How to clean your laptop's cooling fans

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

I've written about this subject in years past, but it's so important I feel obligated to repeat myself for those who might have missed it.

Your laptop may be choking to death.

You see, like desktops, laptops can suck up lots of dust. And because everything in a laptop is packed together so tightly, dust is even more dangerous. When the cooling fans have to run constantly, it's just a matter of time before the machine start to overheat. When that happens, it may lock up. It may damage system components. And it might even kick the bucket.

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How to get started with DLNA

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

What the heck is DLNA and why you should care about it? I'll keep this simple.

If you have a lot of media stored on your PC—namely music, movies, and photos—DLNA makes it possible to stream that stuff to other devices in your house.

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One possible fix for a printer that won't print

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

My poor dad has the worst luck when it comes to technology. Seems like every day he's bumping into some new problem with his phone, laptop, or an accessory.

The latest: His Lexmark inkjet printer suddenly refused to print.

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How to automatically insert commonly used text—and sync those snippets to the cloud

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

You haven't got all day. And yet you're typing the same text over and over again: email addresses, street addresses, signatures, boilerplate, and so on.

That's why I continue to be a big fan of PhraseExpress, a text expander that organizes and auto-completes frequently used text snippets.

For example, to quickly insert, say, your email address, you could type "em1" (as in "email address #1"), and PhraseExpress would instantly paste in the complete address.

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How to go back to iTunes 10, part 2

Rick Broida

Rick Broida, PCWorld

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

Last week ago I told you how to go back to using iTunes 10, a solution for people who upgraded to iTunes 11 and decided they didn't like what they saw.

I screwed up. Bigtime. And I apologize.

In that original post, I steered you to a site called OldVersion.com, which is home to older versions of hundreds of popular programs, iTunes included.

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