Confused?

Three confusing situations: 

Avast! Free keeps telling you to pay

Changing your email password breaks email on your iPad

Gmail errors out on your phone or tablet

I can help. Read on.

 

You do not have to pay for Avast! Free antivirus. It’s free.

Avast! Free is a great antivirus program. It works well, offers some nice features (also for free), and nags you about critical updates to other software. But it has two annoying habits. Most annoying is Avast! Free’s relentless efforts to make us install and use the Google Chrome browser. Just say no.

The other annoyance is Avast! Free’s attempt to get us to upgrade to a paid version of the product. OK, I get that this is the free version and they have every right to keep asking us to pay for a more feature-rich version, but if you don’t actually want anything more than the free version, you have to be persistent.

When you register the product, you get a license that is good for a year. After a year you need to register again to stay with the free version (unless you want to pay for the upgraded version). The process can be a little confusing, so I have made a short tutorial on YouTube for you:

 

If you change your password for something somewhere, you also need to change it everywhere.

In a world where you can unlock your car by pressing a button but where you need a password to fire up your computer, life can be pretty frustrating.

In the last three weeks, I’ve had at least a dozen calls from people who changed their email password on their computer and then could not get email on their phones or tablets.

Here’s the thing: You’re not changing the password on your computer. You’re using your computer to change the password that’s kept in a secure area on your provider’s server.

You’re going to use that same user name/email address and password to access your email from every device. Once you change it online, you need to change the settings for your email apps on your phones and tablets, and if you’re using an email program on your computer, you have to change it there as well. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to get your email.

 

Even I was confused by this one.

One day I was helping a customer set up his Gmail account on his iPhone. I kept getting a ‘password incorrect’ error even though I was sure I’d entered everything correctly.

It turns out that Google considers some devices and apps to be ‘less secure’ because they don’t employ the same strict security standards as Google. Guess what these devices and apps are? Yes: iPhones and iPads, Microsoft Outlook, and some third-party email apps on smartphones. By default, these devices and apps are denied access, but you can easily grant permission.

• Sign in to your Google Account
• Click on My Account | Sign-in & security | Connected apps & Sites
• In the Allow less secure apps section, move the slider to On

Next time you sign in - with the correct password - your Gmail should work perfectly. 

See this article from Google for more information:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6009563?hl=en&ref_topic=2401957. 

 

 

What confuses you? Send me an email and not only will I feel your pain, I will share the answers in future columns.

Links

Stay with Avast! Free - Do Not Pay http://youtu.be/QKtaYiBIZl0 

'Password incorrect' error for Gmail https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6009563?hl=en&ref_topic=2401957 

Computer Care Kelowna http://computercarekelowna.com/

Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm

Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=20618

RSS Feed http://rlis.com/rlis.xml

 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.