Hewie's Views and Reviews

SpaceX (Elon Musk) recently received approval from the FCC to launch 4,425 satellites into space to build a low earth orbit network to sell home Internet. There will be an important test this Wednesday. According to a Musk Tweet, “Much will likely go wrong on this 1st mission.” Also, 6 more launches of 60 sats are needed for minor coverage, 12 for moderate. There will be more details on the day of launch, currently tracking to Wednesday. They are production design because they are not like the Tintin ones but…

When I first moved to Manatee County almost 5 years ago, I was disappointed that the Library System did not offer Lynda.com tutorials online. Both the Seminole County (FL) and Orange County (FL) Libraries began to offer the service just before I moved from that area. Lynda.com, which is now a part of LinkedIn, is an online library of unlimited on-demand instructional videos covering a wide range of software, creative programs, productivity, design, and business skills. You watch at your own pace to learn new skills and technologies. You can…

I have a lot of old black & white photos that I scanned. If I were an expert in Photoshop I might be able to add color after a lot of time and painstaking detail. I found a website and demonstrated it at the February 2019 WinSIG meeting that colorizes photos in seconds.

Last night I experienced another way to stream TV. It was on Facebook! Linacre Media has been streaming regional boxing, MMA, and muay thai events from around the world straight to Facebook. Last night was a fight card of 7 fights that streamed for 3 hours with the quality of PPV or network TV broadcasts. There were several cameras showing the action with commentators Michael Woods and Adam Abramowitz doing the announcing.

I have over 1 million files on my 2 drives in my desktop computer. To find any one file is quite difficult. I have used the Windows version of search and Cortana’s search and it almost impossible to find a file. I have tried re-indexing my hard drive. I have found It takes many, many hours to do so and it really doesn’t improve my search. Last year, at my local computer user group meeting, someone suggested that I look at a program called “Search My Files.” I found this…

A month ago I wrote about increasing the available space on my C-Drive, an SSD card. While I have a D-Drive, which is a 1 TB hard drive, it is used for data. My computer is 3.5 years old and the SSD card was down to about 8GB of available space, which is dangerously low, especially with an impending operating system upgrade. In that article, I talked about deleting a 30 GB partition with outdated recovery software and combining it with the main partition for added storage. See “Making Room…

I was starting to panic. My C-Drive on my main computer was becoming unsafe as I was using up all its free space. The drive is a 225GB SSD card. I was down to 8GB free. I also have a 1 TB hard drive that is dedicated to data and designated as D-Drive. As I saw the shrinking drive develop, I changed the default locations for such items as Documents, Downloads, Videos, & Pictures to the D-Drive. Other than Windows and programs (Apps), there is not much else on the…

We are in the process of cutting the cord. Yesterday, I changed Internet providers. Today I will be terminating our current Internet provider & our cable TV. We will now have fiber optic (Fios) at 150Mbps up and down.

Over the last several weeks, we have tested SlingTV, YouTubeTV, Hulu, & DirectvNow, utilizing the 7-day free trial that each provides.

I have been using a free phone service from Google, Google Voice, for many years. Through some discussions with other members of my computer user group, I was introduced to the ObiHai Obi200. This $50 device enables me to connect my Google Voice number to my house phones

The recent revelation of the Meltdown & Spectre vulnerabilities has created a lot of discussions. For the non-techie, it is extremely confusing. Even for the techies, it is confusing. The issue is not a Windows issue, nor a Mac issue, nor a Linux issue, nor a ChromeOS, or an iPad issue. It is not an Intel or an AMD issue. It has to do with the way computer processors (the main chip in all computers, tablets & phones) are all being programmed to speed up computers. This includes almost every computer manufactured in the last 20 years.