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Your office mate says the new device your company issued is a fob, and you say it’s a dongle. Before things come to fisticuffs in front of the water cooler, let’s investigate. 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. The Question SuperUser reader Hogan has a simple but pressing question: What is the difference? Or, as Humpty Dumpty said in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less....

SATA hard drive connections are faster than older PATA hard drive connections and the same can be said for external cabling standards, but this is counter-intuitive: why wouldn’t the parallel transmission be faster? 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. The Question SuperUser reader Modest is curious about the data transfer rates of parallel and serial connections:...

You have more than enough available space on a given hard disk, so why can’t you park your file there? Read on as we investigate why Windows will deny you even if there is plenty of space to spare. 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. The Question SuperUser reader BumSkeeter is trying to figure out why he can’t copy a small file into a larger disk....

It’s been a while since we’ve been impressed with anything Yahoo has to offer, but they’ve definitely been making a comeback lately. The Yahoo Weather app is beautiful and functional, and today at CES they announced a very interesting and visually impressive News Digest app for iPhone. The application works like a newspaper, with a summarized selection of the most important news stories twice a day, at 8 AM and 6 PM....

Android may not have Siri, but it does have Voice Actions. Voice Actions are a powerful way to perform actions – searching, getting directions, making notes, setting alarms, and more – with just your voice. Google’s voice recognition has become surprisingly good, but – like all voice recognition – it isn’t perfect. Be sure to enunciate clearly whenever you’re speaking to a computer. Performing Voice Actions To start a voice action, either tap the microphone icon on the Google search widget at the top of your home screen or open Google Now and say “Google” out loud....

Sometimes it is fun to speculate how differently your system would operate if changes were made to the hardware components. Today’s SuperUser Q&A post discusses increases in the size of memory to help satisfy a reader’s curiosity. 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. Photo courtesy of Association WDA (Flickr). The Question SuperUser reader spartacus wants to know if increasing the size of memory would cause it to become slower:...

Did you know that you can drag and drop files and folders to the command prompt or terminal? It simply auto-completes the path, so you don’t have to type the full thing out or navigate to the right folder. This works in Windows or Mac, and maybe elsewhere. And it couldn’t be simpler. Just drag and drop a file or folder onto the command prompt, and next thing you know you’ll see the full path....

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. Be sure to check out the previous articles in this Geek School series on Windows 7: Introducing How-To Geek School Upgrades and Migrations Configuring Devices Managing Disks Managing Applications Managing Internet Explorer IP Addressing Fundamentals Networking Wireless Networking Windows Firewall Remote Administration Remote Access Monitoring, Performance and Keeping Windows Up To Date Resource Access...

Installation is quick and easy following the install wizard. Everything in GFI Backup is wizard driven making it easy to use for even novice computer users. From the main interface is nicely laid out so you can easily select the backup or other task you want to create. Creating your first backup is simple following the steps in the Wizard. A noteworthy feature is being updated via email in case there are any errors or other issues with the backup....

So you’ve got all your data stored on servers somewhere — your emails at Gmail, photos on Facebook, and passwords in LastPass. But what if one of these services failed and lost your data? Sure, it’s true that your data is safer in the cloud — Google, Microsoft, and other companies have lost less data than average people have when their hard drives crash — but there’s always a risk....

You’ve set up the programs you need. Your windows are arranged just right. Then, something else demands your attention and you have to shut down. No worries. You can have Ubuntu remember all your running applications and restore them the next time you log in. To have Ubuntu remember the applications you have running in your current session and restore them the next time you log in, you will use the dconf-editor....

If you have an old eBay account you don’t use anymore, you can submit a request to have the account and all accompanying data completely removed—as long as your account is in good standing. Here’s how. What You Need to Know About Deleting Your eBay Account If you want to delete your eBay account, you first have to send in a request to have it deleted. In order for the request to be approved, you must meet these conditions:...

Starting with Windows 10’s May 2019 Update, the login screen uses the blurred “Fluent Design” transparency found on the taskbar, Start menu, and elsewhere. If you’d like to see your lock screen background clearly, here’s how to disable the blur. If you disable the lock screen, Windows 10 jumps right to the login screen instead, bypassing it. With the recent update, the background image has become distorted beyond recognition due to the “Acrylic”-style transparency effect used throughout Windows....

Previously, you could only add a contact card to the document comments in Google Docs. Now, you can mention a contact directly in a Google Docs document to embed the contact card there. This gives others quick ways to interact with that person. You might have a private document that you share on your intranet or a business document that you share publicly. Rather than listing names, email addresses, and phone numbers to provide contact information to your readers, just use a mention in Google Docs....

Are you having trouble deleting a folder from your Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC? If so, that may be a system folder or a folder being used by other apps. We’ll show you how to successfully delete “undeletable” folders on your computer. RELATED: How to Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows Reasons You Can’t Delete a Folder on Windows The most common reason you can’t delete a folder is that your folder is a Windows system folder....

We previously showed you how to get rid of the “Paste Options” box that displays when you paste text in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. You can do the same in Outlook, but the procedure is slightly different. To get rid of the “Paste Options” box in Outlook, click the “File” tab on the main Outlook window. NOTE: You can also click the “File” tab on the ribbon on the “Message” window....

Under “More ways to pay,” click Allowances. Next, choose which payment method you want to use to fund your allowance. The amount you chose will be taken out of this payment method every time the allowance goes out, so choose a method that you know will always have the funds available. Finally, scroll to the bottom and click Create Allowance. The recipient of the allowance will get an email confirming they want to receive your money, and they’ll get the first deposit on the date you scheduled....

Whether you want to use a new font in a Word or just change your operating system’s system font to give it a different look, you’ll first have to install the font on your operating system. The installation process makes the font available to all programs on your operating system. Most applications don’t allow you to simply load a font file and use it — they provide a list of installed fonts for you to choose from....

To protect the contents of your Microsoft Word documents, add password protection to them. Doing so prompts the user to enter the password each time the document is opened. We’ll show you how to do that using a built-in Word feature. Later, you can unprotect your document by removing password protection, if you want. RELATED: How to Password Protect a ZIP File on Windows Encrypt a Word Document With a Password To begin securing your document with a password, open your document with Microsoft Word on your computer....

What’s more fun than the creative block-building in Minecraft? Building whenever and wherever you want with a portable Minecraft installation on a flash drive you can take with you. Read on as we detail how to configure a portable copy of Minecraft for build-anywhere fun. Why Do I Want to Do This? A standard Minecraft installation parks your Minecraft game data in a system directory and, until a very recent update to the Minecraft launcher that not all players have taken advantage of yet, relies on a local installation of Java....