Category: Internet Tips

We are truly in the age of overwhelming choice when it comes to TV. There are more shows available to watch than ever before – across more platforms than we can keep count of. As well as cable, there’s a host of streaming services out there like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, HBO Max, and Hulu. 

With so much choice, deciding which option is best for you can be tricky. Should you ‘cut the cord’ and move to streaming? If so, which platform? Is streaming even better than cable or satellite TV anyway? 

These might be some of your questions. We’ll aim to answer them below. 

First things first: what is streaming?

Streaming is a form of video sharing that occurs over the internet rather than via your cable box or satellite dish. 

Is streaming more cost-effective than cable? 

We all know that cable TV can be expensive. DecisionData.org found that the average US cable bill is $217.42 per month or $2,549 annually. 

Given this price, many people think a streaming service will be much cheaper. This is technically true in some cases, as services like Netflix or HBO Max cost about $15/mo. 

However, not all streaming platforms come in at this low price. For example, YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV start at about $65/month – but they include many channels and networks.

If you replace cable/satellite TV with one streaming platform, you will likely save money. However, the average US household subscribes to four streaming services, which can quickly add up to the same price – if not more – than your cable/satellite TV bill. 

Each streaming platform creates its own unique shows, as well as loaning older TV shows for its users to watch. If you only opt for one streaming service, you’ll undoubtedly miss out on some shows you want to watch. 

To that end, we advise you to carefully look at the streaming services out there and compare them with your cable TV programming schedule. If, for example, you’re a big sports fan, cable/satellite TV is the best bet for you. If you don’t care about sports and want access to a lot of TV series on demand, then a streaming service could work well. 

Here’s some resources to see what networks are on the different services:

Suppose TV – A tool for searching and comparing video services

The Streamable – Search for movies, TV shows, channels, sports teams, streaming services, apps, and devices.

Reelgood – Streaming content search engine

Is your internet connection up to snuff for streaming? 

Yes, you still need to pay for a robust, high-speed internet connection to stream videos. Netflix states that the minimum speed you need to stream high definition video is 5 megabits per second – so if you still have DSL internet, you may not be able to stream. The minimum price for high-speed internet that’s compatible for streaming is about $50/month.

If the internet connection into your home is not right next to your TV(s), you’ll need to make sure that your wireless/Wi-Fi connection is up to streaming – otherwise you may see a lot of pauses and buffering when streaming.

If you’re not sure whether your internet service or Wi-Fi connection is suitable for streaming, contact us. We’ll be happy to take a look for you and talk you through your options. 

How to stream – using the right equipment

Most new televisions sold today are “Smart TVs” that can connect to the internet and have apps for the major streaming providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. But if a new streaming provider comes along, Smart TVs are typically the last device to be able to add apps to support new services.

If you want the flexibility to add new services as well as more choices, you’ll want to consider getting a streaming device to connect to your TV. The most popular devices include Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Chromecast. Here’s a review of the best streaming devices.

If you’re used to using a DVR to be able to pause and record live and scheduled broadcasts – that feature only comes on the high-priced services that include live TV (YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV). Most other services offer on-demand streaming of programs in lieu of a DVR.

Are you prepared to learn how to use streaming?

Another thing to consider with streaming is the hassle and administration that comes with learning how to use a new interface, getting it set up on your TV and finding the right channel each time. 

With cable/satellite TV, things are easy. You just click the remote, and the channels appear. With streaming, though, this isn’t the case. To stream, you may need to switch to a different input source on your TV, and then find the application that has the program you want to watch. Each streaming service also has its own unique interface that you need to learn how to use. 

Final thoughts 

Ultimately, whether or not you opt for a streaming service will depend on your unique preferences. 

If a streaming service has a show that you’re desperate to watch, then you should go for it! We’ll be happy to help you set up the service and teach you how to use it, so you can stream with confidence. Hopefully the show will still be available on the same service next month – as contracts with content providers and streaming services are ever-changing. 

Saying this, if you’re only thinking about moving to streaming because everyone else seems to be, then we advise that you don’t bother. Cable/satellite TV still has a lot of great shows that you can watch. 

Plus, despite what people say, streaming isn’t necessarily less expensive than cable – especially as most people will purchase more than one streaming service. 

Get current expert advice on TV and streaming device set up!

If you want support with setting up a new streaming service or are looking for advice on whether you should cut the cord or opt for streaming, reach out to us. Our friendly team are on hand to help. 

Contact us today with any questions at 775-624-6888 or reach out online.

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Apple recently added two new features to their latest iOS 15 operating system that will help you and someone you trust access your Apple account and mobile device should you forget your password or when you die.

Setting up a Recovery Contact now will allow someone you know and trust help you regain access to your Apple/iCloud account or device should you forget your account password or device passcode.

Adding a Legacy Contact now will allow someone you know and trust access data such as your photos, messages and notes after your death.

For more details and instructions, see the Apple help articles below. If you need help with setup you may contact your tech.

Set up an account recovery contact

How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple ID

Also read: Now’s the time to decide what to do with your online accounts when you pass away.

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Unfortunately, sometimes death is sudden. Therefore now is the time to decide what to do with your online accounts when you pass away. Refer to the links below for various popular online accounts and their digital legacy policy and instructions.

Facebook

Google

Apple

An article on The Verge has details about setting up your digital legacy on the 3 major services above and others together with screenshots.

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Updated 7/3/25 with new information

Your mobile phone number has become increasingly valuable because it’s the way that hackers can gain access to your online financial, email and social media accounts. We now are encouraged to use our smartphone and attached phone number to prove who we are – often via Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), a method that requires not only entering your username/email address and password into a website, but also entering a code or responding to a prompt sent to your cell phone.

But what if someone gained access to your mobile phone – or increasingly more common – your mobile phone number? Hackers that successfully SIM swap or port-out your phone number would have access to reset/change “forgotten” passwords and gain access to online financial, email and social media accounts.

Fortunately the major wireless carriers have taken steps to let you thwart hackers and prevent your phone number from being taken from you without your prior knowledge. It involves contacting your wireless carrier.

Instructions for the major U.S. carriers are below. If you use an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) such as Consumer Cellular or Spectrum Mobile – call 611 from your wireless phone and ask to setup a port-out PIN or other port-out/SIM swap protection to prevent unauthorized porting of your phone number without your prior knowledge.

Verizon Wireless – Number Lock

AT&T Wireless – Wireless Account Lock

T-Mobile – SIM Protection

Also read: How to set up a SIM transfer PIN on every carrier

It’s important to protect your phone number before a hacker poses as you and takes over your phone number before you get a chance to protect it. If you need help with protecting your phone number, contact your tech.

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Email has become one of the main ways we communicate both for work and personal conversations. It’s estimated that a person sends and receives an average of 126 emails per day, and that’s just for work.

We all know that it doesn’t take long for an inbox to get unwieldy and fill up with older messages that are no longer needed or spam that can be deleted. But in between those unnecessary messages are emails that you need to keep. Trying to balance the two can be a challenge.

Some users even get so many emails, they begin having computer issues and have to call in a technician because their email program is no longer working properly due to being overloaded.

If you’re one of the many Gmail users out there, we have some great tips to help you search Gmail like a pro to find what you need and declutter your inbox.

At the top of your Gmail home page, you’ll find this “Search mail” function to use for these tips.

Get Rid of Emails Taking Up Valuable Storage Space

If you’re a free Gmail user, then you get 15GB of free storage space that is shared across all the apps in your Google account. This includes any files you’ve stored in Google Drive as well as your Gmail storage.

To keep your storage optimized and help free up space, you can use this search tip to locate the emails taking up the most space due to large file attachments.

In the Gmail search box type: Larger:10M and then press your Enter key.

This will bring up all email messages in any of your boxes (including sent) that are over 10 megabytes in size and allow you to easily look through them to delete anything you no longer need.

This can often free up a significant amount of space, especially if you have older sent messages from years past with large file attachments. 

Make sure to empty your Trash folder after you’ve deleted the messages to completely remove them from your storage. 

Select All Tip

If you want to select all messages that come up in one of these searches, instead of selecting them one by one or page by page, do the following:

1. After you’ve completed the search, click the top checkbox that will select all messages on the page.

2. Look to the right, and click the area that says “Select all conversations that match this search.” 

If you want to get rid of all the emails that have come up during your search, this will allow you to select all of them quickly and then you can click the delete button.

This also works in your Trash folder. 

Get Rid of Older Emails You No Longer Need

Over time, it’s surprising just how many messages can collect in your Gmail account. If you’ve had it for several years, then you could have years of old messages or sales notices from retailers that you no longer need.

Removing these can both free up space and improve your ability to find current emails faster because your system won’t have to search through years’ worth of irrelevant emails.

To locate older messages, you can use this search term in the Gmail search box: Before:YYYY/MM/DD and then press your Enter key.

Add the date that you want to search in the search statement, for example, “Before:2018/12/31”, which would bring up all your emails with a sent or received date prior to December 31, 2018.

You can then easily delete the ones you no longer need.

Use Search Combinations for Deeper Targeting

What if you want to look for messages that have attachments, that are larger than 11MB and older than 2 years? You can use Google’s mail search terms to do this.

For the above search, you would type the following into the Gmail search bar: has:attachment larger:11M older_than:2y

Press enter and you’ll see a listing of messages that meet all those criteria.

You’ll often be surprised by just how many older messages have been building up in your Gmail account over time. 

Unlock More Search Options

Don’t worry if you can’t immediately remember these search operators, because Google has made it easy for you to access these searches and others using a search panel.

Just click the small icon at the far right of the Gmail search to open a panel of search operators.

You can use this to get very specific in your email searches to locate messages you no longer need.

For example, if you have older messages from a job you moved on from years ago, you can use “Has the words” and type the name of that company to quickly locate all related messages and delete them.

See the complete list of search operators you can use with Gmail here.

Need help getting around your email or other software?

Computer Techs provides expert IT training to Reno area residents on a wide variety of computer and software topics. Contact us today with any questions or computer needs.

Source: Fortune and Google

Google announced in May that it would start automatically requiring users to adopt two-step verification as a security precaution when they sign into services such as Gmail. That plan, which the company said would expand by the end of this year to 150 million users on mobile and desktop, has now started.

What is two-step verification?

Passwords, no matter how strong, may not actually be the best way to keep online accounts secure. Two-step verification, sometimes referred to as two-step authentication, reduces the chances of hackers or other outsiders gaining unauthorized access to your information. This usually means adding an extra security step to log in, like a code sent to your phone via text or a voice call, or a code generated by a Google Authenticator, that users must enter in addition to their usual password.

Why is this happening now?

Google has been encouraging its users to enroll in two-step verification for the past few years. The company has also moved to reduce the need for its users to enter passwords and pushed the use of secure tokens, which instead allow users to sign in to partner websites and apps with a single tap. In addition to the 150 million user accounts Google will automatically enroll in two-step verification this year, creators on sister service YouTube will be required to turn it on by November 1 to access their channels. Google expects that all of its users will eventually be required to login using two-step verification, the company told Fortune.

What’s going to change for me?

You can check whether you’re already enrolled in two-step verification through Google’s Security Checkup. If you’re not, it’s likely you will be eventually. Users who regularly sign in to their account, use Google products on their mobile devices, and who have recovery information on their accounts, like a recovery phone number or email, will be among the first to be automatically enrolled. But if you’re annoyed by the idea of signing in twice, don’t worry. After setting up two-step verification on your computer, you can choose not to use it again on that particular device, and go back to using just your password when you sign in. It’s only when someone else tries to sign in to your account from another computer that users will still have to go through the two-step verification process.

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It’s easy to vilify large tech companies. They hold a lot of power over our online lives. One organization that people like to point to as a monopoly is Google. The company owns over 91% of the worldwide search market share, but it got there for a reason.

Google’s business model is to give people searching online what they want. So it’s in the company’s best interest to make your online life easier. Keeping people searching on its site allows Google to continue running a successful ad business to earn revenue.

Yes, it’s true that you do give up some of your information to the search engine in exhange for using its services (including YouTube, which Google owns). But the trade in Google’s case is a fair one for many.

It’s important to know who you can trust when you’re online so you can keep your personal data protected as much as possible.

Why is Google not such a bad guy? Here are several reasons why we like Google.

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Computer Techs recommended videos is a YouTube playlist consisting of our favorite videos that will educate the viewer about computer and technology related scams, usage tips, and sometimes a funny video that gives us a good laugh. Be sure to press the “Subscribe” button to get notified about new videos that we add from time-to-time.

Whenever you need help with your computer or anything related to technology, please contact your Computer Techs technician.

You can also visit the YouTube playlist in the future by typing youtube.CTreno.com in your web browser address bar.

Some web pages – particularly articles on news and informational websites – have become nearly unreadable and full of distractions over the years with flashing and inline ads, videos, and unreadable fonts. Reader Mode can make many web pages easier to read – and it’s as easy as toggling it on or off. In this article I give instructions on how to enable reader mode (if necessary) in today’s most popular web browsers – and how to toggle it on or off for many web pages.

Google Chrome

To use Reader Mode on Chrome it must first be enabled in a special settings area:

1. Type this into the address bar: chrome://flags/

2. Search for “Reader Mode” to show the Enable Reader Mode settings shown below. Click on the dropdown box and click on Enable.

3. After you relaunch your browser, Reader Mode will be available to toggle on/off on many websites via an icon near the right-end of the address bar – as highlighted above by the magenta circle.

Firefox

Reader view is built into the Firefox browser. If the page has a Reader View, you will see an icon near the right-end of the address bar.

Click on the icon, and the browser will reload the page in Reader View.

Firefox offers some options for its reader mode that allow you to change font, size, and background color.

Microsoft Edge

Reader View on Edge can be toggled on/off on available websites by clicking on the greyed-out book icon next to the favorites star.

When you click it, it will turn blue, and the Reader View of the page will load.

Safari

In Safari on macOS and iOS, “Show Reader View” can be accessed by clicking the left-side of the address bar, then “Show Reader View”.

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The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has released its annual report. The 2020 Internet Crime Report includes information from 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime—an increase of more than 300,000 complaints from 2019—and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion.

Topping the list of types of reported internet crimes was phishing, which more than doubled last year. People over 60 were the most common victims according to the report. Nevada had the 8th most complaints of the states and territories included in the report – yet it is the 32nd most populous.

The phishing category also includes vishing, smishing and pharming – all techniques via email, voicemail, text messaging or via fraudulent websites that attempt to trick victims into divulging personal information such as passwords or credit card numbers.

People over 60 were the most common victim – likely due to the age group growing up in a more trusting society and their less understanding of technology.

Perhaps most surprising is that Nevadans reported the most complaints per thousand people than any other state.

In summary, become educated on how to spot internet crimes so that you or someone you know doesn’t become the next victim.

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