Consider buying your next smartphone outright. It frees you to take your phone to another provider whenever you want to or to even add other eSIMs when you are traveling and don’t want to pay your US phone provider for cellular data outside the US. When you pay your phone off over time, your cell…

As we add more security or privacy extensions, like Norton Safe Web or Malwarebytes Browser Guard, some sites stop working as well for certain tasks. You should always have a plain unadulterated browser, say Vivaldi, Opera, Brave, DuckDuckGo Private Browser, and then you can copy the non-working website address from the address bar into your…

One common rule for backups is 3-2-1, three backups, on two different types of storage, with one of them offline or offsite. And as more people consider SSDs for that backup drive that is unplugged and stored safely out of the office or house, be aware that the less expensive SSDs (less expensive per gigabyte…

Cold weather reminder, keep your electronics from freezing in your car and if you leave them there overnight let them warm up. Lithium batteries don’t hold as much of a charge when really cold either. Before recycling any devices like phones, tablets, or computers, remember to securely wipe or reset your devices to factory shipped…

Let’s call it keeping cables out of the landfill, or just saving money. Sony has started omitting the USB charging cable with some of their smartphones. Apple also is omitting such cables in their latest AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 3. You may want to keep some of those cables around that you may be…

I am going to start with the fun stuff this time. Many people search for specific recipes online but cookbook lovers should browse the Internet Archive’s “Cookbooks and Home Economics” collection to see how we used to cook and eat. It is at https://archive.org/details/cbk and don’t be surprised at the time you spend there. Then…

Google’s URL shortener service, goo.gl, was going away on August 25th which freaked many out. Now it is staying around for existing shortened links that are actively used. Check your google shortened links now and if they redirect without any warnings then your links will continue working after 8/25. As Google has a large graveyard…

Make your smartphone less appealing to reduce how much it begs you for attention and you will have more time for activities real life. Delete as many apps as possible, always asking yourself how much you “need” it (use social site via your web browser instead), set time use limits for the remaining apps, turn…

If you have ever paid the NC DMV online you may have seen a recent email from them about the recent text or SMS scam going around. It purports to tell you that you have unpaid tolls or fees. The “NCDMV will never request payment by text.” When I got “mine” it was easy to…

Now, back to a human actually writing this column. Android phone users, don’t freak out if your phone restarts just because you didn’t use it for a few days. There is a new update to Google Play Services (their “store” service) rolling out that will reboot your phone if you leave it locked for three…

I decided to see how I could use ChatGPT, free version, to write this months column. I didn’t end up really saving time, I had to refine the prompt a few times for each topic to get something I liked. I “could” have just gone with the first result but I would not have been…

Using email to communicate with a group of people means you should think through the difference of reply and reply all, along with using the BCC (blind carbon copy) address field. Most people know of putting additional addresses in the TO field so that replies can come back to all. The key for this to…