James Coates

Editor's note: After a storied 40-year career at the Tribune, the last 14 years of which he spent demystifying and untangling the complexities of the computer age for readers, Jim...

Q. When I pose this question to the electronics store people, I get either a blank stare or a look that says, "What kind of an idiot are you?" I...

Q. I have two computers for our small business: a desktop (Gateway running XP) and a notebook (Toshiba running XP). I would like to network them. They are in the...

Did you ever wonder how almost overnight the whole universe of Web sites suddenly started blinking and burping with animations, flashing and flipping with banner advertisements, and filling every blank...

Q. I purchased a Logitech Webcam so I could video-call friends and family. I've had it for about a year and a half and have yet to get it to...

Q. I bought a Gateway laptop in December with a free Vista upgrade. I made sure the laptop was Vista-ready and have received the Vista pack. However, I have been...

The first few millions of us PC users have endured a few months inside the maw of the beast called Vista. During that time, some nasty downsides to Microsoft's Corp.'s...

Q. I have several flash drives and a couple memory card readers and want to change the automatic-play options that Windows XP offers when I plug them into a USB...

As Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was to Isaac Newton and Elisha Gray was to Alexander Graham Bell and Henri Poincare was to Albert Einstein, so am I to the guy at...

Q. I am sure I won't be the only one to point this out to you. Your reader, Debby Reilly, recently asked you about a problem with Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail...