A reader wrote in to give us some of his favorite Windows computing tips. Some we've written about before, one was an eye-opener.
• Snipping Tool captures portions of a computer screen and lets you erase items, add notes and highlight parts.
• Sticky Notes are little Post-it style notes that stay on your screen. Use it instead of actual Post-its and little scraps of paper lying around your desk. In Windows 10, click the start button in the lower left corner and then click "All Apps." You'll find it under "Windows Accessories."
• GodMode. When you create a special folder on your desktop, you enter the closest thing we've seen to Windows heaven. It gives you a list of everything you can do in Windows, from enlarging text to configuring printers or setting up "autoplay."
To enter GodMode, right-click on the desktop and choose "new folder." Right-click it again and choose "rename." For the right name to put in there, search the Web for "PCMag God Mode." Copy the string of numbers and characters exactly, including the first period but leaving out the last one. The result is a wonderful list of tools that appears in a box you can call up whenever you want.
Cash for Gift Cards
We've never gotten a gift card we didn't like. But there are some we would definitely reject. (A Bungee-Jumping gift certificate would be high on the list.) Here are a couple of websites where cards can be traded for cash.
CardCash.com will buy gift cards or sell new ones at a discount. The site trades cards from more than 400 retailers. When you sell them your card, you get 92 percent of the card's value, or you can trade it for a card from Amazon, CVS or United Airlines. If you buy a card, shipping is free. We saw a $100 Ann Taylor gift card for $76 for example, and a $300 card for $229.
A similar site is GiftCards.com. It has cards from hundreds of retailers and some are on sale for as much as 35 percent off the regular price. You also can sell the cards, as long as there's still $20 to $300 left on them. Check out the GiftCards app for Android and iPhones.
Dumping Cable
We keep hearing from readers who have dropped their expensive cable TV subscriptions. This is going to be an unstoppable trend.
With plug-in adapters like Roku, Apple TV or Google Chromecast, you get networks such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and Amazon Video. All of those except YouTube involve extra fees, like $7 a month for Netflix. But that is very little compared with cable costs.
For sports and other live TV shows, Sling TV is probably best at $20 a month. Sling TV is from the company that makes the $220 Slingbox. But Sling TV is a service rather than a piece of equipment. You use it with an app on your phone or a player such as Roku, Xbox, Google Nexus, Amazon Fire Stick or Amazon Fire TV.
A new arrangement with RCA Antennas (RCAantennas.net) gives you a free 10-day trial of Sling TV. You remember RCA. They were the most famous name in TV manufacturing, except perhaps for Zenith, back in the day. They do a lot of industrial stuff now but claim to have the best-selling antenna for the past 10 years because it can pick up signals in 360 degrees. You can use an antenna to bring in several local channels without paying anything. We've tried it and it works, but you don't get many choices.
The $20 per month Sling Live TV gives you ESPN, AMC, TNT, HGTV and 16 others, and there are $5 add-ons. For $5 extra each month, you get Turner Movie Classics and other movie channels. There's also a sports add-on, a kids add-on, or Spanish TV. HBO is an extra $15 a month. The 10-day trial for RCA Antenna users includes the most popular channels as well as local TV from Fox, CBS, NBC and others.
The $30 SLIVR Indoor Flat HDTV from RCA Antennas has a range of 30 miles. The $45 SLIVR Amplified has a range of 50 miles. A new one, the SLIVR XL Amplified comes with a signal booster and should be out in the spring for $50. All are indoor antennas, easy to set up. Does this still come out as a good deal compared with cable costs? We think so. If cable cuts it fees, it's equally easy for the plug-in cable competitors to cut theirs. As Bugs Bunny likes to say: "You know, of course, that this means war."
Hunting Tech
Instead of filming your skateboarding, surfing or ski adventure, you can use a mount from Bracketron for hunting expeditions. Using the mount, attach a smartphone or action camera to your hunting rifle, bow, fishing rod or paintball gun.
The most expensive model is the ProX Sport Mount 3-in-1, for $70. It has a quick release lever to make it easy to mount and dismount a smartphone or camera. The Mount spins the phone 360 degrees for quick repositioning from vertical to horizontal views. It works with any smartphone or GoPro and similar action cameras.
If you don't need a 3-in-1 mount, there's also a separate mount for your bow and arrow expeditions ($20) and one for mounting in trees, ($15) which screws directly into the tree. The new mounts debuted at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
An Alarming Situation
Lots of security cameras around, but Presence from Netatmo won four innovation awards at the Consumer Electronics Show. This is future stuff, because it won't be available till fall at the earliest. But it is the edge of the wedge, as they say, and shows how sophisticated surveillance cameras can be.
This one can provide color video even in low light and can be adjusted to react to small things, like a dog, or possible menacing movements, like those from a person. After analyzing the data in real time, it figures out whether a stranger is loitering nearby, a car is creeping up the driveway or a pet is in the yard.
We couldn't get a price yet, but the surveillance cameras business is crowded and competitive, so we would guess around $300 when the light goes on.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwa@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
SundayMonday Business on 01/18/2016