Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Mantis the robot, a drop in Snapchat users, long-distance wireless charging, voting via smartphones (or not), Android family link, and more.

 

Chad in Carl Junction, Missouri listens to the podcast asked: "I'm trying to find some kind of password protector, so I don't have to type in password every time. Wondering if you have any suggestions or how secure those things are. I'd appreciate anything you can help me with."

 

Chad, your best options will cost some money. You can look at LastPass, it’s very popular, in active development, it has smartphone apps but it will cost you $2/month.

1Password also offers smartphones apps as well as computer software and it will cost you a little more at $3/month, with a $5/month family plan. Keeper offers similar features for $2.50/month.

You can always go the hardware route with devices like Yubico’s Yubikeys or Google’s Titan keys, but that’s probably a step further than you’re trying to go.

Jeff in Buffalo, Missouri listens to the podcast and asked: "We have a weak signal in North buffalo where we live, on our cell phones and I'm wondering what's the cheapest and most efficient way to boost your cellular signal."

 

Jeff, the cheapest and probably most effective way is to use WiFi calling if that’s available from your carrier.

It’s available from most and it’s transparent to you. Your phone rings like it always has and you can make calls the way you always have, the only different is that the tower is whatever the source of your WiFi is.

Failing that, you could use signal boosters like the many weBoost or SureCall make, just make sure there’s a signal to boost, they can’t make coverage appear from nowhere.

You can also ask the phone company you’re using for a picocell device, but it will need internet access and will likely cost you at least some money.

Greg in Nashville, Tennessee listens on Supertalk WTN 99.7 asked: "I'm trying to do a backup of my son's 1TB computer hard drive and I was wondering if I should use Microsoft's built-in backup, or should I get another program that you download and install? And if so, do you have any recommendations of which program is free and good at doing backups? I have an external Hard drive too, that I can hook up to the computer."

 

Greg, there’s no reason not to use Microsoft’s built in backup service if you just want to safeguard the data on the drive.

There are alternatives but good free offerings are getting less and less common and frankly don’t offer too many advantages.

FBackup and Paragon Backup and Recovery would probably work well for you too, if you want to try a couple of other choices besides Microsoft’s own offering, but as long as you’re looking to backup and restore to the machine you have, you might as well use the built in service that was designed for that.

 

When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … you could win prizes.

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