, you scroll forever. For example, Joy’s friend Mary Lynn Funk went back and forth in one conversation for six months, all with the same heading. Half the time, Joy would lose the thread, unable to find the latest email, as she scrolled past long emails from three months before. Now those emails have been automatically separated into 49 separate chunks. It’s much more manageable. To turn it off […]
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Filed under: 3D Printing, apps, books, Gmail, Internuts, video | Comments Off on CONVERSATION VIEW
Posted on May 26th, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Joy sent off the wrong column last time. The one without Bob’s views on 5G. She swears she didn’t do it on purpose. So here’s some wisdom from the more experienced half of our duo. There are two problems with 5G (fifth generation wireless). First, you almost certainly won’t get the speed advertised. Second, it ignores the competition, FTTH, or Fiber to the Home. Unlike 5G, FTTH involves laying actual cable connections, which is expensive. It’s not wireless. But it’s fast and secure. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says it’s the only way to give options to the 68 million Americans who have only one choice of Internet Service Provider. According to the EFF, 5G customers will either get moderate […]
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Filed under: computers, gadgets, music, video, wireless | Comments Off on THE DARK SIDE OF 5G
Posted on March 18th, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Some people have told us they’d never buy a smart speaker with Alexa, because they don’t want to be spied on. If you already have one, and are a bit worried that all your questions to the device have been recorded, here’s how to erase them forever. In the Alexa app, go to “Settings” and then “History.” You can delete the recordings one by one. Or if you want to delete them all in one fell swoop, open a web browser, such as Chrome or Firefox, and search on the phrase “Amazon manage my content and devices.” Then click on “Devices” and on the three dots to the left of your Echo or Echo Dot. Click “Delete Voice Recordings.” However, […]
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Filed under: Amazon, business, video | Comments Off on ALEXA THE SNOOP
Posted on March 4th, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
The first time we used a Macbook Air, moving our finger on the trackpad caused the screen to jump around like mad. So-called “gestures” can whisk you away to a new place, shutting down whatever you were working on. Recently, a friend complained of this too, so we looked up the solution. These gestures are amazingly abundant on the Mac and are supposed to offer you alternative ways to interact with your computer. But if you find them as annoying as we do, here’s what to do: First, click on the Apple logo in the upper right of your screen. Then choose “System Preferences.” Click “Trackpad.” Note the three tabs, including “More Gestures.” Click a tab to see what’s under […]
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Filed under: books, Mac, photos, TV, video | Comments Off on GETTING BACK ON TRACK
Posted on February 25th, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
A reader writes that his daughter signed up for “Hulu Live,” dropping her cable TV. What do we think? It’s $40 a month for more than 60 channels. Similar services include YouTube TV, Playstation Vue (no Playstation required), Sling TV, and DIRECTV Now. They’re all about the same price except for Sling TV, at $25 a month, which we haven’t had a good experience with. We currently pay AT&T $167 a month for TV. So we’re trying out the seven-day free trial of the $40 a month Hulu service. So far, it’s OK, not great. Hulu Live brings us our live favorites: Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and 60 Minutes, as well as sports. It also has our favorite movie channel, […]
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Filed under: how-to, Internuts, music, programming, TV, video | Comments Off on TV OR NOT TV
Posted on January 21st, 2019 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
Joy left her Kindle Fire tablet in the gym. At first we thought it was somewhere around the apartment but it never turned up. So she decided to bite the bullet and buy Amazon’s “Fire HD 10.” It’s $150 and looks as good as an iPad for less than half the price. She got it in blue. She knew the old one had been stolen as soon as she turned on the new one; now there was one Portuguese and two Chinese dictionaries. Some circumstantial evidence is pretty suspicious. So she went to the “Manage your Kindle” section of Amazon and de-registered the old device. The Kindle Fire HD 10 and HD 8 come with Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant. It […]
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Filed under: email, Gmail, Kindle, spam, tablet, trends, video | Comments Off on FIRE UP THE TABLET
Posted on December 24th, 2018 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
We were roped in by Google’s one-day offer of a nice discount on a new phone; it came with a gift card from AirBNB, worth the cost of the phone, plus $225 for our old phone. But when we got the new phone, the Pixel 3, we decided to return it. The sound quality was muffled, said Bob. Joy couldn’t tell if it was better or worse, but she’s not the audiophile Bob is. This opens the way for a bit of high dudgeon. That is to say, an incensed tirade. One of the great flaws of the high-tech industry is adding improvements where none are needed. We have been writing about this stuff for so long that we now […]
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Filed under: Internuts, phones, photos, video, Windows | Comments Off on NEW ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER
Posted on August 6th, 2018 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
All of the artists we know paint the old-fashioned way: with a brush. But we’re fairly awed by what you can do with a mouse or a tablet. The new Corel “Painter 2019” is out, and it’s worth taking a look at what artists are doing with it. Some of these people start with a photo, and produce the kind of work sold at art festivals. After some digging we found them on Instagram. Go to Instagram.com/CorelPainter to get a little awe for yourself. We were curious about trying it ourselves. So we installed the free trial version from painterartist.com, and clicked on “Discovery Center” inside the program. This was Joy’s job, and she encountered some difficulty right away. Tutorials […]
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Filed under: apps, art, business, facebook, graphics, trends, video | Comments Off on THE DAY OF THE PAINTER
Posted on June 25th, 2018 by Bob and Joy Schwabach
“Save the juice. Save the juice.” That comment is from a sign in Thomas Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The rest of the of the sign rhymes, with the added line: “Turn off the lights when not in use.” Frugal guy, Edison. So taking that advice up to modern times, we took out our wallet, blew off the dust, and cracked it open to the tune of $10 to buy a timer for our phone charger. According to AccuBatteryApp.com, you can’t overcharge your phone’s battery, but leaving it plugged in too long is bad for its health; the battery degrades. Well, we do that a lot, and decided to take measures to overcome our lack of self- control. […]
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Filed under: apps, batteries, storage, video | Comments Off on SAVE THE JUICE
