Computers

It’s tax season, and while we at TurboTax adore this time of year as we get to help millions of Canadians get their taxes done right, we know that most people don’t get quite as giddy as we do about taxes. We’ve compiled a list of the top five burning questions you had for us during our recent #taxtalk Twitter chat with the Best Buy team. We hope they help you better understand your taxes.   

   If you’ve recently been pondering the possible acquisition of a brand new computer, perhaps you’ve already considered your needs and determined exactly what type of system best suits your lifestyle. For the rest of us, today’s blog attempts to help answer the question. If this sounds like you, join me inside for a detailed look at 3 computing categories & what you need to consider to make a happy decision.

 You may not know how to keep your computer protected from malware and viruses. You may not be aware that is something you need to do no matter what type of computer you have. You may even not be aware of what those things are in the first place. Don’t worry. Today we’ll take a look at some basic steps you can take to get your system secure.

The 34" Dell Alienware is a gaming monitor with a curved Quantum Dot OLED display and a high 1440p resolution.

 Gamers love mechanical keyboards like the Razer BlackWidow Expert. The precision of mechanical switches is a big advantage in high stakes video games, but you don’t have to be fighting off a pack of feral ghouls in Far Harbor to appreciate what mechanical keyboards have to offer. In fact, I use one every day where it is unbeatable at the decidedly more mundane task of writing.

When it comes to sitting down in front of your computer, the more screen real estate you have, the better—especially if you have more than one monitor. Here’s how to set up multiple monitors for your computer.

Identify theft is a growing problem in Canada.  All thieves needs to steal your identity is one or two pieces of personal information — information that is easily taken from your garbage from old bills, receipts, invoices and other mail.   Protect your identity and make your home and office secure by shredding all your important documents,   Here’s the 911 on documents shredders.

Like many Canadians, I’ve spent the past few weekends spring cleaning. Something about being largely stuck indoors through a particularly long and harsh winter (including nearly a week without wired Internet access when an ice storm took out cable service in my neighbourhood) makes the first warm day of April seem like it’s past time to get things done. We open the windows, break out the rakes and start cleaning, indoors and out. Cars are washed, windows wiped and carpets shampooed. Since I have the cleaning bug anyway, this is the perfect time to clean my PC –also, both “inside” and out. The result will be a computer that’s faster, cleaner, more energy efficient, less cluttered and a pleasure to use.

As you no doubt know, when it comes to trying to pack the performance needed to undertake serious video gaming in a laptop, it comes down to a very tricky balance between speed and portability. Try to shove too much power in a gaming laptop and for all intents and purposes, it ceases to be a portable PC —heavy, bulky and with little battery life. Go too far in the other direction, though, and you end up with something that’s svelte but unable to play games on anything but the lowest settings. I just spent some quality time with a gaming laptop that manages to strike the perfect balance: the Eurocom M3. It’s a compact, lightweight laptop with the power to chew through pixels and polygons while keeping frame rates high. Eurocom says the M3 is the most powerful 13-inch notebook ever made and everything I’ve seen supports that claim.

As good as your PC or laptop might be, you can make it even better with accessories. A wireless keyboard, a touch-enabled mouse or a set of powerful external speakers will improve your experience without having to upgrade the computer itself. And few companies can match Logitech when it comes to computer accessories —in quality, design or sheer selection of products. I recently had the opportunity to try out a trio of Logitech’s latest: the Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse, TK 820 Wireless Keyboard and Z600 Bluetooth speakers. Here’s what I thought of them.