Three more alerts you must set up
Avoid mobile-data charges
Unlike with your home-network broadband, when you access the internet via your phone you’re likely to be restricted by a mobile-data cap each month. Go over this limit and you can expect sky-high top-up charges (O2, for example, charges £10 for just 1GB).
Avoid this by setting up alerts that warn you as you approach your limit, letting you restrict your usage in the remaining days. Annoyingly, this option isn’t available for iphones. On Android, tap Settings, ‘Network and internet’ (or Connections on some phones), ‘Data usage’, then ‘Mobile data usage’. On this screen, tap the settings cog, then turn on ‘Set data warning’ and tap ‘Data warning’ below it to set when to receive the alert – on our 4GB data plan, we set the alert for
2GB (see screenshot).
Monitor your hard drive
If your hard drive suddenly fails, Windows won’t boot and restoring everything from backups will be a real hassle. Avoid this palaver by getting an early warning, then moving to a new drive before the old one fails. Crystaldiskinfo checks the status of your hard drive and alerts you when it changes from Good to Caution (at which point your drive could fail at any moment). Download the program from www.snipca.
com/34379 (select the Installer option under Standard Edition), then run it. Go to Function, Alert Features, then Mail Settings and enter your email address. You’ll also need your email provider’s mail settings (contact them if you’re not sure what these are). Finally, return to Function, Alert Features, then tick Alert Mail. For more information on how to set it up, refer to our Workshop in Issue 555, page 53.
Get new email notifications for Gmail on your PC
Gmail is incredibly convenient because it lets you access your inbox from any computer, but it’s easy to miss new emails because, unlike traditional email
clients like Outlook, you don’t receive PC notifications by default.
To fix this, log into your Gmail account, then click the cog icon (top right), followed by Settings. Scroll down the list of options until you reach ‘Desktop notifications’ and select either ‘New mail notifications on’ or, if you only want to see alerts for emails marked as important, ‘Important mail notifications on’. Next, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Change (if your browser asks you whether you want to receive notifications from Gmail, click Allow). As long as you have Gmail open in a browser window, alerts will appear in the bottom-right of your desktop when a new email arrives.