Rich Menga covers Windows, likes to talk about retro tech, and has been known to offer an opinion or two. ;-) His blog: www.menga.net. Rich's Facebook fan page: facebook.com/richmenga
Rich Menga
The term “Big Data” is now used to basically describe a service where you put your trust and faith into a third party to house all your digital stuff. Or to put it simply, “Cloud”. Most of you know Big Data as services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Skydrive. Free Big Data is, simply put, anything you can use which is...
I have four web browsers installed on my computer (mainly for writing articles here when I need to test out stuff), that being Internet Explorer 9, Opera 12.02, Firefox 15.0.1 and Chrome 22. My favorite home page is by far the one used in Opera, the “Speed Dial” feature. Now while true you can use add-ons/extensions to get other browsers to have...
Following up to my last article about crapware, McAfee, sorry to say is one that digs really, really deep into the Windows OS and is almost impossible to get out unless you have the McAfee Consumer Product Removal Tool. Before I explain what MCPR.exe does, I’ll give you a simple example of how difficult it is to get McAfee off your Windows...
In a maneuver that is sure to surprise absolutely nobody, the first Windows 8 PCs will of course be bundled with what’s affectionately known as “crapware”. The full list of crapware is in the linked article, but some of the crap that will be preinstalled is a 60-Day Trial Edition of Microsoft Office 2010, a 60-Day Trial Edition of Norton...
As said in the video above, it does amaze me that Facebook does offer good, usable features but then doesn’t even bother telling you how to use them unless you dig through their mostly-useless help system. Well, the video above explains backdated/scheduled posts in plain English. It’s very easy and works well once you know how to do...
Something that people truly miss from the Microsoft Outlook Express 6 email client was the ability to easily have multiple identities and the ability to password-protect them in a very simple way. Granted, the security was “fair” at best, but hey, it was...
I think we all knew at some point that computers would have to start being built here to serve the US market better, and as it turns out, Lenovo is going to do it in the state of North Carolina. Why NC? Because that’s where there main operations offices are, along with a distribution center. Having all those operations close to each other saves operating...
This one will make today a happy Thursday for you. “Scareware” is stuff you see on the internet where people are literally tricked into buying certain software that supposedly ‘protects’ your computer from ‘bad stuff’ when in fact it really does nothing at all. And yeah, this has been going on a good long time. Well, one of...
Said honestly, I never understood ultrabooks just by the name alone. Previously, “ultrabook” simply meant “top model of cetain series of laptop”. For example, Dell would release a line of Inspirons and they’d usually have three models, which were simply base, better and best. “Best” then changed to this thing called...
To invoke Godwin’s Law right at the start here (because it would be guaranteed to come up anyway), yeah, um.. there’s really no way to interpret this other than a Nazi state maneuver or outright being Orwellian. Take your pick, because both apply. Warrantless wireless spying by the US government on anyone for any reason is basically here to stay. As...
Some of you upon read of the title will think, “Haven’t U.S. Presidential debates been live-streamed before?” Amazingly, no, they haven’t. This time around will be the first time. Concerning the previous presidential debates, yes there was archived online video for download, but it was never live-streamed. How and where will the live...
Video: The All New MSN for Windows 8 I am one of those people that sincerely believes there should be absolutely no very-specific software requirements to view any web site, nor require any very-specific software to access certain web site features. In other words, I like web sites that are as “open” in design and functionality as possible. Well,...
I live in Florida so I don’t have to worry about cold weather (except for maybe one week a year). However the rest of the US and obviously other parts of the world have to deal with cold times coming soon, so you’d best prepare for it now. Fortunately, the preparation is quite easy. 1. Know your phone’s minimum operating temperature. I wrote...
I was going to reserve this for a Retro Friday article, but as it turns out, the linear-based camcorder (as in one that uses videocassettes to store recorded video with) didn’t stop being produced all that long ago. In fact, some can still be bought new. For example, Sony’s Handycam series that specifically used Hi8 tapes lasted all the way up until...
The mass-deleting of fake likes and fans has officially begun on Facebook. This is something that was reported several months back, but as of now it’s gone into full swing. Something that Facebook should do is employ the use of deferrment, and if they haven’t done so, they should. On most major webmail systems, there are algorithms in place where if...
and geeks read The Insider, the digital magazine of PCMech.


