If you’re new to the Amazon Echo, you probably know most of the basic actions and commands that you can tell Alexa, like playing music, setting timers, and getting weather updates. However, here are some tricks that you may not have known about, all of which will take your Echo game to the next level.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Amazon Echo
If you’re new to the Amazon Echo, you probably know most of the basic actions and commands that you can tell Alexa, like playing music, setting timers, and getting weather updates. However, here are some tricks that you may not have known about, all of which will take your Echo game to the next level.
Microsoft will end support for the Windows Essentials 2012 suite on January 10, 2017. If you use any of the suite’s component apps—Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, OneDrive, Family Safety, Mail, or Live Writer—here’s what you need to know.
If you are working on a large spreadsheet, it can be useful to “freeze” certain rows or columns so that they stay on screen while you scroll through the rest of the sheet.
If you’re lucky enough to have a modern Chromebook that can run Android apps, you should definitely be taking advantage of this awesome new feature. And if you’re in the market for a new Chromebook, make sure you get one that can run Android apps out of the box. Here are the apps that make it worthwhile.
Cloud storage is the dream of the post-PC, mobile-focused tech world…but we’re not quite there yet. There’s a limit to what you can get for free, especially if you go with one of the major services. Here’s an exhaustive list of all the cloud storage and photo services we could find across the web that have at least some free storage options. Use them all at once to save a million Steam games, or just find the best one with the biggest bucket for your most important files.
The CC and BCC fields when sending email work similarly. CC stands for “carbon copy,” while BCC stands for “blind carbon copy.” Though these terms may have been immediately obvious when email was invented, they’re antiquated today.
You can always look up user accounts on a Windows system using the settings interface, but if you want to save a nice, printer-friendly file with that info, it’s easiest to turn to the Command Prompt.
There’s no faster way to navigate your computer than with keyboard shortcuts, and Windows continues to add more with each new version. Everything begins on the taskbar and Start menu, though, so it’s really handy to use them without ever clicking your mouse. Here are some useful keyboard shortcuts for working with the Windows taskbar.
DON’T YOU HATE IT WHEN YOU ACCIDENTALLY HIT CAPS LOCK?
Windows 10 S is “the soul of today’s Windows”, according to Microsoft. It’s a new version of Windows intended for school PCs, but available to everyone. It’s designed to be more simple and streamlined, so it only runs applications from the Windows Store—unless you spend another $50 to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.
RGB lighting in computer hardware, especially gaming-branded gear, is a divisive subject. Either you think it’s really cool and you want it in all your stuff, or you have good taste. (I kid, I kid.) But despite the rather flashy nature of LED-soaked “battlestation” gaming setups, there’s actually a surprising amount of utility to be found deep in all that rainbow-colored extravagance. Even if you aren’t a fan of the aesthetic, it’s worth considering the next time you’re assembling a gaming PC.
The Windows 10 taskbar works much like previous Windows versions, offering shortcuts and icons for every running app. Windows 10 offers all kinds of ways to customize the taskbar to your liking, and we’re here to guide you through what you can do.
You’ve got a brand new Mac. Congratulations! But all of your files and applications are still on your old Mac. Here’s how to migrate them in just a few clicks.
For most of its long history, Microsoft Word has used a proprietary format for its saved files, DOC. Starting in 2007 with the updated version of Word (and Microsoft Office), the default save format was changed to DOCX. This wasn’t simply a belated 1990s “extreme” version of the format—that extra X stands for the Office Open XML standard. What’s the difference, and which one should you use?
The “Reset Your PC” feature in Windows 10 restores your PC to its factory default settings, including all that bloatware your PC manufacturer included. But the new “Fresh Start” feature in Windows 10’s Creators Update makes it much easier to get a clean Windows system.
Windows doesn’t do the best job of scaling on high-resolution monitors. And if you have multiple monitors with different pixel densities, things can get even more confusing. Thankfully, Windows 10 has settings that can help.
Not sure you love the touch bar? Maybe you mostly just don’t love what’s on it. No worries: that’s easy to change.
OneNote is simple at first glance: it’s a place to write notes and maybe clip articles from the web for future refernce. It’s an organizational tool, and a good one. But unlike other Office products, Microsoft offers OneNote for free and is constantly adding new updates.
Microsoft’s “Shared Experiences” allow you to start a task on one device and finish it on another, or easily set up a remote control or other companion app on a smartphone.
RELATED: Basic Computer Security: How to Protect Yourself from Viruses, Hackers, and Thieves
The Windows 10 Creators Update—codenamed Redstone 2—will begin rolling out on April 11, 2017. Like other updates to Windows 10, it’s free, and includes a host of new features. It will be rolled out slowly like the Anniversary Update, so it will be a few months before Microsoft offers it to everyone.
Windows 10’s Creators Update has a switch you can flip to only allow apps from the Windows Store. This feature can also be used to whitelist your existing desktop apps, only allowing your currently installed applications to run and blocking new applications until you allow them. It’s similar to Gatekeeper on macOS.
People often think of computer security as something technical and complicated. And when you get into the nitty-gritty, it can be—but the most important stuff is actually very simple. Here are the basic, important things you should do to make yourself safer online.
If you’ve been trained on Microsoft Word since you started using a computer, maybe you’ve never looked at those other writing options in Windows. Notepad and WordPad are both developed by Microsoft itself, and included in every copy of Windows. Don’t dismiss them out of hand—while neither are as powerful as paid software in the same niches, they might just do for you.
Sometimes, when sending an email, you want the replies to go to a different email address than you sent the original from. You can do this in Outlook for individual messages or for all messages sent from a specific email account.
