Hewie's Views and Reviews

I like to read my Facebook timeline with the most recent items at the top and successive postings in chronological order. Of course, Facebooks interjects with sponsored ads and what appears to be older posts, but have recent replies. Facebook’s default is to show the as “Top Stories” and it determines what those are. Every so often, FB changes my selection back to theirs. I don’t like that. When I mentioned this to a few friends, they looked at me strangely and I realized that they had no idea of…

It is just 7 weeks since I purchased my first Chromebook, the Acer R11. I was a novice of what to look for and did some preliminary research before buying my Acer R11. I wanted to touch and feel before buying so I went to my nearby Best Buy store. They had 3 models on display and in stock. After looking over the 3, the Acer R11 was on sale and seemed to have the specs that I wanted. It only has 16GB of storage, but I thought that should…

Last fall I read an enticing item on Facebook about having the ability to have my own cloud storage using a device from Lima. This intrigued me. The Lima was not yet shipping, but would soon be available. It is a small device that is powered and would be connected to my router and a USB external drive. It would allow me to have any size storage available to read & write files locally from my desktop and be available at home and away, to be accessed by my laptop,…

It’s official. The next major Windows upgrade, known as the “Windows 10 Creator’s Upgrade Version 1703”, will be rolled out on April 11th.  They release these major updates in waves, so you might not get the upgrade for a while. However, you must prepare in advance, as you may get the upgrade when you turn your computer on, or while you just have it on anytime after that date. Between now and April 11th, make sure that you do a complete backup of your data and if you can, do…

I am the “goto” person for many friends, neighbors, and others when it comes to issues with technology, especially Windows computers. Most of these people are senior citizens. Their computer and smartphone usage is mostly limited to Facebook, games, photos, watching videos, e-mail, browsing the web, banking, paying bills and perhaps purchasing items. Windows computers are far too complex for most, especially when it comes to updating, upgrading, protecting themselves from viruses, malware, intrusions, and just using the system. Microsoft and Apple have tried to make it as easy and…

You seldom need to have your home wi-fi security key as your device usually remembers it and signs you in automatically. I help people with tech issues and recently I have had a few that needed to connect new computers or mobile devices to their wi-fi. However, they were unable to find their security key. Luckily, they had a PC that was connected, so I followed the directions in the article, “How to retrieve Wi-Fi passwords saved on your PC” http://www.pcworld.com/article/3018974/security/how-to-retrieve-wi-fi-passwords-saved-on-your-pc.html and was able to retrieve their wi-fi key.   …

ALISON Online Courses is a FREE, high-quality, online education resource to help you develop essential, certified skills. Certificates have a cost. To download a pdf, it costs about $16. However the course is free, but there may be some ads, which is fair. There are many categories and so many classes. There are some technology topics, but many others, as well. Website Categories include: Financial & Economic Literacy Business & Enterprise Skills Digital Literacy & IT Skills Health Literacy Personal Development & Soft Skills Schools Curriculum Languages Health & Safety…

The best article that I have seen that explains the issue of someone requesting to be your friend on Facebook, when you are already friends, is from Cyndi Ingle, “You Weren’t Hacked, You Were Spoofed on Facebook.” The article is well written with screen shots to help report the spoofer whether you are the recipient of the request or the legitimate person. It also includes instructions on how to protect yourself on Facebook. Cyndi has granted me permission to post the article, as her only link is to her Dropbox…

All through Junior High School (Middle School, to you millennials) and High School, my desire was to go into radio-TV work. My first job was a gopher at WTLB in Utica, NY. I later worked with a couple of DJ’s at WIBX, either in the studio or at record hops. When we moved to Brockport, NY, I worked at WRVM in Rochester, NY on weekends, as a producer/gopher and DJ’ed at a weekly teen center dance in Spencerport. After graduation, I attended Ithaca College as a Radio-TV major. If I…

Clear projection was always in sci-fi movies. Now it is available for all of us. I saw this as a sponsored ad on Facebook. It looked interesting, but I figured it was one of those “donate to the future” & when it is ready, if ever, you will be one of the first to get one. It appears that is not the case. It is a shipping product. It is a bit on the expensive side, $800, but it looks safer than the built-in GPS systems and other electronics in…