This article also appeared in the December 2014 issue of Consumer Reports magazine. Q. I need to convert my VCR tapes to DVDs. Can you recommend a device to do that?—Liss Lieberman, Bay Shore, NY A.

I'm not the newbie but I'm asking this on behalf of some coworkers who heard the rumor that I'm the in-house computer geek-a-nerd know-it-all. The only thing I don't know is how to tell non-technical ...