An unfortunate event – Linux losing to Micro...

Netbooks are the class of laptops that have screens measuring from 7″ to 10″, have no CD or DVD-ROM and use a specially designed low power processor. Initially, these small and inexpensive laptops were released with different versions of Linux on them and they ran fast and ran well. Microsoft saw a huge potential loss in their market share and quickly used their muscle to interject themselves and Windows XP into...

7 Days with Windows 7 – Day 2

Windows 7 offers some great performance improvements over Vista and some usability improvements over XP, but hey it’s Microsoft there is a lot of fluff and huh? moments in it too. In today’s installment of my ongoing week long affair with Windows 7, I explore some of the usability improvements and some of the quirky upgrades to Windows 7 Start menu improvements including recently used documents. Control Panel...

Chrome gets even faster!

If you haven’t tried out Google’s Chrome browser, you should download and try it. Like almost everything Google does, Chrome’s approach to web browsing is simple, fast, and intuitive. Since the browser is less than a year old and still considered beta, Google continues to improve upon it. Today, Google announced that they have made their already blazingly fast browser, even faster! Google boosts speed in...

The Internet is truly becoming mobile

Incredible news story outlining the incredible growth of Internet use on mobile telephones and smartphones. Incredible phones like the iPhone and the Blackberry Bold make the Internet and its limitless information truly accessible while on the go. From January 2008 to January 2009, the number of handheld users accessing the Internet daily, doubled. Read the whole article below. NewsFactor Network | Internet Access on Mobile...

7 Days with Windows 7 – Day 1

I worked late today, but did start and am only using my laptop installed with the beta version of Windows 7. Windows 7 will be released later this year or early next year and take the place of Windows Vista. I wanted to test it a little more thoroughly, so I’m dedicating the next 7 days to use only Windows 7. In today’s installment, I highlighted some of the changes in the new operating system on the desktop, the...

Preparing for a week with Windows 7

Starting tomorrow, I will be embarking on a week long venture of using only Windows 7. I downloaded the beta version of Microsoft’s next Windows release immeadiately after it was made available in January. However, since I installed it on my presentation laptop, I don’t use it very often. That will change tomorrow as I use it exclusively for the next week. Look for daily reports of how my 7 days with Windows 7 is...

Rick Answers his email Videocast – 035

Sort of a Part II to this week’s Videocast 034 since I had so much email to catch up on this week. Again, great questions, this edition includes questions from Beverly, Sandra, Aaron, Margie, Karen, Bill, Douglas, Jose, Nilesh, Diane, Michael, Ralph, Kari, Martha, Neil, and Leo.

Rick Answers his email Videocast – 034

After a two week absence as I prepared the new web site, I’m back to answering your email again via my weekly videocast. This week it will be split into two different videos because I was so behind. GREAT questions the past few weeks ranging from questions about the web site and newsletter to Ubuntu, to donating a computer, slow video performance, AVG, and much, much more. This edition brought to you by questions from...

Interesting data in my site stats

I use Google Analytics to monitor my site data. I check the statistics about once per month, but after checking yesterday, I noticed a few interesting trends: Less than 3% of visitors coming to HelpMeRick.com use a dial-up connection. I thought this would still be up around 10% or higher. Firefox visitors trail Internet Explorer visitors by less than 14% Google Chrome (which has been out less than a year) visitors nearly out...

French police force save millions by using Ubuntu

This might be one of the largest government agencies making a whole sale change to Ubuntu and leaving Microsoft behind. Ubuntu Linux is a free open source operating system that can very capably replace a Microsoft Windows operating system. This article describes how France’s national police force will change all 90,000 of their computers to Ubuntu by 2015, and they have already saved more than $50 million dollars with...

Stop a document from printing – Video Tip

We all run into a problem sooner or later where something we printed didn’t print correctly or we want to stop it from printing. In today’s tip, I explain how to stop the printer from printing and then clean the print job from your computer. Turn off your printer using its power switch Immediately watch for a message by your clock that has anything to do with your printer Click the little bubble message (if you...

Windows 7 faster than XP and Vista

ZDNet Blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested one of the latest beta versions of Wndows 7 on two different machines. One machine had 4 GB of RAM and fast processor, the other machine had 1 GB of RAM and a 2-3 year old processor. On ALL tests, Windows 7 outperformed XP and Vista by almost a 2 to 1 margin and in some cases even more than that. Kingsley-Hughes writes extremely interesting articles over at ZDNet and might be...

Improved Site Searching

I worked on the searching situation here at the new HelpMerick.com, and I think you will find it much more responsive to your needs. Use these tips to help find the information you need out of the nearly 2000 articles on the site: Use multiple words (ex: home networking, or email attachments) Always check your spelling Try different forms of the word if your initial search wasn’t successful (ex: network, instead of...

New computer users

Today alone, I ran across two brand new computer users. It irritates me when I see commenters on some of my YouTube videos and elsewhere on the web make fun of the fact that some people can’t copy and paste or create a table in Microsoft Word or perform any number of computer tips I  teach through this site and via my instructional videos. Computers can be intimidating enough for someone new let alone have the added...

Don’t buy a new computer yet!

If you can at all help it, I still recommend waiting to buy a new computer until later this year. Unless you are willing to move to Ubuntu or a Mac. The reason being that more and more evidence is pointing to a fall release of Windows 7…Microsoft’s next Widnows release. Analyst sees Windows 7 done by summer | Beyond Binary – CNET News.