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Tech News & Commentary
Christopher in Shreveport, Louisiana listening on 710 KEEL asked us: “I wanted to know what your opinion of a decent gaming laptop would be. I play mostly online MMOs.”
Christopher, The specs for decent gaming depend a little bit on what you consider decent. Some people are very casual and don’t care that much about frames per second as long as the game runs reasonably well, some people want to be able to compete and have very responsive systems.
The games you want to play will also have a great influence on how powerful a system you need. We have found that a lot of games don’t ask for much, a processor as basic as a Core 2 Duo and 2GBs of RAM might be enough to run the games, as long as you have a good graphics card, however, that may make them technically work but not run nearly as well as you need.
If you want a gaming laptop, and will not consider a desktop which would probably be a better choice if your main use is gaming, be ready to spend some money and to buy something with decent specs. Look for lots of RAM, the best processor you can afford and a discrete graphics card.
Look at the Lenovo IdeaPad Y series, for example, they’re not absurdly expensive, they’re in the neighborhood for $800 and have 4th generation Intel Core i7 processors plenty of RAM and hard drive space and good graphics card, that may be a good and relatively inexpensive option.
MSI also makes a great deal of gaming laptops starting at around that price and ending at several times that price, those may work for you as well.
You didn’t really give us a price range, although the word “decent” implies that you’re not looking for the top of the range. But we would be remiss without mentioning the Razer Blade and Blade Pro gaming ultrabooks. These are some pretty special machines, combining fast processors with super fast SSDs for storage, an NVIDIA GTX 765M video processor, and Razer’s very cool “Switchblade” user interface on the larger Pro model.
Switchblade has programmable soft keys that have small LED displays, so you don’t have to remember that “M1” means shoot and “M2″ means cast a shield spell. You can have the key labels change as you change games. There is also a small 4” LED display that can be used as a secondary game display, or can play YouTube videos or a website (perhaps with a walk-through for your game), all without disturbing your game play on the primary screen.
The Razer laptops are much more than decent, and they are priced that way, but no decision should be made without understanding ALL of your options. In other words, buying a Toyota is fine, as long as you understand that Ferraris exist.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Andrew in Phoenix, New York asked: “I just bought the iPhone 5 from verizon. The battery life is terrible. I turn it on at 10am and by 4pm the battery is dying. it doesn’t last long. I would like to change my plan to unlimited everything for $50-$60. So if you know anything here in Phoenix, NY that has that, let me know.”
Andrew, Before you jump ship and go to another carrier because of you battery life, you may want to check your phone.
I have been using the iPhone 5 since June and have found that the battery life – for me – is much better than the 4. And I think that generally, it is for most people. The increased battery life was one of the selling points of the 5.
Increasing battery life is a topic we’ve talked about a lot. There are many settings you can change that may extend the time you have between charges. One of the biggest battery hogs is the LCD backlight. One tip we tell people is to turn the brightness on your screen down to the lowest setting you can while still seeing the screen comfortably.
Another setting to look at is your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If you are not using either of those, turn them off. If you have done the new iOS update, those settings are much easier to get to to turn on and off as needed.
Another setting that many people don’t think of is e-mail. If your e-mail is set to constantly check, that will use your battery a lot faster. If your e-mail is set to “push”, it will get e-mail as it’s sent to you. If that setting is turned off, your phone will be in “fetch” mode, where it will check for new mail when you tell it to. You can set this time to every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly or manually. The less often it fetches mail, the less battery it will use.
As far as “unlimited everything” plans, the good news is you can get unlimited plans on both T-Mobile and Sprint. The bad news is either one will cost you around $100 a month, so it looks like you’ll be about double what you’re looking for. And there’s no guarantee that you can use the same phone you had with Verizon on another carrier, so you may be stuck buying another new phone.
Upgrading to iOS 7, if you haven’t done it already, might help, also. iOS 7 offers more control than previous versions about background app refreshing. You can turn it off entirely, or just for selected apps. Shutting down background updates on things you don’t need will give you a real boost in your battery life. And my experience is the same as Chris’. The iPhone 5 battery life seems slightly better than an iPhone 4S. Also, turn off AirDrop and Bluetooth if you’re not using them. I found that shutting off AirDrop until I actually need to transfer a file using it made a BIG difference in my battery life. It’s clear that having that constantly scanning for other iPhones in the area is a big drain on battery life.
Keep in mind though, that the second most common complaint about iOS 7 behind the way it looks, is the negative effect it’s had on battery life.
Although that might simply be because users don’t understand iOS 7 well enough yet, and don’t know what to turn off.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Karen in Columbia, Missouri listening on News Talk 1400 KFRU asked: “I am interested in purchasing an e- reader or tablet for my son who is a sophomore in college. He participates on the college baseball team and in the spring months they travel a lot for games. I would like for him to be able to download his textbooks and possibly work on papers or homework assignments while on the road without having to lug his laptop and textbooks. Any suggestions? He seems to think that the Kindle Fire would be a good way to go because he could get the text books through Amazon ( he also feels this is the cheapest route). If I am going to spend the money I want to get the best bang for my buck. Being able to watch movies or read for pleasure would also be nice.”
A Kindle Fire seems like a sensible choice, he’d be able to buy textbooks from Amazon or rent them for considerably less money, share the same rented or bought copy with all of his other devices, so he can read the books on a smartphone or computer, and the tablet is more than capable of playing movies and giving him access to a good library of apps.
The Kindle Fire line is very fairly priced, starting at just $139 for the Kindle Fire HD, and with the new HDX model costing $379, it is considerably cheaper than an iPad.
iPads also have access to a vast library of textbooks and other media (including Amazon’s textbooks via the Kindle app), and they would more than meet all of his requirements, but the cheapest iPad starts at $329 and that’s for the 7.9 inch Mini.
If you’re looking for textbooks, bang for buck and the capacity to be enjoyed for day to day use as well, he probably made a very reasonable, sensible choice by choosing one of the new Kindle Fires.
Because of their low cost and small size, Chromebooks are gaining acceptance in the textbook area. A LOT of schools are offering all their textbooks in an online format accessible from a Chromebook. And then you have a keyboard, for taking notes in a web app like Google Drive or Evernote.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Jennifer Jacobson, Public Relations Director – Credit Sesame
free credit score and credit report online with no credit card or trial required.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Better guidance for drivers is an old dream. Already at IFA in 1973, a new technology was shown, ARI “Auto Radio Information”. When the broadcasters introduced the service one year later, car radios identified stations with traffic information with a yellow light. In 1981 the car radio got station identification and at IFA 1983, Travel ARI was introduced, which informed the driver that travel information was available even if he was listening to another station without such information.
James in Jefferson City, Missouri asked: “I would like to know about a cell phone called Cricket. It has a larger keypad because I’m getting older and my hands shake and my fingers can’t seem to fit those little tiny keys. I’d also like to know what you know about its range and it’s program – as far as what it costs to buy it and how much a month.”
James, As far as we can tell, Cricket is just the cell phone company, not a specific cell phone model.
Cricket has a 4G LTE network and, like all other cell phone carriers, it’s mostly focusing on smartphones right now, but they do have a couple of phones left with physical keys.
If you’re ok with feature phones, the Kyocera Domino and Kona or the LG Helix may be for you, they have just number keys, so they’re pretty big, they also carry the Samsung Comment 2 which is a basic, Blackberry-like smartphone, but that phone has a full qwerty keyboard and it’s keys are considerably smaller.
When it comes to pricing, all of the phones with physical keys are quite inexpensive, out of the ones with told you about the most expensive is the Samsung Comment 2 at $39.99, and for a feature phone you’re looking at $35/month for unlimited everything, including even international long distance.
If you are only using the phone for calls while on the go, or in case of emergencies, I would check out Jitterbug. While they use outdated phones and technology, they are geared for seniors and people that have difficulty handling devices. They have very low-end plans with minimal minutes and text usage, so I would only use them if your phone is a back up only type of device.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Tom in Windsor, Ontario asked: “Cannot connect Nintendo 3DSXL to Linksys e4200. Why does that happen? Is there something wrong with my router? The Linksys and the Nintendo units both seem to be compatible and illustrate the option of WPA two security. The Mac addresses however are both different. And they cannot Be changed. My Internet service provider Also has its own Mac address. Why couldn’t it be as easy as it was when I set up my iPad. All I have to do there was find My wireless network and then type in my password and it was good to go. How can I get these two units to work with each other? Hope you can help.”
Tom, A MAC (media access control) address is the unique address assigned to every piece of equipment that can connect via Ethernet. No two devices have the same MAC address, and it’s tied to that hardware. There is no way to change it, nor would you ever want to.
The problems connecting a Nintendo DS of any kind to a wireless router usually come down to firewall issues. The DS wants to use all manner of ports to potentially support player-to-player connections that the wireless router often has filtered.
Before you get too crazy with troubleshooting this, log in to your wireless router and shut off the firewall. If that works, we’ll link you to a page on the Nintendo website that lists all these ports and other configurations you’ll need to set up so you can restore the firewall for other uses but still allow the Nintendo DS to work.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
John in Pennsylvania listens Online asked: “I want to know why, when I play YouTube on my phone – I have a 4GB card on there. The YouTube videos come on and play half the video and then it shuts the video down and puts it on pause. I just need to know if there’s something wrong or something that YouTube’s doing.”
Since you mentioned that this is on your smartphone and not your computer, we have to suggest first that the problem might be bandwidth related. Streaming video is a very high-data rate application, meaning that you need a really fast and consistent Internet connection to do it well. Especially in a mobile environment, this can be the source of your problem.
YouTube offers an option on its playback settings to control whether something’s played in “HD” or “360p.” Try setting it for 360p and see whether that clears up the problem. If it does, we can say nearly for certain that it’s bandwidth.
Also, what about other video streams on your phone. Is it only YouTube that seems to have problems? Do you have things like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, or Hulu Plus on your phone? Do any of those have issues?
Is this only with the YouTube app, or does it also occur when you access the YouTube mobile website using your phone’s browser? If it happens in the app but not in the browser, then you might have an older version of the YouTube app, or it might be having some kind of problem with something else installed on your phone.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Bits Limited: Mini Squids — Travel-Sized surge protected power strips
Datawind: UBISLATE 7Ci, 7″ Android tablet with Wi-Fi, internal microphone and camera, and expandable MicroSD memory.
PURE: Jongo Wireless Adapters — Allows you to stream all your music wirelessly to your home audio system.
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!
Magellan’s: RFID-blocking Ridged Aluminum Wallets – in RED for Valentine’s Day – prevents identity theft with expandable pockets that can hold up to 12 credits cards as well as cash and receipts