Tech Medic LLC

Almost everyone is burdened daily with spam emails & one of the common approaches is filtering. In this case, software decides what is probably junk & removes it from your inbox. Sometimes it’s your email program that makes the decision (like Apple Mail or Outlook), or your email company (like Gmail, AOL or Cox) & sometimes it’s a 3rd party service. Traditionally, these 3rd party services are geared toward businesses, they’re expensive & more technical to manage.

After years of hoping, I’ve found a 3rd party spam filtering service for normal people & I’ve been testing it myself with great results. It’s designed to be able to filter the email from ANY email provider, it seems to make intelligent judgments, it’s easy to train it when it misjudges & it’s only $25/year. Its name is Spamdrain & you can check it out with the link below. Though many of you could set it up for yourself just fine, if you'd appreciate some guidance, feel free to reach out.

Stop SPAM and Junk mail with Spamdrain antispam Switch off junk mail and spam with Spamdrain smart antispam filter and take control of your inbox. Works for Android, iPhone, Office365, Yahoo, etc.

I just wanted to share how happy I've been with Coastal Payroll. Paychex kept hiking their prices without notice until I was paying almost $200/mo for my little company. Switching to Coastal Payroll - a local company has worked really well for me this past year. The service has always been prompt & good. They have made some small mistakes sometimes, but nothing that couldn't be resolved with a simple email. The cost is so low, it's been a huge difference. (note: they didn't ask me to make this post & I get nothing for this recommendation).

Coastal Payroll Solutions, Inc. | Wakefield, RI 02879 We offer cost effective, customizable payroll solutions for small to mid-size business throughout Rhode Island and Northeastern Connecticut

If you're getting alerts from your Mac to upgrade to MacOS 11 Big Sur, consider waiting. This is a bigger update than normal & no matter how well it's been tested, it likely has some glaring glitches or incompatibilities to be ironed out. Consider waiting till mid December or later for Apple to release their first big round of bug fixes + there'd be time for other software makers to adjust.

If you're data may be at risk (not backed up), this service has saved the bacon of many of my clients in the past 6+ years. They're solid & charge a fair flat-rate cost.
Depending on how much data you have, the speed of your connection & how much you have your computer on, it can take days or weeks to upload your stuff.
For ultimate privacy, feel free to ask me about a technique built in to their service, to encrypt your data - so that even a Backblaze employee wouldn't be able to theoretically snoop in your stuff.

Backblaze Cloud Backup Backblaze backs up all your data on your laptop or desktop for $6/month. Easy. Secure. Unlimited.

For Mac folks, if you get prompts from Apple to update to MacOS 10.15 Catalina, think thrice. For one, it's just out of the gates & most likely to have glitches yet-to-be ironed out. However, more importantly, MANY older programs will absolutely not work with it. Clients that are considering the update should contact me to discuss any potential negative impacts.

I'm mostly loving the new iOS 13. They've been fairly bold in introducing a lot of new features I like: dark mode, improved Siri behavior, multi-colored flags in email & something extra in all the Apple apps, esp Reminders. However, the one thing that was confusing & frustrating: the "new way" of editing text when composing email or esp text messages. I consider this article a must read for iPhone users when they upgrade. Good luck!

Here's how to use the slew of new text editing gestures in iOS 13! Among the many changes in iOS 13 are some new text editing gestures. Here's how to perform them all.

The right call for your sanity, wallet & the environment...

The Joys of Being a Late Tech Adopter New-gadget season is almost here, but our columnist has concluded, after testing hundreds of gizmos over the years, that it pays to wait.

Do you wish you could add emojis when typing on your computer? (quick answer for mac users: Ctrl+Cmd+Space)(for Windows folks read the article!)

The Little-Known Keyboard Shortcut for Emojis on Mac and Windows Learn how the desktop pros quickly add emoji to their messages from Mac and Windows with this little-known shortcut. Plus, tips on when/where to use it!

If you have an iPhone 8 (not 8 Plus), goto Settings > General > About to find your serial number. Then goto this site to see if your phone is part of a recall

iPhone 8 Logic Board Replacement Program - Apple Support iPhone 8 Logic Board Replacement Program

This might limit our ability to touch type, but it sure is cool!

Lenovo’s Yoga Book C930 swaps the keyboard for an E Ink display Lenovo’s going all-in on IFA this year. The company announced a new Chromebook, a Snapdragon-powered Windows laptop and some smart home devices, among others. The most compelling bit from the bunch, however, has to be the Yoga Book C930. The laptop follows in the footsteps of the Yoga Book A12, th...

Could come in handy if you've been afflicted!

Apple acknowledges faulty MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards with new repair program Extended service for four years from original purchase date

if you hate using a case for your phone...

We Dropped $18,000 Worth of Phones, and These Are the Toughest (and Weakest) We took all of the top smartphones and dropped them onto wood, concrete (and even into a toilet) to see which handset is the toughest in the land.