Hands-On Samsung S25, Deleting Old Accounts & Accessibility Tech

one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question about technology. Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. That's Rich on tech dot tv. Hit con tact guests. This week, we've got Nick Gray, editor in chief at the website Fandroid. He's gonna cover the key features of Samsung's S twenty five series, and later we've got radio

host and accessibility consultant Paul Lane. He's gonna explore how tech can empower people with disabilities.

five plus, and the S twenty five Ultra. Now the twenty five and the twenty five plus are just I think the Ultra is really always where all the most exciting upgrades are. So this has a bigger screen, yes, can you believe it? A bigger screen six point nine inches, But they managed to put that screen in a form factor that's actually easier to hold and no larger than last year's device. So that means less bezel, that little tiny border around the screen. Prices for these devices, I

won't save it to the end. I'll just tell you right now. Cut to the chase. Eight hundred dollars for the S twenty five S twenty five Plus starts at one thousand, the S twenty five Ultra starts at thirteen hundred, and no price increases from last year, So I really like that and don't get scared by those prices. Almost nobody pays full retail price for Samsung device, so there are always some sort of trade in or some sort

of discount. I was looking at their discounts the other day and Samsung gives discounts for just about all kinds of folks like students, military, employee discounts, and more, friends and family. So definitely check out that offer page. All right, So what do I think of these devices? First off,

they made a very good choice. They have replaced the Bixby on the side button with Gemini, so Google Gemini now comes up when you press the side button like the long press of the power button, which is really great because this is going to be a lot of people's first use of AI, and they've done it in a very smart way, so Bixby is not gone. But what they do is they kind of assess what your question is to the AI assistant and they will hand it off based on what you want to do, and

it can even do combination tasks. So for instance, if I say, you know, what's the Lakers score, it will just give me that score. It's going to go to Gemini, it's going to figure that out. If I say restart my phone, it's going to hand it off to Bixby and show me the restart my phone menu on the screen. So where it gets really cool is where you do

combination stuff. So you can say, tell me when the Chiefs are playing next, and it to my calendar and it will go pull Gemini for that information then add it to your calendar. So that's kind of a new thing where they've integrated all of the Samsung apps or a lot of them to make that functionality possible. So that's really neat, and some of the Google apps as well, like Google Calendar and things like that. Two other new

AI features the now Brief. This is a tiny widget that sits on your home screen or at the bottom of your phone, and it gives you like a personalized update for your day. So it'll give your weather, your calendar events, if it's someone's birthday, it'll tell you that, give you little videos to watch, all kinds of stuff that's AI infused.

not dramatically improved on these devices. So if you're looking for like completely different camera functionality, you're not really gonna get it. What they did was they improved one of the lenses, the ultra wide angle lens. They did bring that up to fifty megapixels, up from twelve megapixels. So all of your wide angle stuff is going to look a lot better, a lot brighter. Night video has been dramatically improved thanks to AI. So they're running this through

some sort of algorithms. The video I took of a DJ at a party they threw was just incredible, Like it just was so it pops because it's so crystal clear and bright. Macro shots are going to give you four times more detail. They've also got this audio eraser feature, which means you can get rid of background noise in your videos. So if you have a nice video of your kid taking its first steps with the dog is barking in the back, you can try to get some

of that out of there. Now for content creators, they've got log video support. For most users, this will not matter because you're not color grading your video, but if you are using your phone for professional reasons, this is a really nice addition. Seven years of updates on these devices that is incredible. So if you buy this phone today, it will get seven years of updates, both operating system

and security updates. They're also giving you six months of Google Gemini Advanced included two terabytes of storage included.

at twelve gigabytes of RAM. Now the Ultra didlast year and this year it's the same. I would have loved to see sixteen on the Ultra, but you know, we'll take what we can get. And they all have two hundred and fifty six gigabytes of storage for starters, except for that S twenty five base model. So overall, you know, throwing out a lot of numbers at you, but these are just really solid devices. Like Samsung went back to

the drawing board. They did their homework. They figured out what people want, what people can use on a daily basis, and these phones are just smart. Oh I didn't even mention. You know, they make a big deal out of this Circle to Search, and if you've used it, it is my absolute I think this is the differentiating factor right now between iPhone and Android. Circle to Search means that anything on your screen is tappable and searchable, and they took it a step further. So if you do Circle

to search on your screen, bring that up. Anything that's a link of phone number or an email, you can just tap it to go there. See no how on Instagram. People put links on Instagram in the captions, you can't click them. Long press your home screen. Boom, you can click that in one second. It's little tiny things like that that make this a smart phone. Wi Fi seven also on these devices, which is faster and more reliable, but most routers at home don't have that yet, so

this will be good for the future. The batteries are made of fifty percent recycled material from old Samsung Galaxy batteries. Now the downsides. The Spen did lose bluetooth, which means it can no longer be used as a remote control for the camera. If you leave it behind, you're not going to get an alert on your phone. The back material on this phone is a fingerprint magnet, so most people are going to use a case. Not a big deal,

but this thing is just a fingerprint magnet. You can train people on an episode of CSI on this phone. That's how bad the fingerprints are. They did not put mag safe support into the phone, so if you're familiar with mag Safe on the iPhone, it's got those magnets around the back so you can attach accessories wirelessly. So they did it kind of weird here, They did build in the latest CH two wireless charging support, but you got to put a case on to get the magnets.

Not a big deal. Again, most people are going to have a case. And if you're wondering about getting this phone, switching from another phone, even the iPhone, what are you going to miss out on? Realistically, nothing except Apple's ecosystem and of course the occasional family member or friend who's going to give you trouble for having a green bubble or having, you know, not an iPhone. But you know what,

too bad those people. Yeah, FaceTime of course, but you know what, there's so many ways to make a video call. But I get it. Apple has really built this nice, this infrastructure in this ecosystem that people just love and they love to be on. And I understand that airdrop all those kind of things, but I'm telling you this is the year. If you're on the fence about upgrading, this is the year to do it. I really think that they did an amazing job on this phone. I've

been taking pictures and videos. You can see them on my website, rich on tech dot TV. They are all looking really, really good. Do I think it's a clipsing? What the iPhone does no, But I think that you're in a place where where the pictures and the videos you take on this device are going to be excellent a large majority of the time. Now, I will tell you my iPhone's been collecting dust for the past four days.

Since I got this thing. I've just I've not even given it a second thought because I'm sitting here using it, and I love it. I love all these little features on this phone that make it feel so smart and so futuristic. It's really fun, and they're doing AI in such a smart way. Also, when I get a Samsung phone, especially the new ones, I'm always waiting for some sort of first software update to kind of smooth things over,

to make this better. And I'm not even thinking about that right now because everything is just so good out of the gate. So if I feel like I'm really bullish on this, I am. I really like this phone. I think that Samsung did a great job. I think they listen to people. And the icing on the cake when you scroll through your apps, they are now scrolling vertically like every other proper Android phone out there.

back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. Let's go to Freddy in Yonkers, New York. Freddie, you're on with Rich.

Let's see iPhone. So under the I in the iPhone, there is a setting that will optimize the storage automatically, so you have to turn it on and you go into iCloud and you'll see it says optimized cloud storage, optimized iPhone storage, optimized iPad storage. And what that's doing is it's actually in the background, going to delete the full resolution photos from your and videos from your iPad, but it's still going to allow you to view those

and they will still be stored in the cloud. So the the caveat here is that you have to have enough storage in the cloud for those photos. So if you don't, you're gonna it's not gonna work.

and then photos. Okay, so there's photos and there it is where it says manage storage and you can tap that and it will say, oh wow, they changed everything in iOS.

going to delete out of the iCloud. So you want to let that do its magic. Where again it's just showing your thumbnails on your phone, but the high resolution photo is still stored in the cloud. If you tap that photo or you want to share it, then it will go from the cloud. It will grab that full resolution photo and kind of put it back on your device for sharing all that stuff.

to all of the shows. This is episode one hundred and six, so you can get show notes for that as well. You might want to look this up because I'm gonna tell you about a great website I discovered called delete deesk dot org. Deletedesk dot org. This is a free database with over ten thousand records showing you

how to delete your online accounts. It's got step by step account deletion instructions, direct links, and contact information, and it's got all the different categories technologies, shopping, social media or more. Or you can just search for the website that you want to delete. So this is all in

an effort to kind of clean up your online identity. Right, it's a new year, maybe you want to kind of get rid of some of the old accounts that you opened up and you no longer use, or maybe you're sick of social media you want to get rid of those. But again, the website deletedesk dot org. And this is really good. My old ones, my old recommendations for this were getting kind of what's that term long in the tooth or something like that. It's not even a term

long in the tooth. That's a weird thing to say. All the stuff we say is so weird, right, like all the old sayings. There's a book I had ones. There's a book I had once. It's called like why do we say the things we do? And they're all rooted in something. But anyway, deletedesk dot org is the website to go to.

it's on the T Mobile network. But what I'm wondering about right now is this simply a burner or is it a possible keeper. Because we're able to hold on to the phones, we don't have to return them to the Red Cross cell phone service on T Mobile is free through the end of March. So I'm not quite sure if I'm really going to have to go out and get a brand new phone or I should hold on to this.

not take advantage of that. Why have one more thing to stress about during this trying time. This phone is basic. You're correct in that assessment. Is TCL is a large maker of TVs. They make smartphones as well, mostly kind of budget smartphones, the type that you're getting, you know, where it's maybe given out for free or free of the contract or through a government program sometimes. But they also sell these things and I've reviewed some of them and they're fine.

bog this thing down. So go through all of the apps and uninstall anything that it allows you to uninstall. It may have some bloat wear on there, but I would just get rid of anything you can that you don't need, and then I would restart the phone and that's it. I mean, you've got T Mobile for free for a couple of months. You've got the phone for free. You know, you've suffered a you know, pretty big loss and not having access to your apartment, you said, for

a couple of weeks. So again, stop stressing about the phone. Let this thing do it's thing. You focus on getting a life back in order. So that's my advice, Bill, Thanks so much for the call today. In Santa Monica eight eight eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one at the Samsung event again, you know, I was at the CS everyone was talking about the fires Samsung. Every single conversation started with hey, rich how are you doing, How are

people in La doing? How is La going to rebuild from these fires? I mean, it really is just top of my mind for so many people right now. And it's just so many people in the world are thinking about this because it's a situation that, yes, we've seen devastation in places across America right now. I know people in North Carolina are still dealing with it Florida, and it just goes on on New Orleans before that. I mean, remember watching the devastation from Katrina. I mean, this stuff

takes years and years to recover from. So yeah, it's just a lot of people thinking about it. On another note, I will tell you, I don't know if you saw this movie advertised, but this is kind of a side note for a personal but you got to watch the movie called Wild Robot. I don't know if you saw it advertised on the billboards. Maybe your kids read the

book in school, but we sat down. It just became available on Peacock Streaming included if you have Peacock, which, by the way, Peacock is like the Sleeper streaming service.

You might watch like a minute thirty of ads at the beginning, and then there might be one ad through it or something.

not appeal to me. I saw all the ads around town. Did not appeal to me in any way, shape or form. We started watching this movie and I'm not kidding. About halfway through, there's not a dry eye in the room in this movie. How they made a tear jerker of a movie with a robot, I don't know, but somehow they did. This movie is phenomenal. I don't know if it's nominated for any awards or anything like that. It

should be because it's you know, I'll be honest. When it's movie night with the kids, most of the time, the adults are kind of left like, eugh, do we really have to watch this movie? Because it's rare that a movie appeals to both kids and adults in the same way. Now this movie and I get it, like stuff like you know, the superhero movies and all that stuff. There's a lot going on, Like they don't stop from the second you turn it on till the second you

turn it off. There's just so much going on that, yeah, gets your attention. There's all these things. This did not use any of those tricks. This was like actually a great story. And so I'm telling you fired up tonight tomorrow night with your kids, without the kids, adults, kids, whatever. This is a fantastic movie. Wild Robot. Speaking of Netflix price hike on Netflix, once again, we need like a stinger for any every time Netflix raises prices because prices

are going up. AD free plan is now well, let me start at the beginning, the standard plan without okay, let's start with the AD plan. The AD supported plan goes to seven ninety nine a month, up from six to ninety nine. The standard plan without ADS is now seventeen ninety nine a month, up from fifteen to forty nine. So that's going up two dollars and fifty cents. And then the Premium plan now goes up two dollars a month, so it's at twenty five dollars.

couldn't even get that fight right. They did get the football game stream properly. I'll give them that, but anyway, I mean, Netflix also doesn't have the best stuff.

see episode one oh six. You can also write me there just hit contact. Rick did just that, He says, your vast knowledge continues to impress. This is the year to upgrade my Samsung's cell phone. I'm using an S twenty one. In the past I've always bought my phone directly from AT and T, either in full or over time. If I want the new Ultra that works on all carriers and can pay cash, what's the best way to buy it and sell my old phone?

now and February seventh they never have again. So they will give you top dollar for your old phone, they will take it back, and they will give you the new phone, which is unlocked.

sometimes or you just have to send it in. And also you're going to just walk out with your new phone, and so the transaction is very simple. With the Samsung website, the transaction is going to be just a little bit different because you do have to activate your phone after you get it. You got to send back your old phone in the mail. So it's just a little bit more complicated. But I think it's worth it for the savings if you compare it against what your carrier is

going to do. Rick, good question, Thanks for the call. Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four.

nine point five million teachers. Yes, this is really bad. Now the company says that only twenty five percent of the students have their social Security numbers compromise. Oh, that makes me feel better. So now we're talking. Because of the world we live in. You've got kids under eighteen. They're starting their lives with their Social Security number already

out there on the dark web, already under eighteen. This is something that in my lifetime took a couple of years in my adult age for my social to be hacked, and yours is probably hacked as well. We've seen many instances where socials were hacked and they're out there. So

they're given affected individuals two years of identity protection. You know what the amount of identity protection letters I have at my house from all these different companies that I've been hacked from, I just put them in a pileo. It's like I have so many of them and it's like, what is it really going to do? So they're given that out Power Schools coordinating the notifications to families. The timing is unclearer, But how did the hackers get in?

Stolen credentials? So hackers were able to access Power schools. Power Source customer support portal, and then through here they exploited a customer support maintenance tool to download the sensitive data from all of the district's databases. So again, these schools use this power school to manage their students and grades and sending information to parents. And all that information was in databases both at the schools and I guess in a central database as well, And so that's how

they got access to this through a hack. And I guess the hack has been fixed. I guess the whole has been fixed, but it's it's too late. I mean, all this information's out there.

log it back in see if that helps. But use the Yahoo customer service to try to see if you can get back into this account. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one. Just wanted to tell you some more about the Samsung event. So Samsung a couple other things they announced at their event,

the unpacked here. Uh we was in San Jose, California, and you know it was it was a good event. I mean there was actually a surprise at this event, which we typically don't see it tech events anymore. But they did tease a new phone. It's called the S twenty five Edge, so the Galaxy S twenty five Edge coming later this year. And this is just a super thin phone. They did not give us any details whatsoever. And you had to fight to see this thing. There

are so many people around it the mack. I don't know if it was a real production model or mock up whatever it was, but from what we can tell, two cameras on the back instead of three, sort of a finish, very premium, looking very thin, Thinner than the S twenty three and definitely thinner than the S twenty What was it they had the S twenty four and the S twenty three, I think next to it. Anyway,

there's a lot thinner than those phones. And so this is not going to have Samsung's best camera, best processor.

of years now. They're calling it an x R headset. XR means mixed reality. That means this will be both virtual reality and augmented reality, presumably, So what does that mean? Virtual reality is when you put this helmet on and you don't see anything else around you except what is on the screens in front of your eyes. Augmented reality means you can still see the world around you, but you can also see stuff that's augmented on top.

that actually is a thing. Samsung Galaxy Watch seven has added a kid friendly mode, so the Galaxy Watch seven can now function as a standalone smart watch for kids. With this new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode, kids can call and text their trusted contacts. They can parents can access GPS location tracking, emergency SOS let's kids send alerts

by pressing the side button five times. Obviously, for all these features, you will need a cellular connection on these watches, but kids can download twenty teacher approved apps and watch faces, but p rental approval is required for third party app downloads. This will work on Verizon T Mobile and AT and T. Now, the Watch seven is, you know, their premium watch. The fe is their kind of basic budget watch that starts

at two hundred and fifty dollars. That would be a really good use case of this Samsung Galaxy Watch for kids mode, but so far we have no word that is coming to that watch. But that would be a winner because then parents don't have to spend so much money on a Galaxy Watch seven, they can get the inexpensive Watch fe. Let's go to Oscars here in Winchester, California, Oscar.

with the game. But the problem that I'm having is that the Windows.

you should do to get this to load. There's a couple of things you can do on Chrome next to a website, and this if any website is giving you trouble, if they're in general, if any website is giving you an issue in the future. Number one, you have to check for your AD blocker. If you're using a web browser like Brave, or you have an AD blocker installed like u block Origin or Ghostry, you gotta disable that

and then try the website. Because what happens is a lot of these websites if you're using an AD blocker, they don't they don't properly work, especially if you're trying to use like things that are loading in the background or you know, like this, it says please disable ad or pop up blocker to load this. So that's the first two things you need to do. The third thing you can do is to the left of any URL

on Chrome. Websites leave little bits of data on your computer, and sometimes if something's going wrong on that website, it'll continue to go wrong on so you clear out that data. Now, Oscar, you were correct in saying that you got rid of your cash, that can help, but sometimes that means you got to delete all your history on your computer, and a lot of people don't want to do that because

you lose your logins and things. So if you just want to do this for one website, and you probably never noticed this before, if you look to the left of any URL on Chrome, there's like two little bars. It looks like almost like a site I don't know, like a settings bar. So you tap that button and that will give you all the information about the website, says KFI. Connection is secure, third party sign in, cookies

and site data, site settings. So what I would do is tap the cookies and site data and you can tap manage on device site data. And so what you do is you delete all that stuff in there. All the stuff that's in there will delete all of the information that is stored on your computer. So this then you will reload the website and that website should load properly after you do that. So that's the way to kind of fix anything that's happening on individual websites if

they're just being wonky. Now, the second thing to do is if you have a lot of extensions installed in your computer, it could be interfering with the functionality of that website in general, just any extension that you have. So I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, at least ten extensions that are interacting with every website that I bring up, and sometimes they just don't agree.

So the other way to do it is to open up what's called a private browsing window or an incognito window. And typically when you open up an incognito window, unless you've specifically said I want my extensions to run on this incognito window, it's almost like a fresh web browser without anything signed in, without any of your extensions running, without any of your ad blockers running.

seems odd. Maybe those web browsers were importing other settings from your other web browsers and some of the extensions, but that could be it. But I would go through those things that I just mentioned to see if you can get this to load. And finally, the other thing is that on some networks levels like on some networks like mine at home, I'm running an AD blocker across my entire network. So for instance, if a Google AD pops up on my phone and I try to click it,

I'm not gonna be able to click it. It's not gonna go to the website, it says error. Now that may be frustrating for people that are trying to click websites and links and ads and stuff like that, but I know that that's a network wide restriction. And so if I ever need to tap on an AD on a web result or any in general, I will turn off my Wi Fi and I'll use Cellular and then

I can access those ads. So you may have a network like EUO allows you to turn off ads system wide on your network if you're paying for their euro Secure or whatever they call it nowadays. But again that's something to check too, like someone you know might have installed a network wide ad blocker or a desktop wide ad blocker. That's usually the culprit in things like this. So Oscar, thanks for the question. Great question. Allowed me to explain just a little bit of that. All right,

before are we going to break? Okay, let's just go to break eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour, we're going to talk to Nick Gray, editor in chief at Fandroid. He's gonna discuss all all the Samsung S twenty five stuff with me.

zero one. If you are not following me on social media, I suggest you check it out at rich on Tech on Instagram, also on x I'm also on Facebook, but Instagram is where I do a majority of my posts. This week, I've got posts if you want to see all the Samsung stuff.

for the show Rich on tech dot TV. There you can also sign up for my newsletter, which you know my goal, if you haven't realized, is just to help you with good information. Let's go to David in Tulsa, Oklahoma. David, you're on with Rich.

has that Android just doesn't. And you also have the friend that has it, so they can recommend things that they like. Plus it's a pretty universal device, so if you need help, or you need repairs or anything, is very easy to get. So when it comes to the model of the iPhone. That is what is kind of like, you know, what you need versus what they want to sell you. So the basic current iPhone is the iPhone sixteen and that's going to run about eight hundred dollars.

the best of the best, iPhone sixteen pro. If you want just the standard iPhone, I'd go iPhone sixteen. Go to the Apple store. They will walk you through all the different plans you can get. You can sign up right in the store. I think you're gonna love it. You're gonna have a great new phone. Coming up, we're gonna talk Samsung with Nick Gray, editor in chief at Fandroid. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at eight eight eight rich

one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV. If you want links to anything I mentioned there, just go to the website and you can see them. So let me give you my TikTok update of the week because last week when I did the show, I said that TikTok would probably not be banned, and this week I'm here to tell you that it was banned for about, I don't know, twelve hours.

So after I left the show last week, TikTok went away for just the evening and it basically I got a message on my phone that was like, sorry, TikTok's no longer available, and then a couple hours later it was like, oh wait, we're back, just kidding, and it had this message that said, thanks to you, our new President it is back, which I think rubbed a lot

of people the wrong way too. But anyway, the thing about TikTok to know right now is that if you have the app on your phone, you can still use it.

to go along with it. So way back in the day. That's so over fifteen years ago at this point though.

the security features. But if you did want those customizations back in the day, you had to be on Android. And that kind to suck me in over the years. And also there's just a whole lot of diversity with the hardware. With iPhone, you're kind of stuck with, you know, one or two phones per year. Within the Android space, I'm typically looking at fifty to sixty phones a year, and those are just devices that I get, and there's a whole lot more than that.

their keynote. They got up there and talked about software improvements, all the AI stuff, their new collaborations with Google, and what Gemini is doing on this phone, and then thirty minutes later they're like, oh, yeah, and you know there's a phone to go along with all of these new AI features.

plus device, it's available there too. You can add you know something to your calendar with a big spy search and it just puts it onto your calendar or not a big spy a Gemini search sorry, and it's working there as well. So I think Samsung kind of overplayed how much they are doing as opposed to you know, what Google is doing overall for the Android platform.

rolled out to other devices. But it was always a Google feature, right, But Google's trying to piggyback on They know so many people are going to be buying the Samsung smartphones, the Galaxy S twenty five Ultra definitely at the high end, but even the cheaper ones, you know, the Galaxy S twenty five or the Test twenty five plus. So if you want the latest software from Google with the newest hardware from Samsung, this is definitely the place to step into it.

same as before. But we do have a brand new fifty megapixel Ultra Wide, and I think that's a huge step up, just because there was so much the resolution was so low last time that you lost a lot of the detail. But now we do have the higher resolution sensor. And that also ties into macro shots as well. If you're into you know, getting up really close to a flower or something and taking a photo of that and just seeing those details, you will see some differences there.

Overall image processing though for me, seems to be a little bit dark in compared to last year. I think they just bumped down the exposure a little bit, but that's something that we might see a change with a future software update. So that's one of the things with a lot of a lot of smartphones these days, you get one month in and you get an update that dramatic changes how the overall experiences or the photos that you're taking actually.

be some just bug fixes here and there. But as far as the camera goes, I doubt they're going to launch any camera improvements that early on.

three hundred dollars credit for upgrading your storage. But also they have a nine hundred dollars trade in bonus if you have a newer device that you're willing to trade in.

inste lets you reset your content suggestions. So if you want a fresh star, it's a new year, maybe you just don't like all the stuff that you're seeing across your explore page, your reels, your feeds. You can now reset these recommendations. I tried this.

then there's an option that says reset suggested content. Now I don't know about you, but I've tapped a few things in my life on Instagram that bring up a whole bunch of videos that I no longer am interested in, and so I've been waiting for this feature to kind of like refresh my account, restart my account, and so I tried it, and it doesn't happen instantly. I will tell you that, like, if you go to it and you just try it, you're not going to see the recommendations change instantly.

says reset suggested content. Now, not everyone is going to have that option of reset right away, but enough people do. And I can confirm this because I did post this to my Instagram at Richon Tech and enough people said, yep, I see it.

any of that. Although when you're going through this process, this cleansing process, Instagram does give you the option of on following people that you don't look at their stuff very often, or people that you don't like anymore, or whatever. It's like, do you still like this person in your family?

another email that one's no longer in service. I moved to Gmail, but I lost all the information now due to a computer crash. Okay, man, Jim, you're having a lot of tech issues here. Despite this all, I'm still being charged for the Dropbox subscription. When I try to contact Dropbox support, I only encounter chatbots. I've also checked my PayPal receipts to see if there's any contact information.

What steps can I take to cancel this subscription? Thanks so much, Jim, All right, Jim, Yes you can cancel this. So there's a couple. This is where it gets a little complicated because subscriptions could be done in a variety of ways. It can be done through Apple, iTunes, it could be done through Google Play, it could be done through PayPal, and it can be done through the website itself.

So it sounds like you have PayPal linked to this, which I would go into PayPal and there is a page on PayPal that says recurring subscriptions, and you can go in and de authorize this Dropbox subscription. So if that's what's happening, that's where you want to go and get rid of it. If it's happening through Apple, you got to go to iTunes, check your subscriptions on iTunes and stop the recurring charges there. If it's happening through Google Play, go to Google Play, go to your subscriptions

and stop it through there. Now, if it's none of those things, you can actually go to the Dropbox website itself. Help dot dropbox dot com. They have a help page that says, what if I can't cancel online. If you cannot cancel online, you can cancel your subscription by physical mail. Cancel your subscription. Download this template, fill it out, and

send it to the address below. This includes your first and last name, the email address if you can remember it, the payment method PayPal, credit card, transaction ID, and then you send it to them in San francisc. Lets go and they will get back to you, presumably and cancel this. So that's the last ditch effort, Jim. If you cannot get in touch with this company or cancel this online in any way, that's what you do, and I'll link

that up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv seems kind of funny to send a physical letter to dropbox, but yeah, you can still do that.

Or go to your debit card, your credit card and just dispute the charge from dropbox.

on Tech dot TV. I did mention another price increase Microsoft three sixty five This is their suite of programs on the computer, Word Excel, power Point, Outlook one Note. It also gives you storage and some other perks, one drive, all that kind of stuff. They are raising prices, so the personal plan is going from seven dollars a month to ten dollars a month, or seventy dollars a year

to one hundred dollars a year. Now, I know people don't like to pay for things in advance, but I will tell you, if you're sticking with a subscription, the yearly payment is the way to go. I know it costs more money upfront and we all hate that, but it will save you significant, significant amount of money. So instead of paying you know, ten dollars a month, that's one hundred and twenty dollars a year, this is one hundred bucks a year. So better deal to go with

the Well it's only twenty bucks. That's a problem. It's like, why would I do that just to save twenty dollars? But you know, if you're using it over and over after five years, you know it's one hundred bucks. Okay, I'm still not selling it, but you know what I mean. The Family plan goes from ten dollars a month to thirteen dollars a month or one hundred dollars to one hundred and thirty a year. So here's how you get

around this. This rarely happens, but you can. If you're an existing user of Microsoft three sixty five, you can switch your account to a Classic plan, which will keep your current price. That's only if you're an existing subscriber. You can stick to your seven dollars or ten dollars a month instead of paying ten or thirteen a month, So you can switch to a Classic plan. Got to go into your settings and downgrade to Classic. Now here's the thing. The way they're selling this price increase is

they're adding AI features. So you're getting Copilot AI in Word, Excel, PowerPoint Outlook in one Note. Plus you're getting Microsoft Designer for image creation. So that is how they're selling this to people. But I will tell you, unless you need those things, probably switch to the Classic. And by the way, you do know that you can use Google Docs completely free if you want to just use like word processing. So googleed that's what I use for everything. Docs dot

Google dot com. That's their online word process saying and they have everything they've got everything you need, slides, all all the stuff that they do here. Okay, let's go to Helen. Helen in South Pasadena.

percent of it. So yeah, so you found that, you just went, you ran around in circles, and it's still not working.

sees things from her friends and family? I need an easy way to help protect her. This is a great article posted by Jeremy Kaplan of the wonder Tools blog. He posted a simple guide to keeping parents Safe online, and he just goes through the recommendations. And this is a lot of stuff we talk about here on the show, but I just figured i'd go over them and definitely check out the blog post. I'll link it up on the website. Rich on tech dot tv. Jeremy does a

great job with all the AI stuff. This is not necessarily AI, but number one, he says, go for simple devices iPad or Chromebook. They are tough to mess up. They will do all the basics like email and browsing. If they need something higher and than that, a MacBook error is really good because it's just a fantastic notebook that's fast and great networking. Replace your router with an Euro That way you can remote manage the setup. You can make sure everything's working. It's got a great app.

I know, I can log into my dad's eurosystem from across the country and check on it, make sure everything's working, and help him with things. Account safety, so it's saying to create two accounts, one admin account and then one as a standard account to limit risk from malware. So on a computer, you know maybe don't give your parents that admin access, and that way they can you know if they download something that's gonna be malware, it's not

going to ruin the whole computer. Add yourself as a recovery and legacy contact on Apple or Google for easy password resets and future access ad blockers. Install a free ad blocker like u block Origin, or you can get a premium option like one blocker for Safari. Use trusted reviews. So many people send me reviews, Hey, Rich, have you heard of this product? And literally the website is just advertising the product. It looks like a review, but it's

a total fake review. So use vetted reviews like Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, or vetted. Make sure they know those websites they avoid fake reviews. Make them use a password manager. I try this with my family members. I know it is very tough, but use a password manager to help them secure at least their top twenty five accounts like their email and

their Facebook and their Instagram. Just make sure those are secured with strong passwords and help them understand how to get those passwords or to use autofill clean up all the unused apps, duplicate files, all this stuff on their devices. Like you know, when I go home, I always do like a spring cleaning on my parents' devices, on their phones and on their computers. I do all the software updates, get rid of any apps they don't use, and ask them questions, Hey, do you use this app?

scams too. There's a great website, scam spotter dot org. Have them go to that website and learn the main thing about scams is that they're trying to rush you into doing something you don't really want to do, and that's how they take advantage of you. So teach them the signs of scams and as a bonus, have them sign up for my Instagram at rich on Tech because I always post the latest scams, share them with them and just let them know, like, here's what you're up against,

here's what people are trying to do. Do not fall for Amazon Prime, email your stuff didn't go through. Don't fall for Apple reset your ID, don't fall for it. This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here, look at my Facebook page, Facebook dot com slash rich on tech. Letitia says, I work from home two days a week and sometimes need to scan a document or two. Is there an app that you recommend? There are so many ways you can do this from

your phone, so many ways. I think the app that works the best across everything is Adobe Scan. So Adobe, you know they make Acrobat, they are the leaders in PDF. But they have an app for both iPhone and Android that works really well. And basically I don't believe you have to pay for any aspect of it. They might try to upsell you, but the basic functionality a document scanner that creates a PDF is just built in. It's free, it's simple, it's and it's the one that I recommend

because it just works. Now, there's a million ways you can do this if you don't want to download a new app, and you've got Android, you can just go on your Android and long press the Google Drive icon and you'll see an option that pops up called scan and you can tap that and that will scan on there. And then if you're on iPhone, you can scan from the files app, So open up the files app and if you go into there, hold on, let me get that, and then you just go upper right hand corner it

says scan documents. You can scan documents that way, So three ways to scan documents. And there's a million other apps on iPhone and Android that will scan documents, like so many document scanner apps. But the Adobe Scan I like because it's just simple, comes from a brand name, and it just does what you need without a lot of fuss, and it's just what I use. Well, I use the Google Drive most of the time to scan. But thanks to the call thanks for the Facebook post.

I guess let's see. True Caller is bringing real time caller ID to iOS. So this has been a big difference between Android and iPhone. Android has had caller ID since like day one, so when someone calls you on Android, typically your phone looks up the number and shows you who's calling. Now, I'm not saying the number, I'm saying like the business or the person's name. On iPhone, this was always trickier if the person was not in your address book, you couldn't really tell who they were. Now

some businesses might pop up, but now True Caller. Apple added this feature in iOS eighteen, which I don't want to get into how Apple does things, but it was like very tricky for programs like an app to actually look up a phone number in real time and display it on your lock screen. But now Apple gave that ability to happen in iOS eighteen. Is called live Caller ID look Up feature, so True Caller took advantage of

this immediately. The downside is you do have to pay for their subscription to get the so it is ten dollars a month or seventy five dollars a year.

I totally get that. But at the same time, you can't have a big business around this stuff when nobody's actually selling them or buying them. And then Tesla is refreshing the model. Why this is a major refresh first launched in China, now it's coming to the US in March. Big changes. Not to the range though, three and twenty miles. I really wish that they could get this thing to four hundred miles. That is the sweet spot for an

Evy range is four hundred miles. But again, they did get a tiny range increase about two point eight percent.

things that I have issue with on the Tesla. They have fixed delivery start twenty twenty five forty five to sixty thousand dollars for the new model. Why coming up, we're going to talk accessible tech right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, Talking technology. The website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. There you can email me, sign up for the newsletter, find me on social media, subscribe to the podcast. Pretty much your one stop shop for

all things related to this show. Vincent writes in, Hey, Rich, I hope all as well with you and your family. Can you recommend a good QR code scanner I can download on my Android phone? Thanks, Vinnie, Well, you don't really need to download an app. Most of the modern Android smartphones have the QR code scanning feature built into your phone's camera, So if it's not on, you can go into your phone settings and it should say QR

code scanning and you can toggle that on. Or you can use Google Lens, which is also built into almost all of the Android phones. You can also use Circle the Search to scan QR codes. If you see on on your screen, you can just use circle to search and tap it. But if you must download a standalone app, you can download one called bar Code Scanner. And this is a bar code scanner. It's uh, let's see who's the Let me see who the person who makes it is so you can make sure you're getting the right one.

At the rock a t h A R okay Ather Rock Scanner, QR Code and products. All right, let me bring up my guest, Paul amideis Lane is a radio host and accessibility consultant, and he's going to talk about how tech can empower folks with disabilities.

open Gmail, scroll down, tap reply. I can do all types of things with my voice and even like with Siri, using that to open up different apps and helping me to do it. Now for once you're a vision impaired who has maybe some hearing hearing challenges, some of the features on there are amazing too, like live Transcribe, you have other type of sound notifications on Android allows you to if your coffee maker is a is completed, you'll

get a notification on your phone that's done. So some of these features out there make it amazingly to be independent.

are going to age into some type of disability. So they're getting that now, Rich, So now they are creating and wanted to put these things out there so if something ever happens to them, are when they get a little older, they'll be able to use technology.

gaming more accessible. And working on the access controller with PlayStation that was like my Crown Jewel, being able to help them to carve out how they can have this controller where it's customizable, you can have different profiles in there. And before that, Rich, when I used to game man, I used to put the controller in the palm of my hand and use my chin, use my lip to manipulate the controller. But now single what's out there? I mean,

the sky is the limit. Rich's coming down the pipe this year is gonna be mind blowing.

what incredible person. And it just goes to show that, you know, just because people are different, are different from us or different from what you're used to, it's just got to talk to them and you got to like get to know them and understand where they're coming from. And it's just you know, I've seen Paul for so many years and I wasn't really aware of what his original story was, and he was so happy to share it and so happy to be a wealth of information

for the you know, accessible community. I mean, it's just really really amazing. So thank you Paul for doing that. Appreciate it. And actually this goes to a bigger kind of topic I had. So I was at the Samsung event this week. I was there for about four days, and Samsung, full disclosure, they did bring me up there, as they did with a lot of people, and so you know, it doesn't influence what I think of the products or anything like that. But part of the benefit

of being at these events is the people. And I spent four days with the all the tech reviewers. I mean I'm talking every major tech reviewer you've seen on YouTube or on TV or the internet or whatever was there. And you get to hang out with them, and you get to go to the events and then afterwards you go to parties, and that is really an incredible thing in any business, not just mine, but like the people,

that is what it all comes down to. So the relationships and understanding and exchanging information, you know, just asking everyone how they do their job, and you know, just it's really incredible. So Anyway, the more people that you kind of talk to, the more that you interact with them, it just really makes such a difference in your life that I highly recommend it.

it takes me out of my comfort zone. Like we go to these events and you know, I can handle this stuff, like the Samsung presentation and that, but like you know, going to like cocktail parties, going to parties, going to events, like you got to put yourself out there a little bit, right You're you know, you may not have a wingman or someone you can hang out with all the time, or someone that's close to you, and so you got to like go in and just you know, say hi to people and talk to them.

So it's it takes a lot to put yourself out there in those in that respect. All right, Let's see if there's any other news that I want to get to before I get to the feedback here circle to Search. I know I mentioned it earlier, but it is getting smarter. I think I mentioned it can now instantly recognize the phone numbers, the email addresses and URLs on your screen. So that's pretty cool. I'm gonna link up a cool blog post from the popcar Bear blog about free software gems.

This was posted by my pal Jared Newman from advisorator dot com. If you're not signed up for his newsletter, his is really good, but he posted this link. It's got all these different little apps that can really help, like local send, which is kind of like an air drop but for everything, send, which is like a drop Box but for like, you know, just sharing a temporary link to a file. Joplin open source note taking software,

audio Mass Have you heard of that one? Bobo audio Mass, a web based audio editor quick things like splitting tracks, removing silence, applying filters audio Mass, Yeah, Calces calculator app. Let's see Chris Titus win util Windows customization tool for disabling bloatwear and optimizing the OS. So anyway, I'll put that on the link and the website as well. Rich on tech dot tv, all right, let's open up this feedback.

See what you had to say this week. Efrin from Oxnard writes in, Hey, Rich, I was listening to your podcast from January eighteenth, when Stanley asked about recording shows with Spectrum. You suggested getting the Zuomo Box for his main TV, but wanted to share that Spectrum already offers digital recording for a fee. You can access your recorded programs via their app on any device. Since he uses Roku that's all he needs, it could save him the cost of renting the Zuomo de Thank you for your

great advice. I love listening to your podcast and watching you on TV. Keep up the great work and say hi to Bobo what up? I love it? Thank you, Efran. I think that our caller, if I remember, was saying that he had two TVs. One he wanted the Box four and one he wanted the Roku app with the Spectrum so or the Roku Box with Spectrum.

want to pay more. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Amanda from Westlake Village rights in My family loves your tech reports on TV and in the car on KFI.

your computer normally if you're not using battery power. Just unplug the machine either at its back or the electrical receptacle. Wait ten seconds, plug it in, and the scam is gone. I speak from experience. If you're on laptop power first, I don't know, but i'd shut the lid fast cheers. Yes, when you get those things that take over your screen, do whatever you can to get out of there. You might have to just restart your computer, unplug it if you have to, unplug it from the internet. If you

have to, that's going to do it. Links to everything on the website rich on tech dot tv. I'm on social media at rich on Tech. Next week Philip Swan, the TV answer man, we'll talk about the Super Bowl coverage. Thanks so much for listening. I'm rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.