Details on Google's new Pixel ten smartphones.

Another streaming service is hiking prices and the startup that's reinventing the landline for kids.

Plus, as always, your tech questions answered.

What's going on?

I'm Rich Debiro and this is Rich on Tech.

This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.

It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.

I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.

Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one.

That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one eight eight eight rich one oh one.

Give me a call if you have a question about technology.

Email is also open.

Just go to Rich on tech dot tv right at the top hit contact rich on tech dot tv.

Hit contact there.

You can also find the notes for today's show.

All right, we got a full slate of guests this week and they are all excellent.

Jason Lucking, co founder of Payback, is going to explain how their website helps you get money back when airfare prices that you already booked dropped.

It worked for me, so we're going to talk about how that does, how that works, and see Scott Brown, senior editor at Android Authority.

He's been on the show before.

We were both at the Google Pixel event in Brooklyn.

He is going to break it down and he has had so much success.

He started basically his own YouTube channel just a couple of weeks ago, and man, it is taken off in such a big way, so that's really cool.

And then later we've got a senior editor from XDA to share the simple steps you need to know to deep clean your Windows PC so it runs faster and smoother.

That's going to be a great segment as well.

Well.

Welcome to the show.

If you're streaming us on ktail plus, thank you for doing that.

Welcome to watching the show.

We don't stream in live time, but you can download that app and stream the show later.

We stream the first ten minutes of it, so if you want a little behind the scenes, you could see me in my Chucky Cheese T shirt today.

Yes, I'll talk more about my visit to the new Chucky Cheese concept later, but this week, Yes, in New York City in Brooklyn for the Pixel event.

I actually I told you my mom was in town for many, many weeks, so I actually got to fly back there with her, which was great.

We've only done this a couple of times because she's always coming back and forth between the coasts, but it's not always that I have a reason to go back with her, but I did this time, and so I got to fly next to her, which was great, and to me, it was more of a lesson in like the average person experiencing technology on a plane.

So number One, she opens up her phone, none of her Netflix downloads were there.

How many times does that happen to people all the time?

Number Two, her earbuds wouldn't pair with her phone.

That was another struggle, and also the seatback and I was trying to help her with that, and then of course general Wi Fi issues connecting.

I showed her how to connect to the Wi Fi on the plane and how she can get her messaging for free, which a lot of the airlines offer.

So she was like text messaging the whole flight.

That was pretty cool.

So it was a great experience to be there, mom up in the air, and we had a smooth journey, so that was always nice.

But I was in town for the Pixel ten launch.

This was not your typical tech launch.

Let me tell you.

They were very mysterious.

Google was very mysterious about this thing.

They did not invite a lot of people.

I was apparently one of the chosen ones along with I would say, there's just a couple hundred people there, not your typical giant swath of tech journalists.

This was on a set in Brooklyn, and it was literally they recreated a late night talk show set and it was complete with Jimmy Fallon.

He was there, he hosted it.

They had applause signs, They had celebrities on stage, a studio audience, which I was a part of.

All these camera people and they had a whole bunch of celebs, and they did this as like instead of just your typical tech presentation, they did this as almost like a TV show with the Google Pixel ten series as the starring role.

So they had various guests that came up, like Alex Cooper, she's a popular podcaster.

She came up and demoed something on the camera.

Cody Rigsby, he's a very popular Peloton instructor.

He demoed a feature on the fitness app or sorry, the fitness of the Apple watch Apple Watch, look at me falling into the Apple trap?

The pixel watch then the Jonas Brothers, actually a Jonas brother was there talking about how much they love camera and video on the Pixel and they actually shot their music video in New York City on the new Pixel and so they premiered that as well.

And then Stephen Curry was there as well.

Stephan Curry was there as well to I guess he is the new Google Fitness ambassador, so there he was there, just on screen, not actually in person.

So anyway, small invite only crowd.

It was, you know, it got mixed reactions.

Obviously, the tech press is like, you know, all these hot takes online, Oh it didn't work, it was so horrible.

It was fine, it was funny.

It was different.

The tech people that are interested in the phone are always going to go out and read the specs and see exactly what this thing can do.

But for the average person that's just maybe watching on YouTube saying, oh, let's let me see what's going on here.

It was fine.

I mean, I don't know if they'll do it again, but it was It was good for them to take that chance.

So what did we get at the event?

Brand new Pixel phones.

Pixel ten that's the standard phone.

Then you've got the Pixel ten Pro, and that comes in two flavors, the Pro and then the Xcel, which is just a larger version of that.

So the Pixel ten has a lot of the things that the Pixel ten, you know, the pixels known for.

It's got all the AI features, got the same processor, it's got a three camera lens set up now, so you've got a five times telephoto zoom lens which is great, ten times optical quality zoom, and then up to twenty times super rezoom, which means they're using a little AI to clean up those pictures.

Then when you get to the Pro, and I think for most people the Base Pro is probably going to be your best bet overall.

I think the ten is just fine, but I think it's like, if you want to step up just a little bit, go with the Pro.

But this has the six point three inch display or a six point eight inch.

You get your choice of screen size basically, and then it comes with sixteen gigabytes of RAM, which is incredible.

I love that that they did that.

Based storage on the Pro is one hundred and twenty eight gigabytes, but even better on the Pro Excel it is two hundred and fifty six gigabytes, So that is awesome.

It's got a triple camera, a similar triple camera setup, except this one can go one hundred times super rezuom.

And so I've got the phone right here and tested this out last night.

I took a picture of a sign super far away.

I could not believe it.

It actually takes it's not really it's zooming in, but then it takes whatever you zoomed in on, and it literally just uses AI to kind of recreate the picture pixel by pixel.

And so this picture I took was of a street sign, and it looks a little AI ish, but it was just I mean, it's just wild the things that we're doing now with AI.

I don't even know if you can call that zooming, because now it's just basically AI is looking at what you zoomed in on and just making it better.

So we'll see how that works out for people, but it's a pretty cool party trick.

The biggest feature I think for most people is that they finally added magnets to the back of the pixel lineup, which is great because this is the first Android device that has magnets built in, at least here in the US.

Maybe somewhere else they have them, but not here in the US.

So basically, if you know mag safe on the Apple side of things, this is Google's version.

They're calling it pixel Snap, and so that means you can snap on all kinds of stuff, And by snap, I mean magnetically attached while it's charged, Rings, grips, whatever you got you can put on to the back of these phones with no extra case necessary, even though you'll probably still want a case.

The other big change no more physical SIM card slot.

It is now e SIM only, which means electronic SIM.

So yesterday when I was setting up the device, yeah, I ran into a little bit of an issue because I had to like swap the sin SIM electronically and I couldn't just push one SIM out of my old phone and pop it into the new phone.

So it does, you know, for some people that will present a challenge, but for most people that are just upgrading once every three years four years, not going to be that big of a deal.

So the pricing for these devices, the standard phone starts at eight hundred dollars, the pro is a thousand, the pro Xcel is eleven hundred dollars, very very good pricing.

I think on these phones they didn't really raise prices as far as I can tell, and you did get a bump on some of the specs, and you know just some of the things these can do.

So I really think that they did a great job with these phones this year.

I really really do like this is the year.

If you're going to switch to a pixel, this is the year to do it.

Everything is finally lined up after ten years.

They also showed off the Pixel ten pro fold.

Not much to say about here except it's still there.

The foldable phone dust resistance is now built in that starts at eighteen hundred dollars.

I don't see a lot of people running out to get the foldables right now, but it's there and it's still a nice phone if you like that.

Now, when it comes to some of these AI features, this is what Google really focused on.

Number one.

This feature called Magic Q, which is just incredible.

When someone texts you a question, AI looks through all the data on your phone, your emails, your text your notes, your photos, and it will surface that information right away.

So all you have to do is tap and click and it'll send it to that person.

So if someone says, hey, what's Jim's phone number?

Again, it'll look in your address book for Jim's pone number.

Put it right there.

Hey, what's our dinner reservation for tonight?

It'll put your reservation right there.

You tap it sends it.

Hey, remember to send those pictures you took of us at the circus.

It'll surface your circus photos and I've got a lot of them on my camera roll and it will send them right to the other person.

I mean, that is a really really cool feature.

I need to test that out.

Then the other big feature asked to edit, So you don't even need to know how to use a photo editor anymore.

You just take your picture and then there's a little text chat underneath it, and you just text with Google about what you want it to do to that picture.

So you can say, remove the reflection fix this photo, and AI will do all the fixes for you, crop it whatever you want, and it'll give you a whole bunch of options.

And then it can also do a surprise me mode, so if you just want to see something wild and crazy with your pictures, just tap surprise me.

The other cool feature real time call translation.

So not only are they translating your phone calls on the other ends for the other person, if they speak a different language, but it's in the person's voice.

So if I spoke to someone that was only speaking Spanish and they're speaking to me, they would hear me speaking Spanish in Rich's voice, I would hear them speaking English in their voice.

They're using AI to do that.

That's a really interesting feature.

And then finally, the other feature they mentioned is something called camera Coach, where basically AI helps you take a better picture while you're taking it.

I don't see anyone using this, but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

Google definitely took some shots at Apple.

They said, look, they're running a walled garden.

We've got open choice messages like the blue bubble versus green bubble.

Give me a break, this is over.

They said, everyone has rcs.

Your pictures are going to look good, your videos are going to look good.

You can see when your Android friends are typing, or your iPhone friends are replying, or there's emojis and all that stuff.

So they said, look, we get it.

Switching is hard.

Apple locks you into all this stuff.

While I'm saying this, actually Apple locks you into all this stuff and it is really hard to switch.

But I do think that people that have a pixel and it's a very small amount of people.

When they have them, they've got some of the smartest devices out there.

All right, come up eight eight eight rich one O one.

We're gonna take your calls, your emails.

We're gonna have more of my thoughts, and I'm gonna tell you about the Chuck E Cheese arcade I visited for kids of all ages.

This is rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.

Phone lines are open.

Kim is here answering phones.

What are you waiting for?

Give me a call?

Eight eight eight rich one oh one Diego in San Diego.

You're on with Rich.

Hello, Thank you Rich for doing this what you're doing.

I have this MacBook Pro A nineteen I'm excusing nineteen ninety and after cleaning up everything, all the pictures and stuff that I didn't need everything, I decided to transfer everything over.

And after transfer anything over, I was gonna do factor reset and sell it to.

My friend he's been waiting for it, sure, And.

Then never did that.

It just got stuck on the little Global, the little Earth thing, and there it went.

I just sat there for hours.

I kept rebooting it, doe to everything that I was supposed to, even a factory.

Where is it that downloaded from the internet?

Off the Internet and everything?

I just sat there.

So I put it on the shelf and I just, hey, I'm already good with my computer.

I'll let him and I'll get to it later.

And then the battery went dead.

And for what I learned on the internet, this machine needs a battery to run.

Yeah, you can't.

And it said that when I transfer everything over, it did a self execute.

It committed suicide.

So it's so, what's the what's the question?

How to get this thing back up and running?

To format it?

Is?

This is your data?

St want to do that?

Can I actually get it back and up and running?

I like to sell it.

My friend he got another one, but you can use them for his kid too.

Yeah.

Of course this is a twenty nineteen model.

You said, No, it's an Apple nineteen ninety.

It's the years between sixteen and nineteen.

Twenty nineteen is the year more or less when.

They Okay, so see, yeah, it's a couple of years old.

I mean it's still you know, it's still reasonably I think that the a MacBooks can have like probably almost like a ten year lifespan.

So what is the status of the computer?

It won't boot up at all?

Is that the problem?

It has a dead battery?

Has a dead battery?

Okay, So the question is do you want to replace the battery to save this or now have you left it plugged in for like a really long time to get the battery to maybe come back to life.

Yes, and it just it just won't.

No, was there a problem with the battery before?

No, so it was so it wasn't like, uh, there was no issue with like the battery was like on its last legs or anything like that.

Yeah, yeah, it was.

It was about there because there's that crane on when you just go ahead and get another one.

So I did, but it wasn't.

It was okay, it could have been a little bit longer necessuidly brand new course, but I would say it will give me about eighty percent, you know what I'm saying, stead of the usual watching the movie for you know, a couple of hours or two and a half hours.

They wouldn't do that.

I had to plug it in somewhere in between there.

Okay, Well, the only thing I can think of is so your your computer will not come to life because I had a MacBook that I was able to use without the battery, and this was a long time when the batteries actually popped out.

You can't pop that out.

So I guess the question is do you want to pay?

I mean, you could sell this to your friend as is, and they could just get the battery replaced and then they have a perfectly good computer and then they just have to reinstall the operating system.

It sounds that's what that's what they would hang up with the batteries running.

Okay, Like I said before, like eighty percent that was up in their life.

And when I tried to do factor the reset, I got hung up on that little the little gold the little earth looking thing, and then just the bar will will go about three quarters away and then start back over again, and you can see it doing its progress, and do it again, and they just keep recycling, just keep doing that.

Okay, So it sounds like there's something.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough to know what's what's going on here without exactly seeing it.

I'm a little confused.

As to what's happening.

But I would say a couple of things to think about.

You know, leave it plugged in for a while, see if that brings it back to life.

Sounds like you've already done that.

There are some ways to reset.

Is this an Intel based?

This is an Intel based?

Right?

I could not tell you.

I don't.

I think it is, Yeah, because it's the twenty eighteen, so there's there is one.

Have you heard of this resetting the p RAM?

Yes, okay, we.

Tried that, Yeah, okay.

I think it sounds like you might need someone to do a diagnostic on this to get it or just bring it to a place where they can actually replace that battery and get this thing going.

I'm a little confused as to like what is what the status of that battery is.

Sounds like it's working a little bit, but not necessarily.

But I think once you get battery figured out and this computer turns on, you can easily just wipe the drive.

You can use something like there's a program that I like called disk drill that will let you make a recovery drive for this thing.

You could boot it up from there and it'll it should come back to life.

I mean, there's still life left in this computer.

I think, so if you want to replace that battery or at least get someone that knows how to get this thing turned on, I think it might be a good idea.

All right, Coming up.

Next, we are going to talk about how to recover a refund if your airfare drops in price.

This is rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

This week I went to the first Chuck E Cheese arcade.

It's called Chuck's Arcade location in Brea, California.

It was one of the first people in there.

This is their tenth location overall for this Chuck's Arcade.

And this is kind of like a it's like a new con except from Chuck E Cheese.

That's basically like what I grew up with, right, just an arcade.

So there's no pizza, there's no birthday parties.

It's just all focused on the games.

There's no you know, there's no food in there or anything like that.

But there are prizes, which is fun.

So the one I visited had like sixty games.

They were really nice, really new, like very clean and fresh and modern.

And apparently these these crane machines they call them Clawcades, are I guess really popular.

I know my kid loves these claw games, so and I won one on my first try, which is awesome.

But then they've got retro titles galagam Is, pac Man plus the modern stuff.

And then each location has a you know, they've been decommissioning these animatronics from Chuck E Cheese places, so they have one of them like in glass that you can see.

So this one had Mister Munch.

And then of course there's all a bunch of like merch you can I'm actually wearing one of the t shirts that they sell there.

It's like retro.

It's all retro merchandise, which is really cool.

So yeah, I mean this is a place that anyone can go to, kids, adults, whatever.

You don't need to have a birthday party.

And I really enjoyed it, and I think it's smart they're putting them in like they're trying to put them mostly next to mall food courts, which I think is really smart as well.

So if you happen to see a Chuck's arcade.

And you're wondering what it's all about now, you know, and if you want to see what it's all about, I put it on my Instagram at rich On Tech.

I did a little video which is sort of making the rounds right now at rich On Tech on Instagram if you want to see the Chuck's Arcade.

They do have locations across the nation, just about ten right now, so be on the lookout for.

I love the chuck Eg stuff.

I mean, I grew up going there.

I love the pizza and the you know, my kids had birthday parties there, so I think a lot of people have fond memories of this place for different reasons.

So anyway, kind of cool, all right.

This week I was also surprised because I woke up to an email that said, hey, You've got eighty dollars back as a refund from United.

I said, wait what?

And I forgot that I even had signed up with this website.

But it's called Payback Pai c k dot app, and we've got Jason Lucking on the line.

He is one of the co founders to explain how this all works.

Basically, it gets you money back when an airfare that you book the price drops.

Jason, Welcome to the show.

Do we have him?

Nope, Okay, I don't.

He's there, Okay, Jason, Jason, you on im.

There we go.

We've got Jason ring the bell.

Okay, Jason.

So tell me explain the Payback website, Like, tell me how this works.

So, so Payback was driven out of my own personal travel experiences as well nuts and bolts of it.

Payback is a AI driven flight optimization tool, so we automate the process of optimizing optimizing your flight price for an already purchased ticket.

And so as I understand, like basically, all I did was sign up for the website.

It's free.

You phear your confirmation from one of the major airlines, and then it just watches the price and as soon as it drops to a certain threshold, it will go out and request that refund.

It's really a credit from the airline.

Correct.

Correct.

So again, you're going to book directly with the airline, and we focus on American Delta, United Alaska, and we're in talk with some of the other airlines as well to grow that.

And then you, just as you said, you ford the ticket to us.

We monitor it throughout the day and so whenever that flight price drops and a thresholder is nothing below ten dollars, so any drop over ten dollars, we automate that process to get you a credit or a refund for the difference.

Now, most of us book non refundable tickets, and non refundable tickets get you future flight credits and refundable tickets, which are you know, you pay a bit of a premium for them, you end up getting that back as a refund, back to the original method of payment.

So this surprised me because I think I plugged in like three flights that I had, and two of nothing really happened, and this one is I mean it's just all of a sudden, out of the blue.

I've bought four tickets, so I got twenty dollars each ticket times for eighty dollars.

What kinds of refunds are people seeing?

Like, are you seeing a lot of like a fluctuation in these prices and people kind of capturing these refunds.

Yeah, So you know, when we started this again, it was kind of like a personal thing to start off with.

I'm both a frequent flyer and we fly a lot with the family, so for me I was thinking this would be great for frequent flyers, maybe saving on economy classes, but it's happening on every single class, Economy, business, first class.

Obviously, the ranges vary.

We've seen tickets drop once, and we've seen them drop as many as five or eight times.

Now sixty percent of the time the price has been dropping below what somebody's originally purchased it for.

And the average if you kind of take an amalgamation of all those savings, the average savings is two hundred and fifty dollars per saving, So that might be somebody's getting twenty dollars here, twenty dollars fifty dollars here.

And we've seen drops as high as nine thousand dollars.

Now obviously that was an international first class ticket, but we're still seeing these big drops on the domestic economy tickets as well.

Wow, that's wild.

So people are definitely capturing it.

So you mentioned the fares it works with, so not obviously not an economy basic fare.

I'm guessing right, because there's no changes to us.

The only one that's out is basic economy, which, as you know, you know, basic economy you have to buy a seat belt and an issue to the toilet.

You know, it's it's meant to be bare bones at that point.

Yeah, it's anything above basic economy.

And so how are you getting these refunds?

Are you?

I mean, I assume it's some AI involved in here, Like, how are you actually reaching out to these airlines?

Yes, so we use we use AI to monitor it.

We use AI to converse with the airline on your behalf to get you that credit for the difference.

Now, what one important thing that we think is really key is we don't cancel your ticket and rebook you.

What we do is we get it reticketed, so you end staying on the same confirmation number in the same seat and I will say ninety nine percent of the time in the same seat.

They may move you from one aisle seat to another if you're flying with one specific airline, I wouldn't mentioned that one.

But same flight, same seat, nothing changes for you.

You just end up getting a future flight credit to use on a future flight.

And for me, anybody that is a flies more than three times a year.

This is this is a key thing.

You know, credits are like cash at that point you're going to be using them again.

Well, here's the thing.

I mean, so I know because I book a ton of flights, and here's here's how most people do it.

Maybe I mean this is how I do it.

I research the heck out of it before I book.

I mean, I sit there, I track it, I look at it every day.

The price goes up, the price goes down, it goes around, and all of a sudden, I finally book and I never think about it again.

So all that fluctuation still is happening.

I'm just no longer monitoring it is that kind of what most.

People exactly, So even in that time of you doing the initial look and the time you're purchasing it, it's probably fluctuating throughout the day.

I mean, we've seen drops happen for one hour.

We've seen them drop for you know, multiple days.

The precipice of payback is to say when is the best time to book?

You know, I'm a super analytical person, and I was always thinking, you know, follow these fads.

It's on a Tuesday at six am, clear your cookies.

Make sure you know mercury is in retrograde.

All these like running baths on social media.

And what we wanted people to be able to do is say, when is the right time to book?

The right time to book is now?

Is right now?

To worry?

You book when you want to make that initial decision, and if the price drops, we're going to optimize that for you anyway.

Yeah, because the price is going to go up no matter what, Like it eventually goes up, like when you get closer to the date.

But like you said, there might be these things where it just drops and I and you can see when you log into the website that you see that graph of like what the flight, what the price has done for that flight over time.

So here's my big question though, because I've seen similar startups like this before.

Now that this is happening and you know, people can tap into this thing that probably was never tapped into these refunds, the airlines are like, oh, not so fast.

We're just going to change our terms and conditions and you can no longer get a credit.

Are they going to do that?

So we don't believe.

So in twenty twenty, United announce that they were removing change fees forever, permanently, never coming back.

One of the things that you're building towards is partnerships with the airlines directly we want to integrate into the airlines, and here's the reason why, is because people that use payback become more loyal to that specific airline.

We recently did a study that showed sixty seven percent of our users that receive a price drop are more likely to book with that dedicated airline again for two reasons.

One they feel better about the ticket that they're flying with, and two they've got a credit to use with the airline, which you either.

Use it or you lose it, and if you use it amazing.

Our whole ethos is we want people more, do more of what you love, go out and see the world, whether that's domestically or internationally, and that's kind of a a deep rooted element of payback.

So there's a huge loyalty element with the airlines that we drive forwards.

It's funny because my holiday flights that I was booking for the holidays like Christmas, I was waiting and then when I heard about this website, I actually just booked.

I said to my wife, we could just book these because if the price goes down, which is what we're waiting for, we'll just get a credit.

And that's what happened.

By the way.

So that's the flights that we got, and his exactly.

Price goes up, we do nothing about it.

You know, if the price goes up, let it keep going up.

You know that you paid the best price two months ago, three months ago, whenever it was that you initially booked that ticket.

Right, I've got about thirty seconds.

What's the cost here?

So we don't charge anything upfront.

We charge a twenty percent service fee on whatever we save you, so we don't want it to be any friction of you to question it.

Only when you win do we win.

All right?

Jason Lucking, co founder of payback pai back dot app.

I'll put the link on the website rich on Tech dot tv can find it in the show notes.

Get your money back if your airfare price drops.

Great idea.

Thanks so much for joining me, Jason.

Coming up on the show, I'll tell you more about the pixel watch four and your calls.

Eighty to eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Welcome back to rich on tech rich Demiro here eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven.

Four to two four one zero one.

The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV this is episode one three six.

So if you go to the website you want the show notes, or you want to see my cool Chuck E Cheese shirt, Yeah, go to the website.

Rich on tech dot tv episode one three six.

Hel In Seemi Valley, Welcome to the show.

Well, thanks, thank you, Rich.

I've got a strange problem.

My icons are no longer medium, my preferences medium.

They're larger than small and smaller than medium.

The print underneath them is smaller when I go into my folders and smaller.

I've tried scaling.

I've done whatever research I can do, and I said, well, I don't think it's a virus.

I've run anti virus, and no matter what I do, it just seems to be smaller.

I'm assuming it's on Windows.

Yes.

The only other thing I can tell you about that is unusual, and maybe it's at about the same time I wasn't paying that much attention is about every ten seconds, my icons will blink off and on against.

Okay, it sounds like it sounds like a scaling issue.

If you ask me, it sounds like somehow your the scale of your screen got changed.

So did suddenly everything on the screen get smaller?

Well, I didn't notice it right away, but everything on the screen, all the icons and the words underneath them are smaller.

And I tried customs scaling I have for my word documents.

I have it set at one hundred and that's all there.

Okay, and that's but that's that's a setting that is just for the word app.

So there are you know, when it comes to these computers, there's like global settings, and then there's settings inside the actual apps.

So I'm going to tell you the places to look that I think will help fix this.

And I think the first thing is number one, you have to just look at the scale of your screen.

So when you go into your Windows settings, you can just just go to your desktop actually and write click and you can go and hang on, I gotta move something around here so I can see what I'm doing here display settings, so that that's the number one place to look.

And make sure that your scale is the right scale.

So mine's at one hundred and seventy five percent.

It's based on the monitor, So just play with that number a little bit and see if things look the way they used to be.

So that's number one.

So again, just write, click on the screen and once you write click, you're going to go into display settings and look under scale and layout and just tap that and you can change your scaling.

Now, once you're in there, you can actually check your text size.

That's also in there, so you can go in there, and this is under accessibility actually, but if there's like a quick link, so you can go in there and check your text size, and right now, minds at one hundred percent, you can make that much bigger all the way up to once I tap this, I'm never going to be able to go back one hundred let's say two hundred and twenty five percent.

So there's a little slider.

So again that's under text size, and you could just search text size in the Windows search bar at the bottom.

The other thing to do is I think your icons.

You said your icons were looking a lot smaller.

So if you right click again this desktop, you'll see where it says view and you'll notice there's three options large icons, medium icons, and small icons.

So you might have somehow selected the medium or small and maybe you still want the large, So those are the.

Places do it.

The other thing is, and it sounds like you already found this, but if you want a shortcut to just in general, this is probably a good thing to know on Windows.

But if you just you know, if you have any vision issues or you want to see something closer up and you don't want to change a whole bunch of stuff, you can just press the Windows key and the plus sign on your computer at the same time, and it will bring up the accessibility magnifier and you can zoom into like any part of your page.

So if you're trying to read something that's got tiny text, or you're just you know, having issues that day, maybe you just woke up, you know, and you can't see as well in the morning, just the Windows plus the plus key will take you there so and then minus will take you the other way.

So those are the main places I would look how I think those one of those will fix it.

It sounds like because you said the icons were blinking, that sounds like some sort of screen scaling or refresh rate kind of thing.

So it looks like something got a little tweaked in there.

But hopefully you can just go in and change those settings and find something that works for you.

Good question today, Thanks for the call.

Eight eight eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Let's see, do I have time for another one?

Probably not.

Let me do this, so let me tell you about the pixel Watch four.

Pixel Watch four I mentioned earlier.

They had the Pixel w the Pixel Phones, the Pixel ten.

They also unveiled a new watch and so the thing the headlines to know about the pixel Watch four is that it is the first smart watch that can call for help with satellites.

So we know we have this on our phones, some of the recent model phones have this.

Now the watch has it for the first time.

And the only thing to know about this is that it has to be the cellular that what pixel Google calls the LTE version of the watch, so it's not gonna be the regular watch.

You do have to have that cellular modem inside the watch, so it is the more expensive watch.

But if you are some of that hikes, you're always out in the middle of nowhere without your phone and you know you just have your watch on.

Yes, you could have cellular, but now you can have the satellite emergency, which is really cool.

So that's that's their number one new feature.

It is free and included on the device.

Then they also have this new domed display.

I didn't really notice a crazy different dome display, but it definitely looked like the screen was bigger when I saw it.

The battery life has improved, so thirty hours or forty hours fast charging is improved better, Gorilla glass easier to fix this thing, and of course everything's more accurate.

All the tracking, sleep trackings more accurate.

All these things are more accurate.

So they upgraded the sensors on this device, and then of course they added this personal AI health coach with Gemini.

This is similar to what Samsung did and similar to what Apple did.

Obviously, AI is making its way into every part of our lives.

But the other nice thing they have on this is the Gemini AI, which you can just lift your wrist up to your mouth and just start talking to AI, so you don't have to like activate it with a button or anything on screen.

You can just lift your wrist, which is something you've been able to do with Siri for many years.

But let's be honest, Siri is definitely not as helpful as Gemini AI because you can get answers to anything in the world with Gemini.

It is a really cool feature.

Three hundred and fifty dollars for the Wi Fi version, up to five hundred dollars for the biggest LTE version in stores October ninth, eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.

This is rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you focking technology triple eight rich one O one eight eight A seven four to two four one zero one.

The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

Visit there for the show notes.

Also, you can check out the stories I do for TV.

They're all right there, and follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech.

You see the theme here.

Yes, I posted a couple of things to Instagram this.

Week, and one of them was.

I'm at the airport and I'd use the self checkout, and sure enough, it asks me if I would like to leave a tip?

Why would I leave a tip for a self checkout?

Kiosk, I'm not leaving a tip, and it defaulted to let's see here eighteen percent.

By the way, I was already paying seven dollars for a bottle of water, and everyone commented is like, well, why would you pay seven bucks for bottle water?

Number one when you're in an arena, a sporting event, or an airport, there's something or a movie theater, there's something called suspension of pricing disbelief.

You have to just imagine that a Coca cola cost twenty dollars when you're at a movie theater or an airport.

And that's the same thing with the water.

Now, I did bring my own water bottle.

Yes, I do travel with a water bottle.

When I filled it up at the airport at one of their fillers, it was hot water, like literally hot, and I just did not feel like drinking hot water.

So that's why I bought the bottle of water.

Anyway, you can see that there.

You can also see My Chuck's Arcade My Chuck e Cheese Arcade video.

But we went to you know, if you check my stories too, you can see we went last night to Dave Matthews's band.

We watched them and it was great.

It was a nice show.

It was if you like music, it was a great show.

Right didn't play all the songs that I knew, which I thought was kind of annoying, but you know, what are you gonna do?

I can't tell him what to play, but it made me think about something because we knew exactly what time he was taking the stage, exactly what time he was leaving exactly.

Well, you know people have the set list or whatever.

But like it made me realize, in this world, we don't leave anything to chance anymore, right, Like everything is planned out in advance.

Like there was a time and I've lived this life where things were mysterious.

Right, your favorite band, like like Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, they would just show up on stage whenever they felt like.

You didn't know what time they were supposed to come on, you didn't have access to Reddit, You didn't know the set list because you didn't look it up online.

Right, I mean, these are the things that we just do now.

How about going to a restaurant.

You go to a restaurant.

So many people I know they study the menu for hours before they go to the restaurant.

What about being surprised at what's on the menu at a restaurant?

Why can't we just be surprised?

Now?

My wife and I debate on that because she loves to look at the menu.

I never ever thought about looking at the menu at a restaurant before until I met her.

And now it's like we're analyzing the whole menu.

You know, we've got like everything figured out beforehand.

What about maps?

You know, I was we were going to the concert yesterday, and you know the maps.

It's like we knew where to take the turns.

You know, ways is like all it takes you all over the city.

You know, it takes you a million left turns whatever.

But it's like, what about the days when you just literally drove, Like even on my ride home, I know exactly where I'm going.

I still put on my maps.

Why.

I don't know, It's just something we do movies.

I mean, there are apps that will tell you the exact time to leave the theater.

She can go to the bathroom, run pe.

I think it's called.

I mean, there is no more mystery in our lives, in a modern life, in twenty twenty five, there's no more mystery.

Maybe that's why people are so unhappy.

It's nice to have some mystery in life.

What about when people called, they would call you on the phone, you would just pick up and say, hello, who is this?

Now it's like you know exactly who's on there.

You know who's on the other end.

You don't pick it up half the time.

Picture same thing.

You used to take pictures on your camera, you know, and you'd get it developed.

Remember that anticipation of waiting for the film to be developed.

We don't have that anymore.

Now.

You take a selfie, you look at it the second later, and invariably someone's like, I don't like it.

Let's take another one.

Sports same thing.

I mean, instant highlights on your phone packages, Oh this one.

I like package tracking.

Like you would order something off the TV sight on scene.

You'd be like, oh, that looks cool, let me order it.

Six to eight weeks it was a mystery.

You would call the thing, or you'd mail in and order perhaps, and then six to eight weeks later someone will show up on your doorstep.

I mean, this is it's really this stuff.

I get to think about all this stuff all week long.

Sometimes I remember to mention it.

Sometimes I don't.

John writes in from Orange, California.

I want to continuously video my game room so I can make a collage of clips when someone makes a great shot.

What type of camera should I use?

I'd like to have it remote control and wired charging, so I don't have to keep it taking it down.

I will tell you, John, I've had my Google Nest Cam running twenty four to seven for over ten years now, twenty four to seven.

For ten years, the thing has not missed a beat.

And you can pay Google to record in the cloud twenty four to seven.

You know, you have to pay a little bit every month, but I'm telling you that's the way to go.

I've had this thing plugged in and literally it is never stopped for ten years, ten plus years at this point.

And Google, when I met with them a couple months ago, they said that actually, what people like about their devices is that they last a really long time.

Like I have the Nest thermostat, the original one that's been up for eleven years now in my house, and I do have to replace it because it's gonna stop working.

But I mean, that's a great run.

Eleven years of not having to think about this stuff.

Let's see, Paul's been waiting for a while, and Hammett, Paul, you're on with Rich.

I'm here myself.

Paul, sounds like you're listening.

Paul, you on?

No, okay, Paul, you were?

How do I get this on hold again?

Particular one?

Okay, let's go to Karen in Bakersfield.

Karen, you're on with Rich Hi.

Rich love your show.

You're a great teacher.

And my question is you could recommend a rogue buck antivirus software where when you purchase, then every time you scan, you aren't getting suggestions for adding utilities and.

All these things.

You know, you never feel like you're you're completely protected.

And I know that there'll be you know, enhancements and so forth, but studies are just you know, bobarding you to add on.

Yeah, and they crawl, They slow your computer down to a crawl.

And it's it's horrific.

I mean, it really is, like honestly, the and I know a lot of people are gonna like me saying this, but this whole anti virus kind of thing has gotten out of control.

There are a lot of people, a lot of tech experts out there that do not believe you need anti virus on your computer anymore.

Now.

I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

I think that there are we are still up against a lot of stuff when we are on the internet.

And I think two things.

Number one to know.

Number one, uh, Windows computers have built in uh now uh you know they call it Defender let's see, I think they just recently changed the name.

I think it's all under like Windows Security now, but they have that built into your computer, so.

You can use that.

As long as it's up to date, you're.

Going to be just fine for like ninety nine percent of things that happen on your computer.

So that's number one.

If you want to just go into there, you can just type in Windows Security and it will bring up all of the security functionality that's built into Windows.

So you've got virus in.

Threat protection, account protection, firewall, device app and browser control, and you can tap into something like virus in threat protection and you can see when the last time your computer was scanned, when the last time it found something, what you need to do, the updates that you have, and oh this is actually something I think someone's someone emailed about this.

But there's also like ransomware protection built into your computer as well, so you can turn that on.

So I mean, I think Windows has a lot of stuff that's already built in and I think is fine for most for many many people.

The thing that I think we're up against the most these days is actually clicking a lot or being misled online, and so for that reason I really recommend people using Chrome because Chrome has built in tools that will actually scan the websites that you are visiting and the links that you're visiting to make sure that they are not filled with malware or viruses or some sort of fishing or whatever.

And so if you go into your Chrome settings and let's see, I think we go under I got to find where this is privacy and security.

Let's see here, Yeah, privacy and security.

So under that you can tap security, and they've got this thing called safe Browsing, and the standard protection is pretty much I think that's just turned on for most of Chrome.

But if you really want the best protection from Chrome to protect you in real time with AI, go in and select this enhanced protection under safe Browsing, and it will warn you about dangerous sites.

It will scan suspicious downloads.

I mean, it really does a lot of stuff to make sure you're protected.

And I check I unlike what you should be doing.

I click a lot of these websites that are that are bogus or scammy to see what they try to do.

And there are some that literally just try to download a virus to your computer or malware right away.

And there's others that will just try to, you know, take your information things like that.

So this will protect you from a lot of that.

The other thing I like, I do like malware bites.

I think that's a pretty good way to scan your computer.

There is a website, by the way, Karen called avdash test dot org.

And if you look at all of the ratings for these these antivirus software, they're all almost the same at this point.

So what it really comes down to is, like you said, something that doesn't have a ton.

Of bloatwear involved.

And I think there is one that I think is pretty good, this sofos s O p h O s sofos dot com.

It is a little more expensive, and you know, it's not gonna have like things like VPN all that stuff necessarily does it I don't think it does.

But it does have real time protection.

It does have a lot of good things, and I think their whole business is just protecting you.

So I think that's what you want to look for, is a system that is just simple and not trying to sell you on a thousand other things.

Once they have your email address and once they have you So those are the things I'd recommend to do.

I think that's going to protect you in like ninety nine percent of the circumstances.

I really think a lot of it comes down to these links that people are clicking.

They're getting malware, they're getting scammed, and I think that's what we need to be protected more so than just the random viruses.

It's really the malvertizing and all these pop ups and websites that we're seeing that I think is the biggest issue out there right now.

So stay protected out there, and you know, just be smart about what you click and what you're looking at.

Great call, Karen, appreciate the question.

Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Coming up this hour, We're going to talk to see Scott Brown about the pixel of and I'm going to tell you which streaming service is raising prices.

Next, this is rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four.

Two four one zero one.

Let's see.

I feel like this.

I feel like Mark is a regular here.

Mark and Woodland Hills Welcome to the show.

Goon, sir, how's.

Going we're looking at selling our house and buying another, and when we move into the new house, we would like a comprehensive home security system.

And I'm wondering if there's any conventions, you know, like home improvement conventions upcoming that you know, have all the displays and the tables, and instead of calling blindly around and having some salesman pressure us into a system we'd like to, we'd like to do it hardwired.

Also because you know, we know that the burglars are using Wi Fi jammers now to overcome people's wireless systems.

I was wondering if you have any suggestions or know of any of these conventions coming up for home improvements here.

Yeah.

Well, I'm actually going to one.

I think it's in a couple of weeks CDA CE D I A.

I believe it's in Denver this year.

But that's really the home expo for the professional things like you're talking about, like if you want a wired camera system, you want you know, the TV that's indoor outdoor, you want the built in you know at Crestron System all that stuff.

That's why I'm going, so I want to learn more about these things.

It's been a while haven't gone to the show in like ten years, but that is the main one.

So that's the first place I would I would check cedia xpo dot com, c E d I A e xpo dot com.

And not only will this give you an idea of the show, but you can also look at the exhibitors too, and that'll give you a good idea of who's at this show and who's showing off stuff.

Because these brands are not necessarily the brands that you would find at a Best Buy or a home depot.

You know, these are more professional installers use these brands for the cameras and things like that.

So that's the first place i'd look.

You said you're in Woodland Hills, so I would look at the UH.

I would just go to the you know, Google and I just typed in home shows and they've got a whole bunch of California home shows and they've got one on Riverside, San Diego, Lodie, Sacramento.

Now, the problem with these home shows, a lot of it seems like it is you know, baths, closets, remodeling.

But yeah, the techie stuff might not be there on display.

But that's the kind of show you want to look for.

You want to look for some sort of home show that's like more tech focused.

I personally, you know, the ones I go to CS always going to have all this stuff, But the Cedia one is also going to have a lot of this stuff that you're talking about.

But yeah, I mean, look, this is this is what people want these days.

They want the full house.

Everything has a camera.

They want to be able to remote control access it.

I think some of this stuff, you know, if you're just like a regular person, you just want like the beauty of this is that you can do a lot of this yourself nowadays.

And that's what I think has really been the biggest change in the consumer electronics space in the past ten years or so, is that it used to be you had to have someone come to your house and install this stuff.

But when we had the I think the ring video doorbell really kind of transformed an entire industry because it was the first time you could just literally go outside your front door pop a camera up there, and now with Wi Fi, you can see what's happening outside your front door.

And I remember doing a story on the very first ring doorbell.

It's called Doorbop back then, and people it was such a foreign concept that number one, nobody's WiFi was good enough to reach to the outside of their front door.

So everyone thought this thing sucked because it was like, oh, this thing doesn't work.

No, your Wi Fi signal was ahead of its time.

Your WiFi signal had not caught up to this technology.

And then you know, as soon as we got that, we got all kinds of other cameras.

And then when Whys came out with their twenty dollars camera and Blink with their inexpensive cameras, suddenly it's like you could have a camera everywhere and it was really really cheap.

And so people that want a professional system, there's always going to be those people.

But for everyone else, the fact that you can do this very easily with these mainstream brands is really really neat.

You might have heard the.

News that the government is taking a ten percent stake in Intel.

What the government putting ten billion dollars into Intel, So I guess this was the amount that Intel was supposed to get under the Chipsacked grant to build new factories here in the US.

But now this is actually an investment by the US.

So if Intel does well I guess the US does well.

If Intel doesn't do well, then the US loses their money.

But I think they could just print more.

So what's you know?

It's all fake, It's all phony money anyway, right, I'm not giving this is not financial advice.

I have no idea.

I'm just making a joke.

I'm not sure how all that stuff works.

I don't know where the government gets ten billion?

Is it from me?

Is it from Bobo?

I think it's from US.

I really do.

I think we own Intel now at some point, you know, And here's the thing.

Intel recorded nearly a twenty dollars twenty billion dollar loss in twenty twenty four.

It's first lost since nineteen eighty six.

It is struggling.

This company is struggling.

I love America, I love American companies.

But Intel has missed the boat on everything mobile.

All the chips inside your phones, they're either made by Samsung or TSMC or another company Media Tech.

They are not made by Intel.

Intel did not figure out how to make these chips for the phones work, so they just never really took off.

Now, before you yell at me and say how dare the government investing companies, yes, they've done this before.

I have to look it up.

Financial crisis two thousand and eight, US invested in a City Group and Bank of America two thousand and eight, AIG government owned nearly eighty percent of it after one hundred and eighty billion dollar rescue, GM Chrysler, Amtrak Airlines Post nine to eleven.

So yes, this has happened before.

Eighty eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four to one zero one.

I see the calls, I see the phone lines.

We will get to you in just a little bit.

But we've got a great guest.

Actually, the person I was sitting next to in Brooklyn at the Made by Google event, c Scott Brown, Senior editor at Android Authority, also has a great new YouTube channel of his own name and is just doing really well.

He's just basically focusing on his love of pixel and all things pixel.

So Scott, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much, it's great to be here.

And yeah, thanks for being my seating buddy at the show.

Yeah.

So I guess, what's your first impression, your initial takeaway from this Google Pixel event.

Well, obviously, I mean maybe not obviously, but it's been quite controversial.

I think a lot of the traditional tech fans have been very upset about it because it was very silly.

They didn't focus on hardcore specs, they didn't even really go over pricing and availability.

They just pretty much had this fun show with all these celebrity guests.

And yeah, I think a lot of people are really upset about it.

But I think I think it was great because it sort of bridged the divide.

You know, it brought in people who might not care about a smartphone launch, made them watch it, and now those people might be like, huh, these pixel phones seem pretty cool, maybe we should check them out.

Which those are the.

People we're trying to convince, Like the farmcore techy's like me, like, we're already convinced.

Like, you don't need to convince us to get excited.

You got to convince you know, the moms and the dads and the people who just don't care.

You know.

Well, it's interesting because you say don't care, but I think the people that have pixels actually care more because the people I see with pixel smartphones, I usually they're a little bit elevated, like they they kind of like sought out that phone for a specific reason and that's either the Google software or integration, or also the camera or they they're like, I don't feel like a lot of people have a pixel that are just they have it happenstance, right, Like they seek this phone out, I feel like, and maybe Google knows that, and that's why they don't focus on specs and all that stuff.

They say, Okay, the people that want.

This thing are going to look at the specs eventually, we're going to focus on what this can do for you.

Yeah, And that was even reflected in a little behind the scenes knowledge.

So when when companies have big launches like this, they give journalists the information ahead of time.

They say, we're going to launch this.

This is what it looks like.

You know, you can expect the expects and all that kind of stuff.

Here's the pricing whatever, And then they give us a date and a time and they say, you can't talk about this until this date and time comes.

And that date and time this year, for the first time ever, was an hour before the launch even started.

So I think what Google was planning was was like the nerds, you know, like me, They're going to get all the information they need well before the.

Event even starts.

But then hopefully they'll be like, hey, well I already know everything that's going on, but maybe I should check out this show.

So I think Google very intentionally made the show the way that it was.

And yeah, tech geeks are upset about it, but you know what, like tough, it's not all about you all the time stuff.

Yeah, so what do you think of the new phone?

I mean, we've got the Pixel ten, Pixel ten Pro, the foldable.

What kind of struck you with the improvements that you think is the best?

Well, the interesting thing is that all the improvements are under the hood.

If you, you know, hold the two phones that last year's Pixel nine series and this year's Pixel ten series, if you stack them all next to each other, even I, you know, it's my job to be able to tell the difference between them, and even I would be like, you know, squinting a little bit, like which ones which because they all look exactly the same.

And so yeah, all the actual updates are under the hood, and there are a lot of them, and I'm sad to see that a lot of people online, a lot of the commentators and comments on YouTube and stuff with people saying like, you know, they didn't change anything, these phones are just a rehash, and it's like, no, there's so much going on.

There's a brand new processor that's that's you know, the first of its kind from Google, that's you know, much more powerful, and there's a lot more cool stuff, tons of AI features, new camera upgrades, better speakers, you know, better display.

Like I mean, just the list goes on and on, but you have to go looking.

You can't just look at the phone and say it but yeah, but specifically answer your question.

The thing that I'm the most excited about is probably the new ask photos feature, which I think is super cool.

Basically, the way it works is that if you take a photo and you open it up in photos and you want to edit it, you usually have to like use your your fingers and treat things and fissknobs and move sliders up and down whatever.

Now you can just ask.

You can just put the button and say, hey, you know, make this photos lighting better, or you know, remove the person that's.

Standing behind me or whatever.

Edit you can.

You can imagine and it'll just do it.

And I think that's going to be a game changer for once again the normal person who just picks up this phone, it's like, well, why why should I get this over an iPhone?

That alone, I mean would be something that I think a lot of people would be really interested in.

Yeah.

I mean, how many times have you wanted to change something in a picture but you don't even know where to start, Like, oh, I'd like to make the sky bluer, or the I want to remove this object or whatever.

I mean, there's a million crop it zoom in.

You know, people don't know where all these tools are.

I mean the super nerdy techies do, but like the rest of us, well the rest of people, you know, they may not know where to I mean sometimes I don't even know because I'm not like a photographer person.

Say so, I think that feature is great and it can of course go into AI with like if you want to add stuff to your picture too, you can do that.

I mean, the Google Photos editing on this device is truly like next level, Like it's like everything you need in one place.

What about the idea of snapping on the magnetic accessories?

I mean I feel like that's really cool to have, But I feel like all the cases already had the ring in it, so it's like you're getting it, but you know you're already you're going to put a case on this thing anyway that has that.

I Well, for me personally, I love it because I don't have a case.

I go, I go nude with my phones.

Oh wow, But I think that for yeah, for a lot of people who are already adopted into the too that ecosystem, you know, that's they're.

Probably not too impressive.

But the thing that's going to be cool about this is that now that Google's on board, now there's going to be more products.

You know.

Now it's not just going to be.

We made this product for an iPhone, because the iPhones are the only major manufacturer, are the only major smartphones that have this technology now pixels involved, and then you know Samsung is right around the corner now, and then you know one plus and what a role All the brands are going to start adopting this now that Google has, So yeah, that's just going to be more stuff, you know.

Sure it may just be like slight revamps of what's already available for the iPhone, but hey, I'll take it.

You know, I'm excited to be able to join the party of what iPhone users have been using for a long time.

Now.

Now, you have recently started your own YouTube channel called c Scott Brown.

Definitely follow him, and it's become quite popular because you are focusing It's called a pixel user's perspective, so you are focusing on what you love about the pixel, what makes this phone unique.

And I've been using the new one now for twenty four hours and I'm I'm in love with it.

I'll be honest, like, every time I go to the pixel, I remember how smart a smartphone can be compared to what I talk about in the iPhone, it's all about hunting and pecking, I call it because you're always hunting for something to do and pecking to do something, whereas the pixel puts so much information in front and center when you need it, and it's just like less hunting and pecking.

That's the way I describe it.

Yeah, No, I'm I'm loving the new phones, and yeah, I have a new channel that's specifically dedicated to pixels.

I'm not I don't only talk about pixels.

I have talked about Samsung phones and other phones throughout the thing.

But it always, like you said, it's a pixel user's perspective.

It's somebody who is using pixels and is deep in the Google ecosystem, his perspective on what's going on in the world of tech, which is not common.

And that's probably why the channel has been so popular so quickly, is that a lot of people, even within the Android space, a lot of tech creators are iPhone users.

You know, you can tell you watch their video and they talk about how great the pixel is.

But then in the next video you see their Apple Watch, you know, or or they or they you know.

They show themselves walking around town like you're doing like photography tests or whatever, and you can see the iPhone in their hand.

And the iPhone has the iPhone says, you know, the cellular carrier on the top, and the other one they're tech has like no signal.

Yeah yeah, so yeah, so I kind of saw this gap and it was like, you know, we don't have like a genuine personality somebody who is really a pixel user.

What do those people think?

And the response has been overwhelming because, like I said, like this just hasn't existed.

So yeah, I'm very excited about the earliest success of the channel, and it's been really magnificently all right, all.

Right, I've got one less than a minute.

What do you think I said, this is the year if you're going to switch to a pixel, this is the year.

I said that with Samsung with their foldables, they got those to a place where I think they're about perfect for now.

I think the pixel is about perfect for now ten years in.

Why do you think someone should try this out and switch?

I think that the number one reason is because Google is doing everything it can to make you switch.

Google is welcoming you Apple.

You know, if you're an iPhone user, no shade to you or anything.

But at the same time, like Apple is keeping you prisoner.

Apple is working hard to prevent you from leaving by doing all sorts of dirty tricks behind the scenes, and Google is doing the opposite.

Google is opening up its doors wide and saying, come on in and stay as long as you want, don't you know, bring your current accessories.

You've got all those mag safe things, keep them.

Come on over.

You want to talk with your friends using you know, specialized chat features and stuff like that, We've got that too.

It's Google's attitude is very much like come on over, whereas Apple's attitude is very much the opposite.

So I think that's the number one reason why people should consider, you know, finally getting out of the Apple prison.

For for maybe a little bit.

See what we'll see what it's like on the other side.

All Right, them are some fighting words.

For sure, we're gonna leave it there.

See Scott Brown.

Check them out on YouTube.

See Scott Brown.

Good to see you this week in Brooklyn, and keep up the good work.

On the YouTube channel.

Thanks so much.

Man, all right.

Eight eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

Coming up, I will tell you streaming service that is raising prices.

Next right here on rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one oh one.

That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

While you're there, sign up for my newsletter.

It is free.

It's delivered every weekend.

They are long, they're involved, but you know, it's all the stuff that I think you should know about in the world of tech.

Kind of like this show.

Let's see what else this week?

Oh?

Apple TV?

Apple TV plus raising prices.

There are only two three things we know in this world to be true death taxes and streaming service prices will go up.

That's all we know to be true in this world.

Yes, Apple TV plus US raising prices to thirteen dollars a month, up from ten dollars a month.

The price he takes effect August twenty first for new customers.

Existing users will see the change on their next bill within thirty days.

They've had several price increases.

It launched in twenty nineteen at five bucks.

Now what does Apple say?

You didn't think F one was gonna pay for itself, did you.

I mean, look, they're spending so much money on these things they're doing, and so it costs a lot of money.

I'm not defending them.

I mean this is you know, I do the Apple one, so I pay, like I think it's thirty eight bucks a month for all their stuff, and that price went up, and so I'm wondering if that's going to go up now because of this new price increase on Apple TV Plus.

So anyway, you really got to figure out what you want out of these streaming services at this point, David writes in from Dallas, Oregon, listening on KFIR in Oregon.

As I used to say before I moved to California, or on no It's organ he said, I added a four digit pin to my phone.

Now I regret it because I just want to swipe to one lock like before.

I can't seem to figure out how to remove the lock screen and go back to the way it was.

Is there any hope of eliminating this extra step.

Yes, of course there is, but you don't want to do that.

I cannot recommend that you go out into this world of ours with a phone without a lock on the screen, because there's way too much personal information on your phone.

I remember my dad when.

I set him up with the I don't know I was doing something with this phone.

I gave him a new phone, new iPhone, and was used iPhone.

It was one of my old ones, and I said, all right, now, set up your fingerprint.

I don't want a fingerprint on there.

Why not.

I don't want my fingerprint.

I want to just be able to look at my phone and it opens and I'm like uh, or he said, I swipe it and I said, Dad, you have to have this on there is very important and anyway, it was a whole thing, but he did put it on there.

But yes, some people just don't want this.

You gotta have it.

You got to add add a pin code, add a fingerprint, face off, whatever, because there's just too much info on your phone.

But yes, David, to answer your questions, you can go into settings security on your phone and remove that.

I just can't recommend that.

Reggie is in Charleston, South Carolina.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Hey, how you doing.

I'm doing fantastic.

What's up?

Hey, I'm in the Mac could say.

Tracking advice, and I just got.

A little criteria.

It can't be expensive.

I don't need my subscription.

It has a.

Good range and more importantly, it actually works.

Can you have me?

Well, we can try.

I can give your options, but without having you know, here's the deal with the cart, with the tracking of the car.

So a lot of these free trackers, which we're talking in air tag are similar.

They're all going to work by the beauty of other phones being around them.

So they work on a crowdsourced platform.

Now, when you.

Talk about an iPhone or an Android, they are everywhere.

So as long as your phone is are your car with this little tracker inside is passing another Apple device or an an Android device, you know you're gonna be okay, it's gonna get a lock, but it's not gonna be real time.

Like, you're not gonna be able to track your car in real time because these trackers just don't have that built into them.

You'll be able to see an approximate location and you'll be able to see the last location, but not in real time.

So you have to understand the limitations of these trackers before you put one in your car.

But with that said, plenty of people have one of these hidden in their cars and they use it and they have an idea of where.

Their car is.

Chances are unless they bring your car into the middle of nowhere where it never sees another smartphone or the internet again, you'll be able to get a location on your car.

So couple of options.

Number one, obviously, air tag is you know, the number one option in this area.

Apple invented this entire genre of Bluetooth trackers and so that is probably your number one option if you have an iPhone and use all Apple products.

Because that's what they work best for.

So air Tag is probably my number one because it is the easiest, it's simple.

You pop it in your car, you see where it is on your phone.

You're good to go.

Now, on the Android side of things, Android has something called the Find My Device Network, and so you can get things that work with that one.

And they've got different brands.

Chapolo is one of them.

Chapolo is one of them.

There are just there's pebblebe there's so many of them, but Chaipolo is pretty good.

They've been making trackers for a long time, so I'd look at them and they're going to work with your iPhone or sorry, you're Android, and so you can have this set up with your Android and basically see where your car is on your Android device.

Now, if you want something that's a little bit more into Hendon, there is the tile Trackers.

And tile trackers are platform agnostic, which in rich On tech World, I love that.

I love when things don't just work on one platform or another, they work across all platforms.

And so that's what you're gonna get with the with the tile Trackers, which is now owned by Life three sixty and you can install this and the trick to know about the Tile trackers.

Not only do I really like them, I think they work really really well.

I've got one on my bag.

The thing to know about them is that if there is not a person in the area using the Tile or Life three sixty app, you're not going to get a location.

But Tile will even tell you when you log onto the app, it will tell you how many people around you are using the Tile app.

So those are gonna be the people that are gonna help you find this car if it ever goes missing, lost, stolen, whatever.

And then finally, there is one other device that I've not personally tested but people seem to like.

It's called the track Ye t r a c KI and they've got a couple of GPS trackers I think specifically four cars.

The trackers twenty bucks.

I'm trying to see if there is any monthly fee here.

Today.

Yeah, the lowest monthly up.

So there you go, Reggie.

This does not pass your your smell test here for the nine to ninety five a month.

But with that said, this is uh, this.

Is actually a GPS tracker, So there actually is GPS built into this device, and so that means you are going to get an exact location of your car.

No matter where it is, as long as there's GPS.

Great question, Reggie, Thanks for calling in from Charleston, South Carolina.

Eight to eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.

More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, Triple eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.

PlayStation Sony PlayStation five raising prices.

This week, Sony announced a price hike for PlayStation five consoles in the US effective well, it's already been effective August twenty first.

New prices are as follows.

PS five Standard five hundred and fifty bucks up from five hundred, Digital Edition five hundred, up from four to fifty.

PS five Pro seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Wow, that's a lot.

Sony says it's responding to a quote challenging economic environment.

Prices for accessories is going to stay the same.

So yeah, there you have it, Sony raising prices on the PS five.

Let's go to ron in Corona.

You're on with Rich.

Good afternoon, doesn't everybody have a challenging economic situation nowadays.

Yeah, especially if you have kids and a wife, and there's various there's various aspects to that.

Yes, for sure.

The reason I'm calling is I've been an Android user.

I liked forever, been on the Verizon family since it was Nextel in the eighties nineties.

And a couple of days ago, my S twenty two hit the ground and cracked.

Ouch, did you have a case on it?

I had an Otter case on it.

Really still I had, yeah, and cracked in the upper right hand corner where I cannot communicate with the keyboard.

So I talked to Verizon.

They sent me an S twenty five ultra right.

And now my situation is I can't communicate with the old phone.

By the way, when I got the new cover two weeks ago, the guy says, well, that looks pretty good.

I should give you a trade in moving on, I can't communicate with it.

So, just like Scott said on your phone call, he's got a brand new phone with no connections at all, and I need to get that information off my old phone.

Any suggestions, I have a couple, So first off, you this a Samsung.

Samsung twenty two.

Yes, okay, so.

You you can plug this into monitor and you can see what's on the screen.

Can you see what's on the screen or you just can't tap what's on the screen?

I got I can see about eighty percent of the screen, starting with a little bit down from the top.

That's what I suggested to the Gallop Rises this morning, and she said, yeah, but then you still can't communicate with it.

That's the problem.

What do you mean tap on?

You can't tap?

Okay, what about plugging a mouse into the bottom of it?

You can do that.

I haven't tried that, but I can't see I have a green screen.

Oh I see old blue screen screen.

Oh so the screen is is completely bonked as well.

Okay, yes, well that could be a problem.

Okay, so that hmm yeah, without having a wait, now, is this backed up?

Are you trying to get stuff off of here?

Is that what's happening?

It's backed up about two months ago.

I've got you know a lot of my apps and photos especially that are backed up back to about two months ago.

But I haven't even tried to get them.

I'm just trying to recover the phone if I can.

Oh, okay, recover the phone.

I don't think you're gonna be able to recover the phone the phone data, oh, the phone data.

Okay, well, I mean you're probably gonna have to bring it somewhere because you're there is a way to let's see here, I'm trying to see if okay, hold on, I'm looking at this.

Yeah, so a couple I'm looking at Samsung.

What they suggest, you know?

Number one?

Yes, connect your you'r to a TV screen or a monitor.

So what you could do if you had I mean, this is one way of doing it.

You can connect it to a TV screen or a monitor, but you would also need to connect that mouse because you have to tap as well.

So that's that would be I mean, there is a way to do this.

I don't think there's there's lost hope.

I just think get that I've got a I've got an adapter that I can.

Say the bottom.

Okay, So that might be your best way to do it, is you connect it to a screen and then also connect a mouse into it, so that way you can see it on the screen and you can use the mouse as well.

So I think that's probably going to be your best solution.

I mean a lot of people don't realize that you can do that.

But it should just show up right on the screen as soon as you plug in that adapter, whether it's a you know, a just a standard USBC thunderbolt or an HDMI if you have one of those adapters.

But yeah, Like I've got this monitor in my office where I just plug into Samsung to like charge it, and the screen just it immediately mirrors onto the big screen.

So you can do that and then plug in a mouse as well.

The trick is plugging it both in at the same time.

You could if you plug it into a monitor, you might be able to plug the mouse into the monitor and then you can it might that might pass through to the device to control it as well, So that's probably your best bet.

And then once you have all that done, you know you can go through and just get that stuff up to the cloud.

But I would say ron for future reference.

I know, people, it sounds like you had some of this stuff backed up, and you know what I'm gonna say, but you've gotta you gotta check these backups, yep, you know, because this is the thing.

It's like every time I travel, I take you know, one hundred and two hundred pictures out and about.

I'm like, what if I drop my phone right now into the water or you know, I dropped it crack?

Do you lose all that stuff?

So now that's a different situation, but the same thing kind of sticks is like you just have to Some people go into their iPhone and they don't even realize that it hasn't been backed up in like months because of something that's stalling it.

So just you know, whether you have an iPhone or a Samsung, check the backup.

And Samsung makes it super duper easy to back up.

You can even back up to a USB drive.

Did you know that?

Yeah?

So I read that and the same thing.

I'm gonna try that also.

Yeah, so you can literally, I mean, it makes it so easy you just literally on that's funny.

I'm on the on the Pixel right now.

But on the Samsung, you can go into your your device, into your settings and you'll see a section let me see if it's called back up.

Let's say, okay, sorry, I've got like ten phones here in front of me I'm looking at Let's see if we go into accounts and backup right there, so you can see backup data Samsung Cloud, it will tell you the last time it was backed up.

Or if you don't want to deal with the cloud, you can literally just say backup data to Google Drive or external storage.

You can just plug in a USB drive to the bottom of your phone.

It will back up everything.

Have a backup of these devices.

Because Ron, you did everything right.

It sounds like you had the otter box you had, you know, but it's just this is life.

It throws a curveball, so it all right, Well, keep me posting eight.

Right only to the ground.

Yeah, I will.

I keep you posting on that.

Okay, thanks a lot, Ron, appreciate the call.

Thank you.

I think what happened there with Ron's phone is that, you know, if you if your phone falls let's say five times, right, and you look at the screen, you're like, oh, who, nothing happened to it.

It might be developing micro cracks and tiny little things in that that are that are lessening the strength of that screen.

And then finally on that number six drop, that's when it just goes so sorry, we can't deal with this anymore.

The pressure is too much.

Kind of like, uh, you know sometimes in life, he just crack.

You just I had I'm not kidding.

I had a flight attendant on the flight that I thought was going to I thought they were gonna crack.

They were people were this is I mean, the person next to me was asking for a drink, like a sparkling water, and the guy's like, we have three different types, which one would you like?

And she's like and you know, it's tough to hear in the plane, so like she's talking to him and he but this guy, he was not having it.

He was like he was just kind of going off.

And I was like, oh, this is why I always say, because I always order a sparkling water.

They've got they've got three types.

I always say, whatever one you've got, I'll take.

I don't care, I don't care what flavor it is, just give me it.

But you know some people have this flavor preference.

Anyway, I was cracking up because then I watched him throughout the flight and he was character.

I mean, he was talking with everyone.

He was you know, people were ordered.

He was just a character.

But he didn't he didn't crack.

He was a nice guy.

But he really gave the passenger next to me a hard time about not knowing which drink He's like, can you.

Look at the menu.

We put the menu right in front of you.

So here's my solution.

Okay, because I'm always looking for ways of optimizing things.

If you're listening United Airlines, that little menu that you put in the seatback when you get on the plane, tell people to look at it.

Say hey, we're going to be serving you a drink in about an hour.

Take a look at the menu.

Now have your drink selection ready.

Everyone looks at the flight attendant and asks them for every drink that's available.

Let's see, we have apple juice, we have orange juice, we have coke products, we have that.

No, why are they doing that?

They're wasting time?

It could be much more efficient.

All right, I digress.

Let's go to Craig in de Moin.

Craig, you're on with rich Oh Craig, welcome back to the show.

I'm doing fantastic.

What can I help you with today?

Okay?

Ibouh I sixteen plus okay, I'd stay in the house of that left me kpie and my batteries rowed up to a hundred each time, and I let it go down to seventy five, maybe seventy percent, and then I'd plug it back in, the charge it up to a hundred, and I'd leave it plugged in all night to listen to KFI, of course, and did that hood the battery?

Oh y'all read it go all the way down?

Or what?

Let's put it this way.

You are you are putting a lot of stress on that battery, on that phone by keeping it plugged in all the time and going through those charging cycles.

Now with that said, you know, is it going to ruin your battery?

You know, probably not.

I mean I've got I've got my phone from last year.

I'm at ninety seven percent capacity.

You can go into your iPhone, by the way, and check they actually put this whole setting in there battery.

So go into settings battery and you can check battery health and you can see how much capacity you have.

After a certain amount of time, the battery capacity goes down.

It's just a function of lithium ion batteries.

And then you can see the cycle count as well on your device, so you can see the number of times the iPhone has used your batteries capacity and you can learn more about that.

But the reality is, I use and abuse my phone.

I do not care how I charge it, how much I charge it, what I do with it, and I'm at ninety seven percent after a year of heavy, heavy usage and not caring.

So yeah, by keeping your phone plugged in and streaming all the time and using it twenty four to seven, it's going to put a lot of stress in that battery.

And so you may want to look at the charge limit inside your phone and either change that or toggle on what's called optimized battery charging.

And those are two settings that Apple recently added to the iPhone to make the blast a little bit longer, especially if you're keeping your phone for a long time.

Craig, thanks for the call today, appreciate it.

Good to hear your voice one more time, or once again, I should say.

Coming up, we are going to talk more about the tech news.

I've got a Seattle startup that is bringing back the landline but just for kids.

Plus we've got other guests to talk about cleaning up your Windows PC.

Right here on rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology.

The website for the show rich on Tech dot TV.

You can go there for all the notes for everything I mentioned here on today's show, don't forget.

You can get this as a podcast as well.

Just search rich on Tech in your favorite audio app.

So if you miss an episode you want to listen to something again, listening live is always the best way, but if you can't make it to the show or you need to catch up, you can always just listen to it on your favorite audio app.

Just search rich on Tech, hit follow, and all the new episodes will be there.

So there is a Seattle startup that is bringing back the landline for kids.

It's called tin Can.

This is actually had a one of the one of my followers send this to me.

It's getting a lot of publicity this week.

It's basically they've got two products.

They've got a the tin Can Flashback, which looks like a phone that we had in our bedroom back in the day, if you were lucky enough to have a phone in your bedroom, you know, the corded phone that kind of closes down on a on a you know, just like a two pieces.

That's number one.

That's set's seventy five dollars.

Then they've got the tin Can, which is their phone.

It looks almost like a tin can, kind of similar to a phone, but it's it's got phone styling, but it literally looks like a tin can and that's going to be a looks like one hundred dollars, but it's seventy five on sale right now.

So the flashback phone looks like an eighties wall phone, but it plugs into your router or Ethernet port, so you can make calls on it.

No Internet, no screen, no games, just voice calls.

Of course, there's also parental controlling.

You can say the hours that people can call or talk in there, and also the contacts that are approved, and then of course you can call.

Now here's the thing.

You can call other phones, other tin Can devices for free, but if you want to call outside numbers, they're going to charge you ten bucks a month.

That's coming soon.

Let's call the party line plan, so you can call anyone.

So bottom line, you buy the device for seventy five dollars either one of these devices, and you can call other devices, other tin Can devices for free unlimited.

So let's say your kid has a best friend.

You talk to the other parent, you say, hey, let's get our let's get our kids.

One of these tin cans.

They can, you know, connect it to the internet.

And now they can call each other as much as they want talk on the phone.

Now.

It's cool, but I think this is a tough sell.

Because, let's be honest, kids are already communicating with all kinds of free apps, all kinds of FaceTime.

Now, I'm not saying that's the best way to communicate because it's very distracting.

Like these kids are playing video games and they're they're chatting on FaceTime while they do that.

This I get they're trying to bring back the old days of sort of that one to one connection.

You're just on the phone.

You're sitting there at your desk, you know, your feeder up, laying on your bed, got that long cord on the phone, and you're just talking to someone.

It's like a very classic phone experience.

So we'll see if it takes off.

I mean, it's cool.

You can accomplish the same thing by going with Umama or a magic jack and just get a phone at Walmart, you know, like a standard they still sell those old school phones, not the rotary, but just like a standard wired phone.

So that's tin Can if you want to check it out.

Tincan Dot Kids and then Alaska Airlines and t Mobile are teaming up for free in flight Wi Fi.

This can't come fast enough.

So Alaska, I guess Alaska and Hawaii, you know they linked up now.

So Alaska's new frequent Flyer program is called at Most Rewards at MOS at Most Rewards and starting next year, at Most Rewards members will get free Starlink powered Wi Fi.

Yay.

Wi Fi on planes is so bad.

It took me an hour just to connect to the Wi Fi on the plane the other day.

Starlink I've tested it on Hawaiian airlines.

It is incredible.

It's so fast.

You can literally Next time I fly on a flight that has Starlink, I'm gonna bring my whole desk set up.

I'm gonna buy my little lamp.

I'm gonna bring like a little you know, water cooler.

I'm just gonna s a little plant I can put like near my chair, and I'm just gonna do business because you can literally get stuff done if you have Starlink.

The other Internet that's all all over, like the satellite Internet they used to have, it's just horrible.

It's really really bad.

So Starlink cannot come fast enough on these planes.

Rollout begins twenty twenty six on select flights, with full fleet coverage by twenty twenty seven.

Now remember United is also doing starlink.

It had like a false start.

They put it on like one or two planes and there's like a problem, so they have to bring it back.

I don't know what the status is of United with Starlink, but I cannot wait for that to be on my plane anyway.

T Mobile customers the whole reason.

So everyone gets it for free, but T Mobile customers will get exclusive perks like seamless ad free log on to Starlink.

So I guess you know, with a lot of these free wifis, you got to like watch like a little ad or something before you can access it.

T Mobile customers won't have to do that.

By the way, if you are a T Mobile customer, you've got a phone number with T Mobile, nine times out of ten you can access the Wi Fi for free on your plane.

Just so you know, that.

Amazon Autos added a new customer.

I guess Hurts will be selling used cars on Amazon Autos.

So remember we talked about this last week.

They're selling Hyundais through there.

Now you can buy Hurts cars Amazon Autos.

All right, coming up, next, we're gonna talk about cleaning up your Windows PC.

I know you need to do this.

I know you need the infos.

We're gonna give you the step by step directions.

Coming up next, I'm making your computer.

Run like new.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology the website rich on Tech dot tv.

If you want links to anything I mentioned here.

All right, so we've got We've talked about a lot on today's show, and one of the things that comes up over and over and over with Windows computers, for the most part, is getting them to run smooth and fast and to their potential, because most of these computers are really good and they can last a long time.

But the problem is all this gunk that gets sort of like just collected over the years, and over time you download stuff, you try it out, you stop using it apps, you're trying to get all kinds of stuff on your computer.

So with that in mind, we've got Joe Karas Scoria.

He is the let's see here senior XDA segment lead for OS and devices, I mean recently recently had a title change, So congrats on that, and welcome to the show.

Hello, Thank you so much for having me.

It's a huge quessure to be here.

Yeah, you wrote a great article for XDA Developers about how to deep clean your PC every year, and so first off, just tell me, like, what do you write about typically?

So, first of all, thank you for saying it's great.

I'm glad it resonated.

Yeah, So what the kind of stuff that I wrote about an XCA.

Obviously, since I am segment made for OS and devices, I do write a lot in those two segments as well, but especially OS.

I run a lot about Windows.

More recently Linux I've been covering in one bit of both.

Whenever I can.

So yeah, and it's a lot about tips and tricks, and it's not it's we do it less so from a how to perspective, and more so you probably didn't know you should be doing this, so like you should be doing it.

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's like a lot of things because people don't even know what's out there, what's available, what they should be doing.

So your first step in your article you talked about uninstalling apps, I mean that's always like the first step.

Explain how to do that in the best way.

Yeah, of course, So you know, the standard way to an installer apps.

You know, you go through your start menu, open the start menu, there's on apps button.

You can see all of them there.

You know, you can scroll down that list and don't find a lot of things that you probably don't use anymore or never used.

If you've never looked at at that list before and when you got your computers, that's start going a lot of things there that you don't need.

So you can just scroll down that list and if there's anything that you know you don't need, it can write make it and there's an install button right there to remove it.

And if you're not sure, it's always a good idea to either google it or you can just try.

To launch it and see what it does in case you.

Don't know if you actually need it or not, and then you can decide whether to whether it's an installer or not.

Yes, it is the standard way.

Yeah, So I mean basically, if you don't if you don't reckon, can you ruin anything on your computer if you want to install something that's like like need like the system needs.

Not really most of the system apps that are on Windows in the part of Windows, they can't be removed and words, you might break things that you're used to doing.

It's nothing that you can to restore if you know how, don't look it up.

So it's never going to be permanent damage or very like that's very like going to happen.

But yeah, if you don't know what you're removing, then you might end up with something that you used to do that doesn't work anymore because you needed that specific program.

But it is fixable, so it's never something that's permanent.

All right, your next step run a to blow script.

I mean that sounds like uh, I mean is that something regular users can do or is that for just advanced users.

So this one is a little more complicated because because there's a lot of options here and some of these again can affect certain features that you might be used to, certain things that you might be used to using.

And you know, one of these are programs that I might want to check boxes, and there might be a temptation to just check all of the boxes and disable everything, and this might have an impact on you if you just like, if you disabled something like Microsoft Defender, which is the anti virus in Windows and eleven, that'll be a problem because then you'll have no protection against malware on the computer by default, So you know, it is something that you would want to be a little more tech savvy before you do.

Just you want to have some awareness and take your time to read all the options available in these scripts to make sure that you don't disable anything that is essential to you.

Now, what about the startup apps, because this is another thing where you restart your computer.

Next thing.

No, it's like taking an hour because so many things are popping up as a computer restarts.

Yeah, exactly.

So you know, we only talked about an installing apps, and of course that's a very important first step.

But even if you have apps that you do use and one of them will't create these entries in the startup in the Windows startup and then will always launch whenever you turn on the computer, So it just starts to bog things down more and more as you install more of these programs.

And you don't always need these apps running in the background.

Sometimes you just want to have them and you launch them and you need them, and then you'll leave them alone.

So you know, you can go into the task manager in Windows on weven.

If you open the task manager, there's a startup tab, which has a little icon that looks like a speedometer on a car.

And there's a lot of apps there, and you can see like whether those startup entries are enabled or not, and you can enable, you can disable, you can disable these pretty freely.

This is even less risky than an installing an app, because only doing is preventing that app from running.

At startup.

You can always launch launch it yourself if you needed to function.

Oh wow, so yeah, I'm looking.

I'm looking at my list bing wallpaper, co pilot ever, no iTunes, helper three sixty five, co pilot teams, no sh in one drive, phone link, so all these things are running as soon as I turn on my computer.

I don't probably need all those things running every time I turn on my computer.

So again, it just searching.

Uh the taskbar says task manager, and you'll see it looks like you said, it's like a little spetometer, says startup aps.

Just go in there and disable the ones that you don't need.

Yeah, exactly.

That's that's a great starting point because a lot of those that take it all.

If you use something like Adobe Photoshop, the creative concuite always starts with the computer, and it's a pretty heavy piece of software.

So that's something I usually do every one's own because I only need it when I open photoshops, so I don't need it right now.

Yeah, and that's it's it's running as much as it can to make things faster when it does open.

But just open it up.

Okay.

What about the driver updates?

How do we check for those?

Okay?

So drivers, there's a few ways that they can be distributed because there's a lot of pieces to how drivers work.

So Windows updates, you know, when you open the settings out as the Windows Update section, some driver updates won't come through there automatically.

And then on that page there's also an advanced absence button, and if you go there, there's then an optional updates section and a lot of driver updates coming through there.

They're not mandatory, but you can always install them.

And then after that, it's also up to the manufacturer.

So if your computer manufacturer will have a website with drivers, you will have to look up your specific model, So that's kind of vary from person to person, but you'll look you can look up your model and there will be a page with all the drivers available for your PC.

And some of them might be newer.

A lot of computers also come with specific software that updates your drivers automatically, so you can do that a little more easily without going to the website.

And then you know, in the case of the graphics drivers, a m D and then VideA and the dedicated software for them that updates drivers.

Because graphics drivers are updated very frequently, so it makes sense to separate them a little bit from the computer or Windows, you.

Might want to have that dedicated software.

So that's usually the best way to update graphics driverge as well.

Okay, and this is always uh, you know, people are always interested in this malware.

What do you recommend?

You know, people think their computers infected, there's something going on.

What do you recommend for scanning for malware?

Right?

So, by the FHONT you know, Microsoft Defender has gone into indows eleven.

I always believe that it's a pretty solid solution, you know, for daily day use.

But when you're doing a deep clean like this and you want to make sure that you're getting as much as possible, like no little things still on your computer, the one I usually use is called malware Bytes.

It's been around for a while.

It is to become specifically manware, bite sometime malware.

But yeah, they have a very comprehensive solution.

It's they do have a premium version that offers real time protection.

But if you just want to run a scan, like on demand, it's free.

Okay.

So that's the difference is that if the free one you have to do the scan.

The paid one it will do scans in the background all the time, real time exactly.

Okay, good delineation, thank you.

Okay.

So it runs the scan and what it unearthed something?

Yeah, generally it will.

It's it's kind of a very good detection engine.

So most of them malware out there, I think I have very good experiences maware.

It's very good at detecting things.

If you look at my article.

Actually I wasn't expecting to have any hits when I was writing that article, but I ran, I ran the scan in the room at all four four items there.

Oh you found four things that it flags is like, hey, this stuff you might not want in there.

All right, we'll run out of time.

But finally delete temporary files.

What's the deal with that?

Okay, So that's that's the final one.

There's this is the feature that's part of Windows and it's perfectly safe.

There's if you're go into the settings, they're in the system section, there's a storage page, and then within that there's a temporary files section, and this allows you to do it all kinds of things that Windows stores to speed up certain processes, like there will be icons or things or thumbnails files like that.

There are storages to speed up certain things.

You don't really need them.

A lot of times they might be replaced by other files.

So it's a good idea to run this scan.

And when you when you open the temporary files page, you don't automatically.

Scan your computer for all the temporary files on there.

And aside from the.

Downloads folder, which you shouldn't select because that we will have most of your downloaded files.

You can select everything else and don't need all of it, and it will usually be perfume and fine.

Okay, so that's again just search storage and it'll it'll be right under the system storage.

You'll say temporary files.

All right, great information.

I'm going to link up the article on the website rich on Tech, but if you want to Google search it it is XDA developers.

You should deep clean your Windows PC every year to keep it running smoothly.

Here's how I do it, and my thanks to Joe for joining us today.

Thanks so much for joining me, Joe, thank you.

So much for the invitation.

It's been to wait time.

All right.

Now you know how to get your computer.

You don't even need a new one, just clean it up so easy.

All right, rich on Tech dot tv, I'll link up that article and coming up we are going to open up the feedback.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Oh my gosh, what a great show it has been.

It's not over yet.

I'm just saying it's been a good show.

Thanks to you, Thanks to you, thanks to Bobo, thanks to Kim.

You know, it's a group effort here, little part of me.

I just posted this to my Instagram at rich on Tech saw that there's a setting, it might be a new setting on Facebook where they might they might be scanning your phone's camera role.

Yes, scanning the pictures on your camera roll.

So there are two settings that basically the first one is less nefarious, but it's still like I don't want them scanning anything in my camera role.

So the first one basically says camera roll sharing suggestions.

So the first one is get camera roll suggestions.

When you're browsing Facebook and I've seen this before.

You're scrolling through Facebook says hey, you took this great picture.

Do you want to share it?

And it shows you one of the pictures you took, but it says, don't worry, this is private until you share it.

Nah, just turn that off altogether.

You don't need them looking through your pictures.

That's number one.

Now here's the scarier one.

Get creative ideas made for you by allowing camera roll cloud processing processing.

What does that mean?

Not only are they looking at your pictures on your camera roll, they're uploading them to Meta's cloud to analyze them and maybe affect them with AI or something creative.

And then present you that picture and they said they're scanning it for things like you know, we'll check for safety and integrity purposes.

Huh huh, nah, no, thank you.

So I would go in personally and change these settings to off.

It looks like the first one is turned on by default, which is the less nefarious, but the second one is turned off by default.

But I would turn them both off immediately.

And I just posted how to find these settings It's pretty easy.

Actually, just go into your Facebook settings and look for it's called camera.

Let's see camera role sharing suggestions.

But I posted the full instructions on my Instagram at rich on Tech, I would say take a look and uh yeah, nobody.

Nobody needs that time for the feedback.

These are your emails, your comments, your questions I get from you.

If you want to submit, just go to richon Tech dot tv hit contact.

Bruce writes in your latest newsletter, you had to be talking about you.

You had to be talking about me being trapped in the Apple eco system.

I almost committed to grabbing a new Pixel ten after reading about Magic Q.

But with my iPhone sixteen pro, max iPad Pro, Apple Watch, iMac, Apple TV Final Cut Pro and all the Apple subscriptions, the mountain to change would be too high to climb.

What do you run in here, Bruce?

An Apple store?

And then that's the other thing in the back of my mind.

Google's reputation of dropping devices and services after everyone has adopted them.

Great work, Please keep it up.

Thank you.

Uh No from Pico Rivera writes in Hey, rich I just wanted to share that my husband and I have been using a cell service called Tello.

Since twenty twenty one, we've had no issues.

We pay fourteen bucks a month plus taxes for five gigs of data with unlimited talking text.

You can adjust the plan to fit your needs.

Thanks for all your tech tips.

I enjoy yours newsletters and TV segments.

Noura great.

Tello is excellent, excellent, excellent.

I love them because you can basically build your own plan and customize it exactly the way you want.

So if you just want five hundred texts, no data and unlimited talk, you can do that and it just does the plan price accordingly.

George from Reading Pennsylvania listening on WRAW thirteen hundred says the caller who wanted to keep his old PC running asked about cleaning it up.

I always recommend downloading using Microsoft PC Manager.

It's a free and simple way to clear junk files and keep things running smoothly.

Yes, I've definitely mentioned PC manager before.

It is a easy tool.

Just make sure you're getting the actual official one from Microsoft, not an impost Day from Eastern Washington writes in I heard your show and wanted to share a couple of free tools for editing PDFs.

Try LibreOffice.

They can do it for free.

It does have a learning curve, but it works.

Also.

If you're having trouble changing file permissions, check out MCO unlock it.

I've used it when I couldn't manipulate a file and it helped.

I'm not an expert, but both are worth a try.

Yeah, Libra Office is is great.

Libra is it, Libra Libre Office lib It's like a free version of like Microsoft or Microsoft Office.

Luke from the UK rights in wow are We're all over the place.

I listened to your show every week on the podcast and I enjoy it.

On a recent episode, you talked about securely erasing discs.

I don't think the methods you mentioned are secure enough.

If you're donating, recycling, or selling an old PC or hard drive, it should be overwritten with zeros in one several times.

Windows reset only does this once.

I don't think it overroots the boot, overwrits the boot unless you reinstall from the cloud.

When I erase drives, I use a bootable OS called shred os.

It can do up to seven passes to make sure that data is virtually impossible to recover.

The interface is text base.

You navigate with the keyboard, so make sure you pick the correct drive if you have more than one for maximum protection, erase with zeros and then physically destroy the hard drive.

All right, Luke, you're you're running.

Like the uh Fort Knox over there with your stuff.

Bob from Australia rights in man.

We are worldwide.

One thing missing from your review of tank inkjet printers is the cost comparison with cartridge models.

It takes about three to four cartridge replacements using Excel pricing before a tank printer purchase really pays off, and for some people that's a lot of printing.

Ron from Washington says we've been using the epsoin et twenty seven sixty for years.

The black ink tank lasted us two years.

The color tanks are still a third full after three years.

The issue is the nozzle clog if we don't print enough.

The EPs and cleaning procedure works, but it's a long, repetitive process.

So I made a spreadsheet with colored stripes my printer nozzle exercise A print one every Sunday.

Unscrap.

Okay, let's see here, Okay, Amy says, I sign up your emails because I love hearing you.

I don't have time to read them until today, but like you talk, easy to read and understand.

I'm a sixty eight year old single lady.

Keeping up with tech is important to me.

Thank you, Thank you, Debrah New Milford, Connecticut.

My wife keeps oh, I said on my newsletter.

My wife keeps telling me my newsletters are too long.

Dever says she's right.

But the more I read, the more I find useful information.

I'm grateful you're the one gathering the facts.

Kudos.

I like your newsletter, and Ted in Palm Spring says I listen on one oh four point seven k news FM in Palm Springs.

Thanks for the outstanding show and long live New Jersey.

I grew up in Havertown, a suburb of Philadelphia.

Next week, Jefferson Graham Plus, we're gonna explain quantum computing.

Thanks so much for listening.

There are so many ways you can spend your time.

I do appreciate you spending it.

Right here with me.

My name is rich Dmiro.

I'll talk to you real soon