Posted on October 28th, 2019 by Joy Schwabach
Joy’s Pixel 2 smartphone was blasted by a worker with a hose when she left it in a zip-up container by the side of the pool. Google sent a free replacement, but it wouldn’t make calls. We went through many layers of tech support, chats, email, and phone calls. The phone kept saying “no mobile networks.” In the meantime, we discovered a free app called “Hangouts Dialer.” With it, you can make free calls over WiFi. We’d already been using Google Hangouts, which brings our voice mail messages and texts inside Gmail. To get our phone working, Google sent us a physical SIM card to use instead of the “eSIM” we started with. This made us wonder: “What’s an eSIM […]
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Filed under: apps, cheap calls, health, Internuts, word processing | Comments Off on SIMPLY SIM
Posted on October 21st, 2019 by Joy Schwabach
A friend asked Joy to go with her to Office Depot to choose a new printer. That was an eye-opener. You can get a laser printer from Hewlett Packard for less than a hundred dollars. The LaserJet Pro M15W takes up less than eight by 14 inches on your desk and weighs just eight pounds. Bob’s first laser printer cost $5,500, was gigantic and weighed about 50 pounds. That was black and white only. Our current color laser printer, a behemoth from Okidata, cost around $550 and also weighs nearly 50 pounds. The quality is superb. The kicker for us is tech support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we had an HP printer and called tech support, […]
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Filed under: apps, crytpocurrency, games, Internuts, kids, printer, video | Comments Off on CHOOSING A NEW PRINTER
Posted on October 14th, 2019 by Joy Schwabach
A reader writes: “I have an iPhone SE that’s not even two years old. Now it completely closes down, then will restart, but then goes down again.” She took her phone to a repair shop and the guy said it was planned obsolescence. That didn’t seem right to her, but she didn’t want to ask her service provider, AT&T, for help. In her experience, they upgrade you to a new phone automatically. We suggested she call Apple. “The person I spoke to was very helpful,” she said. “She ran diagnostics on my phone remotely and said I needed an update, which she then did. She showed me how to save my information to the cloud and made me an appointment […]
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Filed under: Apple, apps, Internuts, photos, Windows | Comments Off on APPLE SHINES
Posted on October 7th, 2019 by Joy Schwabach
“Dark Mode” is all the rage on smartphones. It gives you a black background with white text and is easier on the eyes. You can get it on your Windows or Apple computer too, with these tricks. On Windows, hold down the Windows key, (looks like a flag), and tap the plus sign to bring up the Magnifier. Now hold down the “Ctrl” key and the “Alt” key at the same time and tap the letter “i” for invert. Now every bit of text you see anywhere – in Microsoft Word, other programs or on the web – will have a black background. Unfortunately, pictures will have inverted colors too, looking like negatives. To see them normally, toggle back by […]
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Filed under: Amazon, apps, gadgets, Internuts, iPhone, security | Comments Off on EASY ON THE EYES
