Into Tomorrow Quickies

Dave Talks To Naveen Jain, Chairman of Moon Express about his private endeavor to send men back to the moon

Dave talks to Ryan Pamplin, VP of Sales & Partnerships of Meta about the future of our wearables

Dave Talks to Daniel Pidgeon, CEO of StarPower & outgoing chairman of CTA about the state of the industry

Part 2: Dave talks to Dr. Shawn DuBravac, Chief Economist and Steve Koenig, Senior Director of Market Research at CTA about the tech forecast for the upcoming holiday season.

Tom asked: "We live in a two floor condo. On the outer areas of it, the Wi-Fi drops off. Do wi-fi range extenders work? If so, where should I place it? Is price a factor and if so, how much can I expect to spend?"   Tom, range extenders do work, and if you buy one you should place it as close as you can to the area you want to extend the network to while still being in an area that gets solid WiFi from the router. The extender needs something to extend, that means that it absolutely needs to get a good signal, from there it will re-broadcast the network. As for how much you can expect to spend, a basic device will be very cheap, think around $20, while a complex system that can find and eliminate dead spots on its own by redirecting beams will cost you many hundreds, but those are mainly sold as business devices. You can probably give the less expensive option a try, it’s likely to work for you.

Dave talks to Hyojun Ji, Sales Team Manager at Hanssem about their vacuum Blender

Howard Harrison, Co-Founder & CEO of Knomo about their designer Bags for the Digital World

Joyce asked: "What is the best iPad to buy?"   Joyce, “best” depends on your needs. The most advanced model right now is the 9.7” iPad Pro, it has all of the features of the 12.9” Pro, but with a 4K-capable camera, and better colors. Obviously, if you plan to work with it and need a bigger screen, the 12.9” would probably be a better fit for you. If you don’t want features like Pencil but don’t want an 8” screen, maybe the less expensive 9.7” Air 2 would fit your needs. If you want to carry it around either of the current Mini models would be good for you. If you care more about saving money than you you care about a fingerprint sensor, the current base model, the Mini 2, would probably be enough for you. The Pros can be adequate content production devices, the other models are better being used as media consumption devices. The different iPads fit different needs so the best iPad to buy probably depends on what you want out of yours.

Beth asked: "My wife as an iPhone 6. She's trying to download the new OS. Every time she tries to do it, it says she is not connected to the Internet. It does it whether she is connected to Wi-Fi or LTE. I read that it may be due to a corrupted download. So I deleted it and re-downloaded it and it did the same thing."   Joshua, if your wife’s phone refuses to upgrade the OS on it’s own, your best bet might be to bypass it altogether and install it from your computer. Most people don’t bother to do it this way anymore, but you can still update an iPhone through iTunes. Just plug in the phone, click on update, and let the computer download the file and check it. Your phone wouldn’t need to be connected to anything because it would be the computer dealing with the download, so the phone shouldn’t complain. It may leave you wondering what is keeping your phone from doing it in the first place, but since the answer to that usually ends up being "I don’t know, I had to restore to make it work," it ultimately doesn’t matter why, it just matters that you can update your OS if you want to. iOS 10 is widely reported to be causing iPhones to freeze following the update, also. So you might want to wait for a few days, or even a week, and see whether iOS 10.0.2 comes out quickly (the initial release version was 10.0.1).

Bill asked: "Switched our office to VOIP. Got 5 extensions. It's not like the old days, so when the power goes out, the phones go out. Are there solutions out there that make sense for power supply to the individual phones? And also the base unit, the router and the modem to keep you up and running with VOIP?"     Bill, what you’re looking for are UPS units, not the shipping people but Uninterruptible Power Supply units. Luckily, phones and basic network equipment are not very power hungry, so even basic ones should keep you running for a while. Prices vary because units are rated for different power, and they’ll typically say something like “10 minutes at full power” or even “2 minutes at full power”. Full power is something closer to a computer, your equipment should be able to run far longer on them. Unfortunately, these things are just big batteries so eventually they do go bad and will need to be replaced, but they should keep you going if your office loses power for a short time. If it is not short periods that you’re worried about, then you’d probably have to look at something like a generator, but that’s probably overkill unless you lose power for days at a time. If you’re thinking of maybe 15 minutes or an hour, then look into UPS units. In many cases, VOIP phones can be powered using something called POE (Power over Ethernet). This is where your switch sends power to the phones using the same Ethernet cable used to carry the data. The phone itself is no longer plugged in. The magic sauce here is that as long as you have a battery backup on the switch, it won’t lose power and it will in turn keep the phones running. Remember that you’ll need to also have a battery backup on whatever devices bring your phone service in, whether that’s a standard cable modem or a dedicated PRI circuit. (PRI is old school telephone speak for Primary Rate Interface, which is the standard for business telephone service.) You will need a new switch, if the one you have now doesn’t support POE. Keep in mind that all POE isn’t created equal. You need enough power per port to run the phones and enough total power in the switch to run the aggregate of all the ports. Good luck! I hope some of this helps you.

Dennis asked: "My satellite provider has just gone to war with two of my local stations. I don't want to miss programming that I am paying for. Is there a best way to get those programs? I have tried an indoor antenna and it just doesn't work. I'd like your recommendation on a way to receive local programming and be able to record that programming."     Unfortunately you are being used as a bargaining chip in a squabble over dollars between two rich companies, and there is very little you can do. Over the air broadcast signals can’t be rebroadcast on any service without paying the station who aired the signal. In some major markets, streaming devices are just now beginning to offer local affiliates with some of their service packages. However, Tupelo isn’t on any of those lists that we’ve seen. Elvis would not be pleased. So your choices really are limited to an Over The Air antenna, which you’ve tried and it didn’t work, or a subscription to a cable or satellite company that is rebroadcasting the local affiliates. We will put a link in our show notes to a great online article listing 5 ways to get the best performance out of your indoor antenna. Perhaps one of their tips can help you improve your reception. Good luck!

Chris asked: "I have a question about a laptop that doesn't seem to hold the time, on the bottom corner. Everything I'm reading seems to point to a BIOS problem. Is there a way I can test my BIOS or my CMOS Battery to see if that's the problem before I open up the laptop?"     Chris, it definitely sounds like a CMOS battery problem, if your computer is a few years old it may have still come with BIOS firmware instead of the newer UEFI firmware, and it would still be using a battery. Unfortunately, there’s no way to check the battery other than to test it with a voltmeter (it should read 3V), and to do that you’d need to open up your laptop, and if you’re opening it up anyway you might as well replace the battery whether it’s dead or not. The way to tell that the battery is need of replacing would be to run into the exact symptom you’re running into, though, so it’s a good bet that you need to replace it. The battery isn’t technically necessary of for the computer to run, but you will have to manually set the date and time each time you turn it on, if you try to ignore it and don’t set the correct date some security certificates may refuse to let your computer access some secure applications. The easiest path will be to replace the battery. However, before you spend a ton of time tearing the laptop apart, let’s ask what you mean by not keeping time? Do you mean that when you shut the computer down and start it up the next morning, the clock hasn’t advanced much past the time you shut it down? Because if the clock is off by a neat number of hours, your computer might have the wrong time zone configured in its operating system. We’ve seen Windows machines inexplicably return to Pacific time zone after years of living happily on the East coast. We suspect it has something to do with the feature where Windows tries to decide what time zone it’s in by what IP address it was given. That’s a less than perfect science, sometimes. So check that before you go cracking open cases.

Vince asked: "I have an unlimited plan with Verizon Wireless. It's a grandfathered plan. I average between 18 and 24 GB per month. They are offering me one of their data packages. One of them is 30 GB per month. They're saying I can save about 60 dollars a month by switching to that plan. Is it worth it or should I keep what I got?"   Vince, if you already peak at 24GB some months you’ll probably go over 30GB at some point in the future, maybe not now and not for a while, but it’s possible that you will eventually. Normally we’d say that’s a reason to avoid swapping your plan for one with a 30GB limit, having said that, $60 is an awful lot of money… In fact, $60 is enough money to pay for a whole plan. As long as you’re considering switching plans, you may be best served by having a good picture of the whole field. Look at what others offer besides Verizon, you may be able to find a cheaper plan that gives you enough data. If you intend to stick with them though, 6GB is a big buffer, so for $60/month, it may not be a bad idea to switch.

Shirley asked: "I have a Galaxy S5 phone. It's time for the renewal. I have lots of apps on my phone. I'd like to upgrade again. I don't know which phone. Maybe the S7. How do I get all my apps to come over to the other phone? It didn't happen last time I upgraded. I feel there must be a way."     Shirley, the easiest way should be to use Samsung’s own migration assistant. The processes is simple, you connect the two phones with a USB cable, or even through WiFi or NFC, sit back and wait. When it’s done you should have all your contacts, pictures, music, and apps. Now, as Dave can tell you, that may not work at all. Since, your mileage may vary, you’re better off knowing that some carriers make their own phone migration apps, so if Samsung’s own assistant doesn’t work you might as well try your carrier’s attempt. That unfortunately doesn’t always work either, so if that fails too you may have to do the manual thing you had to do last time. Which is not fun, and is not quick, but sometimes it is the only thing that works. We have faith in Samsung’s migration assistant, you may have better luck than Dave did.

Dave asked: "I have an HP Stream mini computer. It's only for streaming. It's only got 2 gig of RAM and a 32 gig SSD drive. I've also got a 1TB usb drive that I'm not currently using. Is there a way to attach a USB drive and move programs and install new programs on that drive. I'd also like to find a way to set some programs, like Netflix, to use that drive for buffering purposes."     Dave, the only HP Stream computers we know of are the very small, inexpensive Windows computers that HP came out with around the time Google introduced Chromebooks. Those computers are discontinued now, but they used to have two ways to upgrade their storage, 1) replacing the micro SSD drive inside, 2) just plugging in a USB drive on one of the two ports in the back. Windows should really just take care of the rest and use the drive. If you want to install program there, just tell Windows that’s where you want them during the installation. As for getting Netflix to use that drive for buffering, that may be harder and it may be counter productive too. Netflix will probably just buffer content on whatever folder the browser is using for cache. You could look into changing that but an internal SSD drive will be faster than an external 1TB drive, and you shouldn’t need 10s of gigs for buffering anyway. If you really want to do it, after plugging in the drive go into your preferred browser’s settings and look for “cache directory” or “cache folder,” just set that to be a folder on the external drive if you can, but you will probably see better performance if you keep using the SSD. In all seriousness, though, it’s hardly worth upgrading an HP Stream notebook. An HP 250 G5 notebook with a 15.6” screen, equipped with an 5th Generation Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a much more reasonable 128GB SSD, is only $299 at Newegg.com. That price includes a Windows 10 license. With a usable configuration like that costing less than $300, it’s hard to imagine upgrading a very low end system like the HP Stream.