Don’t worry; I won’t make you read all 101! The latest edition of Consumer Reports has a nice roundup of 101 tips ‘n’ trix from their writers and editors. These cover household items, money and finance, electronics and more. Here is a sampling from the electronics pile:

• Drop your phone or camera in the water? Don’t freak out and run out to buy a new one.  Try letting it dry. You can even put it in a Ziploc bag with some rice.
• Don’t turn off your printer. Standby mode really doesn’t use much power compared to restarting. Also, if your printer must recalibrate every time, that wastes ink.
• Just like the dumb commercial says, a full hard drive is a slow hard drive. There’s an actual mechanical process the PC uses to find your info, and it takes time. So, clean up your hard drive, get an external drive or store things on a Cloud.
• PC or Tablet? Never thought of it this way: PCs and laptops are good at CREATING content. Tablets are good for CONSUMING it.
• WiFi: Get a wireless hub for your house. You will save on your data plan in a big way. However, when you aren’t near a WiFi hub, your device will waste power searching for a signal, so turn it off when you are out.

That’s just a sample – there are only about 95 other tips at the original article! Next time we will sample a few more. Do you have any useful tips? Let us know!