August 28, 2020 • 49 mins
All listener questions! Listeners ask about the best routers, inexpensive Bluetooth earbuds, best headphones with a mic for kids, Google's Recorder App, how to take screenshots on a smartphone, best new phone for a teenager, if social media still looks bad on the Note20, fixing a laptop keyboard, one time use credit cards, a laptop for under $1,000, best cell phones for senior citizens, a good alternative to Microsoft Word 2011 and how to free up storage on an iPhone.Follow Rich!https://twitter.com/richontechBest Routershttps://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/improve-wifi-signal-at-home/Inexpensive Bluetooth earbudshttps://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/letsfit-smartwatch-earbuds-review/Best kids headphoneshttps://purosound.com/products/bt2200-volume-limited-kids-bluetooth-headphonesGoogle Recorder Apphttps://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/transcribe-audio-to-text-free-google-docs-microsoft-word-smartphone-zoom/Fixing laptop keyboardhttps://www.ubreakifix.com/One time use credit cardshttps://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/heres-how-a-virtual-credit-card-number-can-protect-your-real-card-when-you-shop-online/Cell phones for seniorshttps://www.thelightphone.com/https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone/alcatel-go-flip-3https://www.greatcall.com/phones/jitterbug-flip-cell-phone-for-seniorsFree up storage on iPhonehttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206504See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
What's going on. I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech,
the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about, and it's where I answer
the questions that you send me. Thanks so much for
listening to the podcast. This is a special edition. I'm
gonna do all your questions. I've gotten so many questions
(00:31):
it has become almost a full time job. And they're
coming in from everywhere too. This is the weird thing,
not just California, not just some of the stations that
I'm on across the US, but kind of like everywhere.
So it's been really interesting. It's been really fun through
the pandemic. I feel like I've gotten to know a
lot of you through Instagram and Facebook and all these
(00:52):
different places that you get your questions in. So I've
got a whole bunch of questions here that I've printed
out for my email, and I am going to do
my best to get through as many of them as possible,
and I'm going to be mixing in some other stuff
along the way. I want to talk first off about
five G because I've been using the Note twenty Ultra,
(01:16):
which if you listen to the last show, you know
it's a really good phone. In fact, I'm so tempted
to switch to that phone, but I'm not sure if
I can give up everything just yet with my iPhone
and especially the Apple Watch. Although there is a new
fitbit that's coming out that kind of rivals the Apple
Watch for me, So we will see. Maybe that will
be the winning combination. But the Note twenty Ultra is
(01:38):
a little bit big, especially because you have to have
a case on it. But anyway, so I have been
kind of checking out five G in different ways, and
I have a pretty good understanding at this point of
the five G offerings from T Mobile, also at and
T and to a lesser extent, Verizon, because I've yet
to step into a five G area with Verizon, because
(02:00):
I believe they are far and few between, few and
far between, far and few between whatever it is, so
T Mobile. The sim card that Samsung sent with the
review unit of the Galaxy Ultra was a T Mobile
sim and that was a five G SIM card five
G phone. And I'll be honest, I really am not
(02:23):
impressed with the five G that I saw on the
T Mobile network. Now I'm not saying it's not going
to be good in the future. But it's one of
these things where I really wanted to believe in it
and love it and couldn't wait to try it because
you see all these ads and all these things that
they've been saying about how they are building like the
first true five G network everywhere, and they switched the
(02:43):
switch and it was everywhere all at once, really cool.
And you have a five G signal on the phone.
The little indicator looks awesome, but when you'd go to
use it, there were so many times when I couldn't
even get a good signal. It was super slow. It
was worse than LTE. I would switch back to LTE.
So I don't think it's there just yet. And it's
fine if you have a five G phone and you
(03:04):
got five G, but I guess my thesis here is
that you don't necessarily need to switch to five G
to right now now. On the flip side, AT and
T another phone I have was a AT and T
simcard that they sent to test out the five G there,
and I will say very impressed with the five G
(03:25):
on AT and T. It has a signal and a
lot of places, not as many as the T mobile,
but the signal when it was there worked a lot better.
And I'm talking great speeds like one hundred plus in
a lot of places. So this is just my observations.
It's casual. There's nothing specific or scientific about this. I'm
(03:46):
just telling you my casual observations. Now, I am considering
a switch to AT and T because of this. If
I do get a five G phone, I think that
AT and T would be the network to be on
right now. Verizon, which is my personal carrier, they don't
have five G. But the thing about Verizon is that
they're so solid just everywhere that it's just like one
(04:09):
of these things, where do you need five G? I mean,
how many things are you really doing on your phone
where you need a signal faster than you get with
your current provider. I'm not sure. Now. For me personally,
as a content creator, journalist, someone who's uploading to Instagram
and Facebook and videos and all that good stuff, it
would help me to have something that's really fast all
(04:31):
the time. And so for that reason, I think the
AT and T network would be awesome. Verizon apparently is
just stupid fast when you have a signal, but there's
not many places you have a signal, so Anyway, I
just figured i'd give you a little update on the
whole five G situation from my personal standpoint, and I'm
excited for it, and personally, it's funny because I love
(04:52):
T Mobile as a company. I think I've said this before.
I love them as a company just the way that
they don't really mess with you is very straightforward, and
so that's what I like about them. But I just
feel like the signal sometimes lags the advertising that you see.
But I'm also one of those people where when I
like a product, I'm willing to stick with it and
(05:13):
kind of stick to it. So I don't know. Anyway,
let's get to the first question. This comes from Christine Turner.
She writes, I need to buy a new router and
really need a quiet one, quiet one along with it
being strong. There are so many to choose from and
it's driving me crazy, so I thought i'd ask the expert. Also,
(05:37):
what brand was the twenty seven dollars earbuds on Amazon
that you tried out? The Samsung ones don't fit me
and they drop out. Thanks so much, Christine. Well, the
Wi Fi signal, I'm not sure what you mean by
a quiet one. I don't know of a loud router,
but the routers the I have a lot of experience
with these Wi Fi routers because I've recently upgraded my
(05:57):
internet at home and so I've been getting the new
euro devices that can handle the higher speeds. So I've
got now three of them in my house, and my
speeds are okay. I wouldn't say it's amazing. I'm getting
a thousand down at the at the at the origination point,
I guess the source, you can say, and then when
I get it into the other areas, I'm getting about
(06:20):
three hundred, maybe three point fifty on a good day,
and sometimes less than that. So I still feel like
I can do some more work to get this signal better,
but it's still pretty good. I mean, I'm very happy
with it. So the routers i'd recommend are anything with
a mesh network, which is pretty much all the routers
at this point. But the brands that I like and
(06:42):
the brands that I know are Euro, which I feel
like is kind of like the gold standard. Then you
also have Google, Nest Wi Fi, which you know, I
think works pretty well as well and a lot of
people like it, and then neckgar Orby I have not
tested that personally, but I do believe that they do
a good job because I get a lot of reviews
from people saying they love it. As for the earbuds,
(07:03):
so this was something called Let's Fit, and this was
a story we did on ktla a couple months ago,
and this company reached out to me Let's Fit, and
they said, hey, do you want to try these earbuds
that are dirt cheap. They're only I think it was
twenty eight dollars. They're called the Let's Fit T thirteen,
and I'm telling you, this was the most popular story
(07:25):
I've I think ever done on ktla. And these are
now twenty one dollars on Amazon. They have four and
thirty six reviews. I got a ton of emails from
people that purchase these and said they love them. And
I've done sound tests of these devices and I will
say they sound better than a majority of the more
expensive earbuds. And they're only twenty one dollars. They don't
(07:49):
sound better than the AirPods, but they do sound really
really good for the price. I mean, for twenty one dollars,
you can't go wrong. So again, those are the Let's
Fit T thirteen earbuds on Amazon. Fantastic little device for
that price. All right, let's move on. Oh you know what,
let me tell a story real quick. This was kind
(08:11):
of crazy, So I just mentioned that I ordered the
Euro so I've been these things. The Eros are kind
of tough to get. I used to have the old Euros,
which were just the Euro, not the pro and the beacons.
And so when I got the new Internet, I realized
you needed the faster eros, which are called the euro Pros,
which have the tryband. It's a whole bunch of stuff
that you don't necessarily need to know. Well, unless you
(08:32):
have really high speed Internet then you should know. But
the Eros are like sold out everywhere, so I've been
tracking them. You just can't go on Amazon and buy them.
So I had to buy it from a third party retailer,
you know, another big name which I won't mention, but
you know it rhymes with let's see nest guy, That's
(08:55):
what it rhymes with. And I get this package in
the mail after a week and I open it up
and the first thing I realized there's no shrink wrap
on my Euro box. I'm like, that's weird, because the
last one I ordered from the same exact place, by
the way, had shrink wrap on it, and so I go,
all right, well, I don't know, maybe they for eco
friendly reasons, they don't shrink wrap them anymore. Well, next thing,
you know, I open it up and I'm like, that's weird.
(09:16):
The cord is kind of like mushed and smushed, and
you know how you ever, you know how you take
a cord apart and you have to put it back together.
You never get it exactly right. Then the court also
had some scotch tape on it. I was like, that's
definitely not how euro packages their boxes. Then I look
at the Ethernet cable and it's also repackaged, and also,
by the way, there was a hair stuck in the tape.
(09:39):
I'm like, this is okay, this is clearly an open
box that they sent me. I ordered a new one. Ah,
this is kind of annoying. So I call the company.
Of course, it took a half an hour to get
someone on the phone, and they say, allay, well we'll
send you a new one. No real apology, just oh,
we'll send you a new one. And I have to
send back this one. And I said, well, that's kind
of a pain. I mean, I'm fine keeping this because
(10:01):
this is clearly an open box. I'm sure it works fine,
you know. Can you just give me a credit for
my trouble and I'll just keep this one. You don't
have to spend the money to send me a new one.
I don't have to spend the money to send back
the old one. And they said, all right, hold on.
After about ten minutes on hold, they finally come back
with their offer and they say, all right, we'll give
you a twenty dollars credit. Twenty bucks on a two
hundred dollars device. I was thinking more like forty or fifty.
(10:24):
The whole reason I didn't buy it on eBay is
because I didn't want a new one, and on eBay
I could have saved fifty dollars if I would have
ordered it used. So this whole thing is going on,
but you know, I just wanted to make things a
little bit easier, so I decided to keep it. And
now I've got the device and it's it's working just fine.
All right. Now that you know that story, let's move
(10:45):
on to a question from Franci. Francie says, Hey, Rich,
I need your expertise, advice. You have two handsome kids. Well,
thank you. I have two beautiful girls, nine and seven,
and now with homeschool, I'm having problems finding the best
headphones that are safe kids hearing. My daughters don't like
the earbuds they prefer over the ear headphones, but they
also need a microphone to talk with the teacher, and
(11:07):
one that's comfortable five hours in class, also safe on
the volume, no super loud to protect their hearing. The
best ones are super expensive. We've already spent money on
two computers. Now we need headphones. This homeschool situation is hard,
but better to be safe than sorry with this virus.
Hopefully you can help me, so I will tell you
what I think are really good headphones. And I can't
(11:30):
take I can't take the credit for this because we
interviewed a person named Lauren Dragon over at the Wirecutter,
which is a great reviews website, and when I talk
to her about the best headphones, she said, these are
the best, and the best are pure O p R
specifically the BT twenty two hundreds or I guess two
(11:54):
twenty two hundred s and these are ninety dollars. But
what I would recommend is that you want to make
sure that you look for some sort of discount and
right now maybe they're not offering them. But I've noticed
if you kind of watch the website, and this is
true of a lot of websites, just kind of oh wow,
look at this. See that my little Honey extension Honey
(12:17):
fifteen fifteen percent discount exclusive from Honey. So again, have
one of these things. I really like this Honey. I
wouldn't say I really like it, but it's definitely gotten
me some discounts. But what's the website for that? Is
it get Honey dot com? Uh yeah, get Honey dot
com or Join Honey there it is join Honey dot
(12:37):
com and that's a browser extension that looks for coupon
codes automatically. But anyway, they have a fifteen percent. But
Puro I think is the best because exactly what you're saying, Francy.
They hit all the marks. They have volume limiting, which
is really good, they go over your ears, and they
also have a microphone, and they're super comfortable and they
last forever. So these are the headphones myke have after
(13:01):
Lauren recommended them, and Lauren tests headphones for a living.
So when she said that these are the best. I
took her word for it, and we've been using them
ever since and they are fantastic. My kids love them.
They've had them for I think two years now, and
believe me, they're not taking care of them like you know,
sitting there putting them back in their cases and stuff.
They're just using them all over the place and we've
had no problems and they work great. They also work
(13:23):
Bluetooth or wired, which I really like as well. So
again look up. The website is Purosound purosound dot com.
And I just mentioned the BT twenty two s, but
there are a twenty two hundred s, but there are
a whole bunch of different headphones. They have them for
adults and kids. But that is going to be I
think the best case scenario, all right, Mary says, hey, Rich,
(13:51):
I watch you regularly. I saw the info on the
Google Pixel recorder on KTLA this morning. I have a
Pixel one and I went to the Place store to
find it. However it's not listed. Hmm. The website shows
a similar icon, but it's not from Google like yours.
I found the voice recorder smart Moby Tools. I'm unable
(14:12):
to locate the exact recorder in my Google Pixel Play store.
Is there anything I can do to locate the app
that you mentioned? So I did a little digging on
this one, and it turns out that the recorder app
is only compatible with Pixel two and up. So Mary,
you are out of luck on this one. And this
(14:32):
is another thing that happens very often when I talk
about things on TV and I notice this on my
Facebook page, I notice it on Twitter, I notice it
on email. People for some reason think that they know
what I'm talking about and just google things, and next
thing you know, they're emailing me saying, Rich, I bought
this and it's you. You were wrong, this is not
(14:53):
or this is cheaper than what you said or what
you got it. This is why I do the blog
post on ktla dot com and on my website. I
make sure that I give you the direct links to
the things I'm talking about. If you just go on
Google Play and Google recorder app, what do you think
is gonna happen. You're gonna find some random app, not
the exact what I'm recommending. And this was part of
(15:14):
a story I did on KTLA about transcription apps, and
I did some really good recommendations and I'll just go
through them really quickly. Number one was Google Docs. You
can do voice typing in Google Docs. Number two is
Office three sixty five. They launched a new transcribe feature
where you can upload audio and it will transcribe it,
(15:37):
or you can just tap dictate and it will do
something similar. The Google Recorder app is only available for
the Google Pixel, but I'll be honest, I was able
to install it on my Samsung As or the Samsung
and testing, I should say, with an APK that I
got from Xda, say that ten times fast. Now, I
don't recommend you install APKs unless you know what you're doing,
(15:59):
because there could be some security issues. I trust XDA
and I did install it and it works fine on
the Samsung. Doesn't work on every phone, and i'd recommend
this to Mary, but I'm not sure that I want
to be recommending people downloading and installing APKs because you
have to allow your phone to install things outside Google Play,
(16:21):
and unless you're a total nerd and not what you're doing,
that could be a bad thing. So anyway, that's the
Google Recorder app. If you do want something similar that
works on all androids and iPhones, I recommend an app
called Otter Ai and you get six hundred minutes of
free transcription each month, and then finally Descript. This is
(16:41):
the one that's great for Zoom calls because Otter works
with Zoom as well. But Descript lets you upload a
recorded Zoom call and they will transcribe it. Unfortunately, that
one's only good for three hours a month. After that
it's twelve dollars a month. So to answer your question, Mary,
the pixel the recorder thing from Google is amazing. I've
been using that the most because it's so easy. In fact,
(17:03):
I use it to transcribe almost all of the virtual
meetings that I've had in interviews because I just love
having the transcript and it's unlimited, it's as long as
you want, and it kind of works. So Mary, if
you're not open to upgrading your phone, then you're probably
gonna have to do Otter for now. But good question,
and yeah it happens. Not every app is compatible with
(17:26):
every Android phone, and that you know, when I do
my stories, I do think about this stuff. I do
try to make sure that I find stuff that works
with a lot of different phones and platforms and cross
platforms especially. You know, I could do only iPhone apps
all the time, but then people email me like, rich,
what about Android. I'm like, I know a lot of
apps come out on Android first, all right, sorry, on
(17:48):
iPhone first, and then they come to Android, and so
that's you know, the problem there. So I always try
to think about, okay, is this app available on both?
That's really what I'm trying to do, all right. Next
question coming from oh classy lady, classy lady. A classy
(18:10):
lady on AOL says, how do you screenshot on a
Galaxy X pro cover? How do you screenshot on a
Galaxy x Pro cover? So what I've discovered is screenshotting
is pretty much usually the same across Android. It's usually
the down especially on the Samsung. It's the volume down
along with the power button, and you hold that down
(18:32):
for about a second and then you release. You'll see
your screen turn white with a flash, and then it
will take the screenshot. On the iPhone, it's the opposite.
It is the volume up and the power button at
the same time. Or I guess I should say side
button on the new phones, so power button as well
as the up button on the iPhone that will take
(18:53):
the screenshot. So those are the two ways to take
the screenshots. There are also other ways on some of
the phones. On the Samsung or what was it not
was it the Samsung, you can do like these gesture controls.
You can also do the little s pen if you
have one of the notes, you can also do I
think on the samsungs you can wave your like the
(19:13):
side of your hand over the phone slowly and that
will take a screenshot if you have that enabled. Those
are some of the different ways. And then what's the
other one I saw the other day on the one plus,
I think they had if you place three fingers on
the screen and swipe to the right, it'll take a screenshot.
So lots of options for screenshots. Just remember with iPhone
(19:35):
it's usually the volume up plus the side button, and
on Android it's volume down plus the side button. There
all right, Jennifer writes in and says, hey, Rich, my
son is oh thoughts on iPhone eleven versus iPhone eleven Pro.
(19:59):
My son is looking into getting a new phone. Unfortunately
his camera stopped working in his Samsung seven Edge. He
has obviously had this phone for four years and well
he needs a camera for his school stuff. So your
thoughts I'm a single mom of two, and if I'm
going to invest in this phone he is looking at,
I'd like to know if it's worth the buy. I
appreciate your feedback. And again the subject was thoughts on
(20:22):
iPhone eleven versus iPhone eleven Pro. Well, I think that
he probably how old is he? Did he say? Did
he say how old he is? I'm a single mom.
I don't know, doesn't say how old he is, but
uh oh, sixteen, so he's sixteen. I would probably recommend
(20:43):
just the iPhone eleven. I mean, why does he need
the Pro? The Pro is going to give you a
better looking screen, it's going to give you slightly better
battery life, and it's also going to give you a
better camera because it's got the zoom the telephoto lens. Now,
you can still zoom in on an iPhone eleven, it's
just not gonna be as clear as the the Pro.
And you can do everything you can do on the
(21:04):
Pro on the iPhone eleven. So for that reason, I
think that the iPhone eleven is the way to go.
I mean, why would you not. Now I'm gonna throw
something out there. I don't know if your sixteen year
old's gonna be happy with this because he's got the
Samsung seven Edge. I'm not sure just how big that
screen is, so he may not want to take a
step back in screen size. But you also have the
(21:24):
iPhone se which has a smaller format, a smaller screen,
no face ID, the camera's still great. And that's only
three hundred ninety nine dollars if you go with the
Samsung seven Edge, even if you trade that in, I
don't think you're gonna get very much for that. So
let's just see if you go for the iPhone eleven,
(21:46):
Let's see how much that's gonna cost you. You've got
purchase options. Let's just go with white sixty four gigs
with kids. I mean they use a lot of pictures
and videos. I'd probably spend the extra fifty dollars and
get the one hundred and twenty eight gig model. I mean,
you're literally doubling your memory for fifty extra dollars. You're
already spending six ninety nine, so spend seven forty nine
(22:08):
get double the memory. And now let's say we've got
a trade in, yes, and let's select our model, which
is a Samsung Galaxy S seven. Ah they're not even
doing the S seven anymore. Rope rope. All right, Well
that's unfortunate. So you're not gonna get anything for the
(22:28):
S seven unfortunately. Now you can go to another website.
You can always sell things on eBay. But let's see
if you can get anything on gazelle dot com for
the S seven. If you're looking for a used device,
by the way, you can sell your device here. So
sell Samsung. It's a good sign that the S seven
looks like it's the phone they have on there. So
(22:49):
let's just say it is a factory unlocked and it
is the S seven. Let's scroll all the way down
S seven edge. Let's see how much they're giving you
for it, and let's say it's in good condition. Sixty
nine dollars. So there you go, sixty nine bucks. You
I just saved you sixty nine dollars. So sell the
(23:12):
phone on Gazelle, or if you're really good, put it
on eBay. I always say eBay, you're gonna get a
little bit more, but you're gonna have to You're gonna
have to do more. So eBay is a lot more work,
but you're going to get a higher return on your product.
Versus Gazelle. Super easy. You drop it in the mail
in two minutes and boom you get your sixty nine dollars.
But it's going to be less than you'd normally get
(23:34):
because you're not doing as much work. There's another website
called Swapa. I don't think that they would be taking
the S seven Edge though, because that seems like kind
of an older phone. So I'm just not sure you
might be able to sell it there. But I think
that Gazelle is gonna be your best bets. But I
would go with the iPhone eleven or the iPhone S
(23:56):
for him. All right, Maraud says, did you ever find
a fix for the Samsung Galaxy Note twenty ultra issues
with social media? I think you said you were gonna
try her of Verizon sim and see if the issues
(24:17):
were network related. What happened? Good question. This was related
to the review of the s twenty Ultra. I said,
my biggest problem with it is that social media looks
like garbage on it, and it's still kind of happening.
So I did try the Sorry when I had the problems,
I was on T Mobile and I realized that T
(24:39):
Mobile generally throttles video to four eighty P, which I
don't like. I want full HD. Well, even on the
best carriers now they're still doing just seven to twenty P.
So I did try. Basically everything looked all garbily so
all the like Instagram stories, they just look garbly like pixelated,
(25:02):
and a lot of the videos I'd look at on
whether it was Facebook or even Instagram, they just looked bad.
I just wasn't used to it. On iPhone, social media
videos look fantastic. They look just as crystal clear as
the camera that took them, but for some reason, when
you upload them through Android and view them through Android,
they look horrendous. And so I did find that with
(25:23):
Tea Mobile a lot across the board. When I tried
it with AT and T. It's still happening, just not
as much. I think it's looking better, but I think
that the problem is iPhone just looks really good with
social media and the rest just can't touch it. And
that's mainly because I've talked about this before. The thing is,
(25:44):
all of the phones are optimized for social media. On
the iPhone. All these developers do is concentrate on the
iPhone and they're sitting there and if you've noticed you're
getting updates for your apps all the time on iPhone.
It happens on Android, but just not as much. And
I think that's because this prevalence we have of the
iPhone in the US, at least, it's very iPhone centric,
(26:07):
and so these developers make a lot of money on
the iPhone. They want to service their iPhone audience first. Now,
when you're talking a big app like Instagram, why does
it act like garbage on the Android. I don't know,
it shouldn't. I know. For a long time, Facebook was
so iPhone centric that they didn't even think about Android,
(26:27):
and it was a problem. And now I'm seeing more
of the apps and more of the features come to
Android and iPhone around the same time. But still there
is a major discrepancy between these two platforms. And if
you have an Android, it's kind of frustrating because I
get why it happens. It happens because there are a
(26:49):
million and one Androids out there, and if I have
an app and I'm an app developer, I can't sit
there and optimize my app for million and one phones.
So what you end up doing is you do basics
that work on a variety of Androids, but it doesn't
work very good. And the best way to illustrate this
is case in point Note twenty ultra. If I create
(27:09):
a story on the Note twenty Ultra and then I
look at that Instagram story on the iPhone, it looks
like garbage. Whether it's a video that I uploaded or
the placement of the text, everything's blown up, blown out,
things are cut off. It's very frustrating. If you only
have an Android phone, you don't really know that because
you're not looking at different phones like I am all
the time to see the differences. I don't think it's
(27:30):
a deal breaker for the Note twenty Ultra because it's
still such a great phone. I just wish that social
media was a little little bit better. All right, let's
see Pamela says Hi Rich, I hope you and your
family are doing well. We are, thank you. Here's my problem.
(27:53):
I have Lenovo Flex five with some keys not working.
This has been a problem off and on for about
two years. But now since I can't get all of
the keys to work at all, I want to replace
the keyboard myself. I have tried looking up self help
on doing this, and it looks very difficult. It looks
as if I would have to remove almost everything inside
(28:13):
the computer before getting to the keyboard. What do you think,
do I have to remove everything before getting to the keyboard?
Is this something I should attempt? Any suggestions do not
do this yourself, Pamela, I would not attempt. If you're
talking about going underneath the entire laptop and unscrewing the
(28:34):
bottom four screws and taking out the motherboard and then
getting to the keyboard, I would not recommend doing that
for the mere mortal not something that you should be
doing yourself. With that said, you know, if you've watched
these little videos and you've seen them and you have
you have some hesitation because you're emailing me so clearly
(28:55):
you're thinking, I don't know if this is a good idea.
So that tells me that you have not done this before,
and you probably don't want to attempt it on your
laptop that you rely on. I have done this with
several laptops, but mostly back in the day when laptops
were much more forgiving to upgrades, and the main things
(29:15):
that I upgraded were the memory and also the hard drives,
back when you could do that very easily. Today's computers
just not so easy. Now, when it comes to the keyboard,
there are two things you might be able to do.
You might be able to pop off some keys with
a little tool and find some replacement keys on eBay
(29:36):
or from you know, just look them up on Amazon
and pop those keys back on and they might work.
In fact, the problem might be just little crud underneath
the keys. So I would maybe try popping off one
of the keys that's not working and put a new
one on, Or just maybe use some canned air on
the keyboard and see if maybe blowing some canned air
(29:56):
underneath these keys might work. Just be careful because you
don't want to make this thing worse than it already is.
At the end of the day, I think, if you
want to get use out of this laptop, let's say
Flex five. Oh, this is a chromebook. Let's see is it?
Is it a chromebook? I don't know. It's a two
in one laptop and it's no longer available. So I
(30:18):
would say, if you still want to get some use
out of this thing, it's probably fine if it's only
two years old, but I would bring it somewhere like
a you break, I fix one of these National places
you can go to like Best Buy, geek Squad. They're
probably going to charge you more. But I would go
to one of these little local fix it places, and
if you need to find one in your area, I
would check you break I fix first and see if
(30:41):
that works. If not, I would just check Yelp and
look for a highly rated computer repair facility near you.
I've done computer repairs to these places nearby and they're great.
It's a little inconvenient. You got to bring your computer there.
There's always a chance they could wipe your hard drives.
You want to make sure you have everything backed up.
But at the end of the day, you know a
couple hundred bucks, you're gonna be using your computer, and
(31:04):
it's more of the process. That's kind of a lengthy process,
And yes, you have to bring your computer there and
wait and this and that, But at the end of
the day, you're gonna enjoy having your computer fixed by someone.
I always say it's better to have this done by
someone who does it on a daily basis. Why do
you want to attempt to do something for the very
first time on a gadget that you rely on when
(31:26):
there is someone out there doing this every single day.
They know exactly what they're doing, they have the expertise,
and yes, it's gonna cost you money, but at the
end of the day, then you don't have to worry
about breaking this thing. And then it's on you and
you're gonna be even more frustrated if you short circuit it,
or if you mess something up, or if you get
it all done, which is great, and then you can't
(31:47):
get the back back on or something like that. So
find a fix it place, get it done, and move
on with life. That's what I would recommend. Okay, hey,
let's move on to or Mo's or Mo's or Mo's
writes in one time credit card question. Hey Rich, thanks
(32:09):
for your awesome podcast. Oh great, I butchered your name
and you actually listen to the podcast. I'm sorry, uh
h o r Moz or Moz. I remember that you
mentioned once about a one time credit card number website
slash app that is generated from my original credit card.
Can I know the name of that app slash website? Thanks? Yes,
the website is called privacy dot com. Privacy dot com
(32:32):
and what privacy dot com does is you sign up
and you log in and next thing you know, you
can use your Oh I just okay, hold on, I'm
trying to log in here, so so I can actually
tell you because I've been using this website since I
did the story. I did the website. I signed up
on the website and it's great. So I have a
(32:54):
whole bunch of cards for different things that I'm getting
charged for. And what you do is you sign up
with your I believe it's your bank account, maybe your
debit card as well, so you might be able to
use your debit card. But again, once you sign up,
you cannot use your credit card. So yeah, funding okay, yeah,
(33:14):
my debit card. So you can use your debit card
or your bank account. And so I went with my
debit card, which is linked to my bank account. But
you sign up with that and then when you want
to charge something, you generate a card number, and this
card number can be good for one time use or
it can be good for recurring use, but it will
only authorize for an amount you want. So, for instance,
(33:37):
I've got my Serious XM card and that will only
authorize for ten dollars a month. So if Serious XMS
decides to get sneaky and tries to charge me for
a full year in advance. Once my little promotion is
up and they try to charge me two hundred dollars,
this card is just going to deny that transaction. So
it puts a lot of control in the consumer's hands,
(34:00):
and I love it. It's been great. I've been using it
for a lot of these random transactions that either it's
a website that I don't normally do business with, like
I ordered some outdoor stuff from this one website I
never used before. I didn't want them to have my
debit card number, so I just generated a one time
card number. They did the transaction. That's it. That card
has expired. They can they can't do anything else with it.
If someone finds that that card number or their website
(34:23):
is breached, they can't use it. So the website is
privacy dot com. They make money by getting a little
tiny percentage of the transaction. So if you charge one
hundred bucks, Privacy might make a dollar off of that.
I don't know how much the amount is, but that's
how they make money. So it doesn't cost anything. You
get a certain amount of cards each month, and if
you want more than that, then you have to pay.
(34:45):
I have not hit that at all. So there's also
a cash back. Let's see, when you make a purchase
using a private don't know, there's a cashback system as well,
so you can make one percent back. But that's the website.
I really like it. It helps me. If you've listened to
the podcast many times, you know that I like to
use my debit card over my credit card, and a
(35:07):
lot of times on these random websites. I don't want
to use my debit card because I don't want that
number to get stolen or hacked or taken or whatever,
because it's a headache to get a new one and
it's my money. So I'd rather use something like privacy
where yet it's still coming out of my debit card.
But if something ever happens to that website, I don't
have to worry about it because that card is not
really going to work again. So there you go, Privacy
(35:29):
dot com. Don Williams Rights, Hey Rich, I'm an instructional
aid for a special need special needs kids and school
starts on Monday. Well, Don, I have a lot of
respect for you for doing that. Thank you. I know
that takes a lot of patience and good heart, so
(35:49):
thank you for doing that. My laptop is dying and
I'm looking for a good quality laptop for work and
social media. I'm trying to stay under one thousand dollars.
Do you have any suggestions. I will also use it
for personal stuff like social media, music, etc. Thank you
for your time and help. Don Don. I would say,
if you're looking for a laptop under one thousand dollars,
(36:11):
I would go with a MacBook Air. And the reason
I would say MacBook I know rich you only care
about Apple stuff. Oh Apple, Apple, Apple, Well, let me
give you my reasoning. I have purchased Apple laptops for
a couple of years now, and I'll just tell you
they are I call them the workhorse. They just work.
They work and work and work and work and work
(36:33):
and work. There's no fuss, you don't have to think
about them. There's not a whole bunch of pop ups
happening all the time. There's not a whole bunch of
software you're always downloading and uploading. And every time I
turn on a Windows computer there's some sort of major
software update on my Mac. Yeah, there's a couple of
software updates here and there, but it's not that big
of a deal, and it just runs smooth. You don't
(36:53):
have to think about a lot of stuff when you
have a Mac And for that reason, I think if
you want a headache free experience and you're willing to
spend one thousand dollars, if you said you were spending
you want to spend less than fine, I would have
recommended some sort of budget Windows laptop, but you're looking
to spend a thousand bucks. The MacBook Air is eight
ninety nine in the Education Store on Apple, and you
(37:15):
get free air pods at this point. So I I
that to me, that sounds like an amazing deal. And
I've had MacBook Airs. I've had them, I've edited video
on them. I used them for my first couple of
years at KTLA and they're great. Now over the years,
I've upgraded higher and hire to now a MacBook Pro sixteen.
I used to have a thirteen. But again, all these
(37:36):
laptops have been fantastic. And the best thing about Apple
laptop versus a Windows laptop when you are done with it,
after you know it could be four or five years,
it could be six, could be seven. You can use
these things for a really long time, and when you're
done with it, you can still use it by giving
it to a friend or a family member because it's
(37:56):
still going to work. And yes it's gonna get a
little bit slower over the U, but not like a
Windows laptop. I'm not bashing Windows stuff, but I'm just saying,
since Dawn, you want to spend one thousand dollars, get
something that's really good and get something that's really going
to work for the long haul. So that's what I
would recommend. And thank you again for being a fantastic teacher.
(38:18):
Our kiddos need it and you're doing a great job there,
Lisa Nole says on my Facebook page. Hey, Rich I
really enjoy your on tech reports. I've been searching for
the name of a cell phone that you had on
your show. I believe last year. It was mainly for
senior citizens and it makes calls no Internet. Do you
recall the name of the phone. My mother is in
(38:39):
need of a new phone. She's in a senior facility
and needs a simple to use phone. She's not allowed
any visitors at this time on I'm unable to teach
her how to use a new phone in person. Thank
you for your time and help have a great day. Well.
The phone that I mentioned, I believe it was two
of them, and one of was the light Phone. And
(39:03):
this is a phone that just does phone calls. That's it.
It's a very simple phone. You can what the cool
thing is, you can actually link it to your Verizon account.
And it's just a phone. You can't do anything with it.
And now that I think about it, I should use
this this weekend so I can just disconnect from the grid.
But the light phone is a little phone. All it
(39:23):
does is make phone calls. It's got an e ink screen,
the battery last forever, and that's it. You can do
text on there as well, but that's it. It's a
light phone. It's a simple phone. And how much is
it Let's see how much is that phone? Wow? Three
hundred dollars, So it's kind of expensive for what you
get that. That's kind of an expensive phone. It's unlocked,
but you do put a SIM card in there. I
(39:45):
think the other phone that I mentioned was a T
Mobile flip phone and it was from Alcatel and I
think let's see, was it the Flip three And this
was a really good little phone. Two. Yeah, go Flip
three from Alcatel on T Mobile and it's four bucks
(40:05):
a month. The full price is one hundred dollars. And
this is a flip phone. It's simple. Yes, it has
a camera, but it's got nice This is so funny.
The website does not show it when it's open. I mean,
that's kind of U T mobile. Come on, you gotta
show the buttons and the screen. They don't show it.
That's so weird. But if you google it, I'm sure
you can find it. But the cool thing about this
(40:27):
phone is that it also has Google Assistant built in,
which is really interesting. So if you want, you can
ask Google questions, which you know, maybe your mom would
get a kick out of. But this phone is also
pretty simple because it's just a tiny screen, a little
screen and big keys. And I think that that's probably
a better way to go. That is a hundred bucks.
The other thing I would check out is go look
(40:48):
at the website called Jitterbug, and Jitterbug makes all of
the phones for seniors. They have nice, easy, big, big
button phones like the Jitterbug Flip, which is a hundred
dollars and there's really nothing to it. It's just a
phone to make calls. So those are the three places
that I would look I think the light phone is
(41:08):
probably too expensive, although it's nice because you it's unlocked,
which means you don't have to have a plan with it.
The jitterbug, you're going to talk, you got to get
a plan for that. So the Jitterbug is one hundred dollars.
But let's see how much a plan is minimum two
hundred and fifty minutes fifteen dollars a month. Then you
got to do your texts. So if you want to
(41:30):
do text which I don't think Grandma is going to
be doing or Mom's going to be doing, So you're
talking fifteen dollars a month for only two hundred and
fifty minutes. So if you want twenty five hundred minutes,
you're thirty dollars a month and then unlimited as forty.
So I personally like the idea of the a cheaper phone. Anyway,
you got to decide what you want to do. But
that's those are the phones that i'd recommend with your mom,
(41:52):
and I think they'll all be simple enough for her
to use. All right. Next question comes from Sandra. I
really enjoy your segments on KTLA. Thank you, oh your
podcasts and your newsletters. If you haven't signed up for
my newsletter go to Rich on tech dot TV. I
usually send it out every other week, and it's kind
(42:13):
of like this podcast. It's all the stuff I think
you should know. The information that you share is always
timely and useful. Now to my question, I'm on a
twenty fifteen MacBook Pro with Mojave operating system. I have
not upgraded to Catalina because I don't want to lose
Microsoft Word. I no longer have access to Word because
I am retired. The Word program is the twenty eleven
version I only do. I only use Word to do
(42:36):
word processing. I don't want to pay a monthly fee
to get it. Should I be using the latest operating system?
Is there another word processing program that I should be using?
Would my files and documents be accessible in another word
processing program? I hope you can help me, Sandy. Sandy,
I think you should be running the latest Mac operating system.
(42:57):
Why not? Your computer's still relatively new. I think it'll
handle Catalina. You don't need it, but for security reasons,
it's always a good idea to run the latest. When
it comes to Word, you might lose your compatibility. That's true.
I don't know, because i'd have to upgrade on your
system and see what happens. But I don't think you
need Word anymore. Number One, you're using a program from
(43:18):
nine years ago. A lot has changed in nine years.
You can go to Google Docs and use it absolutely free,
and you're gonna get all of the modern conveniences that
you may not even have in the Microsoft Word program
that you have there. So I would recommend just firing
up your computer and going to Google Docs, which is
(43:40):
let's see docs dot Google dot com, and as long
as you have a Google account, you can use that
totally free. I've been using it for I believe ten
years now, and I've had zero problems with Google Docs.
In fact, it just keeps getting better and better. And
I was one of those old holdouts. I thought, oh,
there's no way that Google could do something as good
(44:03):
as Microsoft, because that's a paid, expensive program. But they
kind of do and it works. Will your files and
documents be accessible, Yes, they will. You can upload them
into Google Drive and they will convert over to the
Google Docs and it'll be great. It'll be great, and
it'll be totally free. Good good question there. All right,
(44:24):
we're almost to the end of the show here, so
let's see here, what do I want to answer? I'll
do one more question, and let's do this one, because
this one is a question that a lot of wrong.
That was the that's the touchstones. When I get phone
calls back on the show, we'll use that. But no,
this is what it is. It's typing, because you guys
are typing your questions to me. Alyssa says big fan. Here,
(44:46):
quick question. Can you point me to the right direction
for how to create more storage for myself as an
older iPhone seven s? Can you any tips you can
help provide? It would be awesome. I trust you, Lissa.
I think the number one thing you need to check
on your iPhone is your iCloud backups, and that is
by going into settings, that is tapping your name at
(45:10):
the top and then iCloud and then manage storage. And
when you look into manage storage, you'll notice that a
lot of your stuff is probably used up by two things,
photos and backups and also messages. So this is where
you want to go into your iCloud storage and delete
any backups. Now you said create more storage for yourself
(45:32):
on your phone, So this is just one aspect. A
lot of people confuse the two. It'll say we need
more storage, but it's talking about iCloud, or sometimes it's
on the phone. More often than not, it's really the
iCloud storage that's filling up that you need to empty.
But I'll tell you both ways. So number one on
your phone with the iCloud go to where I said
and just kind of look up and see what's going on.
(45:54):
So for me, I've got fifty one gigs of photos
in photos. I don't need fifty one gigs of photos
on iCloud because guess what, I don't use iCloud for
my photos. So I can go in and disable and
delete that, no problem. I'm gonna get a big scary
screen that says delete photos and videos. Yes, I don't
need that. So that's number one. Then you've got iCloud drive.
(46:15):
See what you've got filling up that. For me, I've
got all kinds of stuff, not a lot of stuff,
but it's just enough random stuff that's taking up eight gigs.
Then I've got my backups, and after this question, I
actually went in and deleted some of my old backups.
But you want to see how many backups do you
have in there? And for me, I had a whole
bunch of lingering backups. So the only backups you need
(46:36):
in there are your current backups. So if you've ever
upgraded from a new iPhone, you probably have the old
iPhone backup in there and you don't need it, so
you can go ahead and delete that. Just be careful
with that, because I don't want you to delete backups
that you might need. The other thing you want to
do is go into the storage settings on your phone,
so general iph settings, General iPhone storage, and look up
(46:59):
what's taking up the storage on your phone and they'll
show you some recommendations. So for me, the recommendation is
the three things. Let's see. The things taking up the
biggest storage of my phone again are photos, podcasts. I
have forty five gigabytes of downloaded podcasts. Delete, Delete, delete,
(47:21):
and you can delete those by just swiping left on
the podcasts and it will delete the podcast that it
is downloaded to your phone. I don't need forty five
gigs of podcasts on my phone. Wow, that might be
taking up a lot on yours. Adobe Rush four gigs.
I can go in and delete some of stuff there.
And my photos. I have forty five gigs of photos
(47:41):
on my phone. I can delete some of my videos
and also the recently deleted and save some space there.
So those are just a few of the simple ways
to free up some storage on your iPhone. Believe me,
that is one of the trickiest ways that Apple gets
you to pay for more storage is your phone runs
(48:02):
out of storage or your eCloud. It's just a whole
bunch of stuff you don't need that's sitting in there.
So good question, all good questions. Can you believe it?
That is going to do it for this episode of
the show. I hope you enjoyed this version of the show.
I'm not going to do this every week, but I
just want to do it this week as a special
episode because I've gotten so many emails. If you have
a question for me, you can email me. It's hello
(48:25):
at richontech dot TV. I'll give you a new code
word this time. The code word this week is highlight.
If you put highlight in your email, I will notice
it and I will send you a response faster. So
just put it in the subject line, start it with highlight,
and that way I know you're a big fan of
the podcast, and I will take you more seriously. If
(48:47):
you'd like to send me an email, just go to
rich on Tech dot tv hit the email button at
the bottom of the page. Also, if you would rate
and review this podcast, it really helps other people discover it.
Just go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich
on Tech got a lot of reviews since the last one.
Let's see. Die d Aguilaire nineteen eighty three said rich
(49:09):
always has great information to share. Highly recommended. Thank you
and KD six ywk hmm sound like a ham radio thing.
Great as always. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in
a very easy to understand way. Well you're welcome. My
name is rich dmiro On behalf of everyone that gets
this show to your ears. Thank you so much for listening.
Stay safe, we'll talk to you real soon.
What's going on. I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech,
the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I
think you should know about, and it's where I answer
the questions that you send me. Thanks so much for
listening to the podcast. This is a special edition. I'm
gonna do all your questions. I've gotten so many questions
(00:31):
it has become almost a full time job. And they're
coming in from everywhere too. This is the weird thing,
not just California, not just some of the stations that
I'm on across the US, but kind of like everywhere.
So it's been really interesting. It's been really fun through
the pandemic. I feel like I've gotten to know a
lot of you through Instagram and Facebook and all these
(00:52):
different places that you get your questions in. So I've
got a whole bunch of questions here that I've printed
out for my email, and I am going to do
my best to get through as many of them as possible,
and I'm going to be mixing in some other stuff
along the way. I want to talk first off about
five G because I've been using the Note twenty Ultra,
(01:16):
which if you listen to the last show, you know
it's a really good phone. In fact, I'm so tempted
to switch to that phone, but I'm not sure if
I can give up everything just yet with my iPhone
and especially the Apple Watch. Although there is a new
fitbit that's coming out that kind of rivals the Apple
Watch for me, So we will see. Maybe that will
be the winning combination. But the Note twenty Ultra is
(01:38):
a little bit big, especially because you have to have
a case on it. But anyway, so I have been
kind of checking out five G in different ways, and
I have a pretty good understanding at this point of
the five G offerings from T Mobile, also at and
T and to a lesser extent, Verizon, because I've yet
to step into a five G area with Verizon, because
(02:00):
I believe they are far and few between, few and
far between, far and few between whatever it is, so
T Mobile. The sim card that Samsung sent with the
review unit of the Galaxy Ultra was a T Mobile
sim and that was a five G SIM card five
G phone. And I'll be honest, I really am not
(02:23):
impressed with the five G that I saw on the
T Mobile network. Now I'm not saying it's not going
to be good in the future. But it's one of
these things where I really wanted to believe in it
and love it and couldn't wait to try it because
you see all these ads and all these things that
they've been saying about how they are building like the
first true five G network everywhere, and they switched the
(02:43):
switch and it was everywhere all at once, really cool.
And you have a five G signal on the phone.
The little indicator looks awesome, but when you'd go to
use it, there were so many times when I couldn't
even get a good signal. It was super slow. It
was worse than LTE. I would switch back to LTE.
So I don't think it's there just yet. And it's
fine if you have a five G phone and you
(03:04):
got five G, but I guess my thesis here is
that you don't necessarily need to switch to five G
to right now now. On the flip side, AT and
T another phone I have was a AT and T
simcard that they sent to test out the five G there,
and I will say very impressed with the five G
(03:25):
on AT and T. It has a signal and a
lot of places, not as many as the T mobile,
but the signal when it was there worked a lot better.
And I'm talking great speeds like one hundred plus in
a lot of places. So this is just my observations.
It's casual. There's nothing specific or scientific about this. I'm
(03:46):
just telling you my casual observations. Now, I am considering
a switch to AT and T because of this. If
I do get a five G phone, I think that
AT and T would be the network to be on
right now. Verizon, which is my personal carrier, they don't
have five G. But the thing about Verizon is that
they're so solid just everywhere that it's just like one
(04:09):
of these things, where do you need five G? I mean,
how many things are you really doing on your phone
where you need a signal faster than you get with
your current provider. I'm not sure. Now. For me personally,
as a content creator, journalist, someone who's uploading to Instagram
and Facebook and videos and all that good stuff, it
would help me to have something that's really fast all
(04:31):
the time. And so for that reason, I think the
AT and T network would be awesome. Verizon apparently is
just stupid fast when you have a signal, but there's
not many places you have a signal, so Anyway, I
just figured i'd give you a little update on the
whole five G situation from my personal standpoint, and I'm
excited for it, and personally, it's funny because I love
(04:52):
T Mobile as a company. I think I've said this before.
I love them as a company just the way that
they don't really mess with you is very straightforward, and
so that's what I like about them. But I just
feel like the signal sometimes lags the advertising that you see.
But I'm also one of those people where when I
like a product, I'm willing to stick with it and
(05:13):
kind of stick to it. So I don't know. Anyway,
let's get to the first question. This comes from Christine Turner.
She writes, I need to buy a new router and
really need a quiet one, quiet one along with it
being strong. There are so many to choose from and
it's driving me crazy, so I thought i'd ask the expert. Also,
(05:37):
what brand was the twenty seven dollars earbuds on Amazon
that you tried out? The Samsung ones don't fit me
and they drop out. Thanks so much, Christine. Well, the
Wi Fi signal, I'm not sure what you mean by
a quiet one. I don't know of a loud router,
but the routers the I have a lot of experience
with these Wi Fi routers because I've recently upgraded my
(05:57):
internet at home and so I've been getting the new
euro devices that can handle the higher speeds. So I've
got now three of them in my house, and my
speeds are okay. I wouldn't say it's amazing. I'm getting
a thousand down at the at the at the origination point,
I guess the source, you can say, and then when
I get it into the other areas, I'm getting about
(06:20):
three hundred, maybe three point fifty on a good day,
and sometimes less than that. So I still feel like
I can do some more work to get this signal better,
but it's still pretty good. I mean, I'm very happy
with it. So the routers i'd recommend are anything with
a mesh network, which is pretty much all the routers
at this point. But the brands that I like and
(06:42):
the brands that I know are Euro, which I feel
like is kind of like the gold standard. Then you
also have Google, Nest Wi Fi, which you know, I
think works pretty well as well and a lot of
people like it, and then neckgar Orby I have not
tested that personally, but I do believe that they do
a good job because I get a lot of reviews
from people saying they love it. As for the earbuds,
(07:03):
so this was something called Let's Fit, and this was
a story we did on ktla a couple months ago,
and this company reached out to me Let's Fit, and
they said, hey, do you want to try these earbuds
that are dirt cheap. They're only I think it was
twenty eight dollars. They're called the Let's Fit T thirteen,
and I'm telling you, this was the most popular story
(07:25):
I've I think ever done on ktla. And these are
now twenty one dollars on Amazon. They have four and
thirty six reviews. I got a ton of emails from
people that purchase these and said they love them. And
I've done sound tests of these devices and I will
say they sound better than a majority of the more
expensive earbuds. And they're only twenty one dollars. They don't
(07:49):
sound better than the AirPods, but they do sound really
really good for the price. I mean, for twenty one dollars,
you can't go wrong. So again, those are the Let's
Fit T thirteen earbuds on Amazon. Fantastic little device for
that price. All right, let's move on. Oh you know what,
let me tell a story real quick. This was kind
(08:11):
of crazy, So I just mentioned that I ordered the
Euro so I've been these things. The Eros are kind
of tough to get. I used to have the old Euros,
which were just the Euro, not the pro and the beacons.
And so when I got the new Internet, I realized
you needed the faster eros, which are called the euro Pros,
which have the tryband. It's a whole bunch of stuff
that you don't necessarily need to know. Well, unless you
(08:32):
have really high speed Internet then you should know. But
the Eros are like sold out everywhere, so I've been
tracking them. You just can't go on Amazon and buy them.
So I had to buy it from a third party retailer,
you know, another big name which I won't mention, but
you know it rhymes with let's see nest guy, That's
(08:55):
what it rhymes with. And I get this package in
the mail after a week and I open it up
and the first thing I realized there's no shrink wrap
on my Euro box. I'm like, that's weird, because the
last one I ordered from the same exact place, by
the way, had shrink wrap on it, and so I go,
all right, well, I don't know, maybe they for eco
friendly reasons, they don't shrink wrap them anymore. Well, next thing,
you know, I open it up and I'm like, that's weird.
(09:16):
The cord is kind of like mushed and smushed, and
you know how you ever, you know how you take
a cord apart and you have to put it back together.
You never get it exactly right. Then the court also
had some scotch tape on it. I was like, that's
definitely not how euro packages their boxes. Then I look
at the Ethernet cable and it's also repackaged, and also,
by the way, there was a hair stuck in the tape.
(09:39):
I'm like, this is okay, this is clearly an open
box that they sent me. I ordered a new one. Ah,
this is kind of annoying. So I call the company.
Of course, it took a half an hour to get
someone on the phone, and they say, allay, well we'll
send you a new one. No real apology, just oh,
we'll send you a new one. And I have to
send back this one. And I said, well, that's kind
of a pain. I mean, I'm fine keeping this because
(10:01):
this is clearly an open box. I'm sure it works fine,
you know. Can you just give me a credit for
my trouble and I'll just keep this one. You don't
have to spend the money to send me a new one.
I don't have to spend the money to send back
the old one. And they said, all right, hold on.
After about ten minutes on hold, they finally come back
with their offer and they say, all right, we'll give
you a twenty dollars credit. Twenty bucks on a two
hundred dollars device. I was thinking more like forty or fifty.
(10:24):
The whole reason I didn't buy it on eBay is
because I didn't want a new one, and on eBay
I could have saved fifty dollars if I would have
ordered it used. So this whole thing is going on,
but you know, I just wanted to make things a
little bit easier, so I decided to keep it. And
now I've got the device and it's it's working just fine.
All right. Now that you know that story, let's move
(10:45):
on to a question from Franci. Francie says, Hey, Rich,
I need your expertise, advice. You have two handsome kids. Well,
thank you. I have two beautiful girls, nine and seven,
and now with homeschool, I'm having problems finding the best
headphones that are safe kids hearing. My daughters don't like
the earbuds they prefer over the ear headphones, but they
also need a microphone to talk with the teacher, and
(11:07):
one that's comfortable five hours in class, also safe on
the volume, no super loud to protect their hearing. The
best ones are super expensive. We've already spent money on
two computers. Now we need headphones. This homeschool situation is hard,
but better to be safe than sorry with this virus.
Hopefully you can help me, so I will tell you
what I think are really good headphones. And I can't
(11:30):
take I can't take the credit for this because we
interviewed a person named Lauren Dragon over at the Wirecutter,
which is a great reviews website, and when I talk
to her about the best headphones, she said, these are
the best, and the best are pure O p R
specifically the BT twenty two hundreds or I guess two
(11:54):
twenty two hundred s and these are ninety dollars. But
what I would recommend is that you want to make
sure that you look for some sort of discount and
right now maybe they're not offering them. But I've noticed
if you kind of watch the website, and this is
true of a lot of websites, just kind of oh wow,
look at this. See that my little Honey extension Honey
(12:17):
fifteen fifteen percent discount exclusive from Honey. So again, have
one of these things. I really like this Honey. I
wouldn't say I really like it, but it's definitely gotten
me some discounts. But what's the website for that? Is
it get Honey dot com? Uh yeah, get Honey dot
com or Join Honey there it is join Honey dot
(12:37):
com and that's a browser extension that looks for coupon
codes automatically. But anyway, they have a fifteen percent. But
Puro I think is the best because exactly what you're saying, Francy.
They hit all the marks. They have volume limiting, which
is really good, they go over your ears, and they
also have a microphone, and they're super comfortable and they
last forever. So these are the headphones myke have after
(13:01):
Lauren recommended them, and Lauren tests headphones for a living.
So when she said that these are the best. I
took her word for it, and we've been using them
ever since and they are fantastic. My kids love them.
They've had them for I think two years now, and
believe me, they're not taking care of them like you know,
sitting there putting them back in their cases and stuff.
They're just using them all over the place and we've
had no problems and they work great. They also work
(13:23):
Bluetooth or wired, which I really like as well. So
again look up. The website is Purosound purosound dot com.
And I just mentioned the BT twenty two s, but
there are a twenty two hundred s, but there are
a whole bunch of different headphones. They have them for
adults and kids. But that is going to be I
think the best case scenario, all right, Mary says, hey, Rich,
(13:51):
I watch you regularly. I saw the info on the
Google Pixel recorder on KTLA this morning. I have a
Pixel one and I went to the Place store to
find it. However it's not listed. Hmm. The website shows
a similar icon, but it's not from Google like yours.
I found the voice recorder smart Moby Tools. I'm unable
(14:12):
to locate the exact recorder in my Google Pixel Play store.
Is there anything I can do to locate the app
that you mentioned? So I did a little digging on
this one, and it turns out that the recorder app
is only compatible with Pixel two and up. So Mary,
you are out of luck on this one. And this
(14:32):
is another thing that happens very often when I talk
about things on TV and I notice this on my
Facebook page, I notice it on Twitter, I notice it
on email. People for some reason think that they know
what I'm talking about and just google things, and next
thing you know, they're emailing me saying, Rich, I bought
this and it's you. You were wrong, this is not
(14:53):
or this is cheaper than what you said or what
you got it. This is why I do the blog
post on ktla dot com and on my website. I
make sure that I give you the direct links to
the things I'm talking about. If you just go on
Google Play and Google recorder app, what do you think
is gonna happen. You're gonna find some random app, not
the exact what I'm recommending. And this was part of
(15:14):
a story I did on KTLA about transcription apps, and
I did some really good recommendations and I'll just go
through them really quickly. Number one was Google Docs. You
can do voice typing in Google Docs. Number two is
Office three sixty five. They launched a new transcribe feature
where you can upload audio and it will transcribe it,
(15:37):
or you can just tap dictate and it will do
something similar. The Google Recorder app is only available for
the Google Pixel, but I'll be honest, I was able
to install it on my Samsung As or the Samsung
and testing, I should say, with an APK that I
got from Xda, say that ten times fast. Now, I
don't recommend you install APKs unless you know what you're doing,
(15:59):
because there could be some security issues. I trust XDA
and I did install it and it works fine on
the Samsung. Doesn't work on every phone, and i'd recommend
this to Mary, but I'm not sure that I want
to be recommending people downloading and installing APKs because you
have to allow your phone to install things outside Google Play,
(16:21):
and unless you're a total nerd and not what you're doing,
that could be a bad thing. So anyway, that's the
Google Recorder app. If you do want something similar that
works on all androids and iPhones, I recommend an app
called Otter Ai and you get six hundred minutes of
free transcription each month, and then finally Descript. This is
(16:41):
the one that's great for Zoom calls because Otter works
with Zoom as well. But Descript lets you upload a
recorded Zoom call and they will transcribe it. Unfortunately, that
one's only good for three hours a month. After that
it's twelve dollars a month. So to answer your question, Mary,
the pixel the recorder thing from Google is amazing. I've
been using that the most because it's so easy. In fact,
(17:03):
I use it to transcribe almost all of the virtual
meetings that I've had in interviews because I just love
having the transcript and it's unlimited, it's as long as
you want, and it kind of works. So Mary, if
you're not open to upgrading your phone, then you're probably
gonna have to do Otter for now. But good question,
and yeah it happens. Not every app is compatible with
(17:26):
every Android phone, and that you know, when I do
my stories, I do think about this stuff. I do
try to make sure that I find stuff that works
with a lot of different phones and platforms and cross
platforms especially. You know, I could do only iPhone apps
all the time, but then people email me like, rich,
what about Android. I'm like, I know a lot of
apps come out on Android first, all right, sorry, on
(17:48):
iPhone first, and then they come to Android, and so
that's you know, the problem there. So I always try
to think about, okay, is this app available on both?
That's really what I'm trying to do, all right. Next
question coming from oh classy lady, classy lady. A classy
(18:10):
lady on AOL says, how do you screenshot on a
Galaxy X pro cover? How do you screenshot on a
Galaxy x Pro cover? So what I've discovered is screenshotting
is pretty much usually the same across Android. It's usually
the down especially on the Samsung. It's the volume down
along with the power button, and you hold that down
(18:32):
for about a second and then you release. You'll see
your screen turn white with a flash, and then it
will take the screenshot. On the iPhone, it's the opposite.
It is the volume up and the power button at
the same time. Or I guess I should say side
button on the new phones, so power button as well
as the up button on the iPhone that will take
(18:53):
the screenshot. So those are the two ways to take
the screenshots. There are also other ways on some of
the phones. On the Samsung or what was it not
was it the Samsung, you can do like these gesture controls.
You can also do the little s pen if you
have one of the notes, you can also do I
think on the samsungs you can wave your like the
(19:13):
side of your hand over the phone slowly and that
will take a screenshot if you have that enabled. Those
are some of the different ways. And then what's the
other one I saw the other day on the one plus,
I think they had if you place three fingers on
the screen and swipe to the right, it'll take a screenshot.
So lots of options for screenshots. Just remember with iPhone
(19:35):
it's usually the volume up plus the side button, and
on Android it's volume down plus the side button. There
all right, Jennifer writes in and says, hey, Rich, my
son is oh thoughts on iPhone eleven versus iPhone eleven Pro.
(19:59):
My son is looking into getting a new phone. Unfortunately
his camera stopped working in his Samsung seven Edge. He
has obviously had this phone for four years and well
he needs a camera for his school stuff. So your
thoughts I'm a single mom of two, and if I'm
going to invest in this phone he is looking at,
I'd like to know if it's worth the buy. I
appreciate your feedback. And again the subject was thoughts on
(20:22):
iPhone eleven versus iPhone eleven Pro. Well, I think that
he probably how old is he? Did he say? Did
he say how old he is? I'm a single mom.
I don't know, doesn't say how old he is, but
uh oh, sixteen, so he's sixteen. I would probably recommend
(20:43):
just the iPhone eleven. I mean, why does he need
the Pro? The Pro is going to give you a
better looking screen, it's going to give you slightly better
battery life, and it's also going to give you a
better camera because it's got the zoom the telephoto lens. Now,
you can still zoom in on an iPhone eleven, it's
just not gonna be as clear as the the Pro.
And you can do everything you can do on the
(21:04):
Pro on the iPhone eleven. So for that reason, I
think that the iPhone eleven is the way to go.
I mean, why would you not. Now I'm gonna throw
something out there. I don't know if your sixteen year
old's gonna be happy with this because he's got the
Samsung seven Edge. I'm not sure just how big that
screen is, so he may not want to take a
step back in screen size. But you also have the
(21:24):
iPhone se which has a smaller format, a smaller screen,
no face ID, the camera's still great. And that's only
three hundred ninety nine dollars if you go with the
Samsung seven Edge, even if you trade that in, I
don't think you're gonna get very much for that. So
let's just see if you go for the iPhone eleven,
(21:46):
Let's see how much that's gonna cost you. You've got
purchase options. Let's just go with white sixty four gigs
with kids. I mean they use a lot of pictures
and videos. I'd probably spend the extra fifty dollars and
get the one hundred and twenty eight gig model. I mean,
you're literally doubling your memory for fifty extra dollars. You're
already spending six ninety nine, so spend seven forty nine
(22:08):
get double the memory. And now let's say we've got
a trade in, yes, and let's select our model, which
is a Samsung Galaxy S seven. Ah they're not even
doing the S seven anymore. Rope rope. All right, Well
that's unfortunate. So you're not gonna get anything for the
(22:28):
S seven unfortunately. Now you can go to another website.
You can always sell things on eBay. But let's see
if you can get anything on gazelle dot com for
the S seven. If you're looking for a used device,
by the way, you can sell your device here. So
sell Samsung. It's a good sign that the S seven
looks like it's the phone they have on there. So
(22:49):
let's just say it is a factory unlocked and it
is the S seven. Let's scroll all the way down
S seven edge. Let's see how much they're giving you
for it, and let's say it's in good condition. Sixty
nine dollars. So there you go, sixty nine bucks. You
I just saved you sixty nine dollars. So sell the
(23:12):
phone on Gazelle, or if you're really good, put it
on eBay. I always say eBay, you're gonna get a
little bit more, but you're gonna have to You're gonna
have to do more. So eBay is a lot more work,
but you're going to get a higher return on your product.
Versus Gazelle. Super easy. You drop it in the mail
in two minutes and boom you get your sixty nine dollars.
But it's going to be less than you'd normally get
(23:34):
because you're not doing as much work. There's another website
called Swapa. I don't think that they would be taking
the S seven Edge though, because that seems like kind
of an older phone. So I'm just not sure you
might be able to sell it there. But I think
that Gazelle is gonna be your best bets. But I
would go with the iPhone eleven or the iPhone S
(23:56):
for him. All right, Maraud says, did you ever find
a fix for the Samsung Galaxy Note twenty ultra issues
with social media? I think you said you were gonna
try her of Verizon sim and see if the issues
(24:17):
were network related. What happened? Good question. This was related
to the review of the s twenty Ultra. I said,
my biggest problem with it is that social media looks
like garbage on it, and it's still kind of happening.
So I did try the Sorry when I had the problems,
I was on T Mobile and I realized that T
(24:39):
Mobile generally throttles video to four eighty P, which I
don't like. I want full HD. Well, even on the
best carriers now they're still doing just seven to twenty P.
So I did try. Basically everything looked all garbily so
all the like Instagram stories, they just look garbly like pixelated,
(25:02):
and a lot of the videos I'd look at on
whether it was Facebook or even Instagram, they just looked bad.
I just wasn't used to it. On iPhone, social media
videos look fantastic. They look just as crystal clear as
the camera that took them, but for some reason, when
you upload them through Android and view them through Android,
they look horrendous. And so I did find that with
(25:23):
Tea Mobile a lot across the board. When I tried
it with AT and T. It's still happening, just not
as much. I think it's looking better, but I think
that the problem is iPhone just looks really good with
social media and the rest just can't touch it. And
that's mainly because I've talked about this before. The thing is,
(25:44):
all of the phones are optimized for social media. On
the iPhone. All these developers do is concentrate on the
iPhone and they're sitting there and if you've noticed you're
getting updates for your apps all the time on iPhone.
It happens on Android, but just not as much. And
I think that's because this prevalence we have of the
iPhone in the US, at least, it's very iPhone centric,
(26:07):
and so these developers make a lot of money on
the iPhone. They want to service their iPhone audience first. Now,
when you're talking a big app like Instagram, why does
it act like garbage on the Android. I don't know,
it shouldn't. I know. For a long time, Facebook was
so iPhone centric that they didn't even think about Android,
(26:27):
and it was a problem. And now I'm seeing more
of the apps and more of the features come to
Android and iPhone around the same time. But still there
is a major discrepancy between these two platforms. And if
you have an Android, it's kind of frustrating because I
get why it happens. It happens because there are a
(26:49):
million and one Androids out there, and if I have
an app and I'm an app developer, I can't sit
there and optimize my app for million and one phones.
So what you end up doing is you do basics
that work on a variety of Androids, but it doesn't
work very good. And the best way to illustrate this
is case in point Note twenty ultra. If I create
(27:09):
a story on the Note twenty Ultra and then I
look at that Instagram story on the iPhone, it looks
like garbage. Whether it's a video that I uploaded or
the placement of the text, everything's blown up, blown out,
things are cut off. It's very frustrating. If you only
have an Android phone, you don't really know that because
you're not looking at different phones like I am all
the time to see the differences. I don't think it's
(27:30):
a deal breaker for the Note twenty Ultra because it's
still such a great phone. I just wish that social
media was a little little bit better. All right, let's
see Pamela says Hi Rich, I hope you and your
family are doing well. We are, thank you. Here's my problem.
(27:53):
I have Lenovo Flex five with some keys not working.
This has been a problem off and on for about
two years. But now since I can't get all of
the keys to work at all, I want to replace
the keyboard myself. I have tried looking up self help
on doing this, and it looks very difficult. It looks
as if I would have to remove almost everything inside
(28:13):
the computer before getting to the keyboard. What do you think,
do I have to remove everything before getting to the keyboard?
Is this something I should attempt? Any suggestions do not
do this yourself, Pamela, I would not attempt. If you're
talking about going underneath the entire laptop and unscrewing the
(28:34):
bottom four screws and taking out the motherboard and then
getting to the keyboard, I would not recommend doing that
for the mere mortal not something that you should be
doing yourself. With that said, you know, if you've watched
these little videos and you've seen them and you have
you have some hesitation because you're emailing me so clearly
(28:55):
you're thinking, I don't know if this is a good idea.
So that tells me that you have not done this before,
and you probably don't want to attempt it on your
laptop that you rely on. I have done this with
several laptops, but mostly back in the day when laptops
were much more forgiving to upgrades, and the main things
(29:15):
that I upgraded were the memory and also the hard drives,
back when you could do that very easily. Today's computers
just not so easy. Now, when it comes to the keyboard,
there are two things you might be able to do.
You might be able to pop off some keys with
a little tool and find some replacement keys on eBay
(29:36):
or from you know, just look them up on Amazon
and pop those keys back on and they might work.
In fact, the problem might be just little crud underneath
the keys. So I would maybe try popping off one
of the keys that's not working and put a new
one on, Or just maybe use some canned air on
the keyboard and see if maybe blowing some canned air
(29:56):
underneath these keys might work. Just be careful because you
don't want to make this thing worse than it already is.
At the end of the day, I think, if you
want to get use out of this laptop, let's say
Flex five. Oh, this is a chromebook. Let's see is it?
Is it a chromebook? I don't know. It's a two
in one laptop and it's no longer available. So I
(30:18):
would say, if you still want to get some use
out of this thing, it's probably fine if it's only
two years old, but I would bring it somewhere like
a you break, I fix one of these National places
you can go to like Best Buy, geek Squad. They're
probably going to charge you more. But I would go
to one of these little local fix it places, and
if you need to find one in your area, I
would check you break I fix first and see if
(30:41):
that works. If not, I would just check Yelp and
look for a highly rated computer repair facility near you.
I've done computer repairs to these places nearby and they're great.
It's a little inconvenient. You got to bring your computer there.
There's always a chance they could wipe your hard drives.
You want to make sure you have everything backed up.
But at the end of the day, you know a
couple hundred bucks, you're gonna be using your computer, and
(31:04):
it's more of the process. That's kind of a lengthy process,
And yes, you have to bring your computer there and
wait and this and that, But at the end of
the day, you're gonna enjoy having your computer fixed by someone.
I always say it's better to have this done by
someone who does it on a daily basis. Why do
you want to attempt to do something for the very
first time on a gadget that you rely on when
(31:26):
there is someone out there doing this every single day.
They know exactly what they're doing, they have the expertise,
and yes, it's gonna cost you money, but at the
end of the day, then you don't have to worry
about breaking this thing. And then it's on you and
you're gonna be even more frustrated if you short circuit it,
or if you mess something up, or if you get
it all done, which is great, and then you can't
(31:47):
get the back back on or something like that. So
find a fix it place, get it done, and move
on with life. That's what I would recommend. Okay, hey,
let's move on to or Mo's or Mo's or Mo's
writes in one time credit card question. Hey Rich, thanks
(32:09):
for your awesome podcast. Oh great, I butchered your name
and you actually listen to the podcast. I'm sorry, uh
h o r Moz or Moz. I remember that you
mentioned once about a one time credit card number website
slash app that is generated from my original credit card.
Can I know the name of that app slash website? Thanks? Yes,
the website is called privacy dot com. Privacy dot com
(32:32):
and what privacy dot com does is you sign up
and you log in and next thing you know, you
can use your Oh I just okay, hold on, I'm
trying to log in here, so so I can actually
tell you because I've been using this website since I
did the story. I did the website. I signed up
on the website and it's great. So I have a
(32:54):
whole bunch of cards for different things that I'm getting
charged for. And what you do is you sign up
with your I believe it's your bank account, maybe your
debit card as well, so you might be able to
use your debit card. But again, once you sign up,
you cannot use your credit card. So yeah, funding okay, yeah,
(33:14):
my debit card. So you can use your debit card
or your bank account. And so I went with my
debit card, which is linked to my bank account. But
you sign up with that and then when you want
to charge something, you generate a card number, and this
card number can be good for one time use or
it can be good for recurring use, but it will
only authorize for an amount you want. So, for instance,
(33:37):
I've got my Serious XM card and that will only
authorize for ten dollars a month. So if Serious XMS
decides to get sneaky and tries to charge me for
a full year in advance. Once my little promotion is
up and they try to charge me two hundred dollars,
this card is just going to deny that transaction. So
it puts a lot of control in the consumer's hands,
(34:00):
and I love it. It's been great. I've been using it
for a lot of these random transactions that either it's
a website that I don't normally do business with, like
I ordered some outdoor stuff from this one website I
never used before. I didn't want them to have my
debit card number, so I just generated a one time
card number. They did the transaction. That's it. That card
has expired. They can they can't do anything else with it.
If someone finds that that card number or their website
(34:23):
is breached, they can't use it. So the website is
privacy dot com. They make money by getting a little
tiny percentage of the transaction. So if you charge one
hundred bucks, Privacy might make a dollar off of that.
I don't know how much the amount is, but that's
how they make money. So it doesn't cost anything. You
get a certain amount of cards each month, and if
you want more than that, then you have to pay.
(34:45):
I have not hit that at all. So there's also
a cash back. Let's see, when you make a purchase
using a private don't know, there's a cashback system as well,
so you can make one percent back. But that's the website.
I really like it. It helps me. If you've listened to
the podcast many times, you know that I like to
use my debit card over my credit card, and a
(35:07):
lot of times on these random websites. I don't want
to use my debit card because I don't want that
number to get stolen or hacked or taken or whatever,
because it's a headache to get a new one and
it's my money. So I'd rather use something like privacy
where yet it's still coming out of my debit card.
But if something ever happens to that website, I don't
have to worry about it because that card is not
really going to work again. So there you go, Privacy
(35:29):
dot com. Don Williams Rights, Hey Rich, I'm an instructional
aid for a special need special needs kids and school
starts on Monday. Well, Don, I have a lot of
respect for you for doing that. Thank you. I know
that takes a lot of patience and good heart, so
(35:49):
thank you for doing that. My laptop is dying and
I'm looking for a good quality laptop for work and
social media. I'm trying to stay under one thousand dollars.
Do you have any suggestions. I will also use it
for personal stuff like social media, music, etc. Thank you
for your time and help. Don Don. I would say,
if you're looking for a laptop under one thousand dollars,
(36:11):
I would go with a MacBook Air. And the reason
I would say MacBook I know rich you only care
about Apple stuff. Oh Apple, Apple, Apple, Well, let me
give you my reasoning. I have purchased Apple laptops for
a couple of years now, and I'll just tell you
they are I call them the workhorse. They just work.
They work and work and work and work and work
(36:33):
and work. There's no fuss, you don't have to think
about them. There's not a whole bunch of pop ups
happening all the time. There's not a whole bunch of
software you're always downloading and uploading. And every time I
turn on a Windows computer there's some sort of major
software update on my Mac. Yeah, there's a couple of
software updates here and there, but it's not that big
of a deal, and it just runs smooth. You don't
(36:53):
have to think about a lot of stuff when you
have a Mac And for that reason, I think if
you want a headache free experience and you're willing to
spend one thousand dollars, if you said you were spending
you want to spend less than fine, I would have
recommended some sort of budget Windows laptop, but you're looking
to spend a thousand bucks. The MacBook Air is eight
ninety nine in the Education Store on Apple, and you
(37:15):
get free air pods at this point. So I I
that to me, that sounds like an amazing deal. And
I've had MacBook Airs. I've had them, I've edited video
on them. I used them for my first couple of
years at KTLA and they're great. Now over the years,
I've upgraded higher and hire to now a MacBook Pro sixteen.
I used to have a thirteen. But again, all these
(37:36):
laptops have been fantastic. And the best thing about Apple
laptop versus a Windows laptop when you are done with it,
after you know it could be four or five years,
it could be six, could be seven. You can use
these things for a really long time, and when you're
done with it, you can still use it by giving
it to a friend or a family member because it's
(37:56):
still going to work. And yes it's gonna get a
little bit slower over the U, but not like a
Windows laptop. I'm not bashing Windows stuff, but I'm just saying,
since Dawn, you want to spend one thousand dollars, get
something that's really good and get something that's really going
to work for the long haul. So that's what I
would recommend. And thank you again for being a fantastic teacher.
(38:18):
Our kiddos need it and you're doing a great job there,
Lisa Nole says on my Facebook page. Hey, Rich I
really enjoy your on tech reports. I've been searching for
the name of a cell phone that you had on
your show. I believe last year. It was mainly for
senior citizens and it makes calls no Internet. Do you
recall the name of the phone. My mother is in
(38:39):
need of a new phone. She's in a senior facility
and needs a simple to use phone. She's not allowed
any visitors at this time on I'm unable to teach
her how to use a new phone in person. Thank
you for your time and help have a great day. Well.
The phone that I mentioned, I believe it was two
of them, and one of was the light Phone. And
(39:03):
this is a phone that just does phone calls. That's it.
It's a very simple phone. You can what the cool
thing is, you can actually link it to your Verizon account.
And it's just a phone. You can't do anything with it.
And now that I think about it, I should use
this this weekend so I can just disconnect from the grid.
But the light phone is a little phone. All it
(39:23):
does is make phone calls. It's got an e ink screen,
the battery last forever, and that's it. You can do
text on there as well, but that's it. It's a
light phone. It's a simple phone. And how much is
it Let's see how much is that phone? Wow? Three
hundred dollars, So it's kind of expensive for what you
get that. That's kind of an expensive phone. It's unlocked,
but you do put a SIM card in there. I
(39:45):
think the other phone that I mentioned was a T
Mobile flip phone and it was from Alcatel and I
think let's see, was it the Flip three And this
was a really good little phone. Two. Yeah, go Flip
three from Alcatel on T Mobile and it's four bucks
(40:05):
a month. The full price is one hundred dollars. And
this is a flip phone. It's simple. Yes, it has
a camera, but it's got nice This is so funny.
The website does not show it when it's open. I mean,
that's kind of U T mobile. Come on, you gotta
show the buttons and the screen. They don't show it.
That's so weird. But if you google it, I'm sure
you can find it. But the cool thing about this
(40:27):
phone is that it also has Google Assistant built in,
which is really interesting. So if you want, you can
ask Google questions, which you know, maybe your mom would
get a kick out of. But this phone is also
pretty simple because it's just a tiny screen, a little
screen and big keys. And I think that that's probably
a better way to go. That is a hundred bucks.
The other thing I would check out is go look
(40:48):
at the website called Jitterbug, and Jitterbug makes all of
the phones for seniors. They have nice, easy, big, big
button phones like the Jitterbug Flip, which is a hundred
dollars and there's really nothing to it. It's just a
phone to make calls. So those are the three places
that I would look I think the light phone is
(41:08):
probably too expensive, although it's nice because you it's unlocked,
which means you don't have to have a plan with it.
The jitterbug, you're going to talk, you got to get
a plan for that. So the Jitterbug is one hundred dollars.
But let's see how much a plan is minimum two
hundred and fifty minutes fifteen dollars a month. Then you
got to do your texts. So if you want to
(41:30):
do text which I don't think Grandma is going to
be doing or Mom's going to be doing, So you're
talking fifteen dollars a month for only two hundred and
fifty minutes. So if you want twenty five hundred minutes,
you're thirty dollars a month and then unlimited as forty.
So I personally like the idea of the a cheaper phone. Anyway,
you got to decide what you want to do. But
that's those are the phones that i'd recommend with your mom,
(41:52):
and I think they'll all be simple enough for her
to use. All right. Next question comes from Sandra. I
really enjoy your segments on KTLA. Thank you, oh your
podcasts and your newsletters. If you haven't signed up for
my newsletter go to Rich on tech dot TV. I
usually send it out every other week, and it's kind
(42:13):
of like this podcast. It's all the stuff I think
you should know. The information that you share is always
timely and useful. Now to my question, I'm on a
twenty fifteen MacBook Pro with Mojave operating system. I have
not upgraded to Catalina because I don't want to lose
Microsoft Word. I no longer have access to Word because
I am retired. The Word program is the twenty eleven
version I only do. I only use Word to do
(42:36):
word processing. I don't want to pay a monthly fee
to get it. Should I be using the latest operating system?
Is there another word processing program that I should be using?
Would my files and documents be accessible in another word
processing program? I hope you can help me, Sandy. Sandy,
I think you should be running the latest Mac operating system.
(42:57):
Why not? Your computer's still relatively new. I think it'll
handle Catalina. You don't need it, but for security reasons,
it's always a good idea to run the latest. When
it comes to Word, you might lose your compatibility. That's true.
I don't know, because i'd have to upgrade on your
system and see what happens. But I don't think you
need Word anymore. Number One, you're using a program from
(43:18):
nine years ago. A lot has changed in nine years.
You can go to Google Docs and use it absolutely free,
and you're gonna get all of the modern conveniences that
you may not even have in the Microsoft Word program
that you have there. So I would recommend just firing
up your computer and going to Google Docs, which is
(43:40):
let's see docs dot Google dot com, and as long
as you have a Google account, you can use that
totally free. I've been using it for I believe ten
years now, and I've had zero problems with Google Docs.
In fact, it just keeps getting better and better. And
I was one of those old holdouts. I thought, oh,
there's no way that Google could do something as good
(44:03):
as Microsoft, because that's a paid, expensive program. But they
kind of do and it works. Will your files and
documents be accessible, Yes, they will. You can upload them
into Google Drive and they will convert over to the
Google Docs and it'll be great. It'll be great, and
it'll be totally free. Good good question there. All right,
(44:24):
we're almost to the end of the show here, so
let's see here, what do I want to answer? I'll
do one more question, and let's do this one, because
this one is a question that a lot of wrong.
That was the that's the touchstones. When I get phone
calls back on the show, we'll use that. But no,
this is what it is. It's typing, because you guys
are typing your questions to me. Alyssa says big fan. Here,
(44:46):
quick question. Can you point me to the right direction
for how to create more storage for myself as an
older iPhone seven s? Can you any tips you can
help provide? It would be awesome. I trust you, Lissa.
I think the number one thing you need to check
on your iPhone is your iCloud backups, and that is
by going into settings, that is tapping your name at
(45:10):
the top and then iCloud and then manage storage. And
when you look into manage storage, you'll notice that a
lot of your stuff is probably used up by two things,
photos and backups and also messages. So this is where
you want to go into your iCloud storage and delete
any backups. Now you said create more storage for yourself
(45:32):
on your phone, So this is just one aspect. A
lot of people confuse the two. It'll say we need
more storage, but it's talking about iCloud, or sometimes it's
on the phone. More often than not, it's really the
iCloud storage that's filling up that you need to empty.
But I'll tell you both ways. So number one on
your phone with the iCloud go to where I said
and just kind of look up and see what's going on.
(45:54):
So for me, I've got fifty one gigs of photos
in photos. I don't need fifty one gigs of photos
on iCloud because guess what, I don't use iCloud for
my photos. So I can go in and disable and
delete that, no problem. I'm gonna get a big scary
screen that says delete photos and videos. Yes, I don't
need that. So that's number one. Then you've got iCloud drive.
(46:15):
See what you've got filling up that. For me, I've
got all kinds of stuff, not a lot of stuff,
but it's just enough random stuff that's taking up eight gigs.
Then I've got my backups, and after this question, I
actually went in and deleted some of my old backups.
But you want to see how many backups do you
have in there? And for me, I had a whole
bunch of lingering backups. So the only backups you need
(46:36):
in there are your current backups. So if you've ever
upgraded from a new iPhone, you probably have the old
iPhone backup in there and you don't need it, so
you can go ahead and delete that. Just be careful
with that, because I don't want you to delete backups
that you might need. The other thing you want to
do is go into the storage settings on your phone,
so general iph settings, General iPhone storage, and look up
(46:59):
what's taking up the storage on your phone and they'll
show you some recommendations. So for me, the recommendation is
the three things. Let's see. The things taking up the
biggest storage of my phone again are photos, podcasts. I
have forty five gigabytes of downloaded podcasts. Delete, Delete, delete,
(47:21):
and you can delete those by just swiping left on
the podcasts and it will delete the podcast that it
is downloaded to your phone. I don't need forty five
gigs of podcasts on my phone. Wow, that might be
taking up a lot on yours. Adobe Rush four gigs.
I can go in and delete some of stuff there.
And my photos. I have forty five gigs of photos
(47:41):
on my phone. I can delete some of my videos
and also the recently deleted and save some space there.
So those are just a few of the simple ways
to free up some storage on your iPhone. Believe me,
that is one of the trickiest ways that Apple gets
you to pay for more storage is your phone runs
(48:02):
out of storage or your eCloud. It's just a whole
bunch of stuff you don't need that's sitting in there.
So good question, all good questions. Can you believe it?
That is going to do it for this episode of
the show. I hope you enjoyed this version of the show.
I'm not going to do this every week, but I
just want to do it this week as a special
episode because I've gotten so many emails. If you have
a question for me, you can email me. It's hello
(48:25):
at richontech dot TV. I'll give you a new code
word this time. The code word this week is highlight.
If you put highlight in your email, I will notice
it and I will send you a response faster. So
just put it in the subject line, start it with highlight,
and that way I know you're a big fan of
the podcast, and I will take you more seriously. If
(48:47):
you'd like to send me an email, just go to
rich on Tech dot tv hit the email button at
the bottom of the page. Also, if you would rate
and review this podcast, it really helps other people discover it.
Just go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich
on Tech got a lot of reviews since the last one.
Let's see. Die d Aguilaire nineteen eighty three said rich
(49:09):
always has great information to share. Highly recommended. Thank you
and KD six ywk hmm sound like a ham radio thing.
Great as always. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in
a very easy to understand way. Well you're welcome. My
name is rich dmiro On behalf of everyone that gets
this show to your ears. Thank you so much for listening.
Stay safe, we'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
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