Out-of-office reply out of order

Q: I am using Outlook on my PC and I created an out-of-office auto response for while I am on vacation. But when I shut down my PC and sent a test message to myself, I didn’t get the message. What am I doing wrong?

A: Outlook is a great email program, but many of the features really only work when connecting to an Exchange account such as the kind you might use in your office.

When connected to Exchange, the filters and rules you set in Outlook are configured on the server and will work whether you have the program running or not.

When using Outlook to connect to a personal email account, the rules and filters are configured on the computer and will not work unless it is running.

If you need to set up an out-of-office response, check the Web interface to see if there are options to do this in the Web console. Gmail offers this functionality, as do Yahoo and other email systems.

Q: My laptop computer display has multiple vertical lines of various colors running from the very top to the bottom of the screen. What is causing this and how can I fix it?

A: What you are seeing is almost certainly a hardware issue with your laptop. There’s either a problem with the built-in display hardware or the monitor itself is defective.

If the computer is still under warranty, contact the vendor right away.

If the computer is no longer covered by warranty you will need to find a computer repair tech to take a look and see about fixing it.

Unfortunately, this type of repair is not cheap. The screen on a laptop represents about half the value of the computer and tends to be the one repair I don’t recommend; that money would be better spent toward a new laptop.

You can, however, keep using the laptop with an external monitor if you are so inclined. I had a laptop like this once and I connected a monitor, mouse and keyboard and used it like a desktop.