TechByter Worldwide (formerly Technology Corner) with Bill Blinn

If some company other than Adobe had created Lightroom Classic, Adobe would have to worry about the future of Photoshop. As it is, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and some mobile apps from Adobe play exceedingly well together. In Short Circuits: Whether you love or loathe Windows 11, there are probably some annoyances you'd like to fix. Windows 11 Fixer 2.0 is a brilliant solution to many of the annoyances. • As handy as public Wi-Fi hotspots are, they can be dangerous. A few easy techniques can tilt the odds in our favor. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): "Stupid.com" had launched in 2002 and was offering for sale gifts that were decidedly unusual.

Facebook users seem to complain about the service frequently, but it's difficult to find a competing service that has all of Facebook's features. Perhaps it's impossible. In Short Circuits: Device drivers are essential. Without them, printers, mice, disc players, and keyboards would be nothing more than expensive paperweights. But device drivers are often the cause of problems, too. • The Windows 11 File Explorer sometimes stops responding. It' not a problem for everyone, but it is fairly common. The good news is that there's an easy fix. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): In 2002 I was looking at computer prices from 1982, so let's look back 40 years.

Digitizing film negatives by scanning them will almost always reveal dust spots and may reveal scratches. Fortunately, there's a way to reduce or eliminate these if your scanner and your scanning software support infra-red scanning. In Short Circuits: When you're nervous about installing a new application, the Windows Sandbox offers a way to test the new application without concern, but only with Windows Pro or Enterprise editions. • Adobe Premiere Pro is used by professionals to create full-length motion pictures, but it's also a great choice when you're working with digitized home video tapes. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): Batteries have always been a problem with mobile devices. In 2002, technicians were looking for answers.

Of the more than 4700 objects in the Windows System32 directory, around 650 are applications. Some of these are useful tools that that you can use to maintain a clean operating system. But which ones? In Short Circuits: Windows 11 offers organizational techniques that might work better than what you're doing now to find and start applications. • Some Android phones can take a series of photos when they sense motion. This can be helpful, but it can also be confusing. In Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): Compaq, the king of portable computers, was being absorbed into Hewlett-packard in 2002.

Most routers intended for home and small-office use have four ports. If that's not enough, you can add more with a hub or a switch. What's the difference and how much do these things cost? Let's look. In Short Circuits: Password managers are essential and LastPass offers a family plan that gives up to six family members their own separate accounts and the ability to share information between members, when desired. The most difficult part may be convincing people to use it. • The Vivaldi web browser, which is based on Chrome, has added some improved security features that I appreciate, and you may too. Like nearly all modern browsers, Vivaldi gives users control over cookies, trackers, and ads -- but Vivaldi now also reports results. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): Video subsystems have changed much since 2002. Today's low-end graphics subsystems have two to four gigabytes of memory. In 2002, the top-end systems had much less.

Windows seems to have an infinite number of settings and controls. We all know that the options aren't really infinite, but a lot of them exist. Sometimes making a change can eliminate an annoyance and we'll consider three examples this week. In Short Circuits: When you need to create a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray disc, you can use the Windows Explorer. There's a better choice, though -- ImgBurn has been around since 2005 and was last updated in 2013, but it's still the best way to burn a disc. • If you're annoyed by the screen that appears before the Windows login screen, there's a easy way to make it go away permanently. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): Few computer users had UPS units to protect their computers in 2002, and some found out the hard way that they could lose all their data in a flash.

The latest version of Microsoft's PowerToys is an ongoing project that receives new features regularly and adds useful functionality to Windows 10 and Windows 11. In Short Circuits: 1980s computers could run one program at a time. Then we got the ability to multitask programs and now it's easy to have so many applications running that we encounter the limit of human multitasking. • It's getting harder to tell truth from lies, but when Russia's former KGB agent and current president is seeing a lot of success in sowing distrust among Americans, searching for truth is important. Twenty Years Ago: Customer service is often the weak point for organizations, and I was encountering a lot of it in 2002.

It's a good thing that automobiles aren't sold like computers. Imagine bringing your new car home only to find that you'll need several aftermarket items just to make it work right. In Short Circuits: Microsoft 365 is what Microsoft wants you to use for word processing, number crunching, database operations, presentations, and email. It's the right choice for most people, but there are other options when it's not. • Being lazy is not a character fault. Laziness may help you find a better way to perform a repetitive task, and I do have a real-world example. Twenty Years Ago: The Federal Communications Commission had just proposed a schedule to convert television broadcasts from analog to digital. It was a seven-year process.

My wife and I both purchased new computers in March. Mine was 7 years old and ineligible for Windows 11. Hers was 5 years old, ineligible for Windows 11, and had a failing keyboard. The computers are both from the same manufacturer, but otherwise substantially different. In Short Circuits: A computer can be secure, but your privacy may still be at risk. You may be surprised by how little information is needed to uniquely identify an individual. • Usually I'm not a fan of percussive maintenance, but sometimes it gets the job done. Twenty Years Ago: VHS players and tapes weren't yet dead, but they were fading fast.

You may have seen articles that claim a 7-character password containing numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols "could" be cracked in less than a minute. Longer passwords are better. Using upper- and lower-case letters along with numbers and symbols is also better. But less than a minute? Let's check the logic. In Short Circuits: When it's time to buy a new computer, you probably want it to have all of the programs and data from your old computer on the new one. The easy way to accomplish that is with LapLink's PCmover. • If you're the kind of person who enjoys sifting through population and demographic data, you're going to have fun on the World Population Review website. Twenty Years Ago: If you wanted a Bluetooth enabled device, you might be able to add the technology to an existing device, but it wasn't cheap.