New details on the next iPhone launch, plus a potential date. Google makes it easier to get rid of your personal information from their search results, a simple way to save on back to school shopping, plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on?
I'm Rich Dmiro and this is rich on Tech, the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be easy, helpful, fun, and yes, sometimes inspiring. Phone lines are open at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Give me a call. If you
have a question about technology. Email is also open. You can send it to Hello at rich on tech dot tv website rich on tech dot tv, hit the contact page and you can send it that way as well. Coming up on the show this week, we've got Kimber Streams of Wirecutter to join to share top affordable laptops and chromebook picks. Yep, we're talking under one thousand dollars, under five hundred dollars. Kimber is the expert, and believe me, you can't wait to hear the picks. It's gonna be great.
Then a concatadae better known as consanity on TikTok Okay, you know who this guy is. He says, here's another iPhone trick. I guarantee you didn't know about. Yep, he's that guy on TikTok He's going to join to talk about the top iPhone tips and tricks and of course news reviews, all the stuff that happened to me during the week. And you know, early in the show, I say that this stuff should be easy, it should be fun, it should be on complicated. But for many of us,
technology is anything. But let me tell you. When I walk through the newsroom at KTLA, or when I just walk down the street, or I meet someone out and about, it's always the same thing. Hey, Rich, I like what you do, which I do like, okay, I enjoy that part of it. But then comes the question, Hey Rich, can you help me with this? And you know, I'm right in the middle of like making a slide show for my kid's birthday or something like that, or you know,
planning a trip somewhere. No, you know, I'm just like, okay, sure I can help you. You know, I do have a radio show you can call in there, but hey, I'll help you right now too. No problem, And it happens all the time. So one example, a colleague at my work comes up to me and says, hey, Rich, I can't search on my iPhone anymore. There is no search functionality. Like I search for an app, it just doesn't come up. And I said, well, that's come on,
that's easy to fix. Let me just go into your iPhone Syrian search and clearly something's turned off with Spotlight, and sure enough, ten minutes later, I'm stumped, like literally, it's a problem that I've never seen before. What would make the iPhone not able to search through apps? And everything I know to be true about the iPhone is just not Like everything I try is not working. And I'm like, dude, you stump me, Like, I don't know
what is the deal here. Now, maybe it's just a thing where, you know, there's some sort of setting that I'm just not noticing or you know, I don't know about, but it doesn't seem to be the case. So in that case, I got to say I was completely stumped. I don't have all the answers, all the time, and
I think the delineation. A lot of people think that if you're into technology, you have all the answers right, like you just know off the top of your head, here this is what you do, here's how you do it. But I think what's really different about tech folks is that they know the way to find the answer. They know the way to figure out the answer. And I think that's the big difference is that for me, it's not, you know, I'm not nervous about trying to figure out
this stuff. It's more about how do you figure it out? And it's actually kind of fun to do that. It's almost like a little bit of a mystery sometimes, like how do we do this? So that was one time where I was completely just I don't know, like this this problem is really just sitting with me and I said, Okay, do the software update on your phone. Do the updates on your phone, and come back to me and let's see if it's still there. And sure enough, still the same. Let's see.
Oh this was another one.
So I'm walking out of my work the other day and I'm hearing my colleagues's computer alarming, like there's this noise that's like, please do not turn off your computer, do not press power, do not exit, you will lose information. Your computer has been identified as a computer that is, you know, accessing identity theft information. And sure enough, this person had stumbled upon one of those websites that takes over your computer. In fact, Microsoft has an entire page
about this tech support scams. Oh, we've talked about them on the show before. Now, this is where scammers use scare tactics to basically trick you into either paying money for unnecessary tech support or they fix your device with some sort of software download, and once you allow them access to your computer or you hand over any sort of information. Oh, it is a headache upon headaches. And so this person is sitting there. And many times people will tell me about this stuff afterwards, and so I
don't get actually to see it in person. But this time I saw it happening in person. I said, ooh, let's figure out how to get out of this. And sure enough, you know, you can't really move your mouse, nothing works. You can't get out of the screen because they hijack the entire browser, and so it's a full screen browser and you can't do anything. And so I said, all right, try this. I said, press control all delete on your computer. That'll bring up task Manager, and sure
enough it did. And then it says, you know, whatever browser they were using. I think it was Microsoft Edge or something, or maybe it wasn't Edge, maybe it was Chrumme, whatever it was, and you want to end that task, So okay, select that, press end task and you do it, and sure enough it all goes away. And the person was like, you know, this is really scary, like this
was really scary, Like how did this happen? I said, Look, it happens through different websites that you go to, and a lot of it is just injected through ads on these websites. Malvertizing they call it, and that's how they take over your computer. And yes, all the advertising companies like Google and you know the other ones are hipped to this and they try to stop it, but they can't always stop it, and so that's how it happens. And so I said, oh, this is a good lesson
to share because I've wanted to see this in person. Now, what happens If you can't figure that out?
What do you do?
Do?
You just turn off your computer?
You can literally press the power button on your computer, restart it, and this will not come back. But here's the thing. When you open up your web browser, it may say do you want us to open up your last tabs that you had open? You want to say no to that, because if you say yes and that website pops up again, what's going to happen? Your computer's going to get taken over again. So there is an entire Microsoft page all about these tech support scams. You
don't want to fall for one of these things. If you do, it's it's a problem. There's a lot of things they try to make you install software. You know, you've got to scan your software from your computer from malware. You got to change your passwords, you got to call your credit card provider. There's a whole bunch of whole bunch of worm Let's see, how do you say that. It's a big can of worms that's unlocked if you do this. So please do not fall for these one.
End out control all, delete, end the web browser, just end that task or restart your computer. That's the easiest way. Now you can also report this to Microsoft. They've got a website Microsoft dot com slash report a scam. But quite honestly, is that really gonna do much?
I don't know.
But also I'll put this in the show notes. Everything is gonna be on the show notes Rich on tech dot TV. My mom she got an email, and my mom is in town, so we're kind of hanging out, you know, having a good time. Is my son's birthday this week, and so we went out for dinner or whatever. But my mom emailed me and she said, hey, my work wants me to turn on this thing called two factor authentication. It kind of looks scary, and I said, no, no, it's simple. You got to do this well, sure enough.
And this is what I love again about doing this stuff in person, is that it did turn out to be tricky because she's running two different Google accounts on her phone, and so when she clicks in the email to turn on two factor, it's already turned on for her primary account, but she has to switch to her work account on her phone to be able to enable it there. Now, not many people would know that you have to tap in the upper right hand corner of
your Google profile to switch to the other profile. And again that's tricky. And so the reason I tell you all of this stuff is because I want you to know that there are several types of people that listen to this show. Yeah, you've got the techies that sort of know the answers, they know what I'm talking about, they identify, they understand, and they're the ones that are teaching their friends about this stuff. Then you've got sort of the everyday person, the person that's just going to work.
They use tech because they have to, and they want to learn more about this stuff.
And I get it. It is tricky.
It can be very tricky to figure this stuff out, even for me. And so with my mom, I said, Okay, here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we switched accounts, and we're going to set up two factor and I said, and now you're going to get a text message anytime you try to log in to your work account.
And okay. It was still kind of scary for her.
And then I got an email this week from a woman who said, Hey, Rich, how do I transfer a file to a flash drive? Like I've got this flash drive, I've got it, I've got my computer, Like how do I get a file to the flash drive? And I sat to myself and said, okay, someone trying to punk me here, like, come on, who doesn't know how to do that? But the reality is you may not know how to do it. And so the stuff that some people take for granted, like myself, I get it. Not
everyone understands this stuff. And that's why I'm here to help you figure this out. There are no dumb questions. There are only dumb answers from me. That's that's the bottom line. Sometimes the answers, you know, they may be you know, what you paid for. It's free, so you know, the answers may not be as good as you think. But I do my best and I try. And so my point is call with your questions. Don't feel like you're the only person in the world that wonders about
this stuff. No answer is too simple. And the woman that I emailed back about the flash drive, I said, here, you put it in your computer. The only tricky part is it may not be formatted for your computer.
If you're running a Mac.
You put in a flash drive that's not formatted, it may not show up. So here's how you format it. Then you drag the file onto it. You're good to go.
She emailed me back, and she.
Said, Rich, it worked. I can't believe it. It worked perfectly, and I said, okay, I wasn't being punked. This is just someone that needed a little extra assistance. So give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. We're gonna take some more of your calls. Plus, don't forget to visit me on social media. I am at rich on Tech and the website rich on tech dot TV. All the show notes for everything I mentioned are always
listed right there. All right, we got a lot more for the show today, So many things to talk about. Oh, I got lots more scams where that came from. We've got a scam that involves parking and QR codes. We've got new details on the iPhone fifteen plus a potential date when that may be launching. And I'm gonna tell you how I sold my couches online and what I use to get my new couches delivered.
So we'll talk about all of that. Right here.
You are listening to rich on Tech. My name is rich Dumiro. Give me a call Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Let's go to Jennifer in Laguna Hills. Jennifer, you're on with.
Rich Hi Rich. How are you doing today?
I'm doing excellent. How are you good?
Thanks? Happy Saturday. Yes, I probably half a dozen old cell phones that aren't worth selling.
Nobody wants them.
Before I take them for electronics recycling, I thought i'd ask if there's an organization that can repurpose these that you know of.
You know, I I've heard of some places that will take donated cell phones. I have not personally done that. Typically, I'll just bring them to Goodwill if I have some old ones, which you know, I don't know what they do with them, but looking up online here let's see here. So you want to how old are these phones?
Well, I've got a couple of iPhone five sieves.
Okay, and.
A weird old hand tech vibe.
Oh wow, that's old. Yeah, I'm told you, hantack.
You put them in a cupboard and then forget about them.
Yeah, they kind of just stay there forever. I mean, the thing is I think that. Let's see, it looks like, okay, there's a place called nine one one cell Phone Bank accepts donations of use cell phones to provide support and assistance to participating law enforcement entities. Okay, that's one. A donation is made for every phone received. Okay, so that's interesting. They're not actually taking the phones perhaps, but they are. They're taking the phones, but then they're kind of caching
them in so that they get a donation. Let's see, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence takes donated cell phones and sells them through a cellular recycle. Okay, so they raise money again, so they're not actually cell phones for soldiers collects use cell phones. Donations are sold to a business that recycles. So it looks like any of these places that you give them to for donations are actually just get caching in the phones, you know what I mean.
So they're not necessarily using the phone itself. That's what it sounds like.
Yeah, I agree, but you know what that would be Okay too, I take it to goodwill, it's just going to go for electronics recycling and nobody gets the benefit.
Yeah, and that's true. So I mean, you could take it to one of these companies. It's a website called Love to Know. I'll put the link in the show notes. But they've got a couple of these different different let's see one million project dedicated to providing mobile devices to high school children in low income communities. You can donate and they will give you a shipping label as well as donates funds.
Straight to the project.
So again, it looks like many of these places will just take the donation and get the money for it, which is kind of like, I mean, it's better I guess, like you're saying, than just getting these getting rid of them. So I would check out this list on this website, see which one you think you want to support charity wise. Now, I'm just going to tell you, I don't know if these phones are worth very much like an iPhone five C.
Have you looked it up on a place?
Yes, because they.
All won't buy anything older than an iPhone six and so that's why. But I'm willing to give it a try if there's a possibility somebody will benefit from it. Yeah, I'm looking up.
Okay, So there's a website called gizmo Go which I really like, which they recycle prep yeah, and even for them, oh wow, the iPhone VIC gives zero sense, so they will take it, but they you know, and recycle it.
But you're not gonna get much.
So the bottom line, I think with a lot of these things, you're not you can donate them and see, but I don't know if they're going to get a ton of value out of them for donations because they are kind of older. So I think for the rest of you that have an old phone, you can do the same thing.
I'll put the links to the charities. But and you can also like go.
Local, like super local, like ask your church or ask your school if they need a phone. But some of the places that I like that you can maybe get some cash or just straight up recycle these again. Gizmo Go this is a place that will pretty much take any electronics. They'll either give you cash for it or they'll just take it and recycle it properly. Best Buy actually has this new service where you can and it's going to cost you some money, but you can buy
a box. So if you've got a bunch of old stuff laying around, cables, phones, whatever, either a twenty three dollars box or a thirty dollars box that's a little bit bigger, and you can just dump all of your stuff in this box and send it in and they will recycle it properly. So that's best by mail in recycling service and that's brand new as of like maybe six or eight months ago. Eco ATM. This is actually owned by Gazelle. You might have seen them in a place like a Walmart or a grocery store or a
Westfield mall. These are ATMs that scan your phone and they will tell you what it's worth. And there's five thousand of them around the nation. So if they don't give you anything for your phone, they will just recycle it for you as well. So those are some of the places you can do this. Those are some of the ideas, but again ask around. I mean there's also maybe family members that need them. Sometimes you can turn them into an extra security camera or something like that.
But the number one thing that I should get across is to recycle these. So don't just don't just throw them out in the trash, because they do have lithium ion batteries in them and you do not want them to go into the land fell.
Good question, Jennifer, Thanks so much. All right, if you have a question, give me a call.
Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Coming up, I'm going to talk about the service I used to not only get my new couch is delivered, but I also sold my couches online. I'll tell you all about how that process went. Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to a rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one website richon Tech dot tv. There you can find show notes for everything I mentioned.
Here.
You can also see some stories I do for television and check out past episodes of the podcast. That's all at richon tech dot TV. Let's go to Marta. Let's see here Line three. Marta in Laguna Miguel, California. Marta, you around with.
Rich Thank you for taking my call. Well, I have a mother that is now elderly and she having memory problems. She have an Android phone, but I'm willing not to buy her iPhone if necessary. I want to know if there is any app that yes, verbally you can say remind me on Monday I have to go to the doctor at ten and at ten on Monday, the phone allow will say that.
Yes, So, I mean it's basically just instead of a reminder with text, you want a reminder that has audio.
Yes, okay, I saw one. I forgot the name. But if you have to do all these steps manually, and I want her to do it, just the whole.
Thing, right, Oh you want ohs you want her to be able to do it?
Yes?
Oh okay.
That's where it's gonna get a little tricky because okay, there's there's two types of alarm systems on the phones. I mean you have to the text to speech, you know, you can you can easily set a reminder with your voice, right, but it's going to play that or it's not going to play it back, but it's just going to remind you with a visual on the screen.
Right, That's not what you want.
So now when it comes to actually setting like an alarm clock, I mean it's really kind of a manual process. And I'm looking at this app. And that's the beauty of Android, by the way, is that there's so many different apps that can kind of allow you to do things that the iPhone may not allow you to do.
So.
This app is called Talking Alarm Clock Beyond. Have you tried that one? Not talking alarm talking Talking Alarm Clock Beyond. Now, this does exactly what you need. The difference is that you are going to have to set these things. And so that is the issue is that you know, I'm looking at this and it's very very simple to do this, but you can. You can set these alarms and the alarm label will be spoken, So whatever you want it
to be will be spoken. So if you want it to say, you know, go to the doctor at this time, go to you know whatever, and it can repeat it too. So but the difference is that you are going to have to set that manually at the beginning. Now, so these are things, these are things that are happening on a weekly basis, or they all separate and individual.
Oh no, it could be separate. Since so I when she knows it, I wanted her to like get her phone and say verbally, hey, you know on Tuesday, I have my memory class at it remind me on Thursday to call black person, you know, right, So that was ideal because yes, sometimes when she's touching the phone, she touched stuff.
Oh yeah, oh, I know, believe me.
It's it's one of these things where it's like even when someone hands me their phone to like figure out what's happening on it, they touched something and I'm like, wait, the screen went away. So, I mean, it's tough because you can do reminders on the phones very easily, but those reminders usually show up as a as a text, you know, as a box or a prompt or something. What about I mean, this is kind of an interesting Does she live alone?
Yes, it's okay because somebody.
Yeah, you have somebody who she ran a room too, But yes.
Okay, because you could do something where if she there's a Google Nest that is like a little screen and
you could set that up in like her kitchen. And when I set voice reminders on my phone, like if I just say to my phone, remind me to do this on this day and this time, it will show on that screen my reminder because it's it's like it's not verbal, but you can't miss it because it's visual and it will also it can also ring as well, but it is you know, it is displayed, and it's a constant display until you you know, until you get
rid of it. I guess, but again, it's not gonna it's not gonna yell out and say what you need to do.
Now.
There may be a way to do this that I'm not aware of just yet, and I think there there are manual ways of setting it. But for you to just say to your phone, hey, remind me on Friday to go to the doctor at eleven am and then to have your phone speak that out, you know, five minutes before that, that is something that is much more manual as far as I know at this point, and this app definitely does it. It's just a matter of you do have to set that app.
Bright Talking alarm clock bones.
Yeah, talking alarm Clock beyond. And that's just one. There's another one too. There's one called Talking Recordable Voice Alarm Voice Memo Reminder. I mean, there are a bunch of these things in the app store and this one. Okay, so this one voice memo reminder might actually work pretty well. This one says quickly record a note and set it to play at a later time and date. But the different that again, someone is going to have to program
when that voice reminder pops up. And I'm looking at this app again, it's very easy to do, but you have to set that date in time, and so I think when it comes to something that she's going to be able to do verbally very easily, it doesn't look like there's something that's that easy right now. Now we are on the cusp of all this AI stuff and all of this, you know, all of these virtual assistants are getting much much better. So there may be something
that gets better very quickly. But if you're listening and you have a solution of this, obviously email me. We'll talk about it in the feed feedback segment later in the show. So Rich on tech dot TV, hit that contact button and let me know if you have a solution for a talking voice reminder that can also be not only set by voice, but then prompts with the voice. MARTA good question. Thanks so much for calling in today.
Appreciate it. Phone lines are open triple eight Rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. So I got some couches delivered the other day. It's been a long time coming, we said, after the pandemic, because we lived on these couches for so long, like you know, like all of our meals were on these couches and the kids were sitting on there. There was actually an indentation where my kids sat for so long on his iPad during the pandemic. It was
time to get rid of these couches. So we went, we looked, we finally figured it out, we measured all this good stuff and we ended up getting new couches. And when it came to delivery, I actually had a credit on this app called lug and so this app is called lug Lugg, and it's basically a non demand moving app. It's kind of like Uber, but they send a couple of people to your house and they'll move whatever.
And you can also send them to a place like Costco or any of these these furniture places to pick up your stuff. And so of course the furniture place wants you to use their people, which I get and it's the easiest. But I was like, let me try this out because I want to be able to tell people about this app, and so I tried it out. The furniture place really did not like the idea of this, so, like, you're gonna send two people with a truck to pick this up? I said, yeah, but they do it every day.
They said, well, what is this app? And I said it's called lug. They said, I never heard of it. I said, well, let me just try it.
Let's see.
If it doesn't work, your people can deliver it. Sure enough, I scheduled everything out. They gave me the estimate. It's not cheap, but it's like a base fee. And then it's like, you know, twenty five thirty five cents a minute, and you can pick a big truck, a small truck, or an extra large truck. And so it it goes by time and the actual distance. So they've got this light pickup truck which is four hundred pounds, ten boxes, six feet long. They've got a bigger pickup truck which
comes with two people. Then they've got a van, and they've got the Excel van which comes with two people. And they can move your whole apartment. It's all on demand. And so sure enough, the morning came for the delivery and these two guys they went to the furniture place, they picked it up.
Everything was fine.
He sent them like a confirmation code, confirmation screenshot off your order. Then they came to the house. Everything was fine. They actually moved the old couches out of the house into the driveway. They moved the new couches in and everything was great until they had to screw the legs onto the bottom of the couch and they didn't have the right tool. And so this is where my wife looks at me and she's like, I told you, I knew this wouldn't work. And I said, no, this will work.
He's like, well, do you have a long screwdriver. I'm like, no, do you have a screw gun? No, do you have a you know whatever. I didn't have any of this stuff. So I said, all right, just go.
It's fine.
You guys did your job. Everything was perfect. And so next thing you know, I'm going to home depot to buy a screw gun or what do you call, like a drill and I need a long drill bit that I can screw these things into the couch. And so I get there. No one at the home did I already say that where I went, I didn't want to say the name because they were so unhelpful. The person that helped me find the bit that I needed was actually a viewer who was like, rich on Tech, what's up.
I'm like, dude, I'm out of my I don't even know what I'm doing in this store because I know about tech, I don't know about home improvement. And he's like, what do you need help with? I said, here this, I need to screw this screw into this thing, and he said, here, here's what you need. He picked it out in one second. No one at the store could help me pick it out. So I get home. It took me thirty seconds to screw these things into the bottom of the couch, a little feet on the couch.
It was so easy, and it's like, you know, I sounded like like a true like you know, like I was like Tim the toolman tailor, Yeah, handyman rich over here. It was like, you know, like stopped at the end. I felt so great and it worked perfectly. I was out like another one hundred bucks because I bought this this drill basically plus this piece. It came out to like, you know, eighty bucks, ninety bucks. And so my wife, of course, the whole time, was like, see, I told
you you should have used their delivery people. And I said, yeah, that's fine, but it almost all worked out. And so I will say LUG actually very very convenient for moving if you have a big thing that you want to buy at Costco or another store, they can easily bring it to your house.
It was scheduled, they were right on time.
Again, a little bit expensive, but you know, it wasn't It was on par with what the furniture place would have done. But I think that in the end, at the end of the day, the furniture place probably would have had the right tool. But overall, I was very impressed with them. And by the way, I sold my old couches on offer up. I got eighty bucks for them.
And I'm very proud of myself because I was just going to throw them out in the trash and I said, you know what, let me just try to sell these things. I put them on offer up, and I'm not kidding. Within a minute, I had fifteen, twenty thirty people saying can I pick up your couches? Can I pick up your couches? And sold it. In a couple of days, eighty bucks at all were out, so offer up lug.
You know, one person's trash another's treasure. Not that these couches were trash, but my point is here, I was ready to just recycle them and someone else purchased them, so went in doubt. Try to sell this stuff. It's better to give it a second home than just send it to the landfill. All right, more of your calls coming up next. Eight eight eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to
a rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology and uh.
This week, Ah, such a good song.
We were watching Imagine Dragons last night on Hulu in concert and for the first five or seven minutes, I was telling my mom because she's in town. I was like, oh, this is the concert I saw them in in Las Vegas, because they were playing in Las Vegas. And it took me about ten minutes of watching. When they showed like a big wide shot, I was like, oh, wait, that's not the concert I was at.
It was a different show. So the whole time like, oh, I remember when he came out of the stage.
Like that, and it was all like, I guess it was similar to the one I saw, but it wasn't. Uh. iPhone fifteen iPhone fifteen coming up very soon, if you can believe it. Here we are in August, usually the second or third week of September is when Apple announces their new iPhones, which I cannot believe were this close to that time. The rumor right now is September thirteenth, and I don't know.
We'll see.
Sometimes they do it on Monday, sometimes they do it on Tuesday. Sometimes they do it on Wednesday. I feel like Apple likes to do it earlier in the week because then they command the news cycle for the entire rest of that week, where the news people are just all talking about iPhone stuff. So on Wednesday they kind of short change themselves because then they only have Thursday Friday for the news to talk about it. So we'll see. I'm predicting it'll be on September. Let's see, where are
we here, we are September. I'm predicting September eleventh. That's usually they've done it in the past around there, September tenth, So we'll see. Maybe it'll be the twelfth. Mark German at Bloomberg always has the inside scoop on what Apple is launching. Don't know how he does it, but he's got some good inside contacts. Even the people at Apple tell me that they listen to Mark for what's going to happen because Apple is very secretive. The biggest changes
on the iPhone fifteen. The standard model will trade the notch for the dynamic island, which was introduced last year.
On the high end models. Let's see, that's pretty much it.
For the low end model, it's going to get a new processor, but it's going to be last year's now. On the iPhone fifteen and fifteen Pro, this is where the big changes are going to happen. Okay, major camera improvements and also lightning connector is gone in favor of USB.
So yes, no matter which new iPhone you purchase, you're gonna have to get new charging stuff because everything's going to switch over to USBC, which is what's standard on Android devices and pretty much every other electronic for the past five years, including a lot of Apple stuff. Apple has already swapped out all or many of their iPads, all their computers, and almost everything is now USBC. The new iPhone Pro models will be titanium instead of the
standard stainless steel. Let's see what else Camera upgrades including oh wow, they're doing something that Samsung did many many years ago. The optical zoom is gonna get more. They might even have a periscope zoom. Now, see I joke. I joke because whenever Apple does something, it becomes the thing. But if you look at the trends of Apple and Samsung, Samsung actually did a lot of things before.
Apple.
And I'm talking things like water resistance, things like wireless charging. I mean, there's so many things. There's a whole list of stuff that Apple had done before, or sorry, that Samsung had done before. Apple producer Bobo are our resident Samsung fan. So you know, look, it's it's a competition
between these two companies. Samsung does things very early, especially with like foldables and stuff like they've been doing those now for like four years, and one of these days Apple may do that, but we'll see.
So anyway, mark your calendars.
Now is not the best time to buy a new iPhone if you're thinking of making the switch. Sharon's in Williamsburg, Ohio.
Sharon, you're on with Rich.
Oh thank you for taking my call.
Rich.
I really like your program and I've already learned quite a bit from you. Oh, thank you for continuing this.
Where's that clapping again? Thank you?
I just wanted to I listened to you usually on the podcast because a lot of times I'm missing on Saturday. But but I had to find out to answer to this, and I'm hoping you can help me. I had Direct TV and my WiFi and everything was through that, and then all too what they call alta Fiber has taken over. I changed it and everything was fine except that brinks. My home security system, the doors and everything works through there, but the the cameras do not. And my TV keeps
going off and it's a Samsung TV. I love Samsung also, and it keeps going off and I have to keep taking out the Wi Fi.
So you've got so you've got new Wi Fi and it's not working like the old WiFi exactly.
Okay.
Where is your WiFi emanate from? Is it in the same place as the old one?
Yeah?
Okay? And where is that.
It's well, it's in my it's not too far from my TV.
Okay.
Is it sort of like hidden? Is it out in the open?
No?
It is?
I well that this little round Oh I don't know what they call those extender Yeah, like I guess okay, they have that and I also and I also have ring and they even sent me.
Another thing that extra Yeah.
Okay, so it sounds like, Uh, did you use the same Wi Fi and password for your new system?
No?
Okay, So it sounds like it sounds like this signal is not as strong as your old signal. So it sounds like the system they gave you is not as powerful. I would recommend moving it out into the middle of you know, a more central area, see if that helps, or get a new system like an Euro or a Villo to help get that signal better. I'll talk more about this at the top the show. But this is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple eight Rich
one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two.
Four to one zero one. Phone lines are open, email is open.
Hello at Richontech dot tv website rich on Tech dot TV. We've got Kimber Streams coming up of Wirecutter. Kimber is gonna join to share top affordable laptop and chromebook picks.
It's back to school time.
I know you want those computers that are under one thousand, under five hundred bucks. Kimber has the top picks and they are brand new and updated. And then later on we've got iPhone tips and tricks from the person that has made quite the following on TikTok saying saying, here's another iPhone trick I guarantee you didn't know about before the break we had Sharon and Ohio wanted to know about her Wi Fi signal. It just kind of took a downturn when she switched providers, and so it sounds
like there's either interference with her Wi Fi router. Maybe it's not as strong of a signal as it was before. And I'm not talking the speed, I'm talking the actual signal, Like the box that she has is just not putting out as good of a signal. So a couple things you could do to remedy that is to move that, you know, wherever the internet, like the Wi Fi comes out of, like the box that it physically emanates from, just move that into a more central location in the home.
So maybe if it's behind the.
TV or under the TV, or in a closet or in a drawer or behind a cabinet, take it out of there and elevate it just a little bit. If you think about a Wi Fi signal, it sort of goes out as a donut shape. So if you think about that donut. If it's if it's being blocked, you're not going to get that Wi Fi signal. Wi Fi signal sort of the higher it is the better because it will come down, but it's not going to necessarily rise up as easily. So get that into a more
central location and hopefully those things will work better. If they don't, then I would look into a system like EO E E R O if you want something a little bit less expensive. I also like Villo VLO. That's another one you can check out as well. Let's go to David in Orange, California. David, you're on with Rich.
Oh well, Rich, my question has to do with privacy. I understand as a consumer when I call a toll free number that business has a right to my information and my phone number. But for years, whenever I look for a car, I call a dealership. It doesn't matter which dealership. I'm having a lot of problems with Honda and Subaru. My number is blocked. I don't use their toll free number, I use the local number, and they still call me back with that. To me, that's like hacking my information?
Is that legal?
I don't know how they do this when I'm not calling a toll free number.
Well, I think if you're calling them, you have started a business relationship with them, and so that I you know, and I'm not a lawyer, and nor do I know what tactic they're using. But the way I would see it is that once you initiate that call, you are now a customer. And if you look in almost all of these privacy terms and conditions of almost any website or any business, it says that once we have a business relationship, we may continue to contact you for the
purpose of that business relationship. And so I think that that is what they're using to continue to call you. And also, David, a lot of these dealerships are no longer independent. They are part of large conglomerates. They may be nationwide, and so once your number is in that hopper for the one dealership that may seem local, it is being shared amongst all of those dealerships nationwide, and it's going into some sort of database.
So yeah, so what I do.
When I was Now you're talking about getting it sounds like you're getting something repaired or replaced. But when I was shopping for a car, I was using a Google Voice number or a Burner number. You can use an app,
the app called Burner b r Ner. You can set up a temporary phone number and that way everything goes to that temporary number and they will only be able to call that number wall it's active, and with Burner specifically, it can it can actually deactivate that phone number after a certain amount of time, so let's say a week, two weeks. A lot of people use it for dating apps or you know, anytime you want a little bit
of privacy, Craigslist something like that. But yeah, when I was using when I was shopping for a car, these people, it's unbelievable. I mean, if you go to a website and pop your information in there to say I'm interested in a car, you will have twenty five emails in less than a minute. And they're all automated, and they're
all like escalating. So it's like this funnel of sales that's just like, Okay, here's our first email, thank you for putting your information, and we'll have someone look into that. Next email, Hey, rich have you thought about this car? We have a great deal on it. Next one five minutes later, and then it keeps continuing. Then it just keeps going and going, and you can try to unsubscribe, and you can try to get your information off these lists.
But I'm not kidding.
I got two emails this week, no joke from a car that I sold. It must have been I mean it was two cars ago, so it was eight years ago. And I got an email and said, hey, how's your Volkswagen doing. It must have one hundred thousand miles on it by now. I said, what are you talking about? I sold this car eight years ago to you the dealership. So it's one of those things, David, where it's if you don't want your information out there, you've got to
protect it at the outset. And you have to imagine anytime you put your information into any sort of marketing database, it is being shared with that company's affiliates, sometimes with third parties. And it's just one of these things where the bigger these companies are, the more they're sharing it with. And my kids today we're talking about this. They said, hey, Dad, how can you can find anyone's information online, like their
phone number, their house, their address. I said, because these companies share it as soon as you apply for a loan, as soon as you get a credit card, as soon as you buy a house, it all goes into these databases, and so you just have to be aware of that and really at the outset, try to protect yourself.
Just don't give out your information.
In fact, you know, you know what, I'm not even going to go into it because it's just one of these things where please don't give out your infol Oh, this is a perfect segue, David, Thank you for that into what I wanted to talk about. With Google, They're actually going to make it easier to remove some of this personal information from their search results. Now I said, from their search results. This does not take down the information from the websites that have it. It only takes
it out of Google's searches. But they're making it a lot easier to do this. So this is a feature called Results about You. This has been around for a while, but they're making it even better. So Results about You is a feature that Google has and you can access this on your phone if you open up the Google app. So I'll do this right now while I'm talking to you,
so I can see how it looks. Open up the Google app, tap your profile picture in the upper right hand corner, and you will see something that says results about you, and it might be a little beta next to it as well. You tap that and this will actually show you the websites that you've tried to take off of Google Search results that have your information and online. I have two that I asked them to take down.
One said it was approved, one said it was denied, and the approval and denial process, I'm not really sure what the reasoning is, but one they took off, one they didn't. So this is when you search for yourself and you can see your phone number, your address, your age, all that information on the these various websites that collect your data, you can ask Google to take those down and so again it won't take it out of the original website, but it'll take it off Google Search. So
here's what they're doing. They're updating this results about You tool to be more proactive and easier. So it will show you the links that may have your personal information and you'll be able to say please take that down without you having to pop in that link like Google will say, hey, we found this new website that has your phone number on it. Would you like us to
take that down? And to get them to do that, you can tell Google your phone number, your home address, your email even I believe you're social security number if you're using Google one, which I did not put in there because I'd rather not have that in Google's possession.
But if you wanted to, you could do that.
But again, there's a certain level of trust you have to have to even give Google this information, but they kind of know it anyway, so I feel like that's not totally a bad thing. So again, this little search result will show you when your information is shown up on Google, then you can quickly request the removal. They're also going to notify you when new results pop up on the web containing your personal information so that you
can get those taken down. So again, go into the Google app, tap your Google account photo in the upper right hand corner and click results about you, and you will see how you can get this set up and figured out. Now, you're not Google's not going to tell you about the new results right away. This is rolling out, which means it's not going to be available today. It's going to be available in the next few days or
a few weeks. So if you don't have the access right away, it may come up in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. The other thing that Google is doing, They're going to blur explicit imagery, adult imagery and search results by default from now on. So by default, safe search is typically turned on on Google, but now they're going to go a step further and anything that they deem is explicit or adult, they are
going to blur those images. So even if your kid taps images somehow, they will blur that app out by default. You can turn this off if you're an adult and you don't mind seeing that, or you want to see it, you can go ahead and turn that off as well. They also made it easier to find parental controls right in search. So if you search for something like Google parntal Controls or Google family Link, Google will now put a box up that has information on how to manage
your parntal controls. And then Google is also making it easier for you to submit these information requests. And so again this is all just a way that Google is trying to make life a little bit easier because Google is the first stop for most people when they're looking up information about someone. And by the way, this is a little interesting and I'm not sure this applies to
a ton of people. But if you created an uploaded explicit content to a website and then deleted it, you can now request that Google takes that down if it's being published somewhere. So that gets kind of into the weeds a little bit. But basically, I guess if you had an OnlyFans account and you put a bunch of stuff out there and you now say, oh, never mind, Google will help you delete that stuff off the web. So I don't know that's that's like getting above my
pay grade. But if you have a change of heart, I guess Google's saying, you know what, We're gonna help you figure that stuff out. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. If you have a question about technology, give me a call. My name is Rich DeMuro. You are listening to rich on Tech website, rich on tech dot TV eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking tech. So many responses about the voice reminders, Just to bring you up to speed. Marda asked if there was an Android app that would let her set voice reminders and then have them announced at a certain time for her mom, who needed to have it both set by voice and also trigger the voice reminder. And so everyone says, got a lot. I think I got the most emails I've ever gotten about this. Everyone says,
Alexa can do this. So let me see here, let me get some of these emails here. Let's see oh, Richard says, regarding the call for the voice reminders, Alexa does that. I tell it to remind me when to pay credit card bills, go to the doctor. Alexa speaks it back to you at the predetermined time, and it will come up on your phone as a reminder too. Steve says, if her mom has Wi Fi at home, why not just make it easy and get a Nest Mini speaker. If so, mom can say, create a reminder.
The Google assistant will walk her through setting up the reminder. She can also ask what are my upcoming reminders? Let's see see this person. Carmel Valley I says, forget the phone. Alexa does exactly what she wants to do, all verbally. I'm elderly and I use it every day for reminders. I put one in every room. I even have my bedroom lights connected to it so I don't have to struggle in the night. It's worth its weight in gold.
Jamie says, hey, there, regarding the woman that called in and wanted a verbal reminder for her daughter, I can tell my Google device to add a calendar event in the morning. I say hey, Google, good morning, and it tells me everything that's on my calendar for the day.
Hope this helps.
Jim says, I would place one more one or more echo devices in the mother's home, which she should be able to hear better than a reminder coming out of a single telephone. Also, the woman's daughter can set reminders by having the Alexa app on her phone logged into her mom's account, or she can even set up Alexa in her own home log into her mom's account just for setting reminders. Oh that's like next level, next level helping.
So there you go, Alexa or Google Assistant. I actually think that Alexa might be better for that because it's a little bit more nuanced with the reminders. So there you go, easy, easy way. Let's go to let's see where are we Nick and Anaheim. You're on with rich.
Rick. Thank God for you. I need your help.
Okay, we'll see if I can help you. Okay, before we think, you know, I.
Got two issues going here. First, I got a del Vostro that I was getting some data on off the internet. Screen popped up claiming to have taken over the computer, making my data inaccessible and would be released for our money demand. I immediately shut a system down to prevent any additional damage. Do you know, is there any kind of a repair shop you could recommend to retrieve my
files or is any other way to get them. I do have other hard drives that I can use on the laptop, and I do have Millspec software to completely wipe drives clean.
Okay, So on this computer, so did they actually install ransomware?
It's what it appear to be. A window popped up and said that it took over the computer and send money or call this phone number or whatever the heck. I immediately pull the plug on the computer. There's no battery on that computer because.
And you have you turned that computer back on. Okay, So what I would do first is turn that computer back on and see if that message comes up again. Because a lot of times these are these are just scare tactics and it's not actually taken over your computer. Now, sometimes they do actually take.
Over your computer.
I did a story a couple of years ago and they showed me an actual takeover and it's scary and it takes it literally takes over your computer and it says, here's the bitcoin address. Make sure you send this bitcoin to us, and we will unlock your system. So I would first actually see if this computer was locked up.
And again I kind of talked about this earlier on the show, that you can, you know, restart the computer and if you open up, you know, if everything comes back up, normally you're okay, but you can if it says, you know, reopen your browser and it says, hey, do you want us to open the tabs that you had open, then I would definitely say no to that. And if
everything's fine, then you should be okay. Now if this happens, If this did happen and you want to recover your files, I mean, obviously this is where backups come into play.
So if you have a full backup.
Of your computer, and this is why people do a full kind of a full full backup of their computer, they can format the computer and then just install the files from the backup, and that could be either a clone of the drive. You know, you have a program that clones the drive at regular intervals, and you could just literally copy that back over the drive and be you know, you basically set the date of the backup.
You go back a day or an hour before this happened, and you just copy all that information over.
That's number one.
Or if you just have your stuff up in the cloud, you can just reformat the Windows and then copy everything over from the cloud. But at any rate, I would run a full security scan with Window Security to see if there's any malware. I would apply all the security updates to this computer by going into Windows Update. And it doesn't sound like you did anything with your passwords, but maybe change the password to your computer or even
your Microsoft account password. But I think that this may be just as scare and your computer is okay, But if it's not, if it actually is locked up when you open it again, those are the steps that I would take. Nick, thanks for the call, appreciate it. Coming up Kimber Streams of Wirecutter, We're going to talk affordable laptops and chromebooks under one thousand bucks under five hundred dollars. You don't want to miss it. You're listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging with you talking technology, and we've got a great topic here because it is back to school and just in general, everyone's always asking, you know, what's the best computer? Everyone wants the best computer, and I say, okay, here's the best computer. That says, oh, by the way, for like one thousand, under five hundred. And Kimber Streams
is the senior staff writer at Wirecutter. Kimber has been covering laptops and gaming for WESH since twenty fourteen.
Kimber, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So you are testing these things all the time, and you we've done a segment on KTLA about some of these top picks. Obviously you're always changing kind of your picks to evolve with the times. So first off, let's just talk about can you get a good computer for under a thousand or under five hundred.
So looking for.
A laptop at that price range can be super stressful, kind of a craftshoot. But the good news is that now is particularly a good time to buy a budget laptop. Sometimes it's impossible to find something that's decent for under five hundred dollars. But right now a lot of manufacturers are actually discounting models and having sales because they have excess inventory after so many people bought laptops during the
pandemic and they aren't buying them right now. And earlier this year, actually Intel introduced a new batch of low end processors that are considerably more capable than in previous years, especially when you combo that with eight gigs of memory.
Oh wow.
Okay, so I mentioned that you've been testing these for wirecutters since twenty fourteen.
How do you test them?
So we use them like everybody uses a laptop. We do work on them.
We do email docs, spreadsheets, We watch Netflix, we watch movies, listen to music, do a lot of zoom calls. And we also have a battery test that's designed to mimic the way that people use the Internet. They browse, they watch videos, a whole combination of those things. So we get numbers that reflect how actual.
People use these laptops.
Okay, so let's talk about just kind of basic specs because this kind of changes as the times change.
So what do you think is kind of like, if.
You're out at a store, you're out at Costco, you're at best Buy, you're at wherever you might be buying one of these computers or maybe online. What are kind of the things you should be looking for for good enough performance?
Yes, so the first thing you want to look at is how much memory it has. Nowadays, you can get away with eight gigs of memory if you're on a budget, if you're looking for a laptop under five hundred dollars, under seven hundred dollars, that sort of price range, if you can't afford it, sixteen is actually going to last you a couple of years longer and perform better today.
But you know there's realities of how much money you can spend.
You also want to look for a solid state drive, definitely avoid a hard drive.
And you want a good enough processor right now.
That means a twelfth or thirteenth gen Intel Core I three or Core I five processor, or a seven thousand series AMD rise In three or rise In five processor. And you can find more details on specific processor models in our laptop guides at New York Times dot com slash wirecutter.
Okay, now, when it comes to screen ten ADP obviously you want an HD screen and battery life you want. I mean, battery life continues to get better and better with these computers, doesn't it.
Yes, though, as the processors get more powerful, they kind of stuck more battery too. So you definitely want to make sure that you find something that's going to last you through a full day of worker classes, and ideally, if you can swing it, you'll want to find one that's compact and light enough to take with you, though that does get rare the more budget restriction you have.
Okay, So when it comes to laptops and you've got three different types, You've got Windows, You've got Chromebook, and you've got Mac.
What are your thoughts on those three different types?
I mean they all are they all created equally or are they good for different things?
It's pretty much up to choice, I mean, whichever thing you're the most used to, whatever kind of fits your budget. Some Chromebooks tend to be better options if you're on a more restricted budget, though this year, Windows laptops, as I said, have gotten a lot better in that budget category, and you definitely can't get a Mac for less than five hundred bucks.
What is your pick for a Windows laptop under five hundred dollars.
So the best Windows laptop under five hundred dollars is the Acerus Fire three Spin fourteen. It's typically about four hundred and thirty dollars, but right now it actually happens to be on sale for three hundred and fifty, which is kind of a steal For how good this laptop is.
The good thing is.
About it, it's definitely fast enough. Most Windows laptops in this price range have less memory, terrible processors which can only open like one app or a handful of tabs at a time, but this will be able to do pretty much anything you need to do on it.
In our tests.
That also had eight and a half hours of battery life, which is definitely long enough to get through that full day of worker classes if three and a half or three point three pounds, which is definitely light and compact for this category. It has a nice fourteen inch touch screen, and it has a tall aspect ratio, which is extra convenient for web browsing document work, those things with that longer scroll.
The downsides to this bottle are that it.
Comes with Windows in S mode, which means you can only install apps directly. From the Windows Store. But it is free and easy to swap out and back to the regular Windows, so that's not too much of a downtay.
Can you do that right from the Windows?
Like?
Can you is there setting inside Windows to do that?
Yes?
If you go into the start venu and you go to about your Computer, there'll be a little setting there that says you're in S mode, and there's a little button you click that says swap out.
It'll take you directly to the Windows Store, and then you push.
The little get button and that will swap you into the regular Windows where you can install any sort of app from anywhere.
Yeah.
So S mode with Windows is kind of I don't know if it stands for simple Mode or whatever, but it's basically it's kind of like an iPhone where it only allows you to install apps from the App Store the Windows Store, and then if you remove that, it kind of becomes a classic Windows computer that lets you install anything.
Now do you recommend that everyone do that?
Or only if you need to do that, like if you have a program that you need for work or something that's specific that's not in the Windows Store.
Uh.
Yeah, basically, only if you need an app for something specific. If you use like, for example, the Chrome browser, if you use a different browser than Windows Edge.
Then you will need Oh oh wow, so you can't even get Chrome through the store.
I don't believe you can.
Wow. Do they do that on purpose?
That's kind of like they should put that in there, because then people wouldn't have to like if you only wanted Chrome, which is like the first thing I download on anything, It's like they should. I mean, I know they want you to use Edge, but okay, now let's get to if you want Chrome, maybe you go with a chromebook because that's what it runs basically.
Chromebook under five hundred dollars.
Yes, so the best chromebook under five hundred dollars right now is the Lenovo Idea Pad Gaming Chrowbook sixteen inch. It's about four hundred and thirty dollars. One of the benefits to a Chromebook is that they don't come with the bloatwear that's typical of cheap Windows laptop, so you don't have to worry about that. It's going to run fast out of the box, so you're not gonna have to mess with it to get it to do that.
The unique things about this model is that has a gigantic sixteen inch screen, which gives you a ton of room for doing work in side by side screens. You can enjoy your movies on a pretty big screen for a laptop. It also is a higher resolution screen and also a high refresh rate which makes scrolling and other actions look super duper smooth. It's pretty nice. It also has an rgbkeyword if you like the phone colors. If you think it's stacky, you can always turn it off.
And it does come with a number pad too, if you do a lot of number entry. Like our other picks, this one has nine and a half hours of battery life, so it'll definitely last you a full day. But it is four pounds, so it is on the heavier, bulkier side. It's a little inconvenient if you do need to take a laptop with you.
Okay, so, but that sounds pretty good for that price. I mean for four hundred and thirty dollars, you're getting a lot. Now, what's you get?
A huge screen? It's great.
What's the limitation of a Chromebook? Like, why would I go with Chromebook versus a Windows?
Pretty much? If you already went to school, you're used to a chromebook. It's the thing you like.
If you already spend all of your time pretty much in a Chrome browser, you're not really doing much stuff on other apps, and if you have a frequent Internet connection, those do. There are offline modes to work in documents and to save videos to watch locally, but chromebooks do
tend to benefit from an Internet connection. They also can't run specific Mac or Windows programs, but in twenty twenty three, most things have browser or Android app equivalents to run on a chromebook, so there's not really as many limitations to a grunbook as their worst eight like five years ago.
Okay, if you got money to burn, you got a thousand bucks? Which Windows computer am I getting?
Well. Our favorite budget ultrabook, which is something that's by definition of thin and light laptop that already has great battery life, is the aces zen Book fourteen O LED and it runs from seven hundred to eight hundred and seventy dollars depending on which configuration you pick. This type of laptop is ideal for high school and college students specifically because it provides like the best laptop you can get for the least money. It's an excellent value, but
it is great for anyone. My aunt always buys my budget ultra book picks. They're her favorite. So this model has fast performance with either eight gigs or sixteen gigs, depending on which model you choose to get. That more expensive model does have more memory, so if you can't afford it, it's going to last you a few years longer.
This model is super thin and lights three pounds. It had eleven hours of battery life in our tests, which is deaf only going to get you through that full work workday, class day, if you're on a plane, it's going to last you. And it also has a vivid ole lad touch screen as well. It's high resolution. The colors are super super vivid. Reds are very red, blacks are very black. It looks excellent and is a fun
bonus feature. This one actually has a touchpad that can double as a number pad, which is not something you see in very many laptops.
All right, finally, I just got about thirty seconds here the top pick. You have a pick for the Apple MacBook air M one. It's on sale and I was just looking at this yesterday. I said, should we get my kid this MacBook because it's on sale for a pretty good deal.
What's the deal on this one?
Yes, it's absolutely the cheapest MacBook you can get. It's a few years old, but it's thin, light, has great battery life, and it's frequently on sale, like you said, for around seven hundred and fifty bucks right now. So it's definitely the cheapest MacBook you can get if that's what you need.
All right, kimber Streams. We love that you test this to make our lives easier. Do you enjoy doing this?
Yes? I love it.
What's so what's fun about it for you?
What's fun about it for me?
I mean mostly getting to help people, Like buying a laptop is so stressful. Like I got into this job because I was stressed out buying laptop. I bought a crappy laptop. It died in two years. It was terrible. So I try to save people from that fate.
That is such a good thing to save people from, because, like you, like, all these picks you just gave folks are going to actually last and they're gonna do their job and you're not spending a ton of money and you're getting a pretty good laptop there too, So Kimber Streams, senior staff writer for Wirecutter.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it.
You can follow Kimber online at New York Times dot com slash Wirecutter. All of Kimber's picks are there, and I'll put them on the website. Rich on Tech dot TV, thanks.
So much for joining me today. Your calls coming up next at Triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. If you have a question, give me a call. You are listening to Rich on tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two, four one zero one. Patricia is in southern California. Patricia, you're on with.
Rich Oh Hi, Rich.
I'm calling because I discontinued my spectrum of TV and Wi Fi. But yet on my computer, the symbol that shows that I have Wi Fi with the same address, the symbol comes up and also the Wi Fi is that it's maximum strength.
Uh.
Okay, do you have a signal? Do you have an Internet connection on this computer?
No?
Not at all?
Okay, So what is it? A computer? Is it Mac Windows, what is it?
It's an Apple?
Okay. So and you're talking a laptop or a laptop, Okay.
It's a bet. There's no Wi Fi to my home, okay. And I had it turned off because people kept breaking into my Wi Fi. And another thing about it is that I have security cameras, but I have no control over them. Sometimes whenever I happen to be outside, instead of seeing the red lights from the camera, they go totally off. I have no idea what's going on here?
So how are you accessing? Well, first off, let's let's tackle the computer. So the computer, the Wi Fi? How are you accessing Internet on this computer?
I'm not.
Oh you're not, okay, So you don't you don't want the Internet on there?
Well, I do, but I don't want internet until I figure out what's going on. I need to clean the computer and you know, start all over. But I still need to find out what's going on.
Okay.
So when you look at the symbol of the Internet, is it is it a ghost symbol or is it like is it is this the Wi Fi signal all in black?
Or is it kind of ghosted out?
No, it's got the lines, Like, are.
Those lines gray or black.
They're black?
There are they are? Huh.
Okay, so when you click on that, what does it say? What does it say? For Wi Fi?
It's oh, I click on the symbol, and then all of the Wi Fi addresses in my neighborhood come up.
Okay, yep.
And it takes a few minutes for mine to come up. But I just continued mine and Spectrum told me don't cut the wires to the box. And I thought, yes, I am.
Oh, okay, I see what's happening. Okay, so you still have Spectrum. You just discontinue the internet portion.
Now I discontinued everything.
And you still do you still have the box in your house?
Yes? And so I talked to someone at one of the telephone companies and they said, get rid of the box. Okay, yeah, unplugged it a long time ago, and they said, And I figured out how to unscrew two parts to get inside, and I removed the battery. It's a huge battery. It's bigger than a man's hand. And so I removed the battery and then I cut the wire that goes outside.
Oh wow, so you did cut the wire.
Okay, I cut the wire there and I cut the wire from the electrical box where it wasn't on electricity, but it's near the electrical Yeah.
Yeah, that's where they.
Even though Spectrum told me not just oh my gosh, okay, still have a full symbol of Wi Fi's symbol.
Okay, well it Well that's a mystery because at this point, if the box is off and the signals cut, there should not be connection to your computer. Now, if there's still a connection, you're either connected to a secondary network or something else. So what I would do is go into your WiFi.
I can't get Wi Fi from my computer, but I ran a chance the diagnostics and it says that there's a conflict with a country with another country in the world.
Oh wow, well that's that's been going on at as long as time. That's more than just internet. But okay, what I would do is you got to go into your Wi Fi settings and you've got to delete some of these old Wi Fi networks. So if you go into your network settings on your Mac computer and oh gosh, they changed everything, it's kind of a pain the way they listed everything.
I'm used to the old system.
But if you go into Wi Fi, it will say advanced and if you go in there, you'll see all of your know networks. Like I'm looking at all the networks I've ever connected to at the different airports, different hotels. Oh my gosh, look at this is like a graveyard of internet networks that I've connected to.
And you can go.
That.
You don't need Wi Fi to do this, So this is on your actual computer. So you go through, and
you can go through and delete. And what I would do in your case, since you're having so many issues, I would delete all of the networks that you've connected to, and then I would turn Wi Fi off on your computer and then I would figure out your situation for how you're going to get internet on this computer again, because it sounds like Spectrum is going to have some issues trying to get your you know, your internet back if you've cut the wire.
Now, what's going on with the cameras outside? How are those? How are you monitoring those?
Well, there were several breakings into my home and it's someone in the neighborhood. Actually it's more than one person. It's a Boo Blue ring. And so what they do is they cut off my cameras at night because sometimes I wake up and I have work to do because I don't sleep like from nine to five or things like that. I just whenever I'm ready to do my work, I just do it. And so I don't get Wi Fi sometimes because someone has cut off the power to
my cameras. I have a special on the meter. It says cameras with a flip.
You know of Oh right, you haven't connected that way.
Right, because I had my house rewired. So anyway, well, the electrician did is that way. And so when the guy came in and put in my cameras, he said he put boosters on several parts of the house. I don't have a big house, but he said he put a booster in certain places in the house. And anyway, I steel think someone has broken into my computer many times because I'm missing stuff.
Well, here's what I'd recommend. I think that you got a lot of things going on here. I think that you need to figure out how this device is still connecting to the Wi Fi even though you don't have Wi Fi. I think that you need to go through get rid of those old things, and then when it comes to the network in your home, I'm going to
recommend something called the fire walla. This is a physical device that goes between your Internet connection and all of your devices to put a firewall between you and everyone else.
They're not cheap, but it sounds like something you need. Patricia, thanks for the call.
Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology at Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Patricia was our last caller. Lots of questions about her Wi Fi connection. She basically canceled her Wi Fi and it still seemed to be showing up on her computer even though she cut the cable,
removed the box, took the battery out. But a couple of people chimed in and said, maybe she's on her neighbor's WiFi. Maybe jo Joe said, someone has a Wi Fi network that has the same as hers.
That could be it.
I mean, you'd have to have the same Wi Fi, use her name and password as your neighbor for that to happen.
Maybe it did. I don't know.
That seems very unlikely, but that could be it. But Usually when these accounts are set up, they have these random string of characters in the name. The passwords are pretty unique, but that could be it. Let's go to ud David's in Serrito's.
David, You're on with Rich.
Hello.
Hello.
I have a what I think is probably a pretty stupid question.
There's no stupid questions, well.
Okay, a stupid question or them. I just want to know how to find telephone number of friends of mine who have lost touch with I know their address, I used to know their telephone number. Now I don't know how to get their telephone number anymore.
Good question.
So there's a couple of ways to do this, and I've got do you have an let's see, do you have an iPhone.
Or an Android?
It's an Android Android Edge.
Okay, so there's a couple of ways to do this.
The first is if you have well the best I mean, I'll just tell you the easiest way.
The thing.
The thing that I use is an app called Sunshine Contacts. And this is an app that scans your phone, your email, your Google everything. It's just looking for wherever it can on your phone to find this information. And what it does is it compiles it all together. So when someone sends you an email and their phone numbers in that email, it will say, oh, this is John Smith, here's their email. All right, sorry, here's their phone number. Let's put this
as their contact. And then when you go into Sunshine, it will give you all of your contacts and the information it found inside those, so you can search for anyone and you can find that information. And so it is really really good at doing that, and it's pretty much free. There are some paid upgrades to sync with your address book, but Sunshine Contacts, I find is phenomenal. It's pretty much my first stop when it comes to
finding someone's phone number. Now that is given the idea that that person has somehow contacted you, whether it was through email or whether they were in your address book at some point. That's kind of the way that that works. So check out Sunshine Contacts. The other way to do it is if you have an iPhone. Now that's Android,
so I guess I'll continue with Android. The other way to do it is if you go to a contacts dot Google dot com and you can find a list of all your contacts, even people who you didn't necessarily put in your address book because they've got a section called Other Contacts, and you can go in there and see all the people that you've emailed with, and that
will give you their email address. Some of them may have a phone number listed there as well, but that way you can search for someone that you've emailed in the past. So if it's an old friend that you lost touch with, you can search for them and find their email there and then maybe email them and ask for.
Their phone number. That way.
The other thing you can do on the iPhone, and this is for iPhone users, This is very very interesting.
One of my favorite features.
If you've ever had someone call your iPhone and it says the person's name underneath their phone number, even though they're not in your address book, it says maybe, and then it has their phone number. This is a feature that came out years ago, and it's actually a serie feature, even though it's not necessarily that's what they branded as.
But how this works is that if you have emailed with that person, Siri is indexing all of your emails and looking at all of the information in those emails, including people's phone numbers that they mentioned.
So let's say I send you an email it says Hey, great to meet you. My name is Rich. Here's my phone number.
Chat soon, and now I call your phone and it says and it comes from that number that I put in that email, and it says.
Maybe this is Rich, And you go, how did it know?
That's how it knows because it's looking and it's indexing everything in your email. So to set that up, you got to go into your settings, set up an email address, you know, whatever you use, Gmail, Yahoo, Aol, whatever, put that in there, and then you have to in the
email settings or sorry, back in the main settings. You'll see one called Syrian Search, and then you scroll down to where it says mail m ail and you tap that and then it says while searching, and it says show search an app, show content and search, and that says suggestions, show an app, show on home screens, suggest app,
suggest notifications. So and also learn from this app. So make sure all of those things are on and then the next time someone calls you and the numbers in there, you can find them.
Now.
The other way you can do it is you can actually just search. So you can go to your contact on the iPhone and you can search for someone that's in there and you should get a serious suggestion depending on whether they had put that information in their email. And you can also just swipe down from the top of your phone and searched there and it will give you serious suggestions as well. So it will you can scroll down and see contacts messages. I mean, it's really
phenomenal what they're doing to get this information. But Sunshine Contacts is kind of like that same exact feature that Siri gives you, but it's cross platform and it works with all of your different email addresses and all of your contact books. It kind of brings everything all together, which is really really smart. So I really like that app, and it just recently became available on an Android as well.
The other thing you can do is you can check a site like whitepages dot com, so you can do a reverse address search, so maybe you know the person's address and you can type that in there. The only thing I don't like about this is I'm actually opposed to kind of these sites in general because they're so annoying and they're just really like, not nice, and so I'm kind of loath to recommend using those. But if you're looking for an old friend, it could definitely help.
There's a million of these different types of sites. They may charge you for the privilege of getting the phone number looking up someone that I know right now, and sure enough, it actually.
Was completely free.
So I just looked up someone by their address, It said who lives there, I click their name, and now I have their phone numbers at the house. Now, if you want their cell phone number, that's where they may charge you. Cell phone number looks to be a premium add on. It says unlock, full report and one time access nine ninety nine contact info five dollars. So apparently David a lot of people like to find people's phone numbers.
So the address thing through whitepages dot com is pretty good. Now, whitepages dot com, I recommend them because I actually think they're like the least evil out of all of those like peoplefinder sites, because I believe at one point they're actually rooted in the actual like white pages, like the you know, the phone company actually like had a something to do with them. So let's see, they've been around since nineteen ninety seven, thirty million monthly customers.
Wow.
So anyway, whitepages dot com, if you want to find that Sunshine Contacts Contacts dot Google dot com, and also the Serie search. Okay, something I learned this week. If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, one of my biggest issues with these devices is the way that the drawer of apps looks. On every other Android phone in the world, when you swipe up from the bottom, everything is vertical, but for some reason, Samsung does it horizontal and it
really bugs me. And you can get a third party launcher, you can, you know all that, but you can actually change this through Samsung.
They have a way to do this.
So there's an app on Samsung called Goodlock Go d lock Lock good Lock. You can download this from the Samsung Galaxy Store on your phone. And what this app does is it lets you customize all kinds of things on your Samsung phone. But they make you download it separately because some of it's experimental, some of it is stuff that you wouldn't typically get because they want to
keep these phones kind of simple. But they also want to give you some power kind of power options, and so a lot of these power options are inside the Goodlock app. And so you download this app and then there's a tab called Makeup and you select that and then there's a home up module and it's I know, home up. Get it home up, So you download that, enable the Home up and then you tap home screen and then there's an option for the app list that's enabled, so get it apps list, and then.
Once you enable that your app drawer.
And I know this sounds very complicated, but all this is doing is making it so that on your Android phone, on your Samsung, instead of when you swipe up the apps are all you have to then swipe left and right to scroll through your apps. All you can do now is scroll up. It is a glorious thing and is a small change. It came out earlier this year, but to me, that is like the biggest issue I had with Samsung devices was how that drawer worked. And
this is so much easier, It's so much better. It's just so much more the way I use a phone. So definitely check out the good lock app. There's a whole bunch of things you can do through that app. You can change your lock screen, you can change your home screen, there's so many little like tweaks you can do. So definitely do that. Let's see what else do I do? I don't have enough time to go through anything else.
But I will tell you one other thing. I'll just tell you the phone number Triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four to.
One zero one.
Uh, give me a call if you have a question about technology. My name is Rich d'muro. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here at Triple A rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up next. Uh, We've got the guy on TikTok and Instagram who is always handing out those iPhone tricks. I guarantee you didn't know about it goes by consanity. He's coming up on the show shortly. Right after the break,
Let's get to Liz and riverside. Liz, you're on with Rich.
Hi. Rich.
Well, my question is.
My husband passed away a few months ago, and.
I sorry to hear that's.
That's that's okay, But he was a techie and I have desktop and laptop and I want to get rid of them, but I want to make sure that our information is secured off of them. So what else do I take out of them besides the hard drive?
Well?
Is there anything else? I need to take out of them before I like donate them or give them away, just so that it doesn't have our information.
So you've already taken out the hard drives.
Well not yet, okay, but I know how to.
Oh okay, okay, Well if you're if you're taking out the hard drives, I think that's the important part. I don't think there's anything else inside there that you would need to remove, anything like RAM or system memory is not really going to hold any personal data. So the hard drive is really the key to the kingdom there, so I would definitely remove that. And what do you plan to do with these drives?
So after, you know, before I take them, mad, I'm gonna you know, take pictures, you know, like pictures or videos or anything like that. That would be sincemental to me. But after that, I don't know.
Okay.
So there are various software programs that will format these drives. I think that they are kind of a pain and too long, and it's just a it's a process. So what I would recommend is once you remove these drives, and are these all desktops or some of them laptops?
Oh wow?
And so the laptops you're able to remove those drives from there too. Yeah, okay, okay, so you're a bit of a tech of yourself too, huh.
I I try it, you know, take my way through it.
Well, I would.
I think that the easiest way to get once you get everything off of these drives, so you know, the process would be go through and maybe wait, you know, if I were you, I you know, you said this has only been a couple of months, Maybe wait a couple of months, just because it may be too painful, or it may not be the it's it's it might be tough to do this, you know, to go through and you know you're gonna be looking at some of
these videos and photos. You may want to wait a little bit just to let, you know, let yourself grieve a bit. But when that's done, and when you can, you know, get to a place where you feel like you can tackle this project, you know, go through, get the videos off of there. I would put them in something like a Google Photos and that way it'll organize them by people in places and things and you can
easily search them later. Once you have that all out of there, take the drives out and I personally would bring them to a hard drive shredding facility.
Have you heard of this?
No? Yeah, So there are places that you can take them and I've seen this in action.
Are you in your in River? We're you're in Riverside.
So look up hard drive shredding Riverside and see if you find a place, and make sure you find a place that lets you see them being shred. So for ten bucks, I think it was ten or twenty dollars, they will shred these in front of you. So you get to watch these drives get shred and so you know that they are not going to be There's no data that could be recovered off of these drives, but
that's probably the easiest. Now, if you have a friend that can drill some holes through the drives and you know you want to have some fun doing it that way, you could probably do that as well. But that's a little bit more hands on, a little bit more. You know, you need to know some that knows how to do that. You got to put the drive in avice all that good stuff. But if you find a hard drive shredding company,
it's like an e waste recycling company. Usually they have these industrial machines that you know a lot of corporations will come to them with a bunch of drives. They need them shredded, they will do that. So how does that sounds? That sound like a good.
Solution, That sounds like an excellent So.
I still I'll be honest, Liz, I still have a couple of hard drives from old computers that have been sitting in my place for about maybe ten years now, because I did bring I did bring one or two to this hard drive place. We did a story for TV. I did bring one or two and it was fun to watch them get shredded. But I need to bring them back because that's the most guaranteed way. Actually, I
have my father in law. I've been meaning to do it with him with the with the drill, but you got to drill in a certain place, you know, to like make sure, so you got to cover your eyes, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, don't want a piece of drive flinging into your face, you know what I mean?
Absolutely?
Yeah, no, And that that I've never heard of, So that's exce it. And I had been concerns about the SIM memory and stuff like that, so that helps knowing that it.
Just were you talking about cell phones as well.
No, okay, so I was gonna say, if it's a cell phone, you know there is if there was a SIM card and there were some contacts. You know, the older cell phones stored contacts on the sim cards sometimes, so you could, you know, you want to take that out of the phone as well. Now phones are prett easy because the built in formatting is very very simple. The factory restart, you could do that a couple times and erase all the data. But the hard drives they're
definitely tricky. There are programs if you if you want to look into the programs. The big program is called Derek's Boot and Nuke, and so that is the big one. It's called DBAN for sure, and so Dban if you have a friend that's really techy and you want to kind of go down that line, you can look into DMan. But great question. Lots of ways to do this stuff. Basically, you want to rewrite the drive with lots of zeros in one so that nobody can retrieve the data on it.
A simple format doesn't always do that. Thanks for the call. Is coming up next We're going to talk iPhone tips and tricks right here on rich on Tech Welcome back to rich On Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. I know this is Matchbox twenty, but is this This isn't push right, this is three am okay, because I don't want to give away too much about the Barbie movie. But a Matchbox twenty song played a role in that movie. Which is I think it was?
Was it match right now? I'm confusing my movies. Maybe it was it there? Anyway, Yeah, I saw the Barbie movie, me and the rest.
Of the world. Uh uh. Producer Bobo has not seen it. Not everyone's seen it. I mean, but a.
Lot we'll see. I mean, everyone has different thoughts in that movie. Anyway, we're not here to talk Barbie. Visible by Verizon dropped prices. What everyone's raising prices? How did they drop prices? So Visible is owned by Verizon. This is what's called their MVNO Mobile Virtual Network Operator. But it's funny because they're actually owned by Verizon. They set up a secondary cellular company that was mainly aimed towards like millennials and people that wanted to do everything online.
So there's no stores.
The advertising is all sort of aimed at a certain demographic, you know, maybe the younger person, and it's people who you know, they just want an inexpensive cell phone service and it delivers. We did a story with them when they first came out, interviewed the guy who runs it, and it does what it says now. It debuted in twenty eighteen with a forty dollars a month's unlimited plan, which I thought was amazing. But now they have a
twenty five dollars unlimited plan. So here's the thing. You have to have a phone that's compatible, which means it has to be compatible with Verizon. But if you have that and you want the Verizon network at twenty five dollars a month, you can get it. I mean, it's really really inexpensive. Now the twenty five dollars plan is pretty basic. So it's unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and let's see what else. You don't get the five G Ultra wide bands. You don't get their their fastest five G,
but you still get five G access. Now, if you want that, you have to get the fun A Visible Plus plan, which is forty five dollars a month. They actually raise the plan price on the high end plan
and dropped it on the low end plan. But anyway, I tell you all this because if you're looking for an inexpensive mobile service, twenty five dollars a month for unlimited is pretty good, and I think they're gonna you know, Mint Mobile I also really like, and they have an unlimited service for I think it's like thirty dollars a month, and so I wonder if they're gonna have to change to twenty five because of this. Mint Mobile is also
pretty good. So when people tell you have to have like the big major like T Mobile, Verizon, AT and T, you don't.
You can get by.
With one of these smaller carriers that they don't have all the marketing, they don't have all the you know, the perks, like you know, the free Netflix and things like that. But you're just getting your service for a much lower price. So definitely don't discount these things. Visible twenty five dollars a month, they just lowered that price from thirty.
I got to tell you.
About this scam that involved QR codes that lets you pay for parking. This is from the Better Business Bureau scam tracker. They're seeing an influx of reports about these scams. Have you been to a parking lot lately, there's not even an attendant anymore. It's just a machine that lets you pay. Or there's a QR code that says, hey scan to pay for parking here, and now that because we've all gone through the pandemic, we know how to use QR codes. You say, oh, I'll try that. You
scan the QR code, you pay for your parking. But guess what, it's a bogus QR code. It's all a scam. They're trying to get you to scan the code pay for parking, but you're actually just handing your credit card over to the scammers. And yeah, I mean it makes total sense. This is almost like the perfect scam, because how would you know I pay for parking this way? The other day I was in downtown and I scanned a QR code at the box and I paid for
my parking. Now I could tell it was legit because it was legitimate, and so I knew it because I think it was like park Whiz or something like that. But if you see something weird, like some weird company or something you don't really understand, or it looks like an odd URL, do not use it, don't pay, don't try it, and don't get scammed. So again, if you see a QR code near a parking spot, just be on alert. It's probably legit, but it may not be.
So how do you protect yourself? Pay for parking directly through the meter or through the scanning box, sorry, the credit card box like you know sometimes they have like a box there.
Do that. Watch out for the links.
If the QR code says it's going to open a shortened URL, make sure you know where it's bringing you to and look for any evidence of tampering. So if you know they put these QR codes, just make sure that it's like a sticker that's legitimate. I guess if it looks like a sticker that's just been placed there by someone random print it out, then maybe don't use it. They also have some apps that may scan the QR
code that you're scanning from malicious software. I know that if you use something like Google Chrome, it's going to scan the link that you're going to to make sure it's okay, but it may not catch everything, so you do have to be on your own guard. The other thing I would add to this is that if you use something like Apple pay or Google Pay, the bogus companies are probably not going to be set up for
Google Pay or Apple Pay. I could be wrong, but I would just I would try to use that because that'll put one more barrier between you and the actual bogus payment, so or the scam artist. I should say, let's go to let's see we've got Nina. Nina's in San Bernardino. Nina, you're on with Rich.
Hi just have a quick question on tech challenges.
I have to tell you I love the tech challenge because that's why I get to keep this show.
Well, anyway, I have a laptop Dell. It's about six or seven years old and it's flows. But anyway, my question is about two weeks ago it started micro Edge. Microsoft seems to want me to use it use their email, So I I use the X close it down and then I'm able to hit my icon on Google and my email will outlook.
Will come up.
Well, about last week I got an error. It says error refreshed. So I found out that five I'm sorry f five refreshing or if I clicked my right.
No and you go, yeah, yeah, you could control command will also.
Do it okay, but also right now, all it does is error. Does that mean that Microsoft is Microsoft Edge really wants me use for my email? Is that what that means that they're trying to encourage me? Or should I take it into No?
I use, I use UH. I use Outlook every single day on Chrome. So it sounds like there's an issue with the just the u r L. So if you refresh that page it should come back, close down Chrome and then reopen it and see if that does it. The other thing is just manually go to the u r L and type in Outlook dot office dot com and that should bring you to your mail box. Your inbox. You're talking about Outlook email right, yes, and you're yep,
it's Outlook dot office dot com. And so I will tell you because I use this on my computer all the time. I have many many problems with it. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I get kicked out. Sometimes I got to relog in. So I think what happened is you got logged out and you need to log back in. And so if you go to Outlook dot office dot com, does that bring it back up?
Have you been able to type that in?
Well? Right now it's telling me total I don't know it's a PC tune up. I don't know.
Oh, okay, Well in that case, hold on, May I.
Try it and then I can pull you back next week.
Yeah, but if you if it's saying PC tune up, this, this sounds like you.
Have some malware on your machine. So are you using Google Chrome?
Yes?
Okay, So I.
Also acape that just said that everything's.
Okay, Well yes, but you could still have malware, so you could have an extension.
I want you to Are you on Chrome right now?
Well, right now, it's tune up and it's going total defense and it's updating and installing.
So I don't know.
What that means.
Okay, So on Chrome, there's something called Chrome Extensions, and a lot of times when you install stuff there could be some uh malware that gets installed and it tries to hijack your browser. And so what I want you to do kind of in the upper right hand corner of your browser, there's a little icon that looks like a puzzle piece, and if you or over it, it says extensions. If you click that, it will tell you all of the software that is installed into your web browser,
not on your computer, but on your web browser. These are called extensions. They extend the functionality of Google Chrome. So I want you to go through that list and if you see something you don't recognize, I want you to get rid of it, and you can do that by clicking Manage Extensions at the bottom of that list. It will bring up all the extensions. You can either click remove, or you can just toggle the switch underneath one of those and it will turn off that extension.
If you see one for like search helper or PC tune up or any of those things that you were just talking about, either remove it or turn it off, and you can turn off all of these extensions, restart Chrome and see if that fixes it. But it sounds like something is hijacking your browser if you ask me, because you should not get a message that says PC tune up when you're trying to go to a website. That sounds to me like something is inner accepting your
web address. Now, if you're asking how to set a default browser, if you're having trouble and you want to try Microsoft Edge because originally it looked like that's what you were trying to use, you can go into your start menu, Settings Apps and then default apps on Windows and you can set Microsoft Edge or Chrome as you're default. If it's trying to change your default browser to something else, that's how you change it back.
But I use.
Outlook on Chrome all the time. Yes, they want to push you to using Edge because that's Microsoft and Microsoft. But at the end of the day, it does work, and it does work just fine. So check those extensions, make sure they're okay, and delete the ones that you don't know about, or you don't recognize, or you don't need. You're listening to rich on Tech coming up. I cannot believe it. I say this every week, but it's the
end of the show. We've got the feedback segment. All of your questions and emails.
That you've sent me throughout the week. I will get to them. Coming up next.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here talking technology with you.
What a show. It's been.
So many great calls, so many great emails. Thank you for that. I do appreciate it. Every week I can tell just a few more of you decide to tune in, and believe me, it's not lost on me. The emails I get throughout the week, it's just incredible. And they're from everywhere and from all kinds of folks, people that love technology, people that are new to technology, and so
I do read them all. I'm not always able to reply to everyone, so I will read some of them here, but I do try to reply as much as possible. Rich on tech dot tv is my website. If you hit the contact button, you can email me through there. I'm also on social media at rich on Tech. I'm on Instagram, Facebook x formerly Twitter threads sometimes. And also you can get this show as a podcast, so you can go to your favorite podcasting app search rich on Tech and you can find this show there.
Let's get to the feedback. Let's see here. Let's see.
Let's start with some questions. Tony says, I've had a heart attack and two strokes. Are the heart monitor features on the Apple eight Watch worth the investment?
Thanks TJ. Yes, I think so.
I'm not a doctor, and I don't know if you know, it's something that a doctor would recommend, but I can't see how it could hurt. There are features on the Apple Watch that will monitor for high heart rate, low heart rate, irregular heart rate, all kinds of stuff, and so if you fell, you know, if you had another stroke and fell and you were immobile, it could also call nine one one. So I think those are just some of the reasons why it might be a good
idea to have that. So I'd say yes, it's probably worth the investment. Just keep in mind the new Apple stuff is coming out in September, so you may want to wait until then.
Let's see.
Janine says, I enjoy listening and listening and learning from you.
Have a question.
I'm an Android owner and I recently purchased tickets for an event. It was suggested that I save my tickets in Google wallets. You think I should do that or save the email in a folder. Either way, I'm confused on how to accomplish this technology refuses to be my friend. Please help, Janine. Yes, you should absolutely save your tickets to your wallet. This is for iPhone and Android, whether
it's ticket Master or any other digital ticket. A lot of people asking me this question with the Taylor Swift concerts and the first time you're using.
Tickets in a while.
But yes, tickets nowadays are all digital and so nobody really has physical tickets anymore. And the tickets are all high tech, and so if you take a screenshot of the ticket. They may not accept that at the door. And so what you want to do is you really want to save these tickets to your Google Wallet or your Apple wallet. And the way you do that is when you open up the ticket, there should be a little icon on it that says saved my wallet, and that means that that ticket will work on your phone,
whether you have Wi Fi cellular signal or not. It'll keep you from having to get stopped at the door. And so on Google Wallet, I would open up that app first before you try to save your tickets, just to make sure it's all set up and that way it will save. Once it's saved in there, it's kind of like an airline ticket. It just is in there
and it will pop up on that day. It may remind you, but to get that ticket again, all you have to do is open up your wallet, whether it's Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and you'll be able to retrieve those tickets at the event. On you you can search for the wallet app as well, so just search for wallet on either phone, Android or iPhone. They also
have Samsung Wallet. I don't know if that stores tickets though, but it does store credit cards and things like that, and also get your credit card in there or your debit card for sure.
Recommend that.
Let's See Ron says, is there a free QR code generator that will make an iPhone contact entry in turn it into a QR code that the recipient can scan and add to their contacts. If someone asked for my contact info, I'd like to be able to have them scan a QR code and they'll have all my contact info. But I don't want to subscribe to a QR code generator app.
Ron.
I like the app called Let's See. It's called Hi Hello, Hi, Hello dot me, Hi Hello dot Me, and I set up my email or my QR code business card, wherever you want to call it. You put the information you want in there, and it generates a QR code and you can text this to someone. You can put it in your Apple wallet, you can have them scan the code on your phone, you can put it in your email, you can copy the link. There's a million ways to do it. The best part about it is that I've
tested all of them and this is my favorite. And this one's also free, so you can use it for free. Yes, they have paid upgrades, but at the very core service. It's free. I was using this in South Korea when I was meeting new folks. Hey scan the QR code on my phone. I saved it on my screen and it's very easy. And they can download the contact card as well if they'd liked to, so they can add it directly to their phone. They can save it, they
can add the VCF whatever you want. But Ron Hi hellot me is the one that I like.
Let's see.
David says, how can I stop unsolicited emails on my iPhone? Please help? I do not open them. I tried blocking them, they change the senders and they send more.
This is a tough one, David.
My best advice is to report them as spam without opening them, and to also report as spam. And then the other thing is don't open them. And then you might want to turn off the feature that automatically loads remote images. You can do that on both the iPhone and Gmail and most providers. All right, let's see what else here. Let's see. Neil says, Hey, Rich, I have two Garman dash cams. I find the iPhone app to be quite flaky. I've only been able to do firmware
updates on them once. Because of this flakiness, I'm also frequently having difficulty connecting them to the cameras to look at a recent capture. I think the caller was spot on. Love your show, Neil. Yes, we had a caller say that they couldn't really figure out the garment dash cams, and I guess they were right there. They are flaky, Gina says, dear Rich, I say down with the naysayers.
You're not the other guy. Your program is yours and I like it being bada boom power to the people or not regards Gina.
Thanks Gina, and let's see here.
Mario says, I just want you to say I'm not I was not angered by the Twitter rant on your radio program. Did not stop me from wanting to hear the rest of your broadcast. I'm glad it did not let me do so because I had understood that any personal any person is vulnerable, vulnerable to being.
Upset, and that you had apologized.
Keep a note that says be calm near your show for future broadcasts.
Be calm.
I will try to remain calm. I was very upset. I think I was jet lagged. I was really thinking about that and Finally, Erica says, Hey, Rich, I want to let you know that AOLO worked out for me in Guatemala. I got phone calls and WhatsApp. It worked great. Thanks for the info. Here's a couple of pictures from my trip. Thanks the kids and I in Guatemala. Thank you, Erica. I'm Rich Dmiro. Thanks so much for listening to the show.
Check out the notes at richontech dot tv. You can leave your feedback at richontech dot tv, go to the contact page. Find me on social media at rich on tech. My name is rich Dimiro. There are so many ways you can spend your time with me. With spend your time. I do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. I'll talk to you real soon.