How-To Geek

Many gamers refer to any performance problem in an online game as “lag.” But if your computer’s frame rate is low, that isn’t the same thing as lag – lag and low FPS are different problems with different causes.

We have looked at some of the various ways in which remote access of your computer can be achieved, including using TeamViewer and VNC, but if you have Chrome installed you can do the same with nothing more than a browser extension.

Whether you’re dealing with images, music, or video files, it’s important to understand the difference between different types of formats and when to use them. Using the wrong format could ruin a file’s quality or make its file size unnecessarily large.

We all know that Windows is the most malware-ridden platform out there, but why is that? Windows is the most popular desktop operating system, but that isn’t the only reason – past decisions made Windows a fertile breeding ground for viruses and other malware.

SuperUser reader User wants to know why he can’t interchange disks easily:

If you have the option on for checking spelling as you type in Word 2013, you can easily add words to the custom dictionary, using the context menu. However, what if you want to add or delete many custom words, or even add specialized dictionaries?

There’s a lot to be said for app stores and the way they simplify the installation and updating of software, but Linux users can take advantage of the apt-get command to gain more control over things. With Chocolatey, Windows users can do much the same from the command line.

When you open Word 2013, a list of recently opened documents displays on the left side of the screen. This list also displays when you select the Open option from within the program. If you would rather not see this list, it’s easy to disable.

The accessibility options that are available in Windows have been designed to help people that have difficulty using a computer because of a condition or impairment, but there are plenty of interesting options that could prove incredibly useful to everyone. We will reveal how the Ease of Access Center could help you.

There are plenty of articles about Google Reader alternatives, but did you know you can use your favorite email client to read your RSS feeds as well?

You can’t go anywhere on the web without hearing about Google Reader’s shutdown. There are a number of lessons to be learned, but “never use any Google product ever again” isn’t the right lesson to draw.

In this edition of Geek School, we will be helping you understand the powerful PowerShell scripting language that is built right into Windows, and is extremely useful to know in an IT environment.

The Windows Store may be fairly light on great apps, but BlueStacks gives you access to over 750,000 apps on your Windows 8 PC – including lots of touch-enabled games.

Windows 8 has been with us for a good few months now. From consumer previews to the released products, there has been much venting of spleen over the changes made by Microsoft. But after initially hating Windows 8, I started to love it. Genuinely.

Word 2013 offers a new feature, called PDF Reflow, that allows you to import PDF files into Word and edit the text as a Word document. You can then resave or export the text as a PDF file.

Web browsers have been growing up over the past few years. Now that Internet Explorer 6’s hold on the web has been broken, browsers have been implementing a variety of cool new features that websites are taking advantage of today.

When you install any recent version of Microsoft Office, Microsoft assumes that you want to sign up for the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). There’s a check box during installation that’s selected by default and automatically signs you up for the program.

Web apps have been replacing desktop apps for everything from email and document-editing to playing videos and music. You don’t have to keep your web apps confined to a browser window – they can become first-class citizens on your desktop.

In this installation of Geek School we take a look at our options for Backup and Recovery. This is an important one, so come on and join us.

The majority of people use very weak passwords and reuse them on different websites. How are you supposed to use strong, unique passwords on all the websites you use? The solution is a password manager.

In this installation of Geek School, we take a look at Folder Virtualization, SIDs and Permission, as well as the Encrypting File System.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

BitTorrent consumes 12% of total Internet traffic in North America and 36% of total traffic in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a 2012 study. It’s so popular that the new “Copyright Alert System” targets BitTorrent traffic alone.

There are numerous applications which, when launched, result in a UAC (User Account Control) warning being displayed. There are reasons why this security measure is a good idea, but it can also be extremely irritating. ElevatedShortcut lets you create shortcuts that bypass the warning.

In today’s edition of Geek School, we look at the tools we can use to monitor the performance and reliability of our computers.