Our Mission It has come to our attention that a lot of users have Skype installed on their machines and it is making them less productive. We have been given the task of making sure that users cant use Skype at work, however they are welcome to keep it installed on their laptops and use it at home or during lunch breaks on a 3G/4G connection. Given this information we decide to make use of the Windows Firewall and Group Policy....

It doesn’t seem so long ago that we had only one reliable way to connect a computer to an external monitor. Now the good old VGA port, may it rest in peace, is only found on designated “business” machines and adapters. In its place, we have a variety of alternatives, all of which seem to be fighting each other for the limited space on your laptop or graphics card. Let’s break down the options for your next PC purchase....

We already live in the future. We have handheld devices that use satellites to pinpoint our precise locations almost anywhere on the planet. But have you ever wondered just how GPS works? GPS devices don’t actually contact satellites and transmit information to them. They only receive data from satellites – data that’s being always-transmitted. However, GPS isn’t the only way devices can determine your location. Image Credit: NASA From Satellites to the Palm of Your Hand The global positioning system was originally created by the United State for military use, but was eventually opened up to civilian use....

Microsoft Outlook and other modern email clients have a lot of plain, white backgrounds. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Whether you want a soothing beige, an eye-catching image, or something in-between, Outlook allows you to customize your email backgrounds. Personalizing your email background can be a useful way to make a message stand out or advertise a personal brand. You might simply want to save your recipient from an eye-burning white background....

Say you’re browsing the web in Chrome and you remember you need to add a meeting to your calendar. Instead of opening a new tab and accessing your calendar, or using the Google Calendar Chrome app, you can add an event to your calendar right from Chrome’s address bar with this trick. This requires a few steps of setup, but once you’re done, you can type an event in natural language to the address bar—such as “meeting on Thursday at 10 am”—and a new event will be created....

IFTTT lets you automate a ton of your favorite web services, but you can also create convenient home screen shortcuts for a whole host of different tasks. Here’s how to set them up. RELATED: How to Create Your Own Recipes Using IFTTT on the iPhone In addition to applying rules that work automatically in the background, like most IFTTT applets, IFTTT also has “button widgets” that streamline applets into a single button press....

A lot of benchmarks are rather arcane and filled with technical parameters and jargon. Is there a simple way to perform a comparison between GPU performances (say, before and after a major video card upgrade)? Read on as we explain how. Although benchmarking can become extremely technical and time consuming, it certainly doesn’t have to be. And, in the case of simply wanting to benchmark your old GPU against your new GPU, there are really simple solutions....

iPhone and iPad users who are running iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and higher have access to more features for customing group chats and conversations. Instead of seeing small icons for group members, you can have a custom group photo, surrounded by individual display pictures. To change a group photo, first, open the “Messages” app, then navigate to the iMessage group chat. Here, tap the avatar icons found at the top of the conversation....

You can make this change both through their desktop website, and also in the mobile app. We’ve got the instructions for the website first, but if you’re an app user, you can scroll down a bit to see how to change your default card in the mobile app. On the Website Next, select the “Payment Options” setting. You’ll see a list of all the payment methods currently attached to your account....

If you have dozens of tabs open in Safari on iPhone or iPad and need to clear them out quickly, it can be tedious to “X” them out one at a time. Luckily, there are two ways to close all your Safari tabs at once, and they also work in Private Browsing mode. Here’s how. First, open “Safari” on your iPhone or iPad. While on any page, locate the tab switcher button, which looks like two overlapping squares....

Can You Connect AirPods to a Switch? Provided you have installed firmware update 13.0 or later, you can connect AirPods (and other types of Bluetooth headphones) to a Switch. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to update your Nintendo Switch to the latest available firmware under System Settings > System. Hit the “System Update” button to start the process. Your Switch will apply any updates that are ready to go and check the internet for new software to download....

RELATED: How to Set Up the Eero Home Wi-Fi System Before you can actually start giving voice commands to your Eero system, you’ll first need to install the Eero third-party Alexa skill within the Alexa app. We have a guide on how to install Alexa skills, but the jist is that you’ll open up the side menu and select “Skills”. From there, search for “Eero” and enable it. You’ll need to link your Eero account with Alexa, which simply just requires you to enter in your email address associated with Eero and confirm it using a verification code....

Want to set a web page aside and come back to it in the future? If you use Microsoft Edge in Windows 10’s Creators Update, you don’t have to leave the tab open or bookmark it and remember to come back. You can tell Cortana to remind you about the address in the future and forget about it. This is useful for anything time sensitive—for example, perhaps you need to come back to purchase a ticket or another item when it goes on sale....

You’ve got a bunch of DVDs sitting around your house, but you can’t even remember when you last saw your DVD player, and your laptop doesn’t even have a disc drive anymore. It’s time to modernize your collection. Here, we’ll show you how to rip your DVDs to your computer using the swiss army knife of video conversion tools: Handbrake. Easily Rip a DVD with VideoProc While navigating Handbrake can be tedious and complex, there is a simpler alternative....

The DualShock 4’s light bar is a neat thing. It works with many games to mimic what’s happening on the screen—in The Last of Us, for example, it will change colors as your health degrades, and turn red as you die. It’s a little thing, but it’s cool. The downside is that it’s also a battery hog, causing the controller to die much quicker than most of us would like....

Is Disabling BitLocker Safe? If you’re concerned about privacy and security, know that removing BitLocker encryption makes your drive data more accessible in certain situations. For example, if you use a dual-boot PC, the other operating system can access the data stored on your drive if you’ve disabled BitLocker. Also, if your laptop gets stolen or you lose it, whoever has it can access the unencrypted data on your machine’s drive....

Every time you open a LibreOffice program, or even the LibreOffice Start Center, a splash screen displays. This splash screen serves no real purpose, so if you’d rather not see it, we’ll show you how to disable it in Windows and Linux. Disable the Splash Screen on Windows Disabling the LibreOffice splash screen in Windows must be done for each program separately, including the LibreOffice Start Center, by changing their shortcuts....

Norton, like most other antivirus tools, is rather intrusive. It installs a toolbar in your web browser, pops up notifications even when you download safe files, and shows you various special offers and reports. But you can set Norton to only notify you when there’s an actual problem. RELATED: What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10 and 11? (Is Microsoft Defender Good Enough?) The steps below were performed with Norton Security Deluxe, but the process should be similar for other editions of Norton’s antivirus software....

Windows 10 (and Windows 11) has a “lock screen” that you need to dismiss before you can log in. This screen can feel like a nuisance in the sign-in process. We’ll show you how to get rid of it. A lock screen may make sense on a tablet, but if you have a traditional desktop PC, it feels necessary. Why do you need a lock screen and a sign-in screen?...

AVG Antivirus includes browser extensions, notifications, and other features sure to distract you. If you just want an antivirus to silently protect your system in the background, here’s how to slim AVG down. RELATED: What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10 and 11? (Is Microsoft Defender Good Enough?) This process was performed with the free version on AVG, named AVG AntiVirus FREE. To learn more about which antivirus programs we recommend, check out this guide....