ItsGeekToMe.co

Geek Note:  This is going to be a rather unusual column. I don’t usually accept requests for specific businesses or products.  However, I believe this question merits exception to those rules.  If anyone local to the Fort Walton Beach, Florida area knows of, or is a business that can help, contact me either via my website, or e-mail at Geek@ItsGeekToMe.co (not .com!). Or, since you’re reading this on my website, simply comment below the article.  Note that these comments are public, so if you want to keep your comments private, please use one of the aforementioned methods.  – Geek

Q: I’m speech challenged so telephone calls are problematic.

Would you please forward me email addresses to several local businesses that may be interested in coming to my home and helping me?

I have a new gaming computer for my new hobby of flight simulator. The PC operating system is Windows 10. The primary monitor is a 44” HDTV. The secondary monitor is a 22” touch screen.

 The setup needs to recognize the secondary monitor as a touch screen. I also have a Toshiba Satellite 665 Windows 10 laptop and two Apple iPads. I need the laptop and iPads to be synchronized. (I don’t know if I should use an Emulator, iCloud, or iTunes.) I’m very frustrated with not being able to get setup working.

– James W.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A: This doesn’t sound like anything particularly exotic, James.  I presume you have all the driver disks that the hardware came with, or at least the user’s guides that tell where to go online to download them.  Hopefully, my publishing of your letter will generate some useful contacts for you.  I wonder if there’s a local computer club, teacher, or repair business that would care to “adopt” you for this, and perhaps future work?  I will be sure and forward any information to you as it comes in.

Meanwhile, the setup of your PC should be pretty straightforward, with the exception of one monitor being a touch-screen, and the other not.  Windows usually treats a touch-screen like it’s a mouse, and I can’t imagine how that will work if that mouse-ability only exists on one of your two monitors. But, Windows is pretty flexible in these cases, so who knows?  It may work like a charm.  Anyway, assuming you have all the disks and guides, I encourage you to consider taking a shot at performing the setup yourself.  A little success could be a great confidence builder, and if you can’t get it working you’re not really any worse off than you are right now.  I wish I could give you some better help, but all you basically told me is that it doesn’t work.  That doesn’t give me a starting point to give you any guidance.

Now, your Apple device question is a different matter altogether, and I can certainly answer your questions about that.  It comes down to this:  iTunes is an app, and iCloud is an online container where you can store stuff.  You can store your backed-up data either to your local PC, or your iCloud account, but you need to use the iTunes app to perform the synch.  If you’re not a regular user of iTunes, that may sound like I’m telling you to use a music player to synch your devices, but that’s the way Apple has chosen to implement the process of copying data to and from their hardware.  The synch ability (which includes e-mail, text messages, music, photos, apps and all their data, etc.) is built-into and controlled fully through iTunes.  To learn more, I recommend visiting Google, and searching “What is the Difference between iCloud and iTunes.”  Good luck!  I’ll be in touch.