I was recently asked about some shortcuts when I was working at Paula’s house. I use them every day when I work on computers. And they are good for Macs or PCs. The most common ones, by far, are copy and paste; Ctl + C and Ctl + V. Select all is Ctl + A, though I frequently use the left click and hold the button to highlight sections of what I want to select, then Right click on the highlighted bit and select copy. 
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Yep, there are lots of ways to do the same thing, and you may have your own already. But if you don’t know some of these shortcuts, you need to pick them up. Below is a way too big list, but check out some of the ones that interest you. These commands are commonly accessed by using the Ctl key (on PCs), command key (on Macs). The commands are pretty consistent across operating systems and programs, but of course, some programs have shortcuts that are specific to them. Word, Excel, Windows, MacOS, they all have fast shortcuts for getting stuff done.
 
For a HUGE list, with diagrams, and I think a printable listing, you can click HERE.

From How to Geek
​Craig Lloyd
When it comes to smartphone privacy concerns, location data is usually at the top of the list. The thing is, so many apps ask for your location now that we never really stop to think why they ask in the first place.
A bombshell report was recently published by The New York Times detailing just how much location data apps have on you (it’s more than you might think), and how they use that data to make money from targeted advertisements. This concept is nothing new and is already widely known, but the report goes into much greater detail than what we’ve seen before.

Read the article and find out what apps don't need your location and how to turn off location on your phone.

I recently worked on a laptop that had a hard drive problem. It’s not always easy to diagnose a hard drive issue, as sometimes it works, or partly works, then stops. In this case Windows started to the sign-in screen, but was really slow, and after signing in, it just kept signing in. That circle kept spinning and spinning. I’ve seen this sort of thing on Macs too.

There are a number of things you can try to fix an issue like this. If it’s a corrupt Windows problem, then Windows has a recovery option to fix that, and this computer eventually tried to go into that, but failed actually opening that up. I tried a Windows disk also, to no avail, which is why I then tried another hard drive. Since it worked fine from that, I knew the hard drive had failed, and was unable to be written to.

While it seems like that’s the death of a computer, a hard drive is not usually difficult to replace. Unfortunately, the old hard drive was unreadable so the data couldn’t be retrieved from it, but this person had a backup, so that was excellent. I replaced the drive and loaded Windows and the computer is back in business.

In this case, I had a used 250Gb SSD drive, which makes it a peppier computer. I’ve suggested replacing your older mechanical drive with a Solid State Drive before. It can add a few more years to the lifespan of your computer. I like the Samsung EVO drives, you can look at one of those by clicking on the link below.

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​At $73, the 500Gb drive is now priced at what the 250Gb was just a year ago, so I highly recommend it, though the 250Gb is $20 cheaper. This is true for older MacBooks as well as PC laptops, so if you feel like keeping that computer going a little longer, consider upgrading the hard drive.