A free way to speed up your sluggish PC. Direct tv Now is changing its name. Samsung has a new tablet. Google reveals more features on Pixel four, and we're answering your pressing tech questions.
What's going on. I'm Rich damiro.
This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about this stuff I think you should know about happening in the tech world. Plus I'm answering your tech questions. Joining me is producer Megan. Welcome to the show.
Hello, how's it going.
It is going well, although I will tell you, Producer Megan, I am not feeling so well today. Why well, I have a story to tell you. And this is very embarrassing.
Oh no, yeah.
So it's my kid's birthday this weekend and.
Well soon okay, And I was at Target yesterday just do my normal. You know, sometimes you want to go on a target run, right You ever feel that way? I feel like that, Okay, Well I haven't had that urge until just like this week for some reason. So I go to Target and I'm thinking I'm like Dad of the Year because I'm like buying wrapping paper for his gifts, and I'm like, you know what I'm gonna get?
My kid a card, and so I look at all the cards I see, like the ones for little boys or whatever, and it's like, you know, they have a whole bunch that like, you know, when they're turning like five, six, seven, eight, whatever. So I get a card that has a seven on it and I'm like, this is It's like a big cutout of a seven. And I texted to my wife thinking she's gonna be like, oh my gosh, you're so I can't believe you would.
Even think to do that, right, Yeah.
I get a text back and she says, well, he's eight, So I'm basically buying a card that I should have bought last year.
Yeah, this is Yeah, So how did that make me feel? As a dad?
Like I, you know, I love technology and I've got all that figured out right, not everything, but here it is my personal life. I'm just like a.
Mess focus clearly I'm a mess.
No, But you know what, at the end of the day, the thought was there you were you were trying to be a good dad. I was trying to be and you know what, like he won't ever find out, he.
Will never listen to this podcast in thirty year. Could you imagine let me just go through the archives.
Of Dad and I mean, you know seven and eight.
Yeah, it's it's understand he is currently seventh.
You had his age correct, all right?
Now, well let's talk about the Galaxy tab s six.
Get that number right.
Samsung, ahead of their event that's happening in New York next week, is announcing a tablet. Now, why would you do that? Why don't you just wait until the event so we have something fun for the event. So Samsung has their big unveiling next week in New York City and they are announcing the tablet that.
They're going to show there.
So anyway, it's the Galaxy tab s six and it kind of sounds like the competitor to the iPad pro. It's got a s pen which is a stylist that magnetically attaches for charging, so it attaches to the side of the tablet. It also has Bluetooth remote control functionality air Action, which lets you take a selfie from the pen. You just click the little clicker on there. They have this Samsung decks which lets you plug the tablet into a monitor and it turns that monitor into like a
desktop computer. I don't know if anyone's using that feature. Samsung really tries to sell this every time we go to a Samsung event. I don't know if anyone's actually using that. It's got a new processor, it's got good lag free game experience. It's five point seven millimeters, so it's slim. It does have a dual camera. Now they put in the ultra wide lens which is one hundred and twenty three degrees, which is very similar to what
they have in the Galaxy S ten. And you can also unlock it through an on screen fingerprint scanner, which also sounds like the Samsung Galaxy S ten. This is like a giant phone. It's gonna be available September sixth in gray, blue and rose. It's going to be available for pre order on August twenty third in stores again September six for six hundred and.
Forty nine dollars.
That is an insane amount of money to spend on an Android tablet. Here's why there are no apps for Android tablets. If you look at what the iPad has done, I think the iPad is the gold standard for tablets, and I almost never recommend an Android tablet because the tablet might be fine. And this sounds like a great,
nice screen, high powered, it's got the stylus. But when you go to look at the apps, go to find an app like from the top, big apps like you know, I'm talking all the news apps, all the video apps like Netflix is there, right, It's just like I mean, if you're going to spend six hundred and fifty dollars to watch Netflix, you can get a fire tab for sixty bucks from Amazon. So my point is that I don't think you should be spending six hundred and fifty
dollars on Android tablet. I just don't think the support system is there, whereas if you're spending three hundred and twenty nine dollars on the iPad, the inexpensive entry level, which I know you want. Yeah, that's a much better deal right now because it's been out for while. Yeah, So two hundred and fifty bucks for a tablet that's gonna blow away this brand new Samsung tablet.
And I'm not hating on Samsung.
You guys know, if you listen to the podcast I hate on everything.
He's just critical, like that's his job.
But I'm just trying to tell you you're spending all this money, it's better placed.
On an iPad.
Yeah.
Do you think that they're trying to deter everyone's attention from the foldable phone.
I don't think so, because that's still coming out in September as well.
But maybe they're like, but let's focus on our you know, well, they've got Samsung has a couple of things coming out.
They've got the new tablet, they've got the new foldable phone, and they have the new note, right, a couple of things in the pipeline for Samsung.
They're all coming out very soon.
Yeah.
I think Samsung is a numbers game, and they're the number two number. I think they're number one or number two worldwide with phones. Yeah, certainly ahead of Apple in terms of worldwide sales. And I think they're just they're just playing the numbers game. They put out a lot of stuff, A lot of people around the world by it.
Yeah.
All right, So our first question comes from Danetta Jones. Can you recommend a program for writing other than Office three sixty five. I have it, but cannot use it if I if I am not connected to the internet. I am really tempted to just try and find a typewriter. I just want to try. I just want to write without all the hassle. Thank you to Netta.
I think I have something that's a little bit easier than a typewriter, and I would recommend Google Docs. Google Docs is available for free. It is what I've been using for I can't remember the last time I fired up Microsoft Word or any other word processing app. Although I did write my book in the Apple Notes app on my computer last year, I'm not sure why this year I'm writing it in Google Docs.
Yeah, I don't know why.
I felt like, since I was writing a book about iOS, I should write it in an iOS app.
I don't know.
Able notes app.
I just I see the notes app as just being like a notes app.
I wouldn't associate that with like writing.
I think what I liked about it is that you know how you have all your notes on the left hand side, like it's so. I had like a folder, and then each tip was in a separate, little kind of note itself, and I can count them up really easily, because I was trying to get to one hundred and one tips, so it took a while to do that. But Google Docs works offline. I use this on the
plane all the time. The only thing I would have to check to see is if Google Docs works offline on all web browsers or just Google Chrome.
So that would be the only thing for who is it.
Again, Janetta Donetta, So I would say that's the only thing you really need to kind of look out for, is if you might have to switch to the Chrome web browser to make the offline functionality work. But otherwise you can use everything offline and when you get back online, it just kind of sinks it all up. It stores it in the background on your computer, and it works really well. Like the first time I try this out, which by the way, this might have been a year or two ago.
Offline mode, Yeah, I was so impressed.
I didn't know that they had a lot.
I don't think a lot of people do.
So is it just a like a switch like, No, it's just.
It does it all automatically.
So if you have a bookmark, which I have a bookmark for a new Google document, if I press that on the plane, it'll make a new document. I can copy it, I can make it whatever I want, and then when I get back to the you know, regular internet, boom, it all syncs up with the cloud very.
Very works well. Google Docs.
It's all free and you know, you don't necessarily need anything else. Speaking of computers, you've got a computer that has probably slowed down over the years, or maybe it just bought your computer and it's already slow. This happened to me with my mom. I bought her a new computer, and my brother and I sort of went a little cheap on it, and my mom is not one to complain, and she complained about it, and I went over there, she lives in New Jersey, and I checked it out,
and sure enough, this thing was so slow. It was ridiculously slow. Like I couldn't believe that Dell would sell a computer this slow. How old, brand new, it was slow out of the box.
Yeah.
So one of the problems with some of these computers is that the manufacturers are paid to install a bunch of software on computers, not necessarily when you get a Mac, but on the Windows side. So you might get a brand new Windows computer and it comes with all these weird apps that you never recognize, a photo editing app, some sort of control panel app, all these weird things games that are on your desktop, stuff.
That you just don't need. What do you need nowadays.
Just a place to put your photos.
A web browser, web.
Browser like, that's it.
That's like, I only use Chrome pretty much. That's all you need.
Yeah.
So ADW Cleaner is a program from malware Bytes, which is a respected software company, and they now have a feature inside the latest ADW Cleaner seven point four point zero that will go through your computer and scan it and not just find the malware and all of the garbage stuff that you don't need, but it will now detect pre installed software on your computer that you might not need to run your computer. And for a lot of computers, it's going to find some stuff and you
have the option to get rid of that. Now, if you're like me, this is something that you know, like I would go through my computer and get rid of all the stuff that I don't recognize or don't need because.
I'm a power user. But for the average person, they don't necessarily know how to do that.
It's intimidating. You might think you're gonna break something. So this program sort of cuts through all that and it says, you know what, you can get rid of this stuff, and by the way, we will keep a copy of it in the background, but it's not gonna be running.
So if you ever do something wrong. You can easily get it back.
That's cool.
That nice.
Yeah, it's a free program. It's called malware Bytes adw Cleaner. The seven point four point zero is the one that detects pre installed software, and pre installed software can have a real negative effect on your computer. It can be running in the background. It could be hogging your processor, your memory. You don't want stuff running on your computer that you don't need running, and that's what this kind
of keeps from happening. And the company in their blog post at malwarebytes dot com says, let's be clear, pre installed software is not malicious. It's not like adware. Adware is something that hijacks your browser. When you go to search on Google, it might redirect you to bing or Yahoo or something like that, and they make a little bit of money off the ads you click. Pre Installed
software is just stuff you don't really need. A company might pay that manufacturer to put their app there because they want it in front of a lot of people, especially when you buy computers from big box stores if you buy them online.
There is a little tip I got a couple of years ago.
If you buy a Windows computer from the Microsoft store, this specific one they don't allow these manufacturers to put these third party apps on there.
So that's a little hint for you.
If you want to buy a computer, maybe instead of Best Buy, go check the Microsoft store and save yourself a headache.
Oh interesting, Yeah, Oh cool.
I think that's it on this program. But really cool.
Yeah.
I love that idea because I think for so many people it's just very it's very nerve racking to make any changes on your computer and to have a program like ADW Cleaner do it for you and to kind of be confident in that.
Yeah, definitely. All right.
So this next question was written on your Facebook from Don Heaton. Good morning, Rich, I was thinking about buying one of the Verizon five G jet packs. Can you explain the difference between that and the hot spot on my phone? All I want to do is watch a few movies in my motor home while traveling, and maybe a laptop here and there. With my phone, I always have issues with buffering. Thank you for your time, Don, Don.
So let's see the hot spot now, he says, the five G hot spot, So I would actually one hundred percent recommend that. The Only problem is you're not going to find five G anywhere you go, especially in an RV five G if you find it in a city right now, is relegated to the usually the city centers, and even there not very much. There's not a wide
swath of five G just yet. So I don't think that the five G is going to be the best bet for you if you want to get it, because if it handles a four G connection, which I would assume it does, you can I assume it handles for four G LTE as well, like it falls back if it doesn't find it. So if you want a future, proof yourself and buy this thing now.
But you're talking.
It's a four hundred, five hundred dollars on a two year contract for this hot spot, whereas you can get a regular hot spot for much cheaper than that. So I would definitely recommend the hot spot. And here's the reason why hotspot is going to have a better antenna inside for both receiving the signal and sending it out, because it's a hot spot. It's meant for that purpose. Whereas your phone can function as a hot spot and it's fine. Ninety nine percent of the time, your phone
is going to be fine. We use it with our kids all the time they're on their iPads in the back seat. My wife turns her phone on and it's a hot spot and it works great. It's not going to be as powerful in all situations using your phone as it is a dedicated hot spot. And if you're talking about an RV, it's probably way easier to just have a hot spot in your RV close to the window so it gets a nice signal from outside. So use some of those command strips or something to stick
it up on the window. Then you can plug it into a plug in the RV so it always has power. And now you don't have to worry about your phone and you can use your phone. You don't have to turn it on and off. Just leave this thing powered on at all times. It will be picking up that signal and broadcasting it out and you'll have a nice
hot spot in your RV. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend the five G my Fi hot spot, but if you want to go with a Verizon hotspot, sure, Now I would ask the Verizon folks if the five G falls back onto four G, which, of course, like I said, I assume it does. But it's expensive and it's brand new technologies. You're probably just better off getting a regular hot spot. I think that's probably your best bet. Good question. So the Pixel four is Google's next smartphone, and Google
is doing something really strange with this smartphone. Megan, what do you know about the Pixel? Just off the top of your head, great camera, that's it. The marketing has worked from Google. Now, it's not just the marketing, it's the truth, you know. I test every phone out there.
You loved the pixel.
I love the pixel, Pixel four, Pixel three, Pixel three.
Ye. Yeah, I've loved all the pixels. Yeah there's three pixels. Yeah, they are near and dear to my heart. But the problem with the Pixel is that I call it a one trick pony. Amazing camera. The rest of it just not very good. And it's one of those phones that it's an amazing camera, amazing software, but the rest of the phone leaves a little bit to be desired. And that's really frustrating. Because the features on the Pixel are
so cool. Google makes this software so clean. They have great ambient display that shows you stuff all the time on your screen, like your time and your weather, and your notifications and your next calendar appointment.
But the phone overall.
Just isn't as polished as some of the other phones on the market, like from Samsung and some of the other manufacturers like OnePlus, which has arguably better, cleaner, faster running software. Anyway, I digress Pixel four is coming out and Google's doing something weird to hype it up. They're letting us know the features before it comes out.
Who does that backwards?
So the new features that they announced are radar, which they're calling solely and the radar will detect movement around the phone, which means you can use hand gestures to do things like skip songs, snooze alarms, and silence phone calls just by waving your hand in front of the screen.
Interesting. Does that make you want to buy a phone?
I don't think so, not really, because I feel like I would mess with I would accidentally.
Is it really necessary? It's unnecessary.
It's cool and it reminds me of the future, but it's not something that's going to make people buy this phone. The other thing they're doing is adding face on lock, which I mean, hello, Apple to have that for two generations now.
But here's Google.
Here's how they knock face on lock on the iPhone. They say, our face on lock is better because it's ready the second you're near your phone. Because the phone has the radar, so it knows when you're nearby, it turns it on, and it unlocks your phone in a variety of positions. Your phone could be upside down, so I'm not talking face down, but just upside down.
Oh oh, upside down and you can.
Still yeah you thought face down?
Yeah, yeah, So it works in any orientation, which again, I mean, now I have picked up my iPhone and it's flipped over because it's kind of like a symmetrical piece of glass at this point. So I have picked it up and you have to flip it over before it unlocks. I mean, give me a break. And the other thing you have to do that the Google said is on other phones you have to swipe up to access to home screen. Our home screen will just appear once it's unlocks. I mean, okay, and other Android phones
have done that. It's not that big of a deal. So again, the pixel is going to have amazing an amazing camera once again, But is this going to be the phone that people all of a sudden switch from the iPhone too?
I mean.
Probably not.
No, it's going to take a lot for Apple lovers to make the switch.
Yes, I agree.
Okay, so this next question is from Beth as always, thank you and your team for all your hard work.
Team.
I know, I know, I never get a shout out like that. Anyways, if your ears burn all the time, it is my fault because I tell everyone who will listen about all your great advice.
Love that.
Thank you all.
Okay, anyway, she's really into the team.
I just saw an ad for Honey that I believe, I understand is a coupon finding Slash lowest price website that works with Amazon, Amazon Prime, etc. To find the latest oh sorry, to find the lowest prices on thousands of items. I am not the most knowledgeable tech savvy person, so I'm asking for your advice. Have you heard of Honey and what do you know about it?
I love Honey in my TEA good one.
I actually have nice.
So Honey is a Chrome extension or any any web browser. It's an extension, a little piece of software that sits inside your web browser and it monitors all the websites that you go to, waiting for you to go to a shopping website, look at an item, and as soon as it notices that you're looking at something. It says, hmm, let me see if a there's a promo code for that website or a cheaper price.
On that product.
That's the way it's supposed to work. In my experience, Honey is good. It's got a lot of name recognition. They've got a lot of installs. I feel like they don't have the best coupon codes and the best promo codes and the bright best price comparison. But I will tell you one feature I did use, which it did one hundred percent work on is I wanted one.
Of those little what was it called. It was a.
Google smart alarm clock from Lenovo. I don't know if you remember we saw it at CTEs. Yes, little tiny eighty dollars device. Yeah, And it came out a couple months ago, and I said, well, I'm not paying eighty bucks for this seventy nine, but I'll pay some when it goes on sale.
I'll snap one up.
So I sat using Honey a little price alert and you just are on a page, you click their bookmark and it says, hey, we'll add this to your price alert, and as soon as the price drops, we'll send you an alert. Sure enough, the second that price drop to fifty nine dollars, which was twenty dollars off, I got an alert from Honey before all the blogs that I follow picked it up.
Oh I love that.
So I did like that feature and it worked out, So bottom line, try Honey. The other one that I really like is called wiki by Yes, And the reason I like wiki by is it does very similar things, but I find that the discount codes that it finds are really good. And the reason why they're good is because the way wikibi works is when you enter a discount code into let's say gap dot com, it notices that and it saves it for the next person it does,
and it notices if that code worked or not. So if it didn't work, it won't show it to the next person. Or I'm sure there's some threshold maybe if it doesn't work for five people, it stops showing it. But I love that smarts and Honey may do that same thing. I'm just not sure.
Now.
Honey is actually a local company in LA, so maybe we should do a story with them and get some clarification on how their system works. I just personally found that wikibi has worked really well it's come up with some codes.
It has saved me. I would gather hundreds of dollars since I've installed it.
I use wikiby too, but I don't know why, but lately when I've used it, I've had to manually put in the promo code, like it'll give me eight and I have to like try each one.
Okay, it's supposed to try them automatically.
Yeah, I used to do it automatically.
So I wonder it'd be the website that you were on. Yeah, that could have been. It so sketchy, but those are the two. Yeah, that's gonna say for the websites you're on the sketchy. It's like the dresses that they sell on Instagram will look up address and then all of a sudden, she's like, oh my gosh, this is the perfect dress. It's on Instagram, Like, yes, it was targeted towards you.
Because literally, like that happens to me.
All they're crazy marketers with these dresses. But she has bought some of them for like twenty nine bucks or something in.
That Instagram like Legit stores, Pinterest, like the weirdest, strangest stores. Like you'll see a dress you like it and then you go to the website and it's some random store that you've never heard us, Like, you're.
Shipping like direct from China. Yeah, which is fine.
We've been there. No, we've been there and we saw the clothing. Remember we were in that giant store with all the clothing stuff.
You bought a dress. I bought one too, but not for me.
I mean.
Android Auto is getting an upgrade if you use Android Auto in the car. I feel like I've talked about this before on the podcast, but it's actually now rolling out. If you have an Android phone, you plug it in. This is what happens when it takes over the screen in your car. It's Android's answer to CarPlay from Apple, but they are getting some really good improvements. I got a preview of this at Google Io a couple months ago, and I've been eagerly, eagerly waiting for this because it
just makes Android Auto so much more useful. Number One, you don't have to switch between categories of apps. So if you're familiar with Android Auto right now, if you want a music app, you have to tap music and then it gives you all of your apps and you have to tap again or scroll to get into your next music app, or to select the music app you want, or to switch. It's a big process to switch. That's
not good. Now it's all one screen. If you want to go to a map program, you got to go maps, click again and then see all your maps programs, which maybe you have like Ways and Google Maps and maybe another one on there, and you have to choose that.
So now they've streamlined it.
Also, it's one screen and your top four apps on the top row are the ones that you've used recently, or the algorithm determines that you might want to use next, which is smart. The other thing is that it has an overall darker look, so it kind of blends in more with your car screen. Android Auto used to be really bright and it kind of didn't make sense on a car, which the dashboards are mostly dark in cars except yours.
You have like a cream colored.
Dashbar, right yeah, but still like you know, it's dark, but.
It's still dark, right like your screen and like your dashboard and stuff. And then the other thing that it does, and this is Holley Lujah. It finally plays the audio that you were playing when.
You left your car.
I love that.
If you're in the middle of a song. It will just start playing that song. It will pick up where you left off. You're in the middle of a podcast you're listening to. I haven't tested with serious XM, but I would assume it would start playing again. Maybe not from the middle of the song because it's live streaming, but maybe it'll just start the stream again.
I have to test it. This has not come to my phone yet.
I am literally checking every moment of the day because it's rolling out. They announce these things and they say, oh, a're rolling this out because let's say there's a problem. They don't want all billion Android phones in the world having a major issue, so they roll it out to one hundred thousand they see, make sure everything's okay. Now rolled out to another one hundred thousand, so it could take a few weeks to get through the whole earth.
What else, it opens up right to your map, so immediately when you get into Android Auto, your maps are up so you can just directly go to like where you need to go. It looks and sound it's amazing. Like I said, I saw this and tried it at Google Io, but I have not had it in my own hands, so I can't wait and someone did email me and said.
Rich you suck.
You don't realize that I've already had in my phone. When I get into my car, my audio starts again and I have Android. Yes, every Android phone is different. Some of them do that, but now Google is making this streamline streamline and all phones will do it. Yes, your Samsung phone might have done that. But and I replied, and they have a fancy Android.
They didn't reply back. Yeah, your phone is so fancy.
That's funny. All right.
This next question is from Christy Baderacco.
Okay, you don't have to do the last names if you don't want Christy those are those can be tricky sometimes.
Yeah, Christy, Christy, Christy, Christy, Chris d Nope, Christie. Do you know anything about the photostick in air quotes? It is supposed to plug into your computer and organize all of your photos. I wanted to see if it is safe to use.
I get no less than a dozen emails about the photostick, like all the time.
Really, I feel like this is the first one I've seen.
This is the first one I forwarded to you, because wow, I'm curious. I just get so many of these things, so number one, if you search photostick, this is something that they advertise on Facebook and all these online things like crazy. Yeah, I'll just tell you why I don't like this.
Number One, you go to Google, the first result is photostick review.
Is it a scam or legit? That's your first clue that you don't want to buy this thing.
Yeah.
Number two, when you get to the photostick website, it uses a really.
I can't even like find Oh, here's the website the tenth link.
Yeah, exactly.
Photos.
That's the other thing.
It's it's like it's a it's a major down the list on Google, which does not tell me anything good.
This is weird.
So now you go to this one. Number Oh my god, there's so much that's wrong about this. It's just I don't even want to Just stay away from the photostick. No, stay away from the photostick. I'm looking at the picture of the photostick and the USB photostick looks like a USB drive that I got ten years ago at sea. It's so old school. Number three, they play pricing games. It says it retails for one sixty. Now it's on
sale for seventy nine to ninety nine. I guarantee you if I add this to my cart and then leave the website or go to a different page on the website, it's gonna be like.
Hold on, fifty percent off. We'll take another twenty five dollars off.
Just today.
It's fifty four dollars on Amazon right now. Yeah, don't buy it.
Don't do it. Here's what I recommend.
Oh my god. Every review is like, no, just.
Get Google Photos. It does the same thing. It's free, it's Google. Why do you want your photos on a photostick? I don't understand Google Photo. We'll find all the pictures on your computer and upload them to Google Photos.
Just do it that way.
Don't do the photostick.
Oh, someone in Greensboro, Australia, just bought the photostick for Mac and PC five hours ago. It's a little pop up on their website that tells you when someone buys it. Yeah, it's just it uses, it's using high pressure, and I just I don't like it. And I and I will tell you I did email this company to get one to try out, because so many people are emailing me and guess what they said, no no response. That's even worse than a no that means they're just not even caring.
If I'm getting no response as a journalist, imagine as a customer, I just don't recommend it. There are better ways to do this. T Mobile and Sprint are going to merge. Department of Justice has approved it, and it seems like this is a done deal. And so what's gonna happen with this? T Mobile and Sprint are going to merge and give a bunch of their assets to Dish, who is going to start up the new fourth carrier in America, which makes no sense because Sprint was the
fourth carrier. They struggled as the small fourth carrier. But now apparently with Dish Network doing it, everything's gonna be great and they're gonna be able to compete. I don't really understand that. Yeah, why is Dish gonna make it work? But T Mobile and Sprint are tea or Sprint.
Couldn't and they're gonna call it Dish.
I don't know. That's a terrible name for a phone company.
Dish, but they have they Dish to get a little headstart is going to get a bunch of assets from Sprint, their eight hundred megahertz spectrum whatever that means, I guess that's how they you know, one of their spectrums for the calls. They're also going to get Sprint's pre paid business, which is Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Sprint branded prepaid customers. They bought that. They got that for one point four billion dollars.
That's nine point three million customers. Just to give you some.
Kind of perspective, eighteen team Verizon have like one hundred million customers each or almost that many. Yeah, so you're talking a tenth You really think Dish is gonna be able to compete with a small amount of spectrum?
No, no, but we'll see.
Oh, I should probably say on the flip side, what T Mobile and Sprint want to do, and they said that we plan to build one of the world's most advanced five G networks, which will massively revolutionize the way consumers and businesses use their connected devices to enhance their daily lives.
We'll see.
I'll believe it when I see it.
The accent, what was that?
I don't know.
I don't know why they had to get together, And I love that their networks don't even their networks don't even work together. Sprint and T Mobile have two totally different types of networks, but whatever.
Okay, well anyways, this next question is from Ronda Taylor. Good afternoon.
I purchased am dashcam and was wondering if you would know what different companies I could go through for service. This service through PURECM is horrible. Thank you in advance for letting me know. Have a great dar.
Purecam is a four g LT connected car security cam dash cam and it is I've actually kept using it since our segment because I really like it. And I will tell you the service. You can pop in any simcard as long as it's GSM. So whatever service that it came with, which I think was Ultra Mobile, which runs on T Mobile, I don't know if it's going to be much better. Your only two choices are either
AT and T or T Mobile. Now underneath those you can use any of the prepaid carriers, like if you want to stick in a Walmart SIM or a T Mobile prepaid or Ultra or Simple, anything that runs on the T mobile network or the AT and T network will work. And if you want to know, just just look up like list of you can say T Mobile MVN. Mvn O means Mobile Virtual Network Operator, which means those are the companies that operate on T mobile service.
Which is boost Mobile.
So I mean, look how many there are Consumer Cellular, Eco Mobile, Go Smart, Jaguar Mobile, Jolt Mobile, Liberty Wireless, Metro PCs, Mint Mobile, net Ten, Republic Wireless, Simple Mobile, speed Talk, Straight Talk, Ting, Trackphone, Ultramobile, Walmart, Family Mobile, ZIP. You have a lot to choose from, but again those are all running on T mobiles network. Same thing with AT and T. If you do AT and T list of mvn O, you'll get all those. Personally, if you want better service, I would go with.
The AT and T network. That's going to give you better service.
Consumer Cellular, Cricket, Freedom, Pop, Huo, Wireless, net Ten, Straight Talk, Trackphone. Put any of those SIM cards in there and you'll be good to go. Personally, I would say that you want a SIM card that has a bunch of data, because the way this video camera works is it sends little clips to the cloud and it does a pretty good job at compressing those clips. But it's mainly data. You don't need any voice. You're not making calls through
your dash cam. It also functions as a hot spot, so in your car you can use that as a hot spot. So if you're using that functionality, you probably want to get a bigger data plan. But I would say a data plan of a gig or two a month is probably fine, maybe six gigs a month at the most.
Didn't we do a story on pr cam?
Yes, yeah, yeah, I was.
Like it was a while ago. Yeah, yes, that's where I found it.
It was great. It's a great little dash cam.
It records inside and outside. It also has g shock sensor, so if your car gets hit, it'll do a little recording of the clip and it will send it, you know, up to the cloud.
So you have it.
You can live stream a view from your car inside or out. So if you're on vacation, your car's parking your driveway, you can get a little live stream make sure everything's okay.
Yeah, it's kind of fun.
AT and T.
Let's see what I want to talk about AT and T. There's so many things to talk about this week. I'll just do a couple. I'll do two short things. So AT and T is rebranding direct TV Now. And if you have listened to me for a while, you know that I've been on DirecTV Now. We were there for the launch event in New York City back in twenty seventeen or is it twenty sixteen, whatever, it was a couple of years ago. I've been a customer since day one.
They had this fantastic plan. I think it was forty five dollars or forty for the month, and I get every channel. I'm talking every channel. I'll still have that plan, including HBO. Yes, but they raised the price. Now it's up to fifty dollars a month. So when I first joined, it was forty, which was amazing. Fifty dollars is still pretty amazing for all the channels I get. I don't watch any of them, but they're there, and I do get HBO, which I think is worth it.
That's like fifteen dollars a month minimum.
Right. So AT and T is rebranding direct TV now to become AT and T TV now say that ten times fast and T TV. Now, why do they have to rebrand? I mean, I get it. They want to make everything AT and T. But like direct TV now, it never really made sense because it was never delivered through satellite. Direct TV now direct TV you think of satellite TV. So that was our first mistake. They should
have called it something else at the beginning. Yeah, but you know it's been going on for a couple years now, so don't be surprised if your Direct tv Now app switches to AT and t TV now. You will have to if you use your AT. And this is the other thing I love about it, if you have direct TV now. And since I have all these channels, I can log into any of those apps for those channels.
That's really why I keep it.
I can log into the Nick app, I can log into the Disney Junior app. I can watch my favorite shows on any network if I had any I'm.
Talking theoretically here right right, they're a Disney.
No, most of them are. Yeah, but I can log into any app. So if someone's like, oh, there's a really cool show on Investigation Discovery, I'm like, oh cool, I'll just log into the app.
I don't know if that's really.
A channel, Probably Investigation. I think that's like some of my mom watches. Yeah, History channel.
There you go.
I don't even know cable channels. That's how like out of it I am when it comes to TV. I don't even know what channels there are.
I still remember the channels that I would watch as a kid that are now like completely different, Like fourteen was Disney free Form.
Free Form used to be ABC Family.
Yeah, I know all these things from your childhood three years ago, Megan are just but I remember.
There was a time where there was like just twenty not twenty channels, but like forty channels when I was really young, like seven, and like it was Nickelodeon was on channel twelve and fourteen was Disney.
Now and now there's like seven Nickelodeon channels. It's like nick XD, or maybe that's Disney XD. There's like it's like a bunch of different channels. Yeah, it's wild and another quick pop here. Visio is rolling out support for Airplay two and Home Kit to its smart Cast TV sets. We did a story about this on KTLA a couple months ago, giving you a preview of what this is going.
To look like. Now they're actually rolling out.
So if you have a Visio TV with something called smart Cast dating back all the way to twenty sixteen, you want to turn on your WiFi, go into your settings and update your software. You may not get the software update today since it's rolling out again, like we explained earlier, Yeah, but you will get it, and it's really this is a big software update to get Apple Airplay is really cool because now you can take a picture from your iPhone screen and show it off on
your TV screen. Or you can watch a movie from iTunes on your phone and just kind of I call it sling it to your TV, you know, stream it to your TV, whatever you want to call it. But whatever you have on your phone now shows up on your TV screen, which is pretty cool.
That is cool.
And on another note, if you have a bunch of videos in your house, you can link them all up and have the same music playing on all of them. You create like almost like a Sono's kind of experience in your house.
If you got that.
Okay, this next question is from BEV. Subject is control lights in your home via a smartphone. I'm sorry, but I've searched and searched and can't find this on your site. Before May of this year, you did a segment on KTLA about little devices that you could plug your home lamps, et cetera, which allow them to be controlled off site through as through a smartphone.
What was the name of this product.
I think she's talking about a smart plug. Did she say control lamps, yeah.
Okay, yeah, smart plugs.
So the ones we featured a couple in our segment, they're all My advice is just go to costco, see what's on sale, get them there, or you can get the Amazon one.
Now.
It also depends on what you want to control them with. In my house, we're a Google house, so I need to make sure they work with Google Assistant. So there's three things out there that they could possibly work with, and some of them work with all three, but it's kind of rare to find all three.
Most of the time they work with two.
Most of the time you'll find that they work with both the Google Assistant and Alexa. Sometimes you'll find that they only work with home Kit, which is Apple's which is struggled. There's just not as much for Apple as there is for the other ones. But some of them support all three, like I believe the Weimo from Belkan supports all three. And this is smart plug. They're a little more expensive than the other ones. Right now, it's on sale for twenty five bucks for one plug, which
is a lot for one device to control. But once you set this up, you can control anything that's attached to it, so for instance.
In my living room. I have a light in a smart plug.
It's a standard lamp that just comes on every night at six pm and goes off at midnight. And just now sitting there on the couch last night and there goes you hear the plug like turn on.
Oh I like that.
And you can do it that way, or you can connect it to Google or Alexa and have it on a routine. You could have it, you could do whatever you want. Once this Wi Fi plug, it connects your WiFi. By the way, once it's connected, the sky's the limit. Some people have fans on these things, so you can automatically have a fang one in your house. Now with that, you have to make sure that it can support a vice like that. You know, it depends on the rating, like it you'll see on the box. Some of them
are more rated for like Christmas lights. That's a great example of something I always do my Christmas lights every year with these. But the I'm trying to see if the Belkan one, but I would recommend a couple to look at is the Yeah, this one works with Google Assistant, Alexa and home Kit.
I think that's the segment that she's talking about is like a Christmas light.
I know that was a long time ago though it was like last year. But the Wemo Mini smart plug is a good one. Amazon makes their own, which is good. I like that one, and then the other one that I like are actually a brand new one, I should say, is from Why's. And this is the company that is making a lot of budget products for home security. Now they have a camera, they have sensors for your doors, and now they have smart plugs. And for fifteen dollars you get a pair, which is.
A two pack. That's pretty good.
Seven fifty for two of these plugs. That's going to be shipping in September twenty nineteen. Those work with Amazon, Alexa, and Google Assistant, but not home Kit. But bottom line, go on Amazon and just see type in smart plug and kind of see what you like what's on sale.
They all kind of work the same.
The only thing you have to be aware of if you buy the ones that are sort of like a Chinese brand, that are direct from China, it could be a little bit tougher to set up because the app might not be as good as a mainstream one. What you really want to find is one where it doesn't even require a third party app, so some of them you can just open up the Google Home app on
your phone and it will automatically set up. I'm not sure if they have that yet with these plugs, but they do have it with light bulbs, and that's the easiest scenario where you don't have to really because most of the time what you have to do is you plug in the plug, you download the Plugs app, you sign in, you create an account, you get it all set up, and then you link your account from that app to the Google Home or to the Alexa and then you control it through the Alexa app out of
the Google It's a lot, but it's fine. Once you do it once, it's pretty simple. Yeah, so it's pretty easy.
Would you believe we are at the end of the show. No, I know.
We had so many more things to talk about, so many more questions, but we got to go. There's only so much podcast time in this world.
Yes, you know that.
There's I've read something where there's almost like one thousand, two thousand or three thousand new podcasts like every month or every week or something, every second, every second.
It's like that YouTube thing.
It's like every second of a billion like minutes of video or upload it to YouTube.
It's something insane, that's crazy.
I know everyone is out there making a podcast.
Yep, but this is the only one you have to listen to. Yeah, if you want to all the other ones on the Tribute Network as well. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already. Just search rich on Tech in your favorite podcast app. That can be Apple Podcasts, pocket Casts, or Overcast.
Those are a few good ones.
We also have a new website if you want to go to it ktla dot com slash rich on Tech that will bring you to all of the past shows.
And I'm gonna do this. I'm just gonna.
Straightforward with you, with you out there, okay, I would like you to review the show. I never asked. I never I think I started asking that when it first started. Then I never asked again. I said, you know what, why not? We have one hundred reviews right now, five stars. If you're gonna leave anything less than five stars, don't worry about it. Don't just don't even worry about it. If you don't have to do it, don't have to
do it. But if you're going to leave five stars, and you're gonna leave a little written review which was even which would be even nicer. Go ahead, do it that nice. So we want to get up, get up over there, because the more that we have reviews on there, the more people kind of notice and they look at that stuff. We're a review society. People want to see, like is are people listening to this? Do people like it? It's pretty clear you are listening, so doing I do.
Thank you for that, And if you have a question you'd like answered on the show, you can go to rich on tech dot tv and hit contact. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter at rich on tech dot TV. Producer Megan, did you enjoy the show? I know you're like ready to hop on a plane to Hawaii, but did you enjoy the show?
I did enjoy the show. I thought it's fun. We're doing this on a Wednesday, which is a little different.
Producer, Megan, you're giving away all of our secrets. I'm rich to Marry can find me at richon tech dot TV.
Have a great day. We'll talk to you real soon.