
My frugal sister will get her first smartphone when her flip cellphone runs out of minutes, 45 minutes from now.
Which will take some time. She doesn’t make many calls on it. Within the meantime, her associates hold saying: “What?” The sound high quality is dreadful.
I urged the Pixel 4a for $349 with Google Fi cell service for $20 a month for limitless discuss and textual content, not counting no matter information you utilize. However a buddy’s deal could also be higher. She went with Shopper Mobile’s iPhone SE for $250. Shopper Mobile is thought for his or her pleasant tech help, particularly for seniors. The month-to-month value is decrease than Google’s Fi service should you use greater than 500 megabytes value of knowledge monthly.
At Shopper Mobile, limitless voice and limitless texts with 500 megabytes of knowledge is $25 a month. In the event you go over the information restrict — by browsing the net once you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection — they solely cost an additional $5, even should you use three gigabytes value. Three gigabytes of knowledge with limitless discuss and textual content on Google Fi would value $50. That’s $20 greater than the Shopper Mobile deal.
Once I go to my sister subsequent week in California, I’ll hand her my Pixel 3a cellphone so she will be able to evaluate it to her husband’s iPhone. She’s leaning towards the iPhone. It’s a good suggestion to get the identical kind of cellphone as the one you love or buddy, to allow them to present you the ropes. I’ll at all times remorse getting my 90-something aunt an iPad when all her associates had computer systems. She by no means did learn to work it.
For budget-minded people who hardly ever use a cellphone out of vary of WiFi, it’s laborious to beat TracFone’s $30 Android smartphones, such because the LG Insurgent 4 with a $125-a-year service plan. It provides 1,500 name minutes, 1,500 texts and 1.5 gigabytes of knowledge. In the event you unfold it out evenly, that’s about two hours of speaking a month, 125 texts a month and 125 megabytes of knowledge a month. To flee the voice and textual content limits, use a free app like Sign or WhatsApp once you’re in vary of WiFi. However in my expertise, TracFone doesn’t provide good tech help.
I Was Improper
A reader wrote to say he tried clicking on the hyperlink in what I assumed was a faux AOL message. Nothing unhealthy occurred. He was proper, I used to be unsuitable.
My earlier suspicions got here from Googling it. I additionally examined the hyperlink itself. The textual content in a hyperlink is usually simply ornament; it doesn’t imply that’s the place you’re going. Once I hovered over the hyperlink and seemed on the backside of my pc display screen the place the actual deal with was displayed, it seemed phony. I ought to have tried clicking on it anyway. I’ve the free extension “Malwarebytes Browser Guard,” so I’d have gotten a warning if it had been faux.
AOL would love all customers to both obtain their new iOS or Android app, or to click on one of many hyperlinks of their message to get third-party apps, corresponding to Gmail, in sync with their new sign-in procedures. Those that go to AOL’s web site as an alternative of utilizing an app don’t have to fret about this.
Pinball
One of many earliest video games I ever performed on a pc was pinball. It’s nonetheless enjoyable. So I eagerly turned to Stern Pinball’s new Star Trek recreation. It’s $5 from Steampowered.com.
Stern is the largest producer of arcade-quality pinball machines on the planet, going again to the early Nineteen Thirties. Additionally they make pc video games. The brand new StarTrek pinball I performed was enjoyable, with chatter about alien civilizations. I don’t assume it beats the previous Microsoft Pinball for Home windows 98, which a buddy of mine performs in Home windows 10, but it surely’s good.
The obtain at Steampowered.com stated it could take 55 minutes – exceptional! However making an attempt it once more later, it was zip fast, for causes recognized solely to the gremlins who hang-out this stuff. Moreover the Star Trek recreation, I performed Stern’s free pinball recreation, “Final Motion Hero,” named after the film by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a very good factor I purchased the $20 Logitech Gamepad to play it with. A mouse simply doesn’t lower it.
App Glad
Google’s free app “Arts and Tradition” has a brand new characteristic: it enables you to step right into a well-known portray, by tapping “Artwork Filters.” You want a cellphone that has augmented actuality to make it work. I used my Pixel 3a. Vermeer’s “Woman with a Pearl Earring” put a headdress on my head. Frida Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Monkey,” put a monkey on my shoulder. I snapped an image of myself and saved it. However the app’s hyperlinks to the world’s greatest artwork museums are higher than these AR filters. No augmented actuality required. No app required both. Simply go to ArtsAndCulture.Google.com in your pc or cellphone.
Velocity Check
I’ve simply learn the umpteenth tech columnist saying I ought to go to SpeedTest.com to learn how quick my web connection is. I doubt they’ve truly gone to the positioning for the reason that final Ice Age. It is not working any extra! Now it takes you to the Chrome Internet retailer to put in “Secure Search,” which warns that it may learn all of your information on the web sites you go to, heh heh. Does that embrace the financial institution password I simply typed in?
As a substitute of SpeedTest, simply Google “What’s My Web Velocity?” Moreover supplying you with exact numbers, it’ll inform you in case your velocity is sweet, unhealthy or detached.