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HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Jamie in Tampa, Florida asked: “I have an LG flip phone. I’m wondering how come every time I take it off the charger, it’s fully charged, I noticed a reduction in power when it’s turned off? What causes a phone to use its battery power when it’s turned off?”
Batteries store energy by ionizing chemicals, and will stay charged for a reasonable amount of time if they’re not used, but sooner or later they start to lose their charge little by little.
Think of it as sweeping a dusty floor, if you sweep dust off to the side, even if the day doesn’t seem that windy, sooner or later it will wind up all over the floor again.
If your flip phone isn’t that new, you’re gonna notice this problem with the battery much more, batteries don’t age well and over time rearranging those chemicals to hold a charge becomes more and more difficult, so as your phone and it’s battery get a little older you’ll notice that the charge lasts less and less not just when the phone is in use, but also when it’s turned off and just sitting.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Daniel in Millbrook, Alabama listening on 1440 WLWI asked: “I have a Verizon account and am out of contract. I’m thinking of getting a smartphone touchscreen. Should I get a regular phone? an Android? What kind of OS would be best for everyday use. I also like to explore a lot of free apps. I hate to have to go to Verizon and pay $160 to $180 a month for a decent amount of time, when I can go to Straight Talk and get everything unlimited for about $45 a month. Wondering your opinion. Where’s a good place to get used or refurbished phones?”
You don’t have to go with Verizon if your contract is ending soon, Straight Talk does offer different smartphones, if you’re going to go with one of them, you might want to consider an Android smartphone.
You say you want to explore a lot of apps, the most interesting ones won’t be found in proprietary platforms, you’ll have more apps for their Android phones than their more generic smartphones.
Keep in mind that you will be paying a premium for these phones, or having no contract means that the phones are not subsidized, so you’ll be paying between $130 and $330 for phones that are a little inferior from the ones you could get for much less on contract with a bigger carrier, the other side of that, obviously is that if you plan on hanging on to your phone for a few years anyway, you’ll probably save a lot of money.
As for used phones, you can try the usual outlets for used goods, a lot of websites like eBay.com and Craigslist.com offer tons of used smartphones, sometimes for reasonable prices, sometimes, not so much, but make sure that the phone will work with the company you choose for your plan, that means that if you go with Straight Talk, you should probably look for a Straight Talk phone. Sometimes you can find refurbished phones on sell by the carriers, visit their sites and try your luck.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
John in Erie, Pennsylvania listening on WPSE 1450 asked: “We are connected with Time Warner Cable and also have Time Warner digital phone service. My download speed is only around 125 to 180 Kbps. Very slow. I have a gigabyte router. When I’ve had technicians here, they say that the tests”
The slowest speed that Time Warner Cable is advertising for your region is 10 mbps download and 1 mbps upload, that should get you speeds of far more than 125 to 180 kbps.
It’s true that you’re speeds will vary depending on where you’re downloading from and what sort of service they have, but have you tried downloading a large file from someone with obviously fast service? For example, what happens when you download a software update from Microsoft? do you still get very slow speeds?
You should also test using a few services like speedtest.net and testmy.net, and see what they tell you, it’s normal to download from a few sources with less than lightning fast connections, but you should get fast service from someone sometime.
If you’re still getting slow speeds, there’s not a lot of stuff that you can do on your end, if techs claim that they’re getting good speeds from your home, then your wiring should be ok, and even a DOCSIS 2.0 modem, which is the least you would have, can do speeds of 10mbps.
It may be a good idea to ask a friend with a laptop to bring it by so you can rule out any problems coming from your machine, but if their laptop is slow too, maybe you should talk to the cable company again, those speeds are well below what you should expect for your connection.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Guests in this hour:
Paul Gray, Director, Europe TV Electronics Research – NPD DisplaySearch
The TV is no longer the center of the home and it’s not a 46-inch smartphone either. Find out what Paul and his team have discovered in the TV market.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Charlie in Santa Barbara, California listens on KTIP 1440 AM asked: “How do you stop the unsolicited videos of funny animals and things like that, that pop-up on my screen?”
What you’re seeing are flash ads on websites, you can stop them by disabling flash altogether, but that will obviously stop more than just that, or you can use some sort of ad blocker.
If you use Firefox, Chrome or Safari you can use AdBlock as a browser extension, that will get rid of most if not all of the flash ads you see.
For Firefox, you can also look at Flashblock to specifically stop flash ads, which are probably the ones you’re seeing. You can also head to better quality websites… who’s showing you funny animals these days?
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Corrosion Technologies: Several bottles of CorrosionX — A few squirts of CorrosionX clean contacts & connections & keep them protected for months (in salt spray environments) to years.
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle — This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software