It's a special edition of the rich on Tech podcast What's going On? I'm Rich DeMuro and this is rich on Tech, the podcast where we talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and I answer the questions that you send me. My name is Richdmiro, tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Joining me via zoom is producer Megan.
How are you? How's it going?
Oh, live in the dream, quarantined in my home. I think we're going on week number three.
It feels like week number ten.
Oh my gosh, this is this is I just I think I say this every podcast, but this is the most insane thing I have ever experienced in my life. I'm actually asking every day to go back to work, and work is saying no, you can't, Like you cannot come to work. I mean, when do you ever have a job that says that.
I know, it's it is the craziest thing that's ever happened, and in many and like everyone's lifetime, Like it's just it's insane.
I keep saying, I cannot wait till the history book is written on coronavirus, because I can't wait to read it. I'm just so curious like what went right, what went wrong? What did we do right? What did we do wrong? And you know how the city's reacted. I mean, it's a really wild thing. And you know, I'm glad a lot of people out there are safe, you know, and I know people that have been affected. I know, I know personally several people that actually got coronavirus, which is also crazy.
Wow.
I mean, it's just this wild thing that's happening. My mom is is you know, she's by herself, which is really tricky. You know, It's just it's just a very odd thing. So anyway, everything's been fine here. I've been going to the grocery store the most out of any person I know, because I'm the designated survivor in my house to like go out and do things. So okay, if anyone's at most risk here, it's me. But so far, so good. I did order some masks and wait for those.
But anyway, if you're tuning in on the Facebook Live, thanks for joining us. We do appreciate it. This is going to be a little different, you guys know that I've experimented. It's very it looks like it's easy to go live on Facebook doing all this stuff, But it's not because what I'm trying to do is get a quality recording of the broadcast for the podcast, but also go live, and so it's a lot of little tricky things to do that. And so if you're watching on Facebook,
thanks for doing that. If you ditch out, that's fine, but we do appreciate you joining us. This version of the podcast is going to be all questions. So let me see if we have our sound effects. Megan, let's see if they work. Oh nope, that's not it. Do you hear that?
Yeah?
I hear it.
So we got the sound effects. So let's here we go.
Can they hear the sound effects?
I don't know. We'll find out.
Oh, okay, okay, all right.
Our first question comes from Nancy and she wrote on your Facebook page. She asked, have you ever reviewed blue Tooth microphones for the iPad? We are doing a lot of zooming, but need a microphone for people to hear us better.
That's a good question.
That is a good question, and it's something that yeah, everyone's been doing, is these You know, people are connecting their zooms to the big screen because you can just go ahead and chrome cast it to your big screen or you can use airplay and reflect it to your big screen. I love doing that and I've done that several times, and I think it's a really good way
of doing it. But what she's saying is she's connecting it via a cable, and so the difference is is that her iPad is really close to the TV, whereas she's not doing airplay. So that's the difference, and that's why her setup is a little trickier because I actually had to email her for some clarification on this question.
And so what she needs to do, and what I think is the best recommendation for her, is to get a portable Bluetooth speaker and she can connect that Bluetooth speaker to her iPad, put that in front of her. Like at my house, of the couch, then we have like an automan and then the TV on the wall. So if the if the iPad was near the TV screen, then I would put the little speaker in front of me. And if you look on Amazon, they have a bunch of these little Bluetooth speakers. I personally would just go
Amazon Basics and let me just search here right now. Oh, now, did you guys hear that? I hope you didn't. Did you hear that?
Yeah? I did.
Yeah, so I hope you guys don't hear my computer sound effects. Now, if I go on Amazon and I get an Amazon Bluetooth speaker, it is twenty five dollars and that has a microphone built in for hands free calling, and that's super easy. So I love that. Twenty five dollars will solve all of her problems. Now here's the bigger problem that she's going to run into. Oh, free
delivery on Tuesday. So nevermind. I was gonna say a lot of these you know, Amazon, we've talked about this where you can't get a lot of stuff, but apparently this is one of those things that you can get delivered. So that's the solution you can use. If you want to go more expensive, you can just get a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and I bet you Amazon Basics has those two. But the problem with the headphones is that your family can't listen in and you want your whole family to Yeah, do that.
I was going to say air pods, but that does not work.
Oh really well because it just to you. Yeah exactly, nobody heard except you. But well, okay, good question. Oh I guess we just keep doing that because it's more questions.
Okay, this next question comes from deb Hi Rich. I was wondering if you could tell me if all the worry about five G towers and phones are true, will they be super bad for our bodies?
And what's this talk about?
What's this talk about going around that they would want to put a chip implanted for protection against the bag?
Oh wow? This is like some men in black stuff whose this is like really yeah.
Oh wow, any input on these subjects would be appreciated.
Okay, so they're asking in your body. Wow, that's what I haven't heard.
Yeah, And I also haven't heard a lot about this five G, like the five G theory.
I just okay, I have. So what happens is, here's a couple of things are happening. So five G is the new advanced wireless, right like there we have four G, we had three G, we had two G that they didn't really call two G at the time, but now we have five G, and so five G is like this super fast wireless. The problem is with the super fast wireless is that people think that it's connected to all these problems with COVID, And I just don't see
that happening. So uh, And the bigger problem is just like.
Trying to see the connection.
Yeah, the big the bigger problem is that over in Europe they are burning down these five G towers because or they're setting fire to them apparently. And I guess a lot of it was connected to like celebrities tweeting about it, like saying like these towers are evil. There's been a bunch of conspiracy theory videos on YouTube and on Facebook, and so there's a lot going on. Now. I am not an expert in wireless communication, so can
I say for certain that there's no connection. I feel like I actually am concerned sometimes about all the wireless frequencies around US. I work in a TV station where there's a lot of wireless frequencies, so I'm concerned. I mean, I'm not an exp But am I saying there's a connection between COVID and five G. I don't think so, And nor do I think you should believe that, And nor do I think we should stop advancement of RF
and wireless frequency because of a new technology. I think it's just they're packing the radio waves in a different way. I mean, there's millions of radio waves all around us every day, no matter where you are, And I think that's actually the most fascinating thing, the fact that think about this. When you're walking through like your street, they're like everything is being broadcast. They're like every radio station, every TV station, like it's all like in the air.
Like don't you think that's crazy?
That is crazy?
And I never think about that, And now, like that's pretty trippy.
And also, like most people, I mean, I sleep with my phone like, yes, literally a foot away from.
My head, and like I've heard you're not supposed to do that, but you know, now I'm kind of like, is there some weird stic Further.
Dick, I have my phone next to my bed wirelessly charging, and so I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm getting like a one two punch of like my phone radiation plus the wireless charging radiation. And again, we're told that these things are safe, and I do believe that they are safe. But I also think that as a human you have to you know, you have to have a a little bit of not skepticism, but you have to be smart.
And for a while, I didn't charge my phone wirelessly next to me because I thought that wired charging was safer. And the other thing I didn't like is that my Apple Watch has LTE connected to it. And I thought that it's a little bit weird because if you think about it, it's on your wrist at all times. So the LTE connection is one on your wrist all day long, weird. Whereas a phone you have it in your pocket, you have it on your desk, it's in different places. But
this is literally on my body at all times. Now I sound like one of the crazy conspiracy theory people.
I mean, it's really easy to go down that rabbit hole, it is.
And yeah, so I don't think I don't. I still don't know where she's getting the microchip from.
But yeah, wait, so they're going to put chips in people's bodies to protect them against the bad I.
Mean, yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, that one. I don't know about that.
But what I don't know about? Uh Okay, that was a great question, And look at this, it's time for another. I don't I hope you have enough question for a whole show we have.
We actually have a lot of questions. We might be good. Okay, so this next question, Yes.
We can also take some questions from the Facebook folks if they put them on there. So if you guys want to put a question in the chat, I can. I don't think you can see those, but I can.
So okay, okay. So this next question comes from TJ.
The subject is video call with Grandma rich My ninety seven year old grandma is quarantined in the nursing home and she's getting lonely. We bought an iPad and I set up FaceTime and Google Duo for the family to call her. I have disabled all security, so when a call comes in, all she would have to do is slide to accept. This works perfectly on FaceTime, However, she would have to press another button to start video on
Duo after the slide to accept. Is there a way to have video enabled automatically when accepting a Google Duo call on iPad?
That's okay, so no, I actually tested this, and the problem is the way that and I think it's great. I think that the way that Apple has done they've implemented these things is great, but it's also oh wow, I just realized that I can make this bigger on the screen for everyone. So okay, So what he's asking is, can you make it so that when you slide to answer a call on Duo when it's coming in to just go write to video. And I tested this on
my iPhone and here's what happens. You can slide to answer the call, but then you also have to do one more button press to start the video. And I'm not sure if that's an Apple thing or a security thing, but that's the way it is, and there's no way around it as far as I could tell. Now on Android it's different. You just swipe up and boom, it
starts the video. And Google actually Duo has this cool feature which is called knock Knock, So when you're using Google Duo, it actually shows the person if you allow of video of you, like a preview. Have you seen that ever?
We test this out, Yeah, you said you. We tested it the other day, but I didn't see the preview.
I think because on iPhone, I don't think you see the preview.
It's only on androids, so yeah, so but that's cool.
Yeah, it is cool. And I'm trying to trying to see if I have any phones that I'm testing that are out that I can't show.
Oh gosh, no, I don't, okay, just making sure, uh, so yeah, you can't do that, but I I totally what was the guy's name again, TJ TJ.
I totally identify with him because I am all about getting the literally the simplest possible way of getting like these things to friends and family, Like I want to make it so that they can just swipe and boom, it's done. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a question from the screen, so I'll do this ready, that'll be the question from the street. Sylvia says, Megan's microphone looks awesome. Can you share what type it is and where one may purchase it? So, Megan, do you want to give
us some details on that microphone? Let me see, it is a I know what it is. It's a blue snowball.
And so it's a blue snowball.
Blue. Yeah, blue.
Oh, the brand is called blue.
Okay, the brand is called Blue, and it's a snowball microphone. And I actually looked this up the other day because I was recommending it to someone and they have a couple of different levels, I guess because it used to have just one, I think, which was like eighty bucks, and now I think they have like one for fifty dollars, but I think there might be different.
Can Yeah, that's what I see.
What you have the seventy dollars one.
I don't know which one I have because I got it from work, but it looks like this.
The fifty dollars one.
Well, the fifty dollars I'm wondering if the fifty dollars doesn't have one of the connections, like maybe it doesn't have like a certain connection maybe me. I don't know, but I do know that Blue is owned by Logitech now and Blue microphones have been forever like the best microphone for podcasting because they're so simple, they're so easy. Uh, there's a snowball ice, and I wonder that's that's what I have. That's the fifty dollars one. No, I think you have the the other one?
Is this one snowball ice on the side.
Oh it says ice. Oh well, then there we go. So I don't know what the other one is. Then that's interesting. The snowball is classic. Who knows anyway, So you got the fifty you got the cheap one fifty bucks.
I have the cheap one. But it sounds good. That's good. Sorry, I just like messed.
Up oh great, So now we have no no stand Sylvia.
No, I mean I just have to okay.
It's all good.
Get lower. Yeah, all right, should.
We go to your question?
Sure?
Okay, So this next question comes from Michael Hi Rich. I'm hoping you will call out the internet providers that are supplying slower than advertised speeds for the same price. I understand it may be due to everyone being at home during the coronavirus, but as auto insurance companies have cut insurance for people that are driving less, internet providers that are unable to provide their advertised speeds advertised prices
should reduce their prices during this time. I'm working during this time, so my usage has not increased on their system. I have Spectrum in Santa Clarita, and I pay seventy dollars a month for four hundred megabytes with a guarantee minimum of two hundred and I guess the last few days he's been getting between twenty two and fifty megabytes max.
Okay, so little formality thing. By the way, the way they measure internet speed, and this is for everyone, is megabits per second. So when someone says I have a a twenty five connection, that's twenty five megabits per second. And to be honest, I'm not really sure why that is versus megabytes, but that's how they measure it. And so when he says, like, for me personally, I have a two hundred megabit connection, and if you go into fiber, which is like the fastest, it's one gig. So one
gig gig connection. That's one gigabits per second, I believe. But anyway, so when people have Internet connections, like back in the day, they used to be closer to like twenty five and now they're closer to you know, one hundred, two hundred. Some people have much more than that. But that's kind of like the little lesson on those. But with that said, I don't know what to say. I mean, this is the reality of everyone working from home. Megan.
You can talk about your Internet connection. It's it's terrible, right, I mean, it's like it's good sometimes.
And I have Spectrum too.
We had to get Google Wi Fi to like make the connection like go like stronger throughout the house.
Network.
Yeah, and that helped.
Google Wi Fi definitely helped. But yeah, like yesterday it just like went out for an hour and we don't really know why. But two weeks ago, right when everyone started working from home, like it was horrible, but now it's a lot better.
I think it's a lot better.
So it's better because of Google Wi Fi or because of I think.
I think, I think Google Wi Fi.
And I also think that Spectrum like figured out some issues. I don't know, but my mom actually stopped a Spectrum van last week.
She like stopped the card and.
We need help, and not we need help, but like was like, you know, stopped him. He stopped, and she was like, we just got Google Wi Fi, Like what's wrong with Spectrum?
And the guy said, we'll keep Google Wi Fi.
He said Google Wi Fi is great because we thought it was Google Wi Fi because we were still having issues.
He was like, Google Wi Fi is great.
But yeah, no, Spectrum is obviously over capacity because everyone, everyone in the house is using the internet.
So it's just I think it's just going to take a little bit of time, you know.
Yeah, but maybe Michael needs a router.
Well that's the thing. So my question is because he said he was getting twenty five. It's a lot of times when people come to me and say their internet is really bad. It's not necessarily their Internet. It's actually it's the router that they're using, Like the Wi Fi connection that they're using in their home is just not very good. And then the other thing is where you're
testing your connection. So you know that when you're using Wi Fi on your laptop, your connection is probably about half of the speed that's coming in at the router. So most of the time now unless you have one of these new systems, like Megan, have you done a speed test on your Wi Fi from where you are right now, like compared to where they because I assume when the Spectrum guy came there, he was kind of like, let me test the Internet at the source, right, is
that kind of what happened? Yeah, And he's probably like you're getting your full speed right.
Yeah, Well so we have someone come the guy the car that just went by that was.
Just like okay, speaking of internet.
By the way, the one coming to our house for us, that was someone.
Speaking of internet. Megan, your your connection just literally went out of internet. Yeah, like it's just it went out so badly, just now stopped. So anyway, Megan, I just got.
A thing saying your internet connection is unstable.
So yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, this is what happens with the whole internet a little bit. Just keep just stay on it. It'll come back. It just takes a little bit. I'll just I'll just talk, I'll read some of the comments online. But uh so and and see one of the commenters said, uh, where did I see that? Okay, Michael said your picture was flipped the wrong way, So I did fix that. And then let's see here. I
thought someone said, no, I don't know. I thought someone said that it depends on the time of day as well. But oh yeah, Jason James said the time of day impacts the speed and reliability as well. And that's very true because it depends like at night. It's really it slows down during the day. Actually, it used to be at night when it would slow down. Lindsey would always complain to me because she would say, rich, every time I watched TV at night, like the streaming like Netflix
would like slow to a crawl. And I said, no way, I use the Internet all afternoon and it's totally fine. And then next thing you know, I was watching a show at night and I'm like, sure enough, that's the way it is. Your your video is frozen now Megan, you're you're time.
I don't know what to do or.
Literally just dragged down. Now it's it's back. Now it's a little bit, but anyway, it's back.
Okay. It says I have forty five megabytes per second.
Yeah, so that's good. So I mean now your internet that you're getting at your source is probably two hundred. George says it's best to keep the router towards the ceiling for a larger coverage of the area, and that is true. A lot of people put their routers like on the ground especially, that's a really bad place for them. So you want them as close to the center of the room as well. Okay, And Jason James says for him, it's six thirty to eight pm when I guess it's
like the worst time. All right, Megan, we'll try try again.
I just dropped my mic. Okay, okay. This next question comes from Bill hi Rich.
Do you know about smile dot Amazon dot com. You sign in with your username and password and get to pick a charity like feed America and Saint Jude's Children's Research. I think it's worth a mention after you check it out. And then also so most Walmarts have online ordering and you can drive to a special door at your local Walmart where you call a number and you can pick
up groceries that day. He said that I've done I've done that with Walmart three times and I've picked up about one hundred and forty dollars of food.
That's interesting that he says you can call special number. I don't that's I don't know about that one.
He said. You so you order online and then you drive to.
A door, yes, door at the Walmart, and then you can like you look for a call number.
We actually did a story on this before you joined tech, and yeah, we went to Walmart and this was kind of crazy. I'd like to know when that story was because it felt so long ago and it was like way before grocery shopping online was like a thing. Which is really funny because now it seemed like actually, Lindsay was able my wife was able to get an Amazon Prime delivery for today, which is saying because so many people have been having trouble getting those delivery times and she's.
Been actually not one for today too.
So maybe today is like the day that they increased their thing. Because I went to the store yesterday to buy stuff for Easter, and I wasn't able to get like anything I needed, Like I had no eggs, no flour, no vodka. I was kidding. What was the other.
Thing that they.
Didn't have was, oh, the sweet potatoes, like I love. I don't know if you're what you guys do for your Easter, but we do like the sweet potato castrole that my mom has always made. That's like candied sweet potatoes and with like.
Mark smellow, Yes, yeah, I've had those. Those are so good.
It's like my absolute favorite thing. And my mom is like a very She's like a stickler when it comes to recipes, Like she doesn't like to modify anything. So when she like made that recipe for the first time, it was like she had to like there's only like, you know, like five marshmallows on top, and every time I'm always like, I want like a thousand marks, Like so when I made it one year, I literally dumped
the whole bag of marshmallows. Do I want to be able to cut through a layer of marshmallows to get to the candy yams?
Right? Because that's the point.
And don't get me started on yams. Versus sweet potatoes, because I'm still not sure what the difference is.
Oh I I when you said yams, I just thought of sweet.
Potatoes, and I so and I actually so I had to buy purple sweet potatoes. Like they're I think they're like Japanese. They're like the purple ones.
Huh yeah, okay, so interesting.
Yeah, and I've had them before. They're really good. They just literally the color is just different. I think they're a little bit like the consistency maybe is a little bit thicker, like it's not as maybe they don't get as mushy as a candy sweet potato. It's not that big of a deal anyway. So she was able to get all that stuff on Amazon today. So back to
the whole Amazon and Walmart thing. So we did a story with Walmart, and my biggest question was, I don't like other people picking out my fruits and meats.
Oh yeah, that's weird.
Don't you think you're the expert of your own meat and veggies, Like you're the best at picking out your stuff?
Yeah?
Yeah, Ever, now I would feel weird with someone bringing me like apples and like chicken.
Actually, I don't think I would care that much. About the meats, more about the fruits really the vegetables. So yeah, because they have to touch it, and I don't know, well.
You wash it, but I'm I'm more like certain, like like if I'm going to shop for your sake, I don't care, I just pick one of Like you're like, I want to rib you're.
Picking the bruised apple.
Yeah, just like I don't care. Yeah, you don't care. But so here's what Walmart's answer was. They said they train all of their people to pick the best. And on the flip side, what I've noticed with these like Amazon Fresh and all that, like they now Walmart's little differ because they're actually picking the stuff from the store floor, right, but whereas Amazon Fresh and maybe this is different now
with Whole Foods. Maybe they're going into Whole Foods. I don't know, but like in the past they would have like there, it's kind of like no one was in that grocery store except the people that are picking your stuff for you. So my theory was that the produce selection was very good because in a typical grocery store, how many people's hands are touching those apples and feeling them and putting them back versus behind the scenes kind of thing where everything is perfect, right.
Yeah, No, I guess in a sense, it's kind of more monitored versus like someone goes into pavilions and gets your food right now, you don't know how many people have touched it, right, And.
I'm fine with it with how many, Like I don't care if a bunch of people touch the food as long as it's still crispy when I get it, Like, it's fine, but things do get picked through. I also think about how much waste is I imagine the produce section is generates the most waste in a grocery store. Maybe not, but it just seems it's so like kind
of sad. Like if someone could figure out a perfect kind of store for you know, like eBay they call it the perfect store because you have a supply and demand, like someone bids on something at the exact price that they want to buy it for. Like if that could be for produce, like every single apple that ever gets grown, like it never gets wasted, Like that'd be amazing. That'd be my dream. Let me read some of the comments here because we are on Let's see here. Danielle says,
I used to work at Walmart. Not anymore items out of stock now and there are limited spots available for pickup, depends on the area. But no luck here. Frank says. Grocery shopping online was a thing in two thousand. It was, it's been around for a while. But and let's see, and daniel says, right, banana's yellow. I want to eat many right away. That's the other thing, Danielle, You're stumbling
upon a very good thing. When I order bananas, I would like fifty percent to be green and fifty percent to be yellow, right, because this is the problem with bananas. It's like half of them. Yeah, it's every fruit goes from like amazing to cannot eat instantly.
You're at a fifty really.
Fast, right, Yeah, they just figure out, well didn't we do a story?
Yeah we did, And I guess they did figure out something like that.
But like that's okay. Yeah, that's another okay.
And actually I've never been to Walmart because there aren't many Walmart.
Hold on, say it again, I've never been to Walmart.
Never been to a Walmart in your entire life.
Yeah, Like it's I mean, I've seen commercials. I know that they're out there, but I've never been. There's not a Walmart like in LA. I don't think there's any Walmart in That's why US never always Yeah, I know, super weird, not culture.
That is amazing. Well, I will say that I probably never was in a Walmart until I moved to Louisiana, and that's when I first or no, actually my first Walmart was when I moved to Washington State and US I lived in Yakama and I went to my first Walmart and and I loved it. I mean, I know Walmart is kind of like, you know, lover hate kind of thing, but I I'm all about it.
Isn't it just like Target?
Oh, Target, except like thirty percent cheaper? Like oh wow? I mean it's you think Target's cheap until you go into a Walmart and it's Walmart is much. It's you know, like Target used to. I used to consider Target inexpensive, and now I don't consider it inexpensive anymore, at least not the LA locations LA locations. Now here's the other thing.
I talk about this because I've lived in various states, and I've lived in I've lived in Washington State, I've lived in Louisiana, New Jersey and La and in Los Angeles stores are not cheap, Like you don't even realize, Megan, but the grocery store in Los Angeles is probably forty to fifty percent more expensive than a grocery store in anywhere, even even out of like La County, like not Orange County.
Insane.
You have no idea here is five dollars catch up in Louisiana's two fifty the same exact bottle. And you just don't realize that they're building in a bunch of costs of doing business in Los Angeles. So it's just a reality. But you don't realize because you're you're doing business here. And the only reason I know this is because I've lived in other places and I'll never forget
one time, you know, even ordering pizza. So you order pizza in Louisiana or you know, North Dakota, a pizza delivery is going to be fifty percent less than pizza delivery here. It's just the way it is.
And it's insane. It's even more expensive though.
In Hawaii, oh gosh, it goes up like another fifty times.
From La times square Hawaii, and what's the other one times square in Alaska. I've never been to Alaska, though.
Alaska it's supposed to be really Oh that makes.
Super expensive up there. Now when I'm in Hawaii, I do not care.
I don't care.
I will say whatever it takes, because number one, I can't imagine how you get that stuff there.
It all. I can't complain. You can't complain if you're not allowed to complain.
But like you know, if you live there, if I live there, I'd become curmudgeting, like two weeks.
You'd have to grow your own food, you know.
A little, a little trivia for you. I am supposed to be in Hawaii right now. Do I have the tiniest violin sound on my board here? No? I don't think I do. I'm supposed to be in Hawaii right now. And not only that, but my calendar still shows me all the restaurant reservations I had for every single night, And so every night this week I have gone to my wife and I'm like, we're supposed to be at you know, of a restaurant tonight.
It's so depressing, it is depressing.
So yeah, I had I was supposed to be in Italy last week, and I had like a bunch of tours like set up on my calendar and so I didn't delete those, but it was like Vatican Tour, Colisseum Tour, and.
I was just like, I, this is sad.
And then all the nightclubs down below, yeah, polic the disco Teca, day Roma.
Yeah, Oh my gosh.
That's all I remember about going to Europe when I was a kid, was like the disco Teca's right.
The disco tecas?
Isn't that like the thing? Okay?
All right, all right?
This next question comes from Melissa. With the increasing demand for wireless signal at home due to an increase in working from home and more devices, what router do you recommend for high residential usage for the carrier Verizon or Frontier and a three thousand square foot home?
So what am I recommending for those? Out of those two? Yeah, I think they're both going to be fine. But oh my gosh, my watch, I'm like, where is this? Where this come from? What the siri? Quiet? Now? I missed the question? So what was the question again? So basically, they have a house three thousand square foot and they want to get internet and they're trying to decide if Spectrum or FiOS is going to be better.
No no, no, no no. So I didn't hear anything asking what router do you recommend? They have? Verizon slash Frontier.
Used to be used to be Verise and now it's Frontier FiOS.
Yeah, okay, okay, so so yeah, So basically Google Wi Fi or Ero is what you're going to say.
Megan already knows all my answers because I just have the same answers every time.
Some of these questions we like, I've asked so many times that.
I just here's the thing. Now, people don't listen to everything I'm saying. They're not like, like I'm keeping track of everything I say because it's come out of my mouth. But you know, there aren't people sitting there like listening to every single thing I say on every podcast, on every news clip, on every kfi thing. But I say these things over and over.
Yeah.
The reality, well, which one do you like better?
Google Wi Fi or Hero? Well?
I have I personally have Eero and I've had no problems with it whatsoever. But I think that Google Wi Fi is good. I think it really comes down to price and what you need. So if you go and you look at EO and they only have a three pack and you just need a two pack. Like Google Wi Fi I think has a bit more options. I think the standard Google Wi Fi is just one node and then like one access point, so one one and or you can even just get one thing, and they
say that covers a pretty large house. So it kind of depends on what you need. And I think it in what's on sale. So if you go online and you see that Google wi fis or Google Nest WiFi is on sale at a really great price, then go with that, right Or if you see that ero is having some sort of sale, go with that. So I have no preference in the game. I think that all and in fact, I really have no preference among all
of the mesh networks as they call them. I think that they're all fantastic and they're going to be way better than what you have typically, which is the typical setup is what you get from your Internet service provider, and that Wi Fi is going to cover about a you know, three square foot area around your router and that's it. So and Alma is asking on on the
live chat, what do you think of Orby? And I think Orby is great too, I haven't tested Orby personally, but it gets a lot of great reviews and that's Netgear's product and it's perfect. Are yeah, that's Neckgear Orby right? Or is it links to Orby? I think it's Neckgear. I'm like scared to do anything on my computer because I don't know what shows up. Oh you know, I
don't know what you see. But yeah, Orby is from Neckgear, So yeah, I think that one's great too, So I think any of them are going to be perfect for sure.
All right, Okay, this next question comes from Larry. Is it worth the money for Phone Soap three? And if so, how much is it worth buying for?
Ooh, well, I will tell you Phone Soap. Let me explain what it is. It's a it's a sanitizer for your phone and it's also a charger as well. So we interviewed the CEO of the company. And I never used my Phone Soap. I got one for Christmas. I think it was a year ago or two years ago, and I never plugged it in until coronavirus. And now I have it on my bedside and I put my phone in there, not every day, but definitely after I
visit the grocery store. I pop it in there and probably every you know, two or three days, I'll throw it in there, and it's a UV light, so it kind of closes up over it. It splashes your phone with UV light and there's no water. That's the bad, bad word to use.
It was gonna be like what no, but it puts.
It bathes your phone in UV light, and UV light is proven to kill bacteria and viruses on the surface, and so it kind of renders anything on your phone that's a virus or bacteria useless. And so for that reason, I like it. Now. I will tell you what I learned from another infection specialist that told me that they believe that the germs and stuff on your phone are not that harmful to you because ninety nine percent of
the time they are our own germs. So I thought that was interesting, and it kind of makes sense because you would think people would be getting sick from their phones all the time because we're carrying them everywhere. But if you think about it, most of the time, it's just you handling your phone. Now, people hand me their phone all the time to do things. I generally don't like to touch them because they're very dirty, and I think that's where you get that cross contamination is when
you touch something else that's not yours. But most of the time, so the argument being is that you're probably more at risk of getting sick by touching someone else's phone, or someone else's desk or on the you know, an airplane, like the tray table that's dirty from the last person,
you know, anything, you're you're getting other people's germs. So our homes are probably filled with germs, but they're mostly ours, and that's why people think they get sick more when they travel or they go out somewhere, you know whatever. With all that said, I think that the I don't think it can hurt to have a phone soap it's eighty bucks for this device, and he's asking how much
do I think it's worth? Probably because the devices are sold out everywhere, and so maybe he's looking at it on eBay and that's why how much is it worth? But I think it's worth it, And I don't know, do you have one of these things? I think also with a phone. With a phone, ever since Apple said that you can use a liceol wipe on it, I think it'll be just just as well served with a lice al wipe.
You can buy liceol wipes. They're literally like I found available Lifesol wipes and Clorox wipes yesterday and they were gone in a second.
Did you order on Amazon? No, they were gone.
So you were watching the websites that tell you about the Yeah, yep, yeah, yeah. I find most of the time those things are just sold out instantly and that's it. They're there. They keep going in stock. But yeah, they're really tough to get. But if you can, and my only advice with those when you're using them on your phone is to ring them out a little bit, Like you don't want like a sopping wet lice all wipe on your phone because it's no, it's just a little
bit too wet. I think if you ring it out just a little bit, you don't want to get rid of everything. But then you use that and that'll clean your phone. And I've been using them on my phone in my computer now and it's great, so nice. All right, I think we have time for one more question, Megan.
Okay, this next question comes from Sally. We tried having a virtual dance birthday party for our friend's birthday last night, but.
Everyone could barely hear the music.
Is there an app we can use in which everyone in the group can hear the music at the same time? Any other suggestions.
On how to do this?
Did she say how she did the party? Did she say she did it on Zoom? No? Okay, Now, I'd probably just recommend Zoom. And the way I would recommend it is you can do a couple of things. If you have like another like another, like I would Here's what I would do. I would personally either share my screen and have YouTube up on the screen, and that is my audio. So YouTube is basically one of the participants. So I think that that's probably the best way of doing it, and then you have the audio is sort
of piped in from your computer into Zoom. The other way you can do it is if you want, you can connect your phone to your computer. But the thing is you want to have the music as a participant on your Zoom. That's the best way of doing it. So I would use my phone to connect for me to show my face, and then on my I would be a participant and share my screen, but I would have YouTube on the computer and that would be piping in the audio, and that way everyone hears the audio
nice and clean. I can play DJ on YouTube and we can all be participating from our phones. That would probably be the best way to do it.
That makes sense.
I like that it's a little bit of set up and you need two devices. But I would say a lot of people have a computer and a phone, so or access to that.
And also parties take a little bit of setup in general.
So yeah, like you wouldn't expect a DJ to just come to your party and like play music off his smartphone speaker. Right, you gotta pipe into something.
You gotta put some effort into it.
Got anything in life, if you want it to be good, you gotta put a little effort into it. So that's that's my life advice for you. Can you believe it, Megan, that's going to take us to the end of this show. That's going to do it for this episode, I would say, if you want links to what we talk about, take a look at the show notes. But we really don't have links to what we talked about because we just talked about a lot of stuff. But if you want to submit a question for me, you can go to
my website. Rich on tech Dot TV. At the bottom scroll down, there's a little envelope for email. Just tap that and you can send me a question. Or you can find me on Instagram. I am at rich on Tech Megan. How can folks find you?
I'm on Twitter at producer.
Megan And if you like this podcast, notwithstanding all of these crazy coronavirus episodes, please rate and review it. Go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on Tech and send a link to a friend tell them that you liked it, because that really helps us. I don't know how, but it does, right, it does.
It helps us. It makes us feel the connection.
It makes us feel the connection. That's true. I'm rich to arou on behalf of everyone that gets this show to your ears. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you real soon.