Situation: You’re going to install a Canon printer on a computer but you don’t have the driver CD for it. So, like anyone else, you go to Canon’s web site to download them. This should be an easy painless process, right? Wrong. Here’s what you have to do to download drivers for a consumer-grade Canon printer:Go to www.canon.com Click...

You’ve got a blog and you’re putting a good amount of effort into it. You’re writing away, posting articles and doing what you can to get some readership. The problem is that nobody is reading your blog. It seems no matter what you do you’re not gaining any traffic. And you know you’re writing good stuff. What do you do? Follow the...

One thing I pay keen attention to when writing articles for PCMech is not to use internet jargon (a.k.a. slang or “netspeak”). The only time I would use it is only if I’m forced to. Internet jargon can easily turn into a bad habit quickly. And as anyone knows, bad habits are tough to break. If your use of jargon gets out of control, it will...

Gmail, that mail you either love or hate (I hate it) now has emoticons in it. You know these as "smiley faces" or just "smileys". Google’s Gmail, of course, is not the first to use emoticons. Just about all web-based mail has the option. Quick quiz! Tell me what this Gmail emoticon represents: Yeah, that’s what I thought it...