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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss wireless technologies and elder care, mandatory working from home, hacking an IoT coffee maker, malicious Android apps, and more.
David in Lincoln Park, Michigan listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “Why is it that, in the days of the Commodore 64s, 128s and Amigas, that cool games and programs ran on minimal storage and speed just fine, and now everything takes massive storage and speed to work?”
David, its because they were crap. You may remember them as cool games, but they were extremely basic go play them again if you want to see how they hold up.
You can play much better games than the ones that you played on those devices on a $5 Raspberry Pi. Just install RetroPi and youll be able to play games that were released with the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, various Sega platforms and more.
The hardware is both as cheap and as minimal as they come, and the games are miles ahead of Commodore 64 of Amiga games, but if you compare them to what you can play on modern consoles or PCs well theyre also crap.
Dont think of it as your phone is more powerful than the Commodore 64, think of it as the shutter button in your camera app uses an image that displays more colors and takes up more room than those computers were capable of, let alone the pictures the camera takes. Better things are more resource intensive.
Victor in North Pole, Alaska listens on Newsradio 970 KFBX and asked: “I have Internet access with the Gigabit speed. I recently purchased a Netgear Nighthawk mesh that gives me better coverage throughout my house. But the Internet provider is now saying that I’m using too much bandwidth. Just this month alone, they say I’ve used over 5 terabytes of downloads. I can’t figure out what is using – I haven’t added any other hardware other than my router. They suggest it’s either a virus – and I’ve run virus scans, or somebody using my Internet – which I changed everything when I put the new router in. So I’m wondering if there’s some app or program that can tell me what device is using the most bandwidth and using the most data.”
Victor, your router will do it for you.
The first thing we should mention is that you may need to upgrade its firmware, since older versions didnt have this feature.
After you do that, go into the settings and turn on something called Dynamic QoS, or Dynamic quality of service.
The idea is that the router analyzes what devices are using more bandwidth and tries to prioritize the things you need, which is nice and all but what we want is the reporting functionality that comes with it.
If you let it run for a while and go back to the settings youll find a table listing each of your devices and next to each youll see how much bandwidth theyve been using.
After that its just a matter of figuring out why. For example, 4K TV will use several gigabytes per hour, so maybe the culprit is something like that, still 5TB is a good deal of data, so its worth having a look youll probably be able to cut that down.
Mike in Belmont, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk Mississippi and asked: “I’m trying to find a good Bluetooth soundbar to put in my bedroom. What I’d really love to do is put it on my back wall away from the TV kinda behind the bed, to where I feel like I’m in a movie.”
Mike, the size of both the space you have to work with and your wallet will determine whats best for you.
If youre dealing with a small space and and a relatively small budget, look into the Bose Solo 5, its a compact but capable soundbar that retails for about $200.
Creative sells a small soundbar with a subwoofer called the Stage for under $100 too, we havent heard it do its work, but theres a good chance that it will work better if youre planning to have it upclose, if you go for that one wed suggest keeping your expectations low.
If you can afford to spend more, Sonor sells a soundbar called the Arc that has gotten very good reviews and comes with Alexa as a bonus, if thats something you have any interest in, but it will stretch your finances a little more at $800.
Michael in Lithonia, Georgia listens on AM920 The Answer and asked: “Trying to find out what are the best earbuds on the market, in your opinion.”
Michael, thats mostly down to personal preference.
The Bose QuietComfort earbuds have lots of fans and reportedly very good noise cancellation. Sennheisers Momentum True Wireless 2 are usually near the top of the list in terms of sound quality.
Chris has been a fan for several years of the Jabra Elite line. Thats what he personally uses. He started out with the 65t last year, but recently treated himself and upgraded to the Elite Active 75t, which is very similar but with a few new features and longer battery life. The “regular” Elite 75t sells for about $150. The Active version he has, which they say is “sweatproof” and is a more rugged version sells for about $200. But they still sell last years model, the 65t that he started with, for about $100.
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