Electronics Rant

[Kraffty]

For the last month or so it seems our electronic services and devices have banded together and conspired to come up with interesting ways to add frustration to our lives. Our phones have started dropping calls, breaking up or just showing the message “call failed”. Verizon offered to sell us a signal booster that plugs into our network but so far it hasn’t really helped much because it’s plugged into our internet. Our internet service has deteriorated over the last 6 months to the point where last weekend we were without service for about 50% of the time. CenturyLink pings the line, says all is fine and the problem must be on our end - it’s not. They have shipped us 3 different modems - no improvement, and still won’t send out a tech. So last Sunday, having had enough of this nonsense and acting swiftly I Google “satellite internet”……. “you are not connected to the internet”………. OK…. so the next day I contact Viasat and in just three days we had a new service provider. Speeds seem a bit slower but it hasn’t glitched once. My phone now has 4 bars vs. 1 or 2 before.

During this same time period my 16 month old 85” Sony X800H TV broke a pixel or blew a board or threw a rod, it was still running but had a vertical red line right down the center. 4 months out of warranty but we did have an insurance policy thru Direct TV that covers all electronic devices in the house. They shipped us a “comparable” replacement set that arrived with a cracked screen and eventually settled with us by sending a check for 1900.00. Lori agreed to stepping up to the X900H model as long as we drove down to Tempe to pick it up ourselves and to buy a 5 year extended warranty. Done and done and, for anyone looking for a really nice picture, the X900 is awesome. When we picked it up the tv store had the comparable LG and Samsung versions side by side and the Sony easily had the best picture, brightest colors, really dark blacks and strong contrast.

Viasat internet is twice the cost of what we were paying but they did offer a bundle with Dish TV and making that switch from Direct TV actually ended up saving us a few dollars for the same packages of shows. Century Link is telling me they are billing me 8 months of service left on the contract we had with them. I’ll contest that of course, they certainly didn’t hold up their end of the contract, small claims maybe? Complaint filed with FCC maybe? Pay it and shut up maybe?

Arizona Power also just sent us a google Nest smart thermostat that I need to install, do I feel lucky, well do I? I’m thinking we’re due for a quiet period now, hopefully Seri tells the other electronics to knock it off for a while if not maybe the google assistant on the tv will.

 

[Bossbaby]

I miss the days of no cell phones and plain old cable tv believe it or not, I'm 41 yrs old but vaguely remember the good ol days .

 

[Boatboy24]

My wife and kids are constantly complaining about internet speed - it seems just fine to me, so I'm not sure what they're complaining about. Our TV service from Verizon however, leaves ample room for improvement.

One of our thermostats died about 18 months ago and we got a Nest. I like it, but can't stand the idea that Google is gathering data every minute. I had wanted an Ecobee (compatible with Apple HomeKit), but our HVAC guy didn't have any in stock. Should be a simple switch if I really want to do it though.

On the plus side of technology, we replaced our 13 year old Honda Pilot last weekend with a brand new 2021 model. Our "newer" car had been my 2011 Outback which will be 11 years old this summer. The tech in cars now is just awesome. Between waving your foot under the rear bumper to open the lift gate to remote start and Apple Carplay, I'm having too much fun with my wife's new car. It's crazy. The kid's can literally plug in the Nintendo Switch and play video games on the screen in the back. If they get bored with that, plug in a phone and watch movies on Netflix. When I was a kid, I was thrilled to sit in the 'way back' of the station wagon and look for unusual license plates.

 

[balatonwine]

We had similar issues. We are fully wireless. Internet started to degrade, especially during the tourist season. Pings mean nothing. Sending a tiny amount of data back and forth only confirms a connection. Nothing more. But during heavy loads the system will start to drop those with the weakest interconnecting signal.

I simply installed an external antenna for the Internet modem. Problems went away.

Phones are more a problem. We still have to "walk the property" at times to find that day's "sweet spot" to keep the connection.

Ergo, it is not your devices. It is the telecom companies who have not updated and upgraded their systems for the current and ever increasing loads. And if you are someone at the end of the chain, you will be cut off. And they will do nothing for you, since you are in the minority.

Sadly, once people get tired of land based signals being dropped, and more and more migrate to satellite, you might experience the same. Ergo, you would have been better to not have made this post, and kept a good thing private....

 

[ibglowin]

Seems like we all go through periods where the tech is just not working as well as it should. I wonder how many/most families who are not techno nerds keep things up and running at times.

We gave up on Centurylink years ago. We are only 0.75 miles from the hub and the best they could/would offer me was 6MB. Across the street they were offering 12MB. Our other option was Comcast/Xfinity. Once upon a time they were very unreliable in this area. They seem to have upgraded their infrastructure enough (where Centurylink has not upgraded anything) to the point that for the last several years we are up over 95% of the time and outages are only a few minutes or an hour or so max. Our speeds seem to keep going up every 12-18 months as well with no increase in price. I signup for a 12mo contract and get a nice monthly discount. We now have 200MB advertised speed but we easily get 260MB sustained. We are paying $60/month and that includes TTL as they say. They offer speeds up to 1GB but that is more than what we need. I have 3 networks in the house. A wired portion which I installed before wifi was invented. Then a wireless portion with an Apple Airport Extreme and 2 Airport Express in Extended Mode. Got tired of the slow speeds in the back/fringe areas of the house when we were on the Airport Express so I picked up an Eero Mesh 3 hub system about 6 months ago made by Amazon. That has really improved speeds in the back of the house. I need to migrate things over at some point so more things are directly connected to the Mesh Network. We have so many connected devices in our house I don't see how we could ever go back to old school DSL. We do have a small local company (LANET) that is doing wireless internet. You have to have good LOS to their towers and course living in this terrain that is problematic in lots of areas. They are also a little slower in speed and a little higher in price but folks seem to like doing business with a small locally owned company than a huge nationwide cable TV company. I run my own owned modem so there is no monthly lease fees which are crazy high.

We recently dumped Verizon (but not really) and swiched over to Xfinity Mobile. We were paying over $100 a month for 2 smartphones and 3GB shared data. When we retired from the Lab we lost our 20% discount Verizon was offering LANL employees. The Lab uses Verizon network for all company phones so that is probably over 10,000 phones. When we lost our discount I called in and was trying to see what they could do for someone who had been with them for over 20 years. Answer nothing. Not even a Senior Discount to be had. Xfinity Mobile uses the Verizon network. We have the same 3GB data but now our phone bill is $30 total (you only pay for the data). Whats the catch? You have to have Xfinity Internet. Not an issue. Our cell phones are set up to do VOIP when at home and that works great. We have a tower 1 mile away so when we leave the house we have 5 bars around town. Verizon has the best network in NM. We had ATT for a few years but gave up on them as they refused to put a single tower in Los Alamos County since Verizon had the lab contract.


One thing I would recommend is to reboot your entire network every week or two. Not sure why but if you see download speeds slowing down (I use Speedtest.net app) a reboot seems to brings things back to their optimum download speed.

@Kraffty you may want to look into SpaceX Starlink internet to compare price/speed to what your getting. Also if you have a Cable provider in your area like I do you may look into them and be surprised at the price/performance currently being offered.

https://www.satelliteinternet.com/providers/starlink/

 

[Khristyjeff]

can't stand the idea that Google is gathering data every minute. I had wanted an Ecobee (compatible with Apple HomeKit)

I agree with you on Google. Privacy is a plus for Apple in my opinion.

 

[Kraffty]

Starlink looks interesting, we received an ad from them the day we had Viasat installed. They're asking 99.00 to get on a waiting list - right. Equip is 500 and service is 99 a month. Supposedly Viasat is a few months away from launching Viasat3 which should increase speeds and I assume just require an Alt-Atzimuth adjustment to the dish. What ever we settle on we've already had more uninterupted service since thursday than in the last year with century Link.

We do have another service, sort of, available that offers at least 3 or 4 times the speed. Neighbors across the street have it, but the cable runs under the street, naked and not in conduit and to a box in our front yard but, the cable is broken. They don't really have an incentive to come out, trench the street to run new cable for just one customer.

 

[Robert R]

When my wife and I moved out of Tulsa to our little 20-acre paradise in the woods, we also moved beyond the reach of Cox cable and DSL from anybody. Tried AT&T for phone, cellular and internet via their MiFi hotspot device - when it worked at all, it was barely over dial-up speeds, and had to be rebooted almost daily. Our digital life became very frustrating, with much wailing, cursing, and gnashing of teeth. Until my wife saw a new sign on a corner about a new local high-speed internet service that had just put a tower in our area. We couldn't get signed up fast enough, and the cursed ATT became a blasphemous utterance in our house (right up there with Dodge, but that's off topic). We pay $77.14 a month to Airlink for all the data speed our devices need (including streaming for TV), and Verizon became our cellular service. We've been satisfied with both. We do have a 20' tower atop our 2-story house for the Airlink signal, since we need line-of-sight.

 

[ibglowin]

My In-laws got taken by the ATT MiFi scam. They live in Plattsburg, MO about an hour North of KC, MO. Little bitty town that had cable at one time but I guess they went belly up. They had Centurylink for a few years but it was pitifully slow and expensive for what they were actually getting. They were looking to bundle and ATT had the magic sales pitch and they fell for it. They did not read the fine print. It only allowed for TEN (10) devices to be connected to the MiFi at any given time. Between their cell phones, computers, pads and an Amazon Echo they were at 10 devices. So anytime they had company or family over they could not connect unless you kicked someone else off the MiFi......

We stayed a week and it was in late January and it was sleeting/snowing the entire week so not much to do. Stuck inside. Every time we wanted to do anything it was a decision as to who got kicked off......