Speaker 1: Details on Google's new Pixel ten smartphones. Another streaming service
Speaker 1: is hiking prices and the startup that's reinventing the landline
Speaker 1: for kids. Plus, as always, your tech questions answered. What's
Speaker 1: going on? I'm Rich Debiro and this is Rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: This is the show where I talk about the tech
Speaker 1: stuff I think you should know about. It's also the
Speaker 1: place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe
Speaker 1: that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open
Speaker 1: up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one.
Speaker 1: That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one. Give
Speaker 1: me a call if you have a question about technology.
Speaker 1: Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv right at the top hit contact rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot tv. Hit contact there. You can also find
Speaker 1: the notes for today's show. All right, we got a
Speaker 1: full slate of guests this week and they are all excellent.
Speaker 1: Jason Lucking, co founder of Payback, is going to explain
Speaker 1: how their website helps you get money back when airfare
Speaker 1: prices that you already booked dropped. It worked for me,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk about how that does, how
Speaker 1: that works, and see Scott Brown, senior editor at Android Authority.
Speaker 1: He's been on the show before. We were both at
Speaker 1: the Google Pixel event in Brooklyn. He is going to
Speaker 1: break it down and he has had so much success.
Speaker 1: He started basically his own YouTube channel just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, and man, it is taken off in
Speaker 1: such a big way, so that's really cool. And then
Speaker 1: later we've got a senior editor from XDA to share
Speaker 1: the simple steps you need to know to deep clean
Speaker 1: your Windows PC so it runs faster and smoother. That's
Speaker 1: going to be a great segment as well.
Speaker 2: Well. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: If you're streaming us on ktail plus, thank you for
Speaker 1: doing that.
Speaker 2: Welcome to watching the show.
Speaker 1: We don't stream in live time, but you can download
Speaker 1: that app and stream the show later. We stream the
Speaker 1: first ten minutes of it, so if you want a
Speaker 1: little behind the scenes, you could see me in my
Speaker 1: Chucky Cheese T shirt today. Yes, I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: my visit to the new Chucky Cheese concept later, but
Speaker 1: this week, Yes, in New York City in Brooklyn for
Speaker 1: the Pixel event. I actually I told you my mom
Speaker 1: was in town for many, many weeks, so I actually
Speaker 1: got to fly back there with her, which was great.
Speaker 1: We've only done this a couple of times because she's
Speaker 1: always coming back and forth between the coasts, but it's
Speaker 1: not always that I have a reason to go back
Speaker 1: with her, but I did this time, and so I
Speaker 1: got to fly next to her, which was great, and
Speaker 1: to me, it was more of a lesson in like
Speaker 1: the average person experiencing technology on a plane. So number One,
Speaker 1: she opens up her phone, none of her Netflix downloads
Speaker 1: were there. How many times does that happen to people
Speaker 1: all the time? Number Two, her earbuds wouldn't pair with
Speaker 1: her phone. That was another struggle, and also the seatback
Speaker 1: and I was trying to help her with that, and
Speaker 1: then of course general Wi Fi issues connecting. I showed
Speaker 1: her how to connect to the Wi Fi on the
Speaker 1: plane and how she can get her messaging for free,
Speaker 1: which a lot of the airlines offer. So she was
Speaker 1: like text messaging the whole flight. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So it was a great experience to be there, mom
Speaker 1: up in the air, and we had a smooth journey,
Speaker 1: so that was always nice. But I was in town
Speaker 1: for the Pixel ten launch. This was not your typical
Speaker 1: tech launch.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you.
Speaker 1: They were very mysterious. Google was very mysterious about this thing.
Speaker 1: They did not invite a lot of people. I was
Speaker 1: apparently one of the chosen ones along with I would say,
Speaker 1: there's just a couple hundred people there, not your typical
Speaker 1: giant swath of tech journalists. This was on a set
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, and it was literally they recreated a late
Speaker 1: night talk show set and it was complete with Jimmy Fallon.
Speaker 1: He was there, he hosted it. They had applause signs,
Speaker 1: They had celebrities on stage, a studio audience, which I
Speaker 1: was a part of. All these camera people and they
Speaker 1: had a whole bunch of celebs, and they did this
Speaker 1: as like instead of just your typical tech presentation, they
Speaker 1: did this as almost like a TV show with the
Speaker 1: Google Pixel ten series as the starring role. So they
Speaker 1: had various guests that came up, like Alex Cooper, she's
Speaker 1: a popular podcaster. She came up and demoed something on
Speaker 1: the camera. Cody Rigsby, he's a very popular Peloton instructor.
Speaker 1: He demoed a feature on the fitness app or sorry,
Speaker 1: the fitness of the Apple watch Apple Watch, look at
Speaker 1: me falling into the Apple trap? The pixel watch then
Speaker 1: the Jonas Brothers, actually a Jonas brother was there talking
Speaker 1: about how much they love camera and video on the
Speaker 1: Pixel and they actually shot their music video in New
Speaker 1: York City on the new Pixel and so they premiered
Speaker 1: that as well. And then Stephen Curry was there as well.
Speaker 1: Stephan Curry was there as well to I guess he
Speaker 1: is the new Google Fitness ambassador, so there he was there,
Speaker 1: just on screen, not actually in person. So anyway, small
Speaker 1: invite only crowd. It was, you know, it got mixed reactions. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the tech press is like, you know, all these hot
Speaker 1: takes online, Oh it didn't work, it was so horrible.
Speaker 1: It was fine, it was funny. It was different. The
Speaker 1: tech people that are interested in the phone are always
Speaker 1: going to go out and read the specs and see
Speaker 1: exactly what this thing can do. But for the average
Speaker 1: person that's just maybe watching on YouTube saying, oh, let's
Speaker 1: let me see what's going on here.
Speaker 2: It was fine.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if they'll do it again,
Speaker 1: but it was It was good for them to take
Speaker 1: that chance. So what did we get at the event?
Speaker 1: Brand new Pixel phones. Pixel ten that's the standard phone.
Speaker 1: Then you've got the Pixel ten Pro, and that comes
Speaker 1: in two flavors, the Pro and then the Xcel, which
Speaker 1: is just a larger version of that. So the Pixel
Speaker 1: ten has a lot of the things that the Pixel ten,
Speaker 1: you know, the pixels known for. It's got all the
Speaker 1: AI features, got the same processor, it's got a three
Speaker 1: camera lens set up now, so you've got a five
Speaker 1: times telephoto zoom lens which is great, ten times optical
Speaker 1: quality zoom, and then up to twenty times super rezoom,
Speaker 1: which means they're using a little AI to clean up
Speaker 1: those pictures. Then when you get to the Pro, and
Speaker 1: I think for most people the Base Pro is probably
Speaker 1: going to be your best bet overall. I think the
Speaker 1: ten is just fine, but I think it's like, if
Speaker 1: you want to step up just a little bit, go
Speaker 1: with the Pro. But this has the six point three
Speaker 1: inch display or a six point eight inch. You get
Speaker 1: your choice of screen size basically, and then it comes
Speaker 1: with sixteen gigabytes of RAM, which is incredible. I love
Speaker 1: that that they did that. Based storage on the Pro
Speaker 1: is one hundred and twenty eight gigabytes, but even better
Speaker 1: on the Pro Excel it is two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: six gigabytes, So that is awesome. It's got a triple camera,
Speaker 1: a similar triple camera setup, except this one can go
Speaker 1: one hundred times super rezuom. And so I've got the
Speaker 1: phone right here and tested this out last night. I
Speaker 1: took a picture of a sign super far away. I
Speaker 1: could not believe it. It actually takes it's not really
Speaker 1: it's zooming in, but then it takes whatever you zoomed
Speaker 1: in on, and it literally just uses AI to kind
Speaker 1: of recreate the picture pixel by pixel. And so this
Speaker 1: picture I took was of a street sign, and it
Speaker 1: looks a little AI ish, but it was just I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just wild the things that we're doing now with AI.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you can call that zooming,
Speaker 1: because now it's just basically AI is looking at what
Speaker 1: you zoomed in on and just making it better. So
Speaker 1: we'll see how that works out for people, but it's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool party trick. The biggest feature I think
Speaker 1: for most people is that they finally added magnets to
Speaker 1: the back of the pixel lineup, which is great because
Speaker 1: this is the first Android device that has magnets built in,
Speaker 1: at least here in the US.
Speaker 2: Maybe somewhere else they have them, but not here in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you know mag safe on the Apple
Speaker 1: side of things, this is Google's version. They're calling it
Speaker 1: pixel Snap, and so that means you can snap on
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, And by snap, I mean magnetically
Speaker 1: attached while it's charged, Rings, grips, whatever you got you
Speaker 1: can put on to the back of these phones with
Speaker 1: no extra case necessary, even though you'll probably still want
Speaker 1: a case. The other big change no more physical SIM
Speaker 1: card slot. It is now e SIM only, which means
Speaker 1: electronic SIM. So yesterday when I was setting up the device, yeah,
Speaker 1: I ran into a little bit of an issue because
Speaker 1: I had to like swap the sin SIM electronically and
Speaker 1: I couldn't just push one SIM out of my old
Speaker 1: phone and pop it into the new phone. So it does,
Speaker 1: you know, for some people that will present a challenge,
Speaker 1: but for most people that are just upgrading once every
Speaker 1: three years four years, not going to be that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. So the pricing for these devices, the
Speaker 1: standard phone starts at eight hundred dollars, the pro is
Speaker 1: a thousand, the pro Xcel is eleven hundred dollars, very
Speaker 1: very good pricing. I think on these phones they didn't
Speaker 1: really raise prices as far as I can tell, and
Speaker 1: you did get a bump on some of the specs,
Speaker 1: and you know just some of the things these can do.
Speaker 1: So I really think that they did a great job
Speaker 1: with these phones this year. I really really do like
Speaker 1: this is the year. If you're going to switch to
Speaker 1: a pixel, this is the year to do it. Everything
Speaker 1: is finally lined up after ten years. They also showed
Speaker 1: off the Pixel ten pro fold. Not much to say
Speaker 1: about here except it's still there. The foldable phone dust
Speaker 1: resistance is now built in that starts at eighteen hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of people running out to
Speaker 1: get the foldables right now, but it's there and it's
Speaker 1: still a nice phone if you like that. Now, when
Speaker 1: it comes to some of these AI features, this is
Speaker 1: what Google really focused on.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 1: This feature called Magic Q, which is just incredible. When
Speaker 1: someone texts you a question, AI looks through all the
Speaker 1: data on your phone, your emails, your text your notes,
Speaker 1: your photos, and it will surface that information right away.
Speaker 1: So all you have to do is tap and click
Speaker 1: and it'll send it to that person. So if someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: what's Jim's phone number? Again, it'll look in your address
Speaker 1: book for Jim's pone number.
Speaker 2: Put it right there.
Speaker 1: Hey, what's our dinner reservation for tonight? It'll put your
Speaker 1: reservation right there. You tap it sends it. Hey, remember
Speaker 1: to send those pictures you took of us at the circus.
Speaker 1: It'll surface your circus photos and I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of them on my camera roll and it will send
Speaker 1: them right to the other person. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: a really really cool feature. I need to test that out.
Speaker 1: Then the other big feature asked to edit, So you
Speaker 1: don't even need to know how to use a photo
Speaker 1: editor anymore. You just take your picture and then there's
Speaker 1: a little text chat underneath it, and you just text
Speaker 1: with Google about what you want it to do to
Speaker 1: that picture. So you can say, remove the reflection fix
Speaker 1: this photo, and AI will do all the fixes for you,
Speaker 1: crop it whatever you want, and it'll give you a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of options. And then it can also do
Speaker 1: a surprise me mode, so if you just want to
Speaker 1: see something wild and crazy with your pictures, just tap
Speaker 1: surprise me. The other cool feature real time call translation.
Speaker 1: So not only are they translating your phone calls on
Speaker 1: the other ends for the other person, if they speak
Speaker 1: a different language, but it's in the person's voice. So
Speaker 1: if I spoke to someone that was only speaking Spanish
Speaker 1: and they're speaking to me, they would hear me speaking
Speaker 1: Spanish in Rich's voice, I would hear them speaking English
Speaker 1: in their voice. They're using AI to do that. That's
Speaker 1: a really interesting feature. And then finally, the other feature
Speaker 1: they mentioned is something called camera Coach, where basically AI
Speaker 1: helps you take a better picture while you're taking it.
Speaker 1: I don't see anyone using this, but maybe I'll be
Speaker 1: proven wrong. Google definitely took some shots at Apple. They said, look,
Speaker 1: they're running a walled garden. We've got open choice messages
Speaker 1: like the blue bubble versus green bubble. Give me a break,
Speaker 1: this is over. They said, everyone has rcs. Your pictures
Speaker 1: are going to look good, your videos are going to
Speaker 1: look good. You can see when your Android friends are typing,
Speaker 1: or your iPhone friends are replying, or there's emojis and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So they said, look, we get it.
Speaker 1: Switching is hard. Apple locks you into all this stuff.
Speaker 1: While I'm saying this, actually Apple locks you into all
Speaker 1: this stuff and it is really hard to switch. But
Speaker 1: I do think that people that have a pixel and
Speaker 1: it's a very small amount of people. When they have them,
Speaker 1: they've got some of the smartest devices out there. All right,
Speaker 1: come up eight eight eight rich one O one. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take your calls, your emails. We're gonna have more
Speaker 1: of my thoughts, and I'm gonna tell you about the
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese arcade I visited for kids of all ages.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four to one zero one. Phone lines are open.
Speaker 1: Kim is here answering phones. What are you waiting for?
Speaker 1: Give me a call? Eight eight eight rich one oh
Speaker 1: one Diego in San Diego.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 3: Hello, Thank you Rich for doing this what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I have this MacBook Pro A nineteen I'm excusing nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety and after cleaning up everything, all the pictures and
Speaker 3: stuff that I didn't need everything, I decided to transfer
Speaker 3: everything over. And after transfer anything over, I was gonna
Speaker 3: do factor reset and sell it to.
Speaker 4: My friend he's been waiting for it, sure, And.
Speaker 3: Then never did that. It just got stuck on the
Speaker 3: little Global, the little Earth thing, and there it went.
Speaker 3: I just sat there for hours. I kept rebooting it,
Speaker 3: doe to everything that I was supposed to, even a factory.
Speaker 3: Where is it that downloaded from the internet? Off the
Speaker 3: Internet and everything? I just sat there. So I put
Speaker 3: it on the shelf and I just, hey, I'm already
Speaker 3: good with my computer. I'll let him and I'll get
Speaker 3: to it later. And then the battery went dead. And
Speaker 3: for what I learned on the internet, this machine needs
Speaker 3: a battery to run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 3: And it said that when I transfer everything over, it
Speaker 3: did a self execute. It committed suicide.
Speaker 1: So it's so, what's the what's the question? How to
Speaker 1: get this thing back up and running? To format it? Is?
Speaker 2: This is your data?
Speaker 5: St want to do that?
Speaker 3: Can I actually get it back and up and running?
Speaker 3: I like to sell it. My friend he got another one,
Speaker 3: but you can use them for his kid too.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course this is a twenty nineteen model.
Speaker 3: You said, No, it's an Apple nineteen ninety. It's the
Speaker 3: years between sixteen and nineteen. Twenty nineteen is the year
Speaker 3: more or less when.
Speaker 2: They Okay, so see, yeah, it's a couple of years old.
Speaker 1: I mean it's still you know, it's still reasonably I
Speaker 1: think that the a MacBooks can have like probably almost
Speaker 1: like a ten year lifespan. So what is the status
Speaker 1: of the computer? It won't boot up at all? Is
Speaker 1: that the problem?
Speaker 3: It has a dead battery?
Speaker 2: Has a dead battery?
Speaker 1: Okay, So the question is do you want to replace
Speaker 1: the battery to save this or now have you left
Speaker 1: it plugged in for like a really long time to
Speaker 1: get the battery to maybe come back to life.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it just it just won't.
Speaker 1: No, was there a problem with the battery before? No,
Speaker 1: so it was so it wasn't like, uh, there was
Speaker 1: no issue with like the battery was like on its
Speaker 1: last legs or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was about there because there's
Speaker 3: that crane on when you just go ahead and get
Speaker 3: another one. So I did, but it wasn't. It was okay,
Speaker 3: it could have been a little bit longer necessuidly brand
Speaker 3: new course, but I would say it will give me
Speaker 3: about eighty percent, you know what I'm saying, stead of
Speaker 3: the usual watching the movie for you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of hours or two and a half hours. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: do that. I had to plug it in somewhere in
Speaker 3: between there.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the only thing I can think of is
Speaker 1: so your your computer will not come to life because
Speaker 1: I had a MacBook that I was able to use
Speaker 1: without the battery, and this was a long time when
Speaker 1: the batteries actually popped out. You can't pop that out.
Speaker 1: So I guess the question is do you want to pay?
Speaker 1: I mean, you could sell this to your friend as is,
Speaker 1: and they could just get the battery replaced and then
Speaker 1: they have a perfectly good computer and then they just
Speaker 1: have to reinstall the operating system.
Speaker 3: It sounds that's what that's what they would hang up
Speaker 3: with the batteries running. Okay, Like I said before, like
Speaker 3: eighty percent that was up in their life. And when
Speaker 3: I tried to do factor the reset, I got hung
Speaker 3: up on that little the little gold the little earth
Speaker 3: looking thing, and then just the bar will will go
Speaker 3: about three quarters away and then start back over again,
Speaker 3: and you can see it doing its progress, and do
Speaker 3: it again, and they just keep recycling, just keep doing that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it sounds like there's something. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's tough to know what's what's going on here without
Speaker 1: exactly seeing it. I'm a little confused. As to what's happening.
Speaker 1: But I would say a couple of things to think about.
Speaker 1: You know, leave it plugged in for a while, see
Speaker 1: if that brings it back to life. Sounds like you've
Speaker 1: already done that. There are some ways to reset. Is
Speaker 1: this an Intel based? This is an Intel based?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 3: I could not tell you. I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it is, Yeah, because it's the twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: so there's there is one.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this resetting the p RAM?
Speaker 7: Yes, okay, we.
Speaker 2: Tried that, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I think it sounds like you might need someone to
Speaker 1: do a diagnostic on this to get it or just
Speaker 1: bring it to a place where they can actually replace
Speaker 1: that battery and get this thing going. I'm a little
Speaker 1: confused as to like what is what the status of
Speaker 1: that battery is. Sounds like it's working a little bit,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily. But I think once you get battery
Speaker 1: figured out and this computer turns on, you can easily
Speaker 1: just wipe the drive. You can use something like there's
Speaker 1: a program that I like called disk drill that will
Speaker 1: let you make a recovery drive for this thing. You
Speaker 1: could boot it up from there and it'll it should
Speaker 1: come back to life. I mean, there's still life left
Speaker 1: in this computer. I think, so if you want to
Speaker 1: replace that battery or at least get someone that knows
Speaker 1: how to get this thing turned on, I think it
Speaker 1: might be a good idea.
Speaker 2: All right, Coming up.
Speaker 1: Next, we are going to talk about how to recover
Speaker 1: a refund if your airfare drops in price. This is
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich
Speaker 1: DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. This week I went to
Speaker 1: the first Chuck E Cheese arcade. It's called Chuck's Arcade
Speaker 1: location in Brea, California. It was one of the first
Speaker 1: people in there. This is their tenth location overall for
Speaker 1: this Chuck's Arcade. And this is kind of like a
Speaker 1: it's like a new con except from Chuck E Cheese.
Speaker 1: That's basically like what I grew up with, right, just
Speaker 1: an arcade. So there's no pizza, there's no birthday parties.
Speaker 1: It's just all focused on the games. There's no you know,
Speaker 1: there's no food in there or anything like that. But
Speaker 1: there are prizes, which is fun. So the one I
Speaker 1: visited had like sixty games. They were really nice, really new,
Speaker 1: like very clean and fresh and modern. And apparently these
Speaker 1: these crane machines they call them Clawcades, are I guess
Speaker 1: really popular. I know my kid loves these claw games,
Speaker 1: so and I won one on my first try, which
Speaker 1: is awesome. But then they've got retro titles galagam Is,
Speaker 1: pac Man plus the modern stuff. And then each location
Speaker 1: has a you know, they've been decommissioning these animatronics from
Speaker 1: Chuck E Cheese places, so they have one of them
Speaker 1: like in glass that you can see. So this one
Speaker 1: had Mister Munch. And then of course there's all a
Speaker 1: bunch of like merch you can I'm actually wearing one
Speaker 1: of the t shirts that they sell there. It's like retro.
Speaker 1: It's all retro merchandise, which is really cool. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is a place that anyone can go to, kids, adults, whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't need to have a birthday party. And I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it, and I think it's smart they're putting
Speaker 1: them in like they're trying to put them mostly next
Speaker 1: to mall food courts, which I think is really smart
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So if you happen to see a Chuck's arcade.
Speaker 1: And you're wondering what it's all about now, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you want to see what it's all about,
Speaker 1: I put it on my Instagram at rich On Tech.
Speaker 1: I did a little video which is sort of making
Speaker 1: the rounds right now at rich On Tech on Instagram
Speaker 1: if you want to see the Chuck's Arcade. They do
Speaker 1: have locations across the nation, just about ten right now,
Speaker 1: so be on the lookout for.
Speaker 2: I love the chuck Eg stuff. I mean, I grew
Speaker 2: up going there.
Speaker 1: I love the pizza and the you know, my kids
Speaker 1: had birthday parties there, so I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have fond memories of this place for different reasons.
Speaker 2: So anyway, kind of cool, all right.
Speaker 1: This week I was also surprised because I woke up
Speaker 1: to an email that said, hey, You've got eighty dollars
Speaker 1: back as a refund from United. I said, wait what?
Speaker 1: And I forgot that I even had signed up with
Speaker 1: this website. But it's called Payback Pai c k dot app,
Speaker 1: and we've got Jason Lucking on the line. He is
Speaker 1: one of the co founders to explain how this all works. Basically,
Speaker 1: it gets you money back when an airfare that you
Speaker 1: book the price drops.
Speaker 2: Jason, Welcome to the show. Do we have him? Nope, Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: He's there, Okay, Jason, Jason, you on im.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: We've got Jason ring the bell. Okay, Jason. So tell
Speaker 1: me explain the Payback website, Like, tell me how this works.
Speaker 8: So, so Payback was driven out of my own personal
Speaker 8: travel experiences as well nuts and bolts of it. Payback
Speaker 8: is a AI driven flight optimization tool, so we automate
Speaker 8: the process of optimizing optimizing your flight price for an
Speaker 8: already purchased ticket.
Speaker 1: And so as I understand, like basically, all I did
Speaker 1: was sign up for the website.
Speaker 2: It's free.
Speaker 1: You phear your confirmation from one of the major airlines,
Speaker 1: and then it just watches the price and as soon
Speaker 1: as it drops to a certain threshold, it will go
Speaker 1: out and request that refund. It's really a credit from
Speaker 1: the airline.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 8: So again, you're going to book directly with the airline,
Speaker 8: and we focus on American Delta, United Alaska, and we're
Speaker 8: in talk with some of the other airlines as well
Speaker 8: to grow that.
Speaker 5: And then you, just as you said, you ford the
Speaker 5: ticket to us.
Speaker 8: We monitor it throughout the day and so whenever that
Speaker 8: flight price drops and a thresholder is nothing below ten dollars,
Speaker 8: so any drop over ten dollars, we automate that process
Speaker 8: to get you a credit or a refund for the difference. Now,
Speaker 8: most of us book non refundable tickets, and non refundable
Speaker 8: tickets get you future flight credits and refundable tickets, which
Speaker 8: are you know, you pay a bit of a premium
Speaker 8: for them, you end up getting that back as a refund,
Speaker 8: back to the original method of payment.
Speaker 1: So this surprised me because I think I plugged in
Speaker 1: like three flights that I had, and two of nothing
Speaker 1: really happened, and this one is I mean it's just
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, out of the blue. I've bought
Speaker 1: four tickets, so I got twenty dollars each ticket times
Speaker 1: for eighty dollars. What kinds of refunds are people seeing? Like,
Speaker 1: are you seeing a lot of like a fluctuation in
Speaker 1: these prices and people kind of capturing these refunds.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So you know, when we started this again, it
Speaker 8: was kind of like a personal thing to start off with.
Speaker 8: I'm both a frequent flyer and we fly a lot
Speaker 8: with the family, so for me I was thinking this
Speaker 8: would be great for frequent flyers, maybe saving on economy classes,
Speaker 8: but it's happening on every single class, Economy, business, first class. Obviously,
Speaker 8: the ranges vary. We've seen tickets drop once, and we've
Speaker 8: seen them drop as many as five or eight times.
Speaker 8: Now sixty percent of the time the price has been
Speaker 8: dropping below what somebody's originally purchased it for. And the
Speaker 8: average if you kind of take an amalgamation of all
Speaker 8: those savings, the average savings is two hundred and fifty
Speaker 8: dollars per saving, So that might be somebody's getting twenty
Speaker 8: dollars here, twenty dollars fifty dollars here.
Speaker 5: And we've seen drops as high as nine thousand dollars.
Speaker 8: Now obviously that was an international first class ticket, but
Speaker 8: we're still seeing these big drops on the domestic economy
Speaker 8: tickets as well.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's wild. So people are definitely capturing it. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned the fares it works with, so not obviously
Speaker 1: not an economy basic fare. I'm guessing right, because there's
Speaker 1: no changes to us.
Speaker 8: The only one that's out is basic economy, which, as
Speaker 8: you know, you know, basic economy you have to buy
Speaker 8: a seat belt and an issue to the toilet. You know,
Speaker 8: it's it's meant to be bare bones at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 8: it's anything above basic economy.
Speaker 2: And so how are you getting these refunds? Are you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume it's some AI involved in here, Like,
Speaker 1: how are you actually reaching out to these airlines?
Speaker 5: Yes, so we use we use AI to monitor it.
Speaker 8: We use AI to converse with the airline on your
Speaker 8: behalf to get you that credit for the difference. Now,
Speaker 8: what one important thing that we think is really key
Speaker 8: is we don't cancel your ticket and rebook you. What
Speaker 8: we do is we get it reticketed, so you end
Speaker 8: staying on the same confirmation number in the same seat
Speaker 8: and I will say ninety nine percent of the time
Speaker 8: in the same seat. They may move you from one
Speaker 8: aisle seat to another if you're flying with one specific airline,
Speaker 8: I wouldn't mentioned that one. But same flight, same seat,
Speaker 8: nothing changes for you. You just end up getting a
Speaker 8: future flight credit to use on a future flight. And
Speaker 8: for me, anybody that is a flies more than three
Speaker 8: times a year.
Speaker 5: This is this is a key thing.
Speaker 8: You know, credits are like cash at that point you're
Speaker 8: going to be using them again.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I know because I book a ton
Speaker 1: of flights, and here's here's how most people do it.
Speaker 1: Maybe I mean this is how I do it. I
Speaker 1: research the heck out of it before I book. I mean,
Speaker 1: I sit there, I track it, I look at it
Speaker 1: every day. The price goes up, the price goes down,
Speaker 1: it goes around, and all of a sudden, I finally
Speaker 1: book and I never think about it again. So all
Speaker 1: that fluctuation still is happening. I'm just no longer monitoring
Speaker 1: it is that kind of what most.
Speaker 8: People exactly, So even in that time of you doing
Speaker 8: the initial look and the time you're purchasing it, it's
Speaker 8: probably fluctuating throughout the day. I mean, we've seen drops
Speaker 8: happen for one hour. We've seen them drop for you know,
Speaker 8: multiple days. The precipice of payback is to say when
Speaker 8: is the best time to book? You know, I'm a
Speaker 8: super analytical person, and I was always thinking, you know,
Speaker 8: follow these fads. It's on a Tuesday at six am,
Speaker 8: clear your cookies.
Speaker 5: Make sure you know mercury is in retrograde. All these
Speaker 5: like running baths on social media.
Speaker 8: And what we wanted people to be able to do
Speaker 8: is say, when is the right time to book?
Speaker 5: The right time to book is now?
Speaker 2: Is right now?
Speaker 5: To worry?
Speaker 8: You book when you want to make that initial decision,
Speaker 8: and if the price drops, we're going to optimize that
Speaker 8: for you anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the price is going to go up no
Speaker 1: matter what, Like it eventually goes up, like when you
Speaker 1: get closer to the date. But like you said, there
Speaker 1: might be these things where it just drops and I
Speaker 1: and you can see when you log into the website
Speaker 1: that you see that graph of like what the flight,
Speaker 1: what the price has done for that flight over time.
Speaker 1: So here's my big question though, because I've seen similar
Speaker 1: startups like this before. Now that this is happening and
Speaker 1: you know, people can tap into this thing that probably
Speaker 1: was never tapped into these refunds, the airlines are like, oh,
Speaker 1: not so fast. We're just going to change our terms
Speaker 1: and conditions and you can no longer get a credit.
Speaker 2: Are they going to do that?
Speaker 5: So we don't believe.
Speaker 8: So in twenty twenty, United announce that they were removing
Speaker 8: change fees forever, permanently, never coming back. One of the
Speaker 8: things that you're building towards is partnerships with the airlines
Speaker 8: directly we want to integrate into the airlines, and here's
Speaker 8: the reason why, is because people that use payback become
Speaker 8: more loyal to that specific airline. We recently did a
Speaker 8: study that showed sixty seven percent of our users that
Speaker 8: receive a price drop are more likely to book with
Speaker 8: that dedicated airline again for two reasons. One they feel
Speaker 8: better about the ticket that they're flying with, and two
Speaker 8: they've got a credit to use with the airline, which
Speaker 8: you either.
Speaker 5: Use it or you lose it, and if you use
Speaker 5: it amazing.
Speaker 8: Our whole ethos is we want people more, do more
Speaker 8: of what you love, go out and see the world,
Speaker 8: whether that's domestically or internationally, and that's kind of a
Speaker 8: a deep rooted element of payback. So there's a huge
Speaker 8: loyalty element with the airlines that we drive forwards.
Speaker 1: It's funny because my holiday flights that I was booking
Speaker 1: for the holidays like Christmas, I was waiting and then
Speaker 1: when I heard about this website, I actually just booked.
Speaker 1: I said to my wife, we could just book these
Speaker 1: because if the price goes down, which is what we're
Speaker 1: waiting for, we'll just get a credit.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened. By the way. So that's the
Speaker 2: flights that we got, and his exactly.
Speaker 8: Price goes up, we do nothing about it. You know,
Speaker 8: if the price goes up, let it keep going up.
Speaker 8: You know that you paid the best price two months ago,
Speaker 8: three months ago, whenever it was that you initially booked
Speaker 8: that ticket.
Speaker 1: Right, I've got about thirty seconds. What's the cost here?
Speaker 8: So we don't charge anything upfront. We charge a twenty
Speaker 8: percent service fee on whatever we save you, so we
Speaker 8: don't want it to be any friction of you to
Speaker 8: question it.
Speaker 5: Only when you win do we win.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Jason Lucking, co founder of payback pai back dot app.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link on the website rich on Tech
Speaker 1: dot tv can find it in the show notes. Get
Speaker 1: your money back if your airfare price drops. Great idea.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me, Jason. Coming up on
Speaker 1: the show, I'll tell you more about the pixel watch
Speaker 1: four and your calls. Eighty to eight rich one O
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven.
Speaker 2: Four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV
Speaker 1: this is episode one three six. So if you go
Speaker 1: to the website you want the show notes, or you
Speaker 1: want to see my cool Chuck E Cheese shirt, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go to the website. Rich on tech dot tv episode
Speaker 1: one three six. Hel In Seemi Valley, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 9: Well, thanks, thank you, Rich. I've got a strange problem.
Speaker 9: My icons are no longer medium, my preferences medium. They're
Speaker 9: larger than small and smaller than medium. The print underneath
Speaker 9: them is smaller when I go into my folders and smaller.
Speaker 9: I've tried scaling. I've done whatever research I can do,
Speaker 9: and I said, well, I don't think it's a virus.
Speaker 9: I've run anti virus, and no matter what I do,
Speaker 9: it just seems to be smaller.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming it's on Windows.
Speaker 10: Yes.
Speaker 9: The only other thing I can tell you about that
Speaker 9: is unusual, and maybe it's at about the same time
Speaker 9: I wasn't paying that much attention is about every ten seconds,
Speaker 9: my icons will blink off and on against.
Speaker 1: Okay, it sounds like it sounds like a scaling issue.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, it sounds like somehow your the
Speaker 1: scale of your screen got changed. So did suddenly everything
Speaker 1: on the screen get smaller?
Speaker 9: Well, I didn't notice it right away, but everything on
Speaker 9: the screen, all the icons and the words underneath them
Speaker 9: are smaller. And I tried customs scaling I have for
Speaker 9: my word documents. I have it set at one hundred
Speaker 9: and that's all there.
Speaker 1: Okay, and that's but that's that's a setting that is
Speaker 1: just for the word app. So there are you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to these computers, there's like global settings,
Speaker 1: and then there's settings inside the actual apps. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you the places to look that I
Speaker 1: think will help fix this. And I think the first
Speaker 1: thing is number one, you have to just look at
Speaker 1: the scale of your screen. So when you go into
Speaker 1: your Windows settings, you can just just go to your
Speaker 1: desktop actually and write click and you can go and
Speaker 1: hang on, I gotta move something around here so I
Speaker 1: can see what I'm doing here display settings, so that
Speaker 1: that's the number one place to look. And make sure
Speaker 1: that your scale is the right scale. So mine's at
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy five percent. It's based on the monitor,
Speaker 1: So just play with that number a little bit and
Speaker 1: see if things look the way they used to be.
Speaker 2: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: So again, just write, click on the screen and once
Speaker 1: you write click, you're going to go into display settings
Speaker 1: and look under scale and layout and just tap that
Speaker 1: and you can change your scaling. Now, once you're in there,
Speaker 1: you can actually check your text size. That's also in there,
Speaker 1: so you can go in there, and this is under
Speaker 1: accessibility actually, but if there's like a quick link, so
Speaker 1: you can go in there and check your text size,
Speaker 1: and right now, minds at one hundred percent, you can
Speaker 1: make that much bigger all the way up to once
Speaker 1: I tap this, I'm never going to be able to
Speaker 1: go back one hundred let's say two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five percent. So there's a little slider. So again that's
Speaker 1: under text size, and you could just search text size
Speaker 1: in the Windows search bar at the bottom. The other
Speaker 1: thing to do is I think your icons. You said
Speaker 1: your icons were looking a lot smaller. So if you
Speaker 1: right click again this desktop, you'll see where it says
Speaker 1: view and you'll notice there's three options large icons, medium icons,
Speaker 1: and small icons. So you might have somehow selected the
Speaker 1: medium or small and maybe you still want the large,
Speaker 1: So those are the.
Speaker 2: Places do it.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, and it sounds like you already
Speaker 1: found this, but if you want a shortcut to just
Speaker 1: in general, this is probably a good thing to know
Speaker 1: on Windows. But if you just you know, if you
Speaker 1: have any vision issues or you want to see something
Speaker 1: closer up and you don't want to change a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, you can just press the Windows key
Speaker 1: and the plus sign on your computer at the same time,
Speaker 1: and it will bring up the accessibility magnifier and you
Speaker 1: can zoom into like any part of your page. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to read something that's got tiny text,
Speaker 1: or you're just you know, having issues that day, maybe
Speaker 1: you just woke up, you know, and you can't see
Speaker 1: as well in the morning, just the Windows plus the
Speaker 1: plus key will take you there so and then minus
Speaker 1: will take you the other way. So those are the
Speaker 1: main places I would look how I think those one
Speaker 1: of those will fix it. It sounds like because you
Speaker 1: said the icons were blinking, that sounds like some sort
Speaker 1: of screen scaling or refresh rate kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: it looks like something got a little tweaked in there.
Speaker 1: But hopefully you can just go in and change those
Speaker 1: settings and find something that works for you. Good question today,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call. Eight eight eight Rich one O
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
Speaker 1: zero one.
Speaker 2: Let's see, do I have time for another one? Probably not.
Speaker 1: Let me do this, so let me tell you about
Speaker 1: the pixel Watch four. Pixel Watch four I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: They had the Pixel w the Pixel Phones, the Pixel ten.
Speaker 1: They also unveiled a new watch and so the thing
Speaker 1: the headlines to know about the pixel Watch four is
Speaker 1: that it is the first smart watch that can call
Speaker 1: for help with satellites. So we know we have this
Speaker 1: on our phones, some of the recent model phones have this.
Speaker 1: Now the watch has it for the first time. And
Speaker 1: the only thing to know about this is that it
Speaker 1: has to be the cellular that what pixel Google calls
Speaker 1: the LTE version of the watch, so it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be the regular watch. You do have to have that
Speaker 1: cellular modem inside the watch, so it is the more
Speaker 1: expensive watch. But if you are some of that hikes,
Speaker 1: you're always out in the middle of nowhere without your
Speaker 1: phone and you know you just have your watch on. Yes,
Speaker 1: you could have cellular, but now you can have the
Speaker 1: satellite emergency, which is really cool. So that's that's their
Speaker 1: number one new feature. It is free and included on
Speaker 1: the device. Then they also have this new domed display.
Speaker 1: I didn't really notice a crazy different dome display, but
Speaker 1: it definitely looked like the screen was bigger when I
Speaker 1: saw it. The battery life has improved, so thirty hours
Speaker 1: or forty hours fast charging is improved better, Gorilla glass
Speaker 1: easier to fix this thing, and of course everything's more accurate.
Speaker 1: All the tracking, sleep trackings more accurate. All these things
Speaker 1: are more accurate. So they upgraded the sensors on this device,
Speaker 1: and then of course they added this personal AI health
Speaker 1: coach with Gemini. This is similar to what Samsung did
Speaker 1: and similar to what Apple did. Obviously, AI is making
Speaker 1: its way into every part of our lives. But the
Speaker 1: other nice thing they have on this is the Gemini AI,
Speaker 1: which you can just lift your wrist up to your
Speaker 1: mouth and just start talking to AI, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to like activate it with a button or anything
Speaker 1: on screen. You can just lift your wrist, which is
Speaker 1: something you've been able to do with Siri for many years.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, Siri is definitely not as helpful
Speaker 1: as Gemini AI because you can get answers to anything
Speaker 1: in the world with Gemini. It is a really cool feature.
Speaker 1: Three hundred and fifty dollars for the Wi Fi version,
Speaker 1: up to five hundred dollars for the biggest LTE version
Speaker 1: in stores October ninth, eighty eight rich one oh one
Speaker 1: eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you focking technology triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eight eight A seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. The website for the
Speaker 1: show rich on Tech dot TV. Visit there for the
Speaker 1: show notes. Also, you can check out the stories I
Speaker 1: do for TV. They're all right there, and follow me
Speaker 1: on Instagram at rich on Tech. You see the theme here. Yes,
Speaker 1: I posted a couple of things to Instagram this.
Speaker 2: Week, and one of them was.
Speaker 1: I'm at the airport and I'd use the self checkout,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, it asks me if I would like
Speaker 1: to leave a tip?
Speaker 2: Why would I leave a tip for a self checkout?
Speaker 1: Kiosk, I'm not leaving a tip, and it defaulted to
Speaker 1: let's see here eighteen percent. By the way, I was
Speaker 1: already paying seven dollars for a bottle of water, and
Speaker 1: everyone commented is like, well, why would you pay seven
Speaker 1: bucks for bottle water? Number one when you're in an arena,
Speaker 1: a sporting event, or an airport, there's something or a
Speaker 1: movie theater, there's something called suspension of pricing disbelief. You
Speaker 1: have to just imagine that a Coca cola cost twenty
Speaker 1: dollars when you're at a movie theater or an airport.
Speaker 1: And that's the same thing with the water. Now, I
Speaker 1: did bring my own water bottle. Yes, I do travel
Speaker 1: with a water bottle. When I filled it up at
Speaker 1: the airport at one of their fillers, it was hot water,
Speaker 1: like literally hot, and I just did not feel like
Speaker 1: drinking hot water. So that's why I bought the bottle
Speaker 1: of water. Anyway, you can see that there. You can
Speaker 1: also see My Chuck's Arcade My Chuck e Cheese Arcade video.
Speaker 1: But we went to you know, if you check my
Speaker 1: stories too, you can see we went last night to
Speaker 1: Dave Matthews's band. We watched them and it was great.
Speaker 1: It was a nice show. It was if you like music,
Speaker 1: it was a great show. Right didn't play all the
Speaker 1: songs that I knew, which I thought was kind of annoying,
Speaker 1: but you know, what are you gonna do? I can't
Speaker 1: tell him what to play, but it made me think
Speaker 1: about something because we knew exactly what time he was
Speaker 1: taking the stage, exactly what time he was leaving exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: you know people have the set list or whatever. But
Speaker 1: like it made me realize, in this world, we don't
Speaker 1: leave anything to chance anymore, right, Like everything is planned
Speaker 1: out in advance. Like there was a time and I've
Speaker 1: lived this life where things were mysterious. Right, your favorite band,
Speaker 1: like like Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, they would just show
Speaker 1: up on stage whenever they felt like. You didn't know
Speaker 1: what time they were supposed to come on, you didn't
Speaker 1: have access to Reddit, You didn't know the set list
Speaker 1: because you didn't look it up online. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: these are the things that we just do now. How
Speaker 1: about going to a restaurant. You go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: So many people I know they study the menu for
Speaker 1: hours before they go to the restaurant. What about being
Speaker 1: surprised at what's on the menu at a restaurant? Why
Speaker 1: can't we just be surprised?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: My wife and I debate on that because she loves
Speaker 1: to look at the menu. I never ever thought about
Speaker 1: looking at the menu at a restaurant before until I
Speaker 1: met her. And now it's like we're analyzing the whole menu.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got like everything figured out beforehand. What
Speaker 1: about maps? You know, I was we were going to
Speaker 1: the concert yesterday, and you know the maps. It's like
Speaker 1: we knew where to take the turns. You know, ways
Speaker 1: is like all it takes you all over the city.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes you a million left turns whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's like, what about the days when you just
Speaker 1: literally drove, Like even on my ride home, I know
Speaker 1: exactly where I'm going.
Speaker 2: I still put on my maps. Why.
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's just something we do movies. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are apps that will tell you the exact time
Speaker 1: to leave the theater. She can go to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: run pe. I think it's called. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: no more mystery in our lives, in a modern life,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, there's no more mystery. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: why people are so unhappy. It's nice to have some
Speaker 1: mystery in life. What about when people called, they would
Speaker 1: call you on the phone, you would just pick up
Speaker 1: and say, hello, who is this? Now it's like you
Speaker 1: know exactly who's on there. You know who's on the
Speaker 1: other end. You don't pick it up half the time.
Speaker 1: Picture same thing. You used to take pictures on your camera,
Speaker 1: you know, and you'd get it developed. Remember that anticipation
Speaker 1: of waiting for the film to be developed.
Speaker 2: We don't have that anymore. Now.
Speaker 1: You take a selfie, you look at it the second later,
Speaker 1: and invariably someone's like, I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Let's take another one. Sports same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, instant highlights on your phone packages, Oh this one.
Speaker 1: I like package tracking. Like you would order something off
Speaker 1: the TV sight on scene. You'd be like, oh, that
Speaker 1: looks cool, let me order it. Six to eight weeks
Speaker 1: it was a mystery. You would call the thing, or
Speaker 1: you'd mail in and order perhaps, and then six to
Speaker 1: eight weeks later someone will show up on your doorstep.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is it's really this stuff. I get
Speaker 1: to think about all this stuff all week long. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I remember to mention it. Sometimes I don't.
Speaker 2: John writes in from Orange, California.
Speaker 1: I want to continuously video my game room so I
Speaker 1: can make a collage of clips when someone makes a
Speaker 1: great shot. What type of camera should I use? I'd
Speaker 1: like to have it remote control and wired charging, so
Speaker 1: I don't have to keep it taking it down. I
Speaker 1: will tell you, John, I've had my Google Nest Cam
Speaker 1: running twenty four to seven for over ten years now,
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. For ten years, the thing has
Speaker 1: not missed a beat. And you can pay Google to
Speaker 1: record in the cloud twenty four to seven. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to pay a little bit every month, but
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that's the way to go. I've had
Speaker 1: this thing plugged in and literally it is never stopped
Speaker 1: for ten years, ten plus years at this point. And Google,
Speaker 1: when I met with them a couple months ago, they
Speaker 1: said that actually, what people like about their devices is
Speaker 1: that they last a really long time. Like I have
Speaker 1: the Nest thermostat, the original one that's been up for
Speaker 1: eleven years now in my house, and I do have
Speaker 1: to replace it because it's gonna stop working. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a great run. Eleven years of not having to
Speaker 1: think about this stuff. Let's see, Paul's been waiting for
Speaker 1: a while, and Hammett, Paul, you're on with Rich. I'm
Speaker 1: here myself. Paul, sounds like you're listening. Paul, you on?
Speaker 2: No, okay, Paul, you were? How do I get this
Speaker 2: on hold again?
Speaker 3: Particular one?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to Karen in Bakersfield. Karen, you're on
Speaker 1: with Rich Hi.
Speaker 6: Rich love your show.
Speaker 11: You're a great teacher. And my question is you could
Speaker 11: recommend a rogue buck antivirus software where when you purchase,
Speaker 11: then every time you scan, you aren't getting suggestions for
Speaker 11: adding utilities and.
Speaker 5: All these things.
Speaker 11: You know, you never feel like you're you're completely protected.
Speaker 11: And I know that there'll be you know, enhancements and
Speaker 11: so forth, but studies are just you know, bobarding you
Speaker 11: to add on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they crawl, They slow your computer down to
Speaker 1: a crawl. And it's it's horrific. I mean, it really is,
Speaker 1: like honestly, the and I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are gonna like me saying this, but this whole anti
Speaker 1: virus kind of thing has gotten out of control. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people, a lot of tech experts
Speaker 1: out there that do not believe you need anti virus
Speaker 1: on your computer anymore.
Speaker 2: Now. I think I'm somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: I think that there are we are still up against
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff when we are on the internet.
Speaker 1: And I think two things. Number one to know. Number one, uh,
Speaker 1: Windows computers have built in uh now uh you know
Speaker 1: they call it Defender let's see, I think they just
Speaker 1: recently changed the name. I think it's all under like
Speaker 1: Windows Security now, but they have that built into your computer, so.
Speaker 2: You can use that. As long as it's up to date, you're.
Speaker 1: Going to be just fine for like ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of things that happen on your computer.
Speaker 2: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: If you want to just go into there, you can
Speaker 1: just type in Windows Security and it will bring up
Speaker 1: all of the security functionality that's built into Windows.
Speaker 2: So you've got virus in.
Speaker 1: Threat protection, account protection, firewall, device app and browser control,
Speaker 1: and you can tap into something like virus in threat
Speaker 1: protection and you can see when the last time your
Speaker 1: computer was scanned, when the last time it found something,
Speaker 1: what you need to do, the updates that you have,
Speaker 1: and oh this is actually something I think someone's someone
Speaker 1: emailed about this. But there's also like ransomware protection built
Speaker 1: into your computer as well, so you can turn that on.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think Windows has a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that's already built in and I think is fine
Speaker 1: for most for many many people. The thing that I
Speaker 1: think we're up against the most these days is actually
Speaker 1: clicking a lot or being misled online, and so for
Speaker 1: that reason I really recommend people using Chrome because Chrome
Speaker 1: has built in tools that will actually scan the websites
Speaker 1: that you are visiting and the links that you're visiting
Speaker 1: to make sure that they are not filled with malware
Speaker 1: or viruses or some sort of fishing or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so if you go into your Chrome settings and let's see,
Speaker 1: I think we go under I got to find where
Speaker 1: this is privacy and security. Let's see here, Yeah, privacy
Speaker 1: and security. So under that you can tap security, and
Speaker 1: they've got this thing called safe Browsing, and the standard
Speaker 1: protection is pretty much I think that's just turned on
Speaker 1: for most of Chrome. But if you really want the
Speaker 1: best protection from Chrome to protect you in real time
Speaker 1: with AI, go in and select this enhanced protection under
Speaker 1: safe Browsing, and it will warn you about dangerous sites.
Speaker 1: It will scan suspicious downloads. I mean, it really does
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff to make sure you're protected. And
Speaker 1: I check I unlike what you should be doing. I
Speaker 1: click a lot of these websites that are that are
Speaker 1: bogus or scammy to see what they try to do.
Speaker 1: And there are some that literally just try to download
Speaker 1: a virus to your computer or malware right away. And
Speaker 1: there's others that will just try to, you know, take
Speaker 1: your information things like that. So this will protect you
Speaker 1: from a lot of that. The other thing I like,
Speaker 1: I do like malware bites. I think that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good way to scan your computer. There is a website,
Speaker 1: by the way, Karen called avdash test dot org. And
Speaker 1: if you look at all of the ratings for these
Speaker 1: these antivirus software, they're all almost the same at this point.
Speaker 1: So what it really comes down to is, like you said,
Speaker 1: something that doesn't have a ton.
Speaker 2: Of bloatwear involved.
Speaker 1: And I think there is one that I think is
Speaker 1: pretty good, this sofos s O p h O s
Speaker 1: sofos dot com. It is a little more expensive, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's not gonna have like things like VPN
Speaker 1: all that stuff necessarily does it I don't think it does.
Speaker 2: But it does have real time protection.
Speaker 1: It does have a lot of good things, and I
Speaker 1: think their whole business is just protecting you. So I
Speaker 1: think that's what you want to look for, is a
Speaker 1: system that is just simple and not trying to sell
Speaker 1: you on a thousand other things. Once they have your
Speaker 1: email address and once they have you So those are
Speaker 1: the things I'd recommend to do. I think that's going
Speaker 1: to protect you in like ninety nine percent of the circumstances.
Speaker 1: I really think a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: these links that people are clicking. They're getting malware, they're
Speaker 1: getting scammed, and I think that's what we need to
Speaker 1: be protected more so than just the random viruses. It's
Speaker 1: really the malvertizing and all these pop ups and websites
Speaker 1: that we're seeing that I think is the biggest issue
Speaker 1: out there right now. So stay protected out there, and
Speaker 1: you know, just be smart about what you click and
Speaker 1: what you're looking at. Great call, Karen, appreciate the question.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up
Speaker 1: this hour, We're going to talk to see Scott Brown
Speaker 1: about the pixel of and I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: which streaming service is raising prices.
Speaker 2: Next, this is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 2: On Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Triple
Speaker 1: eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four.
Speaker 2: Two four one zero one. Let's see.
Speaker 1: I feel like this. I feel like Mark is a
Speaker 1: regular here. Mark and Woodland Hills Welcome to the show.
Speaker 7: Goon, sir, how's.
Speaker 12: Going we're looking at selling our house and buying another,
Speaker 12: and when we move into the new house, we would
Speaker 12: like a comprehensive home security system. And I'm wondering if
Speaker 12: there's any conventions, you know, like home improvement conventions upcoming
Speaker 12: that you know, have all the displays and the tables,
Speaker 12: and instead of calling blindly around and having some salesman
Speaker 12: pressure us into a system we'd like to, we'd like
Speaker 12: to do it hardwired. Also because you know, we know
Speaker 12: that the burglars are using Wi Fi jammers now to
Speaker 12: overcome people's wireless systems. I was wondering if you have
Speaker 12: any suggestions or know of any of these conventions coming
Speaker 12: up for home improvements here.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm actually going to one. I think it's in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks CDA CE D I A. I
Speaker 1: believe it's in Denver this year. But that's really the
Speaker 1: home expo for the professional things like you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like if you want a wired camera system, you want
Speaker 1: you know, the TV that's indoor outdoor, you want the
Speaker 1: built in you know at Crestron System all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm going, so I want to learn more
Speaker 1: about these things. It's been a while haven't gone to
Speaker 1: the show in like ten years, but that is the
Speaker 1: main one. So that's the first place I would I
Speaker 1: would check cedia xpo dot com, c E d I
Speaker 1: A e xpo dot com. And not only will this
Speaker 1: give you an idea of the show, but you can
Speaker 1: also look at the exhibitors too, and that'll give you
Speaker 1: a good idea of who's at this show and who's
Speaker 1: showing off stuff. Because these brands are not necessarily the
Speaker 1: brands that you would find at a Best Buy or
Speaker 1: a home depot. You know, these are more professional installers
Speaker 1: use these brands for the cameras and things like that.
Speaker 1: So that's the first place i'd look. You said you're
Speaker 1: in Woodland Hills, so I would look at the UH.
Speaker 1: I would just go to the you know, Google and
Speaker 1: I just typed in home shows and they've got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of California home shows and they've got one
Speaker 1: on Riverside, San Diego, Lodie, Sacramento. Now, the problem with
Speaker 1: these home shows, a lot of it seems like it
Speaker 1: is you know, baths, closets, remodeling. But yeah, the techie
Speaker 1: stuff might not be there on display. But that's the
Speaker 1: kind of show you want to look for. You want
Speaker 1: to look for some sort of home show that's like
Speaker 1: more tech focused. I personally, you know, the ones I
Speaker 1: go to CS always going to have all this stuff,
Speaker 1: But the Cedia one is also going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff that you're talking about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, this is this is what people want
Speaker 1: these days. They want the full house. Everything has a camera.
Speaker 1: They want to be able to remote control access it.
Speaker 1: I think some of this stuff, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: just like a regular person, you just want like the
Speaker 1: beauty of this is that you can do a lot
Speaker 1: of this yourself nowadays. And that's what I think has
Speaker 1: really been the biggest change in the consumer electronics space
Speaker 1: in the past ten years or so, is that it
Speaker 1: used to be you had to have someone come to
Speaker 1: your house and install this stuff. But when we had
Speaker 1: the I think the ring video doorbell really kind of
Speaker 1: transformed an entire industry because it was the first time
Speaker 1: you could just literally go outside your front door pop
Speaker 1: a camera up there, and now with Wi Fi, you
Speaker 1: can see what's happening outside your front door. And I
Speaker 1: remember doing a story on the very first ring doorbell.
Speaker 1: It's called Doorbop back then, and people it was such
Speaker 1: a foreign concept that number one, nobody's WiFi was good
Speaker 1: enough to reach to the outside of their front door.
Speaker 1: So everyone thought this thing sucked because it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this thing doesn't work. No, your Wi Fi signal was
Speaker 1: ahead of its time. Your WiFi signal had not caught
Speaker 1: up to this technology. And then you know, as soon
Speaker 1: as we got that, we got all kinds of other cameras.
Speaker 1: And then when Whys came out with their twenty dollars
Speaker 1: camera and Blink with their inexpensive cameras, suddenly it's like
Speaker 1: you could have a camera everywhere and it was really
Speaker 1: really cheap. And so people that want a professional system,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be those people. But for everyone else,
Speaker 1: the fact that you can do this very easily with
Speaker 1: these mainstream brands is really really neat.
Speaker 2: You might have heard the.
Speaker 1: News that the government is taking a ten percent stake
Speaker 1: in Intel. What the government putting ten billion dollars into Intel,
Speaker 1: So I guess this was the amount that Intel was
Speaker 1: supposed to get under the Chipsacked grant to build new
Speaker 1: factories here in the US. But now this is actually
Speaker 1: an investment by the US. So if Intel does well
Speaker 1: I guess the US does well. If Intel doesn't do well,
Speaker 1: then the US loses their money. But I think they
Speaker 1: could just print more. So what's you know? It's all fake,
Speaker 1: It's all phony money anyway, right, I'm not giving this
Speaker 1: is not financial advice. I have no idea. I'm just
Speaker 1: making a joke. I'm not sure how all that stuff works.
Speaker 1: I don't know where the government gets ten billion?
Speaker 2: Is it from me? Is it from Bobo? I think
Speaker 2: it's from US. I really do.
Speaker 1: I think we own Intel now at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. Intel recorded nearly a twenty dollars
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollar loss in twenty twenty four. It's first
Speaker 1: lost since nineteen eighty six. It is struggling. This company
Speaker 1: is struggling. I love America, I love American companies. But
Speaker 1: Intel has missed the boat on everything mobile. All the
Speaker 1: chips inside your phones, they're either made by Samsung or
Speaker 1: TSMC or another company Media Tech. They are not made
Speaker 1: by Intel. Intel did not figure out how to make
Speaker 1: these chips for the phones work, so they just never
Speaker 1: really took off. Now, before you yell at me and
Speaker 1: say how dare the government investing companies, yes, they've done
Speaker 1: this before.
Speaker 2: I have to look it up.
Speaker 1: Financial crisis two thousand and eight, US invested in a
Speaker 1: City Group and Bank of America two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: AIG government owned nearly eighty percent of it after one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty billion dollar rescue, GM Chrysler, Amtrak Airlines
Speaker 1: Post nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: So yes, this has happened before.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four to one zero one. I
Speaker 1: see the calls, I see the phone lines. We will
Speaker 1: get to you in just a little bit. But we've
Speaker 1: got a great guest. Actually, the person I was sitting
Speaker 1: next to in Brooklyn at the Made by Google event,
Speaker 1: c Scott Brown, Senior editor at Android Authority, also has
Speaker 1: a great new YouTube channel of his own name and
Speaker 1: is just doing really well. He's just basically focusing on
Speaker 1: his love of pixel and all things pixel.
Speaker 2: So Scott, welcome to the show.
Speaker 13: Thanks very much, it's great to be here. And yeah,
Speaker 13: thanks for being my seating buddy at the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess, what's your first impression, your initial takeaway
Speaker 1: from this Google Pixel event.
Speaker 13: Well, obviously, I mean maybe not obviously, but it's been
Speaker 13: quite controversial. I think a lot of the traditional tech
Speaker 13: fans have been very upset about it because it was
Speaker 13: very silly. They didn't focus on hardcore specs, they didn't
Speaker 13: even really go over pricing and availability. They just pretty
Speaker 13: much had this fun show with all these celebrity guests.
Speaker 13: And yeah, I think a lot of people are really
Speaker 13: upset about it. But I think I think it was
Speaker 13: great because it sort of bridged the divide. You know,
Speaker 13: it brought in people who might not care about a
Speaker 13: smartphone launch, made them watch it, and now those people
Speaker 13: might be like, huh, these pixel phones seem pretty cool,
Speaker 13: maybe we should check them out.
Speaker 4: Which those are the.
Speaker 13: People we're trying to convince, Like the farmcore techy's like me, like,
Speaker 13: we're already convinced. Like, you don't need to convince us
Speaker 13: to get excited. You got to convince you know, the
Speaker 13: moms and the dads and the people who just don't care.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because you say don't care, but I
Speaker 1: think the people that have pixels actually care more because
Speaker 1: the people I see with pixel smartphones, I usually they're
Speaker 1: a little bit elevated, like they they kind of like
Speaker 1: sought out that phone for a specific reason and that's
Speaker 1: either the Google software or integration, or also the camera
Speaker 1: or they they're like, I don't feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people have a pixel that are just they have
Speaker 1: it happenstance, right, Like they seek this phone out, I
Speaker 1: feel like, and maybe Google knows that, and that's why
Speaker 1: they don't focus on specs and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: They say, Okay, the people that want.
Speaker 1: This thing are going to look at the specs eventually,
Speaker 1: we're going to focus on what this can do for you.
Speaker 13: Yeah, And that was even reflected in a little behind
Speaker 13: the scenes knowledge. So when when companies have big launches
Speaker 13: like this, they give journalists the information ahead of time.
Speaker 13: They say, we're going to launch this. This is what
Speaker 13: it looks like. You know, you can expect the expects
Speaker 13: and all that kind of stuff. Here's the pricing whatever,
Speaker 13: And then they give us a date and a time
Speaker 13: and they say, you can't talk about this until this
Speaker 13: date and time comes. And that date and time this year,
Speaker 13: for the first time ever, was an hour before the
Speaker 13: launch even started. So I think what Google was planning
Speaker 13: was was like the nerds, you know, like me, They're
Speaker 13: going to get all the information they need well before the.
Speaker 4: Event even starts.
Speaker 13: But then hopefully they'll be like, hey, well I already
Speaker 13: know everything that's going on, but maybe I should check
Speaker 13: out this show. So I think Google very intentionally made
Speaker 13: the show the way that it was. And yeah, tech
Speaker 13: geeks are upset about it, but you know what, like tough,
Speaker 13: it's not all about you all the time stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what do you think of the new phone?
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got the Pixel ten, Pixel ten Pro,
Speaker 1: the foldable. What kind of struck you with the improvements
Speaker 1: that you think is the best?
Speaker 13: Well, the interesting thing is that all the improvements are
Speaker 13: under the hood. If you, you know, hold the two
Speaker 13: phones that last year's Pixel nine series and this year's
Speaker 13: Pixel ten series, if you stack them all next to
Speaker 13: each other, even I, you know, it's my job to
Speaker 13: be able to tell the difference between them, and even
Speaker 13: I would be like, you know, squinting a little bit,
Speaker 13: like which ones which because they all look exactly the same.
Speaker 13: And so yeah, all the actual updates are under the hood,
Speaker 13: and there are a lot of them, and I'm sad
Speaker 13: to see that a lot of people online, a lot
Speaker 13: of the commentators and comments on YouTube and stuff with
Speaker 13: people saying like, you know, they didn't change anything, these
Speaker 13: phones are just a rehash, and it's like, no, there's
Speaker 13: so much going on. There's a brand new processor that's
Speaker 13: that's you know, the first of its kind from Google,
Speaker 13: that's you know, much more powerful, and there's a lot
Speaker 13: more cool stuff, tons of AI features, new camera upgrades,
Speaker 13: better speakers, you know, better display.
Speaker 4: Like I mean, just the list goes on and on,
Speaker 4: but you have to go looking.
Speaker 13: You can't just look at the phone and say it
Speaker 13: but yeah, but specifically answer your question. The thing that
Speaker 13: I'm the most excited about is probably the new ask
Speaker 13: photos feature, which I think is super cool. Basically, the
Speaker 13: way it works is that if you take a photo
Speaker 13: and you open it up in photos and you want
Speaker 13: to edit it, you usually have to like use your
Speaker 13: your fingers and treat things and fissknobs and move sliders
Speaker 13: up and down whatever.
Speaker 4: Now you can just ask.
Speaker 13: You can just put the button and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 13: make this photos lighting better, or you know, remove the
Speaker 13: person that's.
Speaker 4: Standing behind me or whatever. Edit you can. You can
Speaker 4: imagine and it'll just do it.
Speaker 13: And I think that's going to be a game changer
Speaker 13: for once again the normal person who just picks up
Speaker 13: this phone, it's like, well, why why should I get
Speaker 13: this over an iPhone? That alone, I mean would be
Speaker 13: something that I think a lot of people would be
Speaker 13: really interested in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many times have you wanted to change
Speaker 1: something in a picture but you don't even know where
Speaker 1: to start, Like, oh, I'd like to make the sky bluer,
Speaker 1: or the I want to remove this object or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a million crop it zoom in. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't know where all these tools are. I mean
Speaker 1: the super nerdy techies do, but like the rest of us,
Speaker 1: well the rest of people, you know, they may not
Speaker 1: know where to I mean sometimes I don't even know
Speaker 1: because I'm not like a photographer person. Say so, I
Speaker 1: think that feature is great and it can of course
Speaker 1: go into AI with like if you want to add
Speaker 1: stuff to your picture too, you can do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Google Photos editing on this device is truly like
Speaker 1: next level, Like it's like everything you need in one place.
Speaker 1: What about the idea of snapping on the magnetic accessories?
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like that's really cool to have,
Speaker 1: But I feel like all the cases already had the
Speaker 1: ring in it, so it's like you're getting it, but
Speaker 1: you know you're already you're going to put a case
Speaker 1: on this thing anyway that has that.
Speaker 13: I Well, for me personally, I love it because I
Speaker 13: don't have a case. I go, I go nude with
Speaker 13: my phones. Oh wow, But I think that for yeah,
Speaker 13: for a lot of people who are already adopted into
Speaker 13: the too that ecosystem, you know, that's they're.
Speaker 4: Probably not too impressive.
Speaker 13: But the thing that's going to be cool about this
Speaker 13: is that now that Google's on board, now there's going
Speaker 13: to be more products.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Now it's not just going to be.
Speaker 13: We made this product for an iPhone, because the iPhones
Speaker 13: are the only major manufacturer, are the only major smartphones
Speaker 13: that have this technology now pixels involved, and then you
Speaker 13: know Samsung is right around the corner now, and then
Speaker 13: you know one plus and what a role All the
Speaker 13: brands are going to start adopting this now that Google has,
Speaker 13: So yeah, that's just going to be more stuff, you know.
Speaker 13: Sure it may just be like slight revamps of what's
Speaker 13: already available for the iPhone, but hey, I'll take it.
Speaker 13: You know, I'm excited to be able to join the
Speaker 13: party of what iPhone users have been using for a
Speaker 13: long time.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Now, you have recently started your own YouTube channel called
Speaker 1: c Scott Brown. Definitely follow him, and it's become quite
Speaker 1: popular because you are focusing It's called a pixel user's perspective,
Speaker 1: so you are focusing on what you love about the pixel,
Speaker 1: what makes this phone unique. And I've been using the
Speaker 1: new one now for twenty four hours and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: in love with it. I'll be honest, like, every time
Speaker 1: I go to the pixel, I remember how smart a
Speaker 1: smartphone can be compared to what I talk about in
Speaker 1: the iPhone, it's all about hunting and pecking, I call
Speaker 1: it because you're always hunting for something to do and
Speaker 1: pecking to do something, whereas the pixel puts so much
Speaker 1: information in front and center when you need it, and
Speaker 1: it's just like less hunting and pecking.
Speaker 2: That's the way I describe it.
Speaker 13: Yeah, No, I'm I'm loving the new phones, and yeah,
Speaker 13: I have a new channel that's specifically dedicated to pixels.
Speaker 13: I'm not I don't only talk about pixels. I have
Speaker 13: talked about Samsung phones and other phones throughout the thing.
Speaker 13: But it always, like you said, it's a pixel user's perspective.
Speaker 13: It's somebody who is using pixels and is deep in
Speaker 13: the Google ecosystem, his perspective on what's going on in
Speaker 13: the world of tech, which is not common. And that's
Speaker 13: probably why the channel has been so popular so quickly,
Speaker 13: is that a lot of people, even within the Android space,
Speaker 13: a lot of tech creators are iPhone users. You know,
Speaker 13: you can tell you watch their video and they talk
Speaker 13: about how great the pixel is.
Speaker 4: But then in the next video you see their Apple Watch,
Speaker 4: you know, or or they or they you know.
Speaker 13: They show themselves walking around town like you're doing like
Speaker 13: photography tests or whatever, and you can see the iPhone
Speaker 13: in their hand.
Speaker 1: And the iPhone has the iPhone says, you know, the
Speaker 1: cellular carrier on the top, and the other one they're
Speaker 1: tech has like no signal.
Speaker 13: Yeah yeah, so yeah, so I kind of saw this
Speaker 13: gap and it was like, you know, we don't have
Speaker 13: like a genuine personality somebody who is really a pixel user.
Speaker 5: What do those people think?
Speaker 13: And the response has been overwhelming because, like I said,
Speaker 13: like this just hasn't existed. So yeah, I'm very excited
Speaker 13: about the earliest success of the channel, and it's been
Speaker 13: really magnificently all right, all.
Speaker 1: Right, I've got one less than a minute. What do
Speaker 1: you think I said, this is the year if you're
Speaker 1: going to switch to a pixel, this is the year.
Speaker 1: I said that with Samsung with their foldables, they got
Speaker 1: those to a place where I think they're about perfect
Speaker 1: for now. I think the pixel is about perfect for
Speaker 1: now ten years in. Why do you think someone should
Speaker 1: try this out and switch?
Speaker 13: I think that the number one reason is because Google
Speaker 13: is doing everything it can to make you switch. Google
Speaker 13: is welcoming you Apple. You know, if you're an iPhone user,
Speaker 13: no shade to you or anything. But at the same time,
Speaker 13: like Apple is keeping you prisoner. Apple is working hard
Speaker 13: to prevent you from leaving by doing all sorts of
Speaker 13: dirty tricks behind the scenes, and Google is doing the opposite.
Speaker 13: Google is opening up its doors wide and saying, come
Speaker 13: on in and stay as long as you want, don't
Speaker 13: you know, bring your current accessories. You've got all those
Speaker 13: mag safe things, keep them.
Speaker 4: Come on over.
Speaker 13: You want to talk with your friends using you know,
Speaker 13: specialized chat features and stuff like that, We've got that too.
Speaker 13: It's Google's attitude is very much like come on over,
Speaker 13: whereas Apple's attitude is very much the opposite. So I
Speaker 13: think that's the number one reason why people should consider,
Speaker 13: you know, finally getting out of the Apple prison.
Speaker 5: For for maybe a little bit.
Speaker 4: See what we'll see what it's like on the other side.
Speaker 1: All Right, them are some fighting words. For sure, we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it there. See Scott Brown. Check them out
Speaker 1: on YouTube. See Scott Brown. Good to see you this
Speaker 1: week in Brooklyn, and keep up the good work.
Speaker 2: On the YouTube channel.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Man, all right.
Speaker 1: Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four two four one zero one. Coming up, I
Speaker 1: will tell you streaming service that is raising prices. Next
Speaker 1: right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
Speaker 1: technology at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. While
Speaker 1: you're there, sign up for my newsletter. It is free.
Speaker 1: It's delivered every weekend. They are long, they're involved, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's all the stuff that I think you
Speaker 1: should know about in the world of tech.
Speaker 2: Kind of like this show. Let's see what else this week?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: Apple TV? Apple TV plus raising prices. There are only
Speaker 1: two three things we know in this world to be
Speaker 1: true death taxes and streaming service prices will go up.
Speaker 1: That's all we know to be true in this world. Yes,
Speaker 1: Apple TV plus US raising prices to thirteen dollars a month,
Speaker 1: up from ten dollars a month. The price he takes
Speaker 1: effect August twenty first for new customers. Existing users will
Speaker 1: see the change on their next bill within thirty days.
Speaker 1: They've had several price increases. It launched in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: at five bucks. Now what does Apple say? You didn't
Speaker 1: think F one was gonna pay for itself, did you.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, they're spending so much money on these
Speaker 1: things they're doing, and so it costs a lot of money.
Speaker 2: I'm not defending them.
Speaker 1: I mean this is you know, I do the Apple one,
Speaker 1: so I pay, like I think it's thirty eight bucks
Speaker 1: a month for all their stuff, and that price went up,
Speaker 1: and so I'm wondering if that's going to go up
Speaker 1: now because of this new price increase on Apple TV Plus.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you really got to figure out what you
Speaker 1: want out of these streaming services at this point, David
Speaker 1: writes in from Dallas, Oregon, listening on KFIR in Oregon.
Speaker 1: As I used to say before I moved to California,
Speaker 1: or on no It's organ he said, I added a
Speaker 1: four digit pin to my phone. Now I regret it
Speaker 1: because I just want to swipe to one lock like before.
Speaker 1: I can't seem to figure out how to remove the
Speaker 1: lock screen and go back to the way it was.
Speaker 1: Is there any hope of eliminating this extra step. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course there is, but you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I cannot recommend that you go out into this world
Speaker 1: of ours with a phone without a lock on the screen,
Speaker 1: because there's way too much personal information on your phone.
Speaker 2: I remember my dad when.
Speaker 1: I set him up with the I don't know I
Speaker 1: was doing something with this phone. I gave him a
Speaker 1: new phone, new iPhone, and was used iPhone. It was
Speaker 1: one of my old ones, and I said, all right, now,
Speaker 1: set up your fingerprint. I don't want a fingerprint on there.
Speaker 2: Why not. I don't want my fingerprint.
Speaker 1: I want to just be able to look at my
Speaker 1: phone and it opens and I'm like uh, or he said,
Speaker 1: I swipe it and I said, Dad, you have to
Speaker 1: have this on there is very important and anyway, it
Speaker 1: was a whole thing, but he did put it on there.
Speaker 2: But yes, some people just don't want this. You gotta
Speaker 2: have it.
Speaker 1: You got to add add a pin code, add a fingerprint,
Speaker 1: face off, whatever, because there's just too much info on
Speaker 1: your phone. But yes, David, to answer your questions, you
Speaker 1: can go into settings security on your phone and remove that.
Speaker 1: I just can't recommend that. Reggie is in Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hey, Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing fantastic. What's up?
Speaker 13: Hey, I'm in the Mac could say.
Speaker 2: Tracking advice, and I just got.
Speaker 3: A little criteria.
Speaker 9: It can't be expensive. I don't need my subscription.
Speaker 2: It has a.
Speaker 14: Good range and more importantly, it actually works.
Speaker 1: Can you have me?
Speaker 2: Well, we can try.
Speaker 1: I can give your options, but without having you know,
Speaker 1: here's the deal with the cart, with the tracking of
Speaker 1: the car. So a lot of these free trackers, which
Speaker 1: we're talking in air tag are similar. They're all going
Speaker 1: to work by the beauty of other phones being around them.
Speaker 1: So they work on a crowdsourced platform.
Speaker 2: Now, when you.
Speaker 1: Talk about an iPhone or an Android, they are everywhere.
Speaker 1: So as long as your phone is are your car
Speaker 1: with this little tracker inside is passing another Apple device
Speaker 1: or an an Android device, you know you're gonna be okay,
Speaker 1: it's gonna get a lock, but it's not gonna be
Speaker 1: real time. Like, you're not gonna be able to track
Speaker 1: your car in real time because these trackers just don't
Speaker 1: have that built into them. You'll be able to see
Speaker 1: an approximate location and you'll be able to see the
Speaker 1: last location, but not in real time. So you have
Speaker 1: to understand the limitations of these trackers before you put
Speaker 1: one in your car. But with that said, plenty of
Speaker 1: people have one of these hidden in their cars and
Speaker 1: they use it and they have an idea of where.
Speaker 2: Their car is.
Speaker 1: Chances are unless they bring your car into the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere where it never sees another smartphone or the
Speaker 1: internet again, you'll be able to get a location on
Speaker 1: your car. So couple of options. Number one, obviously, air
Speaker 1: tag is you know, the number one option in this area.
Speaker 1: Apple invented this entire genre of Bluetooth trackers and so
Speaker 1: that is probably your number one option if you have
Speaker 1: an iPhone and use all Apple products.
Speaker 2: Because that's what they work best for.
Speaker 1: So air Tag is probably my number one because it
Speaker 1: is the easiest, it's simple. You pop it in your car,
Speaker 1: you see where it is on your phone. You're good
Speaker 1: to go. Now, on the Android side of things, Android
Speaker 1: has something called the Find My Device Network, and so
Speaker 1: you can get things that work with that one. And
Speaker 1: they've got different brands. Chapolo is one of them. Chapolo
Speaker 1: is one of them. There are just there's pebblebe there's
Speaker 1: so many of them, but Chaipolo is pretty good. They've
Speaker 1: been making trackers for a long time, so I'd look
Speaker 1: at them and they're going to work with your iPhone
Speaker 1: or sorry, you're Android, and so you can have this
Speaker 1: set up with your Android and basically see where your
Speaker 1: car is on your Android device. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: something that's a little bit more into Hendon, there is
Speaker 1: the tile Trackers. And tile trackers are platform agnostic, which
Speaker 1: in rich On tech World, I love that. I love
Speaker 1: when things don't just work on one platform or another,
Speaker 1: they work across all platforms. And so that's what you're
Speaker 1: gonna get with the with the tile Trackers, which is
Speaker 1: now owned by Life three sixty and you can install
Speaker 1: this and the trick to know about the Tile trackers.
Speaker 1: Not only do I really like them, I think they
Speaker 1: work really really well. I've got one on my bag.
Speaker 1: The thing to know about them is that if there
Speaker 1: is not a person in the area using the Tile
Speaker 1: or Life three sixty app, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: a location. But Tile will even tell you when you
Speaker 1: log onto the app, it will tell you how many
Speaker 1: people around you are using the Tile app. So those
Speaker 1: are gonna be the people that are gonna help you
Speaker 1: find this car if it ever goes missing, lost, stolen, whatever.
Speaker 1: And then finally, there is one other device that I've
Speaker 1: not personally tested but people seem to like. It's called
Speaker 1: the track Ye t r a c KI and they've
Speaker 1: got a couple of GPS trackers I think specifically four cars.
Speaker 1: The trackers twenty bucks. I'm trying to see if there
Speaker 1: is any monthly fee here.
Speaker 2: Today. Yeah, the lowest monthly up. So there you go, Reggie.
Speaker 1: This does not pass your your smell test here for
Speaker 1: the nine to ninety five a month.
Speaker 2: But with that said, this is uh, this.
Speaker 1: Is actually a GPS tracker, So there actually is GPS
Speaker 1: built into this device, and so that means you are
Speaker 1: going to get an exact location of your car.
Speaker 2: No matter where it is, as long as there's GPS.
Speaker 1: Great question, Reggie, Thanks for calling in from Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Eight to eight rich one on one eighty eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 2: More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich Tomuro here hanging
Speaker 1: out with you, talking technology, Triple eight rich one on
Speaker 1: one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: PlayStation Sony PlayStation five raising prices. This week, Sony announced
Speaker 1: a price hike for PlayStation five consoles in the US
Speaker 1: effective well, it's already been effective August twenty first. New
Speaker 1: prices are as follows. PS five Standard five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks up from five hundred, Digital Edition five hundred,
Speaker 1: up from four to fifty. PS five Pro seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars. Wow, that's a lot. Sony says it's
Speaker 1: responding to a quote challenging economic environment. Prices for accessories
Speaker 1: is going to stay the same. So yeah, there you
Speaker 1: have it, Sony raising prices on the PS five. Let's
Speaker 1: go to ron in Corona.
Speaker 2: You're on with Rich.
Speaker 6: Good afternoon, doesn't everybody have a challenging economic situation nowadays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you have kids and a wife, and
Speaker 1: there's various there's various aspects to that.
Speaker 6: Yes, for sure. The reason I'm calling is I've been
Speaker 6: an Android user. I liked forever, been on the Verizon
Speaker 6: family since it was Nextel in the eighties nineties. And
Speaker 6: a couple of days ago, my S twenty two hit
Speaker 6: the ground and cracked.
Speaker 2: Ouch, did you have a case on it?
Speaker 6: I had an Otter case on it. Really still I had, yeah,
Speaker 6: and cracked in the upper right hand corner where I
Speaker 6: cannot communicate with the keyboard. So I talked to Verizon.
Speaker 6: They sent me an S twenty five ultra right. And
Speaker 6: now my situation is I can't communicate with the old phone.
Speaker 6: By the way, when I got the new cover two
Speaker 6: weeks ago, the guy says, well, that looks pretty good.
Speaker 6: I should give you a trade in moving on, I
Speaker 6: can't communicate with it. So, just like Scott said on
Speaker 6: your phone call, he's got a brand new phone with
Speaker 6: no connections at all, and I need to get that
Speaker 6: information off my old phone.
Speaker 1: Any suggestions, I have a couple, So first off, you
Speaker 1: this a Samsung.
Speaker 6: Samsung twenty two.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, so.
Speaker 1: You you can plug this into monitor and you can
Speaker 1: see what's on the screen. Can you see what's on
Speaker 1: the screen or you just can't tap what's on the screen?
Speaker 6: I got I can see about eighty percent of the screen,
Speaker 6: starting with a little bit down from the top. That's
Speaker 6: what I suggested to the Gallop Rises this morning, and
Speaker 6: she said, yeah, but then you still can't communicate with it.
Speaker 6: That's the problem.
Speaker 2: What do you mean tap on?
Speaker 1: You can't tap? Okay, what about plugging a mouse into
Speaker 1: the bottom of it? You can do that.
Speaker 6: I haven't tried that, but I can't see I have
Speaker 6: a green screen. Oh I see old blue screen screen.
Speaker 1: Oh so the screen is is completely bonked as well. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: well that could be a problem. Okay, so that hmm yeah,
Speaker 1: without having a wait, now, is this backed up? Are
Speaker 1: you trying to get stuff off of here? Is that
Speaker 1: what's happening?
Speaker 6: It's backed up about two months ago. I've got you
Speaker 6: know a lot of my apps and photos especially that
Speaker 6: are backed up back to about two months ago. But
Speaker 6: I haven't even tried to get them. I'm just trying
Speaker 6: to recover the phone if I can.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, recover the phone. I don't think you're gonna
Speaker 1: be able to recover the phone the phone data, oh,
Speaker 1: the phone data. Okay, well, I mean you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: have to bring it somewhere because you're there is a
Speaker 1: way to let's see here, I'm trying to see if okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, I'm looking at this. Yeah, so a couple
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Samsung. What they suggest, you know? Number one? Yes,
Speaker 1: connect your you'r to a TV screen or a monitor.
Speaker 1: So what you could do if you had I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one way of doing it. You can connect
Speaker 1: it to a TV screen or a monitor, but you
Speaker 1: would also need to connect that mouse because you have
Speaker 1: to tap as well. So that's that would be I mean,
Speaker 1: there is a way to do this. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's there's lost hope.
Speaker 6: I just think get that I've got a I've got
Speaker 6: an adapter that I can.
Speaker 5: Say the bottom.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that might be your best way to do it,
Speaker 1: is you connect it to a screen and then also
Speaker 1: connect a mouse into it, so that way you can
Speaker 1: see it on the screen and you can use the
Speaker 1: mouse as well. So I think that's probably going to
Speaker 1: be your best solution. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't realize that you can do that. But it should
Speaker 1: just show up right on the screen as soon as
Speaker 1: you plug in that adapter, whether it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a just a standard USBC thunderbolt or an HDMI if
Speaker 1: you have one of those adapters. But yeah, Like I've
Speaker 1: got this monitor in my office where I just plug
Speaker 1: into Samsung to like charge it, and the screen just
Speaker 1: it immediately mirrors onto the big screen. So you can
Speaker 1: do that and then plug in a mouse as well.
Speaker 1: The trick is plugging it both in at the same time.
Speaker 1: You could if you plug it into a monitor, you
Speaker 1: might be able to plug the mouse into the monitor
Speaker 1: and then you can it might that might pass through
Speaker 1: to the device to control it as well, So that's
Speaker 1: probably your best bet. And then once you have all
Speaker 1: that done, you know you can go through and just
Speaker 1: get that stuff up to the cloud. But I would
Speaker 1: say ron for future reference. I know, people, it sounds
Speaker 1: like you had some of this stuff backed up, and
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna say, but you've gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta check these backups, yep, you know, because this is
Speaker 1: the thing. It's like every time I travel, I take
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred and two hundred pictures out and about.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what if I drop my phone right now
Speaker 1: into the water or you know, I dropped it crack?
Speaker 1: Do you lose all that stuff? So now that's a
Speaker 1: different situation, but the same thing kind of sticks is
Speaker 1: like you just have to Some people go into their
Speaker 1: iPhone and they don't even realize that it hasn't been
Speaker 1: backed up in like months because of something that's stalling it.
Speaker 1: So just you know, whether you have an iPhone or
Speaker 1: a Samsung, check the backup. And Samsung makes it super
Speaker 1: duper easy to back up. You can even back up
Speaker 1: to a USB drive.
Speaker 2: Did you know that?
Speaker 6: Yeah? So I read that and the same thing. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna try that also.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can literally, I mean, it makes it
Speaker 1: so easy you just literally on that's funny.
Speaker 2: I'm on the on the Pixel right now.
Speaker 1: But on the Samsung, you can go into your your device,
Speaker 1: into your settings and you'll see a section let me
Speaker 1: see if it's called back up. Let's say, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I've got like ten phones here in front of me
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Let's see if we go into accounts
Speaker 1: and backup right there, so you can see backup data
Speaker 1: Samsung Cloud, it will tell you the last time it
Speaker 1: was backed up. Or if you don't want to deal
Speaker 1: with the cloud, you can literally just say backup data
Speaker 1: to Google Drive or external storage. You can just plug
Speaker 1: in a USB drive to the bottom of your phone.
Speaker 1: It will back up everything. Have a backup of these devices.
Speaker 1: Because Ron, you did everything right. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: had the otter box you had, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: just this is life. It throws a curveball, so it
Speaker 1: all right, Well, keep me posting eight.
Speaker 6: Right only to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will.
Speaker 6: I keep you posting on that.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks a lot, Ron, appreciate the call. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I think what happened there with Ron's phone is that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if your phone falls let's say
Speaker 1: five times, right, and you look at the screen, you're like, oh, who,
Speaker 1: nothing happened to it. It might be developing micro cracks
Speaker 1: and tiny little things in that that are that are
Speaker 1: lessening the strength of that screen. And then finally on
Speaker 1: that number six drop, that's when it just goes so sorry,
Speaker 1: we can't deal with this anymore. The pressure is too much.
Speaker 1: Kind of like, uh, you know sometimes in life, he
Speaker 1: just crack. You just I had I'm not kidding. I
Speaker 1: had a flight attendant on the flight that I thought
Speaker 1: was going to I thought they were gonna crack. They
Speaker 1: were people were this is I mean, the person next
Speaker 1: to me was asking for a drink, like a sparkling water,
Speaker 1: and the guy's like, we have three different types, which
Speaker 1: one would you like? And she's like and you know,
Speaker 1: it's tough to hear in the plane, so like she's
Speaker 1: talking to him and he but this guy, he was
Speaker 1: not having it.
Speaker 2: He was like he was just kind of going off.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, this is why I always say,
Speaker 1: because I always order a sparkling water. They've got they've
Speaker 1: got three types. I always say, whatever one you've got,
Speaker 1: I'll take. I don't care, I don't care what flavor
Speaker 1: it is, just give me it. But you know some
Speaker 1: people have this flavor preference. Anyway, I was cracking up
Speaker 1: because then I watched him throughout the flight and he
Speaker 1: was character. I mean, he was talking with everyone. He
Speaker 1: was you know, people were ordered.
Speaker 2: He was just a character. But he didn't he didn't crack.
Speaker 2: He was a nice guy.
Speaker 1: But he really gave the passenger next to me a
Speaker 1: hard time about not knowing which drink He's like, can you.
Speaker 2: Look at the menu.
Speaker 1: We put the menu right in front of you. So
Speaker 1: here's my solution. Okay, because I'm always looking for ways
Speaker 1: of optimizing things. If you're listening United Airlines, that little
Speaker 1: menu that you put in the seatback when you get
Speaker 1: on the plane, tell people to look at it. Say hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to be serving you a drink in about
Speaker 1: an hour. Take a look at the menu. Now have
Speaker 1: your drink selection ready. Everyone looks at the flight attendant
Speaker 1: and asks them for every drink that's available. Let's see,
Speaker 1: we have apple juice, we have orange juice, we have
Speaker 1: coke products, we have that. No, why are they doing that?
Speaker 1: They're wasting time? It could be much more efficient. All right,
Speaker 1: I digress. Let's go to Craig in de Moin. Craig,
Speaker 1: you're on with rich Oh Craig, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic. What can I help you with today?
Speaker 10: Okay? Ibouh I sixteen plus okay, I'd stay in the
Speaker 10: house of that left me kpie and my batteries rowed
Speaker 10: up to a hundred each time, and I let it
Speaker 10: go down to seventy five, maybe seventy percent, and then
Speaker 10: I'd plug it back in, the charge it up to
Speaker 10: a hundred, and I'd leave it plugged in all night
Speaker 10: to listen to KFI, of course, and did that hood
Speaker 10: the battery? Oh y'all read it go all the way down?
Speaker 10: Or what?
Speaker 2: Let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: You are you are putting a lot of stress on
Speaker 1: that battery, on that phone by keeping it plugged in
Speaker 1: all the time and going through those charging cycles. Now
Speaker 1: with that said, you know, is it going to ruin
Speaker 1: your battery? You know, probably not. I mean I've got
Speaker 1: I've got my phone from last year. I'm at ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent capacity. You can go into your iPhone, by
Speaker 1: the way, and check they actually put this whole setting
Speaker 1: in there battery. So go into settings battery and you
Speaker 1: can check battery health and you can see how much
Speaker 1: capacity you have. After a certain amount of time, the
Speaker 1: battery capacity goes down. It's just a function of lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries. And then you can see the cycle count
Speaker 1: as well on your device, so you can see the
Speaker 1: number of times the iPhone has used your batteries capacity
Speaker 1: and you can learn more about that. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: I use and abuse my phone. I do not care
Speaker 1: how I charge it, how much I charge it, what
Speaker 1: I do with it, and I'm at ninety seven percent
Speaker 1: after a year of heavy, heavy usage and not caring.
Speaker 1: So yeah, by keeping your phone plugged in and streaming
Speaker 1: all the time and using it twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: it's going to put a lot of stress in that battery.
Speaker 1: And so you may want to look at the charge
Speaker 1: limit inside your phone and either change that or toggle
Speaker 1: on what's called optimized battery charging. And those are two
Speaker 1: settings that Apple recently added to the iPhone to make
Speaker 1: the blast a little bit longer, especially if you're keeping
Speaker 1: your phone for a long time. Craig, thanks for the
Speaker 1: call today, appreciate it. Good to hear your voice one
Speaker 1: more time, or once again, I should say. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk more about the tech news.
Speaker 1: I've got a Seattle startup that is bringing back the
Speaker 1: landline but just for kids. Plus we've got other guests
Speaker 1: to talk about cleaning up your Windows PC. Right here
Speaker 1: on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The
Speaker 1: website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. You
Speaker 1: can go there for all the notes for everything I
Speaker 1: mentioned here on today's show, don't forget. You can get
Speaker 1: this as a podcast as well. Just search rich on
Speaker 1: Tech in your favorite audio app. So if you miss
Speaker 1: an episode you want to listen to something again, listening
Speaker 1: live is always the best way, but if you can't
Speaker 1: make it to the show or you need to catch up,
Speaker 1: you can always just listen to it on your favorite
Speaker 1: audio app. Just search rich on Tech, hit follow, and
Speaker 1: all the new episodes will be there. So there is
Speaker 1: a Seattle startup that is bringing back the landline for kids.
Speaker 1: It's called tin Can. This is actually had a one
Speaker 1: of the one of my followers send this to me.
Speaker 1: It's getting a lot of publicity this week. It's basically
Speaker 1: they've got two products. They've got a the tin Can Flashback,
Speaker 1: which looks like a phone that we had in our
Speaker 1: bedroom back in the day, if you were lucky enough
Speaker 1: to have a phone in your bedroom, you know, the
Speaker 1: corded phone that kind of closes down on a on
Speaker 1: a you know, just like a two pieces. That's number one.
Speaker 1: That's set's seventy five dollars. Then they've got the tin Can,
Speaker 1: which is their phone. It looks almost like a tin can,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to a phone, but it's it's got
Speaker 1: phone styling, but it literally looks like a tin can
Speaker 1: and that's going to be a looks like one hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: but it's seventy five on sale right now. So the
Speaker 1: flashback phone looks like an eighties wall phone, but it
Speaker 1: plugs into your router or Ethernet port, so you can
Speaker 1: make calls on it. No Internet, no screen, no games,
Speaker 1: just voice calls. Of course, there's also parental controlling. You
Speaker 1: can say the hours that people can call or talk
Speaker 1: in there, and also the contacts that are approved, and
Speaker 1: then of course you can call.
Speaker 2: Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You can call other phones, other tin Can devices for free,
Speaker 1: but if you want to call outside numbers, they're going
Speaker 1: to charge you ten bucks a month. That's coming soon.
Speaker 1: Let's call the party line plan, so you can call anyone.
Speaker 1: So bottom line, you buy the device for seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars either one of these devices, and you can call
Speaker 1: other devices, other tin Can devices for free unlimited. So
Speaker 1: let's say your kid has a best friend. You talk
Speaker 1: to the other parent, you say, hey, let's get our
Speaker 1: let's get our kids.
Speaker 2: One of these tin cans. They can, you know, connect
Speaker 2: it to the internet.
Speaker 1: And now they can call each other as much as
Speaker 1: they want talk on the phone.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: It's cool, but I think this is a tough sell.
Speaker 1: Because, let's be honest, kids are already communicating with all
Speaker 1: kinds of free apps, all kinds of FaceTime. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's the best way to communicate because it's
Speaker 1: very distracting. Like these kids are playing video games and
Speaker 1: they're they're chatting on FaceTime while they do that. This
Speaker 1: I get they're trying to bring back the old days
Speaker 1: of sort of that one to one connection. You're just
Speaker 1: on the phone. You're sitting there at your desk, you know,
Speaker 1: your feeder up, laying on your bed, got that long
Speaker 1: cord on the phone, and you're just talking to someone.
Speaker 1: It's like a very classic phone experience. So we'll see
Speaker 1: if it takes off.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's cool.
Speaker 1: You can accomplish the same thing by going with Umama
Speaker 1: or a magic jack and just get a phone at Walmart,
Speaker 1: you know, like a standard they still sell those old
Speaker 1: school phones, not the rotary, but just like a standard
Speaker 1: wired phone. So that's tin Can if you want to
Speaker 1: check it out. Tincan Dot Kids and then Alaska Airlines
Speaker 1: and t Mobile are teaming up for free in flight
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. This can't come fast enough. So Alaska, I
Speaker 1: guess Alaska and Hawaii, you know they linked up now.
Speaker 1: So Alaska's new frequent Flyer program is called at Most
Speaker 1: Rewards at MOS at Most Rewards and starting next year,
Speaker 1: at Most Rewards members will get free Starlink powered Wi Fi. Yay.
Speaker 1: Wi Fi on planes is so bad. It took me
Speaker 1: an hour just to connect to the Wi Fi on
Speaker 1: the plane the other day. Starlink I've tested it on
Speaker 1: Hawaiian airlines. It is incredible. It's so fast. You can
Speaker 1: literally Next time I fly on a flight that has Starlink,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring my whole desk set up. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: buy my little lamp. I'm gonna bring like a little
Speaker 1: you know, water cooler. I'm just gonna s a little
Speaker 1: plant I can put like near my chair, and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna do business because you can literally get stuff
Speaker 1: done if you have Starlink. The other Internet that's all
Speaker 1: all over, like the satellite Internet they used to have,
Speaker 1: it's just horrible. It's really really bad. So Starlink cannot
Speaker 1: come fast enough on these planes. Rollout begins twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six on select flights, with full fleet coverage by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty seven. Now remember United is also doing starlink. It
Speaker 1: had like a false start. They put it on like
Speaker 1: one or two planes and there's like a problem, so
Speaker 1: they have to bring it back. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the status is of United with Starlink, but I cannot
Speaker 1: wait for that to be on my plane anyway. T
Speaker 1: Mobile customers the whole reason. So everyone gets it for free,
Speaker 1: but T Mobile customers will get exclusive perks like seamless
Speaker 1: ad free log on to Starlink. So I guess you know,
Speaker 1: with a lot of these free wifis, you got to
Speaker 1: like watch like a little ad or something before you
Speaker 1: can access it.
Speaker 2: T Mobile customers won't have to do that.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you are a T Mobile customer,
Speaker 1: you've got a phone number with T Mobile, nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten you can access the Wi Fi for
Speaker 1: free on your plane.
Speaker 2: Just so you know, that.
Speaker 1: Amazon Autos added a new customer. I guess Hurts will
Speaker 1: be selling used cars on Amazon Autos. So remember we
Speaker 1: talked about this last week. They're selling Hyundais through there.
Speaker 1: Now you can buy Hurts cars Amazon Autos. All right,
Speaker 1: coming up, next, we're gonna talk about cleaning up your
Speaker 1: Windows PC. I know you need to do this. I
Speaker 1: know you need the infos. We're gonna give you the
Speaker 1: step by step directions. Coming up next, I'm making your computer.
Speaker 2: Run like new. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology the
Speaker 1: website rich on Tech dot tv. If you want links
Speaker 1: to anything I mentioned here. All right, so we've got
Speaker 1: We've talked about a lot on today's show, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that comes up over and over and
Speaker 1: over with Windows computers, for the most part, is getting
Speaker 1: them to run smooth and fast and to their potential,
Speaker 1: because most of these computers are really good and they
Speaker 1: can last a long time. But the problem is all
Speaker 1: this gunk that gets sort of like just collected over
Speaker 1: the years, and over time you download stuff, you try
Speaker 1: it out, you stop using it apps, you're trying to
Speaker 1: get all kinds of stuff on your computer. So with
Speaker 1: that in mind, we've got Joe Karas Scoria. He is
Speaker 1: the let's see here senior XDA segment lead for OS
Speaker 1: and devices, I mean recently recently had a title change,
Speaker 1: So congrats on that, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 14: Hello, Thank you so much for having me. It's a
Speaker 14: huge quessure to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you wrote a great article for XDA Developers about
Speaker 1: how to deep clean your PC every year, and so
Speaker 1: first off, just tell me, like, what do you write
Speaker 1: about typically?
Speaker 14: So, first of all, thank you for saying it's great.
Speaker 14: I'm glad it resonated. Yeah, So what the kind of
Speaker 14: stuff that I wrote about an XCA. Obviously, since I
Speaker 14: am segment made for OS and devices, I do write
Speaker 14: a lot in those two segments as well, but especially OS.
Speaker 14: I run a lot about Windows. More recently Linux I've
Speaker 14: been covering in one bit of both.
Speaker 7: Whenever I can.
Speaker 14: So yeah, and it's a lot about tips and tricks,
Speaker 14: and it's not it's we do it less so from
Speaker 14: a how to perspective, and more so you probably didn't
Speaker 14: know you should be doing this, so like you should
Speaker 14: be doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's like a lot of things
Speaker 1: because people don't even know what's out there, what's available,
Speaker 1: what they should be doing. So your first step in
Speaker 1: your article you talked about uninstalling apps, I mean that's
Speaker 1: always like the first step. Explain how to do that
Speaker 1: in the best way.
Speaker 14: Yeah, of course, So you know, the standard way to
Speaker 14: an installer apps. You know, you go through your start menu,
Speaker 14: open the start menu, there's on apps button.
Speaker 7: You can see all of them there.
Speaker 14: You know, you can scroll down that list and don't
Speaker 14: find a lot of things that you probably don't use
Speaker 14: anymore or never used. If you've never looked at at
Speaker 14: that list before and when you got your computers, that's
Speaker 14: start going a lot of things there that you don't need.
Speaker 14: So you can just scroll down that list and if
Speaker 14: there's anything that you know you don't need, it can
Speaker 14: write make it and there's an install button right there
Speaker 14: to remove it. And if you're not sure, it's always
Speaker 14: a good idea to either google it or you can
Speaker 14: just try.
Speaker 7: To launch it and see what it does in case you.
Speaker 14: Don't know if you actually need it or not, and
Speaker 14: then you can decide whether to whether it's an installer
Speaker 14: or not.
Speaker 7: Yes, it is the standard way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean basically, if you don't if you
Speaker 1: don't reckon, can you ruin anything on your computer if
Speaker 1: you want to install something that's like like need like
Speaker 1: the system needs.
Speaker 14: Not really most of the system apps that are on
Speaker 14: Windows in the part of Windows, they can't be removed
Speaker 14: and words, you might break things that you're used to doing.
Speaker 14: It's nothing that you can to restore if you know how,
Speaker 14: don't look it up. So it's never going to be
Speaker 14: permanent damage or very like that's very like going to happen.
Speaker 14: But yeah, if you don't know what you're removing, then
Speaker 14: you might end up with something that you used to
Speaker 14: do that doesn't work anymore because you needed that specific program.
Speaker 14: But it is fixable, so it's never something that's permanent.
Speaker 2: All right, your next step run a to blow script.
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like uh, I mean is that
Speaker 1: something regular users can do or is that for just
Speaker 1: advanced users.
Speaker 14: So this one is a little more complicated because because
Speaker 14: there's a lot of options here and some of these
Speaker 14: again can affect certain features that you might be used to,
Speaker 14: certain things that you might be used to using. And
Speaker 14: you know, one of these are programs that I might
Speaker 14: want to check boxes, and there might be a temptation
Speaker 14: to just check all of the boxes and disable everything,
Speaker 14: and this might have an impact on you if you just like,
Speaker 14: if you disabled something like Microsoft Defender, which is the
Speaker 14: anti virus in Windows and eleven, that'll be a problem
Speaker 14: because then you'll have no protection against malware on the
Speaker 14: computer by default, So you know, it is something that
Speaker 14: you would want to be a little more tech savvy
Speaker 14: before you do. Just you want to have some awareness
Speaker 14: and take your time to read all the options available
Speaker 14: in these scripts to make sure that you don't disable
Speaker 14: anything that is essential to you.
Speaker 1: Now, what about the startup apps, because this is another
Speaker 1: thing where you restart your computer.
Speaker 2: Next thing.
Speaker 1: No, it's like taking an hour because so many things
Speaker 1: are popping up as a computer restarts.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 14: So you know, we only talked about an installing apps,
Speaker 14: and of course that's a very important first step. But
Speaker 14: even if you have apps that you do use and
Speaker 14: one of them will't create these entries in the startup
Speaker 14: in the Windows startup and then will always launch whenever
Speaker 14: you turn on the computer, So it just starts to
Speaker 14: bog things down more and more as you install more
Speaker 14: of these programs. And you don't always need these apps
Speaker 14: running in the background. Sometimes you just want to have
Speaker 14: them and you launch them and you need them, and
Speaker 14: then you'll leave them alone. So you know, you can
Speaker 14: go into the task manager in Windows on weven. If
Speaker 14: you open the task manager, there's a startup tab, which
Speaker 14: has a little icon that looks like a speedometer on
Speaker 14: a car. And there's a lot of apps there, and
Speaker 14: you can see like whether those startup entries are enabled
Speaker 14: or not, and you can enable, you can disable, you
Speaker 14: can disable these pretty freely. This is even less risky
Speaker 14: than an installing an app, because only doing is preventing
Speaker 14: that app from running.
Speaker 7: At startup. You can always launch launch it yourself if
Speaker 7: you needed to function.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so yeah, I'm looking.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my list bing wallpaper, co pilot ever,
Speaker 1: no iTunes, helper three sixty five, co pilot teams, no
Speaker 1: sh in one drive, phone link, so all these things
Speaker 1: are running as soon as I turn on my computer.
Speaker 1: I don't probably need all those things running every time
Speaker 1: I turn on my computer. So again, it just searching.
Speaker 1: Uh the taskbar says task manager, and you'll see it
Speaker 1: looks like you said, it's like a little spetometer, says
Speaker 1: startup aps. Just go in there and disable the ones
Speaker 1: that you don't need.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 14: That's that's a great starting point because a lot of
Speaker 14: those that take it all. If you use something like
Speaker 14: Adobe Photoshop, the creative concuite always starts with the computer,
Speaker 14: and it's a pretty heavy piece of software. So that's
Speaker 14: something I usually do every one's own because I only
Speaker 14: need it when I open photoshops, so I don't need
Speaker 14: it right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's it's it's running as much as it
Speaker 1: can to make things faster when it does open.
Speaker 2: But just open it up. Okay. What about the driver updates?
Speaker 2: How do we check for those?
Speaker 7: Okay?
Speaker 14: So drivers, there's a few ways that they can be
Speaker 14: distributed because there's a lot of pieces to how drivers work.
Speaker 14: So Windows updates, you know, when you open the settings
Speaker 14: out as the Windows Update section, some driver updates won't
Speaker 14: come through there automatically. And then on that page there's
Speaker 14: also an advanced absence button, and if you go there,
Speaker 14: there's then an optional updates section and a lot of
Speaker 14: driver updates coming through there. They're not mandatory, but you
Speaker 14: can always install them. And then after that, it's also
Speaker 14: up to the manufacturer. So if your computer manufacturer will
Speaker 14: have a website with drivers, you will have to look
Speaker 14: up your specific model, So that's kind of vary from
Speaker 14: person to person, but you'll look you can look up
Speaker 14: your model and there will be a page with all
Speaker 14: the drivers available for your PC. And some of them
Speaker 14: might be newer. A lot of computers also come with
Speaker 14: specific software that updates your drivers automatically, so you can
Speaker 14: do that a little more easily without going to the website.
Speaker 14: And then you know, in the case of the graphics drivers,
Speaker 14: a m D and then VideA and the dedicated software
Speaker 14: for them that updates drivers. Because graphics drivers are updated
Speaker 14: very frequently, so it makes sense to separate them a
Speaker 14: little bit from the computer or Windows, you.
Speaker 7: Might want to have that dedicated software.
Speaker 14: So that's usually the best way to update graphics driverge
Speaker 14: as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, and this is always uh, you know, people are
Speaker 1: always interested in this malware.
Speaker 2: What do you recommend?
Speaker 1: You know, people think their computers infected, there's something going on.
Speaker 1: What do you recommend for scanning for malware?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 14: So, by the FHONT you know, Microsoft Defender has gone
Speaker 14: into indows eleven. I always believe that it's a pretty
Speaker 14: solid solution, you know, for daily day use. But when
Speaker 14: you're doing a deep clean like this and you want
Speaker 14: to make sure that you're getting as much as possible,
Speaker 14: like no little things still on your computer, the one
Speaker 14: I usually use is called malware Bytes. It's been around
Speaker 14: for a while. It is to become specifically manware, bite
Speaker 14: sometime malware. But yeah, they have a very comprehensive solution.
Speaker 14: It's they do have a premium version that offers real
Speaker 14: time protection. But if you just want to run a scan,
Speaker 14: like on demand, it's free.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So that's the difference is that if the free one
Speaker 1: you have to do the scan. The paid one it
Speaker 1: will do scans in the background all the time, real
Speaker 1: time exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, good delineation, thank you. Okay. So it runs the
Speaker 2: scan and what it unearthed something?
Speaker 14: Yeah, generally it will. It's it's kind of a very
Speaker 14: good detection engine. So most of them malware out there,
Speaker 14: I think I have very good experiences maware. It's very
Speaker 14: good at detecting things. If you look at my article.
Speaker 14: Actually I wasn't expecting to have any hits when I
Speaker 14: was writing that article, but I ran, I ran the
Speaker 14: scan in the room at all four four items there.
Speaker 1: Oh you found four things that it flags is like, hey,
Speaker 1: this stuff you might not want in there. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll run out of time. But finally delete temporary files.
Speaker 1: What's the deal with that?
Speaker 7: Okay, So that's that's the final one.
Speaker 14: There's this is the feature that's part of Windows and
Speaker 14: it's perfectly safe. There's if you're go into the settings,
Speaker 14: they're in the system section, there's a storage page, and
Speaker 14: then within that there's a temporary files section, and this
Speaker 14: allows you to do it all kinds of things that
Speaker 14: Windows stores to speed up certain processes, like there will
Speaker 14: be icons or things or thumbnails files like that.
Speaker 7: There are storages to speed up certain things. You don't
Speaker 7: really need them.
Speaker 14: A lot of times they might be replaced by other files.
Speaker 14: So it's a good idea to run this scan. And
Speaker 14: when you when you open the temporary files page, you
Speaker 14: don't automatically.
Speaker 7: Scan your computer for all the temporary files on there.
Speaker 7: And aside from the.
Speaker 14: Downloads folder, which you shouldn't select because that we will
Speaker 14: have most of your downloaded files. You can select everything
Speaker 14: else and don't need all of it, and it will
Speaker 14: usually be perfume and fine.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's again just search storage and it'll it'll
Speaker 1: be right under the system storage. You'll say temporary files.
Speaker 1: All right, great information. I'm going to link up the
Speaker 1: article on the website rich on Tech, but if you
Speaker 1: want to Google search it it is XDA developers. You
Speaker 1: should deep clean your Windows PC every year to keep
Speaker 1: it running smoothly. Here's how I do it, and my
Speaker 1: thanks to Joe for joining us today. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me, Joe, thank you.
Speaker 7: So much for the invitation. It's been to wait time.
Speaker 2: All right. Now you know how to get your computer.
Speaker 2: You don't even need a new one, just clean it
Speaker 2: up so easy.
Speaker 1: All right, rich on Tech dot tv, I'll link up
Speaker 1: that article and coming up we are going to open
Speaker 1: up the feedback. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, what a great show it has been. It's
Speaker 1: not over yet. I'm just saying it's been a good show.
Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Thanks to you, thanks to Bobo, thanks
Speaker 1: to Kim. You know, it's a group effort here, little
Speaker 1: part of me. I just posted this to my Instagram
Speaker 1: at rich on Tech saw that there's a setting, it
Speaker 1: might be a new setting on Facebook where they might
Speaker 1: they might be scanning your phone's camera role. Yes, scanning
Speaker 1: the pictures on your camera roll. So there are two
Speaker 1: settings that basically the first one is less nefarious, but
Speaker 1: it's still like I don't want them scanning anything in
Speaker 1: my camera role. So the first one basically says camera
Speaker 1: roll sharing suggestions. So the first one is get camera
Speaker 1: roll suggestions. When you're browsing Facebook and I've seen this before.
Speaker 1: You're scrolling through Facebook says hey, you took this great picture.
Speaker 2: Do you want to share it?
Speaker 1: And it shows you one of the pictures you took,
Speaker 1: but it says, don't worry, this is private until you
Speaker 1: share it. Nah, just turn that off altogether. You don't
Speaker 1: need them looking through your pictures. That's number one. Now
Speaker 1: here's the scarier one. Get creative ideas made for you
Speaker 1: by allowing camera roll cloud processing processing.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Not only are they looking at your pictures on your
Speaker 1: camera roll, they're uploading them to Meta's cloud to analyze
Speaker 1: them and maybe affect them with AI or something creative.
Speaker 1: And then present you that picture and they said they're
Speaker 1: scanning it for things like you know, we'll check for
Speaker 1: safety and integrity purposes.
Speaker 2: Huh huh, nah, no, thank you.
Speaker 1: So I would go in personally and change these settings
Speaker 1: to off. It looks like the first one is turned
Speaker 1: on by default, which is the less nefarious, but the
Speaker 1: second one is turned off by default.
Speaker 2: But I would turn them both off immediately.
Speaker 1: And I just posted how to find these settings It's
Speaker 1: pretty easy. Actually, just go into your Facebook settings and
Speaker 1: look for it's called camera. Let's see camera role sharing suggestions.
Speaker 1: But I posted the full instructions on my Instagram at
Speaker 1: rich on Tech, I would say take a look and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, nobody. Nobody needs that time for the feedback.
Speaker 1: These are your emails, your comments, your questions I get
Speaker 1: from you. If you want to submit, just go to
Speaker 1: richon Tech dot tv hit contact. Bruce writes in your
Speaker 1: latest newsletter, you had to be talking about you. You
Speaker 1: had to be talking about me being trapped in the
Speaker 1: Apple eco system. I almost committed to grabbing a new
Speaker 1: Pixel ten after reading about Magic Q. But with my
Speaker 1: iPhone sixteen pro, max iPad Pro, Apple Watch, iMac, Apple
Speaker 1: TV Final Cut Pro and all the Apple subscriptions, the
Speaker 1: mountain to change would be too high to climb. What
Speaker 1: do you run in here, Bruce? An Apple store? And
Speaker 1: then that's the other thing in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: Google's reputation of dropping devices and services after everyone has
Speaker 1: adopted them. Great work, Please keep it up.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Uh No from Pico Rivera writes in Hey, rich I
Speaker 1: just wanted to share that my husband and I have
Speaker 1: been using a cell service called Tello. Since twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: we've had no issues. We pay fourteen bucks a month
Speaker 1: plus taxes for five gigs of data with unlimited talking text.
Speaker 1: You can adjust the plan to fit your needs. Thanks
Speaker 1: for all your tech tips. I enjoy yours newsletters and
Speaker 1: TV segments.
Speaker 2: Noura great.
Speaker 1: Tello is excellent, excellent, excellent. I love them because you
Speaker 1: can basically build your own plan and customize it exactly
Speaker 1: the way you want. So if you just want five
Speaker 1: hundred texts, no data and unlimited talk, you can do
Speaker 1: that and it just does the plan price accordingly. George
Speaker 1: from Reading Pennsylvania listening on WRAW thirteen hundred says the
Speaker 1: caller who wanted to keep his old PC running asked
Speaker 1: about cleaning it up. I always recommend downloading using Microsoft
Speaker 1: PC Manager. It's a free and simple way to clear
Speaker 1: junk files and keep things running smoothly. Yes, I've definitely
Speaker 1: mentioned PC manager before. It is a easy tool. Just
Speaker 1: make sure you're getting the actual official one from Microsoft,
Speaker 1: not an impost Day from Eastern Washington writes in I
Speaker 1: heard your show and wanted to share a couple of
Speaker 1: free tools for editing PDFs. Try LibreOffice. They can do
Speaker 1: it for free. It does have a learning curve, but
Speaker 1: it works.
Speaker 2: Also.
Speaker 1: If you're having trouble changing file permissions, check out MCO
Speaker 1: unlock it. I've used it when I couldn't manipulate a
Speaker 1: file and it helped.
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert, but both are worth a try.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Libra Office is is great. Libra is it, Libra
Speaker 1: Libre Office lib It's like a free version of like
Speaker 1: Microsoft or Microsoft Office. Luke from the UK rights in
Speaker 1: wow are We're all over the place. I listened to
Speaker 1: your show every week on the podcast and I enjoy it.
Speaker 1: On a recent episode, you talked about securely erasing discs.
Speaker 1: I don't think the methods you mentioned are secure enough.
Speaker 1: If you're donating, recycling, or selling an old PC or
Speaker 1: hard drive, it should be overwritten with zeros in one
Speaker 1: several times. Windows reset only does this once. I don't
Speaker 1: think it overroots the boot, overwrits the boot unless you
Speaker 1: reinstall from the cloud. When I erase drives, I use
Speaker 1: a bootable OS called shred os. It can do up
Speaker 1: to seven passes to make sure that data is virtually
Speaker 1: impossible to recover. The interface is text base. You navigate
Speaker 1: with the keyboard, so make sure you pick the correct
Speaker 1: drive if you have more than one for maximum protection,
Speaker 1: erase with zeros and then physically destroy the hard drive.
Speaker 2: All right, Luke, you're you're running.
Speaker 1: Like the uh Fort Knox over there with your stuff.
Speaker 1: Bob from Australia rights in man. We are worldwide. One
Speaker 1: thing missing from your review of tank inkjet printers is
Speaker 1: the cost comparison with cartridge models. It takes about three
Speaker 1: to four cartridge replacements using Excel pricing before a tank
Speaker 1: printer purchase really pays off, and for some people that's
Speaker 1: a lot of printing. Ron from Washington says we've been
Speaker 1: using the epsoin et twenty seven sixty for years. The
Speaker 1: black ink tank lasted us two years. The color tanks
Speaker 1: are still a third full after three years. The issue
Speaker 1: is the nozzle clog if we don't print enough. The
Speaker 1: EPs and cleaning procedure works, but it's a long, repetitive process.
Speaker 1: So I made a spreadsheet with colored stripes my printer
Speaker 1: nozzle exercise A print one every Sunday.
Speaker 2: Unscrap.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's see here, Okay, Amy says, I sign up
Speaker 1: your emails because I love hearing you. I don't have
Speaker 1: time to read them until today, but like you talk,
Speaker 1: easy to read and understand. I'm a sixty eight year
Speaker 1: old single lady. Keeping up with tech is important to me.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Debrah New Milford, Connecticut. My wife
Speaker 1: keeps oh, I said on my newsletter. My wife keeps
Speaker 1: telling me my newsletters are too long. Dever says she's right.
Speaker 1: But the more I read, the more I find useful information.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful you're the one gathering the facts.
Speaker 2: Kudos.
Speaker 1: I like your newsletter, and Ted in Palm Spring says
Speaker 1: I listen on one oh four point seven k news
Speaker 1: FM in Palm Springs. Thanks for the outstanding show and
Speaker 1: long live New Jersey. I grew up in Havertown, a
Speaker 1: suburb of Philadelphia. Next week, Jefferson Graham Plus, we're gonna
Speaker 1: explain quantum computing. Thanks so much for listening. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways you can spend your time. I do
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it.
Speaker 2: Right here with me. My name is rich Dmiro. I'll
Speaker 2: talk to you real soon