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
Problem: Your hard drive is getting full.
Solution: Delete unnecessary data to make more room.
Easy enough, right? Actually, it's not always easy to find the files and folders that are using the most space on your drive. In fact, it can be downright complicated and time-consuming.
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
iTunes 11, which arrived last week, brought some big changes with it. And for the last few days I've been helping you work around some of those changes, like restoring the iTunes sidebar and even returning to iTunes 10.
Today let's talk about another iTunes 11 curiosity: the software no longer includes the option to find duplicates in your song library.
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
Reader Wes sent me this simple plea:
"I recently downloaded the new iTunes 11. I want to go back to the last version. Is there a way?"
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
Are you an iTunes user? If so, by now you may be looking at iTunes 11, which Apple started rolling out yesterday. (Still running iTunes 10? You can get the update by clicking Help, Check for Updates.)
One thing you'll notice right away is the totally overhauled interface, which, just like with Windows 8, can take some getting used to.
Indeed, the big change is the disappearance of the sidebar, which is how most people navigated their libraries and playlists, the iTunes Store, and so on. Needless to say, iTunes 11 can seem disorienting without it.
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
Much as I love Gmail, I don't love how messy it can be. Messy interface, messy layout, and, sometimes, messy emails.
Specifically, after a few messages go back and forth between you and someone else (that's called a thread), you end up with a lengthy, cluttered, messy explosion of text.
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
It's baa-aaack!
Last month I explained how to shut down Windows 8, an option you wouldn't expect to require step-by-step instruction. And yet.
One thing you might have noticed, especially if you're a laptop user, is that the Power menu, once you finally reach it, has no Hibernate option. You can click Sleep, Shut down, or Restart, but if you want to hibernate your machine, well, you're outta luck.
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
At the risk of sounding like a cranky old man who doesn't like change, I'm feeling a bit cranky about Windows 8 and some of the changes it imposes. (Get off my lawn, Microsoft!)
For example, every time I boot my PC, I have to enter my Microsoft account password. Hey, I'm all about security, but this machine never leaves my desk, so I'm really not worried about unauthorized access. The password check is one step I could do without.
