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My frugal sister will get her first smartphone when her flip cellphone runs out of minutes, 45 minutes from now.
Which will take some time. She doesn’t make many calls on it. Within the meantime, her mates hold saying: “What?” The sound high quality is dreadful.
I recommended the Pixel 4a for $349 with Google Fi cell service for $20 a month for limitless discuss and textual content, not counting no matter information you employ. However a good friend’s deal could also be higher. She went with Shopper Mobile’s iPhone SE for $250. Shopper Mobile is understood for his or her pleasant tech help, particularly for seniors. The month-to-month price is decrease than Google’s Fi service when you use greater than 500 megabytes price of knowledge monthly.
At Shopper Mobile, limitless voice and limitless texts with 500 megabytes of knowledge is $25 a month. In the event you go over the information restrict — by browsing the net if you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection — they solely cost an additional $5, even when you use three gigabytes price. Three gigabytes of knowledge with limitless discuss and textual content on Google Fi would price $50. That’s $20 greater than the Shopper Mobile deal.
Once I go to my sister subsequent week in California, I’ll hand her my Pixel 3a cellphone so she will be able to evaluate it to her husband’s iPhone. She’s leaning towards the iPhone. It’s a good suggestion to get the identical kind of cellphone as your beloved or good friend, to allow them to present you the ropes. I’ll all the time remorse getting my 90-something aunt an iPad when all her mates had computer systems. She by no means did learn to work it.
For budget-minded of us who hardly ever use a cellphone out of vary of WiFi, it’s exhausting to beat TracFone’s $30 Android smartphones, such because the LG Insurgent four with a $125-a-year service plan. It affords 1,500 name minutes, 1,500 texts and 1.5 gigabytes of knowledge. In the event you unfold it out evenly, that’s about two hours of speaking a month, 125 texts a month and 125 megabytes of knowledge a month. To flee the voice and textual content limits, use a free app like Sign or WhatsApp if you’re in vary of WiFi. However in my expertise, TracFone doesn’t supply good tech help.
I Was Fallacious
A reader wrote to say he tried clicking on the hyperlink in what I assumed was a pretend AOL message. Nothing unhealthy occurred. He was proper, I used to be mistaken.
My earlier suspicions got here from Googling it. I additionally examined the hyperlink itself. The textual content in a hyperlink is commonly simply ornament; it doesn’t imply that’s the place you’re going. Once I hovered over the hyperlink and seemed on the backside of my pc display the place the actual tackle was displayed, it seemed phony. I ought to have tried clicking on it anyway. I’ve the free extension “Malwarebytes Browser Guard,” so I’d have gotten a warning if it had been pretend.
AOL would really like all customers to both obtain their new iOS or Android app, or to click on one of many hyperlinks of their message to get third-party apps, comparable to Gmail, in sync with their new sign-in procedures. Those that go to AOL’s web site as an alternative of utilizing an app don’t have to fret about this.
Pinball
One of many earliest video games I ever performed on a pc was pinball. It’s nonetheless enjoyable. So I eagerly turned to Stern Pinball’s new Star Trek sport. It’s $5 from Steampowered.com.
Stern is the most important producer of arcade-quality pinball machines on the planet, going again to the early 1930s. In addition they make pc video games. The brand new StarTrek pinball I performed was enjoyable, with chatter about alien civilizations. I don’t suppose it beats the outdated Microsoft Pinball for Home windows 98, which a good friend of mine performs in Home windows 10, however it’s good.
The obtain at Steampowered.com stated it could take 55 minutes – remarkable! However making an attempt it once more later, it was zip fast, for causes identified solely to the gremlins who hang-out these items. Moreover the Star Trek sport, I performed Stern’s free pinball sport, “Final Motion Hero,” named after the film by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s factor I purchased the $20 Logitech Gamepad to play it with. A mouse simply doesn’t reduce it.
App Pleased
Google’s free app “Arts and Tradition” has a brand new function: it permits you to step right into a well-known portray, by tapping “Artwork Filters.” You want a cellphone that has augmented actuality to make it work. I used my Pixel 3a. Vermeer’s “Woman with a Pearl Earring” put a headdress on my head. Frida Kahlo’s “Self-Portrait with Monkey,” put a monkey on my shoulder. I snapped an image of myself and saved it. However the app’s hyperlinks to the world’s greatest artwork museums are higher than these AR filters. No augmented actuality required. No app required both. Simply go to ArtsAndCulture.Google.com in your pc or cellphone.
Pace Take a look at
I’ve simply learn the umpteenth tech columnist saying I ought to go to SpeedTest.com to learn how quick my web connection is. I doubt they’ve really gone to the positioning because the final Ice Age. It is not working any extra! Now it takes you to the Chrome Internet retailer to put in “Secure Search,” which warns that it could possibly learn all of your information on the web sites you go to, heh heh. Does that embody the financial institution password I simply typed in?
As a substitute of SpeedTest, simply Google “What’s My Web Pace?” Moreover supplying you with exact numbers, it would inform you in case your pace is nice, unhealthy or detached.
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