Echtek - Technology Consulting > Blog > General

The Right Internet Speed For Your Grandparents

August 22, 2014 General, Technology No comments yet

Remember back in the day of the dial up modem? The day when you had to make sure your parents and little sister did not pick up the phone in any other room as to not lose connection? Remember watching the little AOL man run across the screen as you listened to the sweet sound of the fax machine tones as it brought you to the “World Wide Web?” Great time right? You had the AOL software installed and from that one “Connect” button you were able to get online and search through websites, download things from Napster, and hang out in chat rooms with people. You were at the infancy of the Internet and little did you know what might become of it.

Flash forward to 2014 where your standard internet connection is at least 384kbps, which for those in the know is the standard DSL speed, and you are able to watch a video in less than 30 seconds, load multiple pictures, and have a fully function website come up no your browser in record time. Pretty sweet huh? But let’s back up a bit. When you were looking for an Internet Service Provider or ISP, what was your criteria? For the normal user including the elderly who are just coming in to this technology in the middle or tail end of their lives, it can all be very foreign to them. I am sure they probably even went to their children or grand children for advice, and that advice might just be, “Get what I have”; simply because it works. How are they to understand the Kilobytes or Megabytes or Gigabytes Per Second (KBPS)? How are we to protect them from being taken advantage of by service companies? And how can we keep them from breaking the bank?

First look at what your grandparents would use the internet for. Start with the simple things:

  • Browsing the web
  • Watching a video
  • Checking E-Mail
  • Making the occasional Skype Call

These are the basics of web use. Most older people are not familiar with the term Instant Messaging and the idea is very vague for them to understand but for those that do it must be quite pleasing to be able to talk and connect with them so quickly and easily than just the occasional visit or phone call. But look at the few thing like watching a video or making a skype call. Those take up a lot of bandwidth and if you have been sharing Wifi with a group of people and know when someone is watching a video, you see the speed drastically drop. So what would be good for them?

Your standard DSL package speed is about 384 KBPS. And there are plenty of companies like “NETZERO” which would say they are “faster than dial up by 10 times”. This is a funny statement as these companies are usually the ones that are slow to catch up with the times by being the ones who offered the “dial-up speed booster” when you had dial up. The reality is your dial-up connection was a 56KBPS connection. The software they provided you with to speed up the internet a month over dial-up most likely decreased the quality of pictures, made files smaller, and text different font to make it faster to render but it really did nothing toward making your speed faster. The reason it was called a 56K modem was simply because that was the fastest it could go: 56K. So that was the first scam they ran on you. So if we look to their claim as being “10 times faster” is really actually very wrong. The connection on most DSL modems can go at 384KBPS for the standard consumer model provided by phone companies and that is at the basic bundle. That is certainly enough to browse the web and read e-mail but will not be enough to handle YouTube or even voice on a Skype call. This is simple math. 56 x 10 = 560KBPS. That is not where close to 10 times. To prove this right you would have to rent the bundle with the upgraded model which goes at about 784KBPS and that is when you should rather just go with a basic cable package for internet because at that point your paying way to much.

Cable prices these days are not to bad. A basic package for a 50 Megabyte Per Second (MBPS) connection could start you between $30 and $40. Many cable companies will try and rope you in with bundles so be wary when calling. But for the internet technologies, software, and standards that are released every year the basic cable connection is your best bet. It is a solid connection for all the activities listed above and if ever needed most modems can boost up to 300MBPS, for a fee of course. Plus this basic package gives you some leeway to install a wireless router (if the one provided by the Cable company is not already wireless) so when you or family come to visit you can stream video and do whatever else you wish on the internet without your grandparents or parents losing money.

Now there is a warning that must be issued for those older people who have been up with technology and have an E-Mail from AOL and are still using the AOL software to connect to the internet. AOL may rightly be stealing money from you or them a month. If you have setup a different connection to the internet whether it be cable or DSL, and they are still using the AOL software to do everything on the web then they need to be shown whats happening. Now that you have put in a different connection the computer no longer uses itself to connect to the Internet as it did in the days of the 56K modem. The device the computer is connection to does. That device is always on so they no longer needs to hit the connect button on the AOL software to see the little yellow man run to the internet to connect. They have no need for the Mail app in the software or search or any of that antiquated functions that are currently no longer supported or produced by AOL. Why are they still paying for AOL then? Because somewhere in the transfer of their internet service AOL did not inform their users that they no longer provide internet connections and so they were able to justify the bill by saying that it is for support to their AOL software which is still being used.

It is intervention time. It is time to explain that the AOL software must be removed. They need to be shown how to access the internet without the software and how to check E-mail without the crutch. This is still a problem with senior citizens and $10 a month over many years is a lot of money for those on a budget or a fixed income. So sit down with your parents or grandparents and explain to them what is going on. Before the internet was a destination. Today the internet is always there and always on. We use it for communication, entertainment, and work. In this time of net neutrality it is time to bring them out of the dark of the old internet, save them some money, and move them into the light of standard connectivity.

Because getting an E-Mail or Instant message from Grandma or Grandpa is just as sweet if you know that they are not getting ripped off for sending it.

Read More

EA Access Announced

July 30, 2014 Gaming, General No comments yet

EA announced a new service yesterday called “EA Access”. The service is akin to Netflix. You’ll be able to play EA Titles for $4.99 a month. Currently the beta is out and you can play: FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2 and Battlefield 4. On top of being able to play full games, you will also get to save 10% on all XBox One EA Digital Downloads and be able to play up to 5 days ahead of other people. Soon you will also be able to buy subscriptions in retail and online stores.

It sounds pretty exciting but it is yet to be seen if the library of EA Games available keeps up with the pace of releases. Sure, the current offering has some of their most popular games but if the service stays behind the curve, I won’t be shelling out $5 a month.

It is also interesting to note that Sony passed on EA Access saying it was not a good value. (check this IGN Article for more info)

Read More

Webhosting Explained

July 23, 2014 General, Technology No comments yet

Are you looking to start your own website for your clan or guild? or even just to have a personal website? The first task is finding a webhost to host your website. This can be a daunting task but I’m going to tell you what you should be looking for to make your buying experience less stressful. Also, as a quick note, I am not being paid by either company I am comparing in this article.

It’s the year 2014, gone are the days of paying for bandwidth (the amount of memory your website sends over the internet). Earlier in the 90s and even 2000s, webhosts would have you pay for the amount of bandwidth you wanted. This would obviously restrict you to a certain amount of data and then they’d either charge you overage or just take down your website for the rest of the pay cycle. Think about buying a cell phone and going over your minutes, it’s what used to happen with websites. So obviously, any company that does not provide “Unlimited Bandwidth” is pretty much not worth even looking into.

Just like bandwidth, storage space is also mostly unlimited now. With technology the way it is, it is very cheap for companies to add more storage space to their servers so again, any company not offering “Unlimited Storage” is not worth looking into.

I’m going to put a comparison between 2 companies and then explain the differences:

comparison

Dreamhost vs Godaddy

You can see by the comparison, it’s a really tight race. Obviously both companies have more than just those package options but these were the closest to being the same.

Confused as to what “Shared Hosting” means? Shared Hosting just means that your website is hosting on the same server that other sites are hosted on, it’s the way for companies to keep the prices so low. It also means that all the server resources are shared (think about running multiple games on the same PC at the same time, after a certain number of games open, all of them are going to run a little slower). Both Dreamhost and GoDaddy utilize “Shared Hosting”.

What is a MySQL Database? MySQL is the language in which the database is written in. The database is what most websites use to store data (this blog uses a MySQL Database to store all of the blog posts and other information). With Dreamhost you get a nice unlimited Database. GoDaddy limits the number of databases you can have and how big those databases can be. Given, most databases are relatively small, but if your website does grow above that number, GoDaddy would hit you with another charge.

So conclusions are that the main things you need to be looking for are Bandwidth, Storage, and if your host can provide databases and provide them unlimited or not.

Personally, I’ve been using Dreamhost since 2008 to host all sorts of sites, including this blog. I have never had any problem with my webhosting at all. Their customer service is pretty quick and personalized. Unfortunately I haven’t really ever used GoDaddy to make a comparison but honestly, I’ve never felt the need to go shopping for a new webhost in all the years I’ve been with Dreamhost and that says something.

To order a site from Dreamhost, check out the order page on this site! We also have a 15% off new webhosting promo code! Exclusively for readers of this blog!

Read More

Discussion on Net Neutrality

July 16, 2014 General, Technology 1 comment

The concept of Net Neutrality has become a huge point of contention in the US. Upon trying to get more information I was bombarded with what seemed to me like screaming either for or against and it seemed very hard to me to get a good grasp about what exactly the arguments were. I’m going to try to set out both sides in a way that makes sense and then add my 2 cents to the pile.

Net Neutrality is really the term for keeping the internet “free”. That means that the internet companies can’t tinker with the flow of data over its networks. “Tinker” can mean a lot of different things from limited access to specific sites to purposely slowing the speed of the internet for certain people to “spying” on their networks. Scary thought? Very Scary. So with that being said, it would seem that the answer would be clear cut right? Wrong. If the answer were as clear cut as that, there wouldn’t be an argument. The FCC (Federal Communication Commission) is the government body that regulates communication in the US. In 2011, Verizon filed suit against the FCC for overstepping their rights to regulate and won. This is when Net Neutrality became a huge issue.

Opponents of Net Neutrality (surprise, surprise, most big voices against Net Neutrality are the Internet Companies themselves) put forth some actually clear arguments. The biggest argument is that the regulation by the FCC would cause the infrastructure to lag even further behind the rest of the world. To back up a step, for those of you who don’t know, the US lags far behind other developed nations in broadband speed and bandwidth. If there was no Net Neutrality, the argument is that the internet companies could charge for “Tiered” service and thus make more money to spend on building up the infrastructure which would eventually lead to higher speeds and better coverage overall.

What is “Tiered Service”? Think of it like a line to get on a Disney World Attraction. If you have a Fast Pass you can get into a special line and get to ride the other ride faster than someone in the regular line. Essentially what the internet companies could do would be to create these faster tiers of internet and charge more for it.

The other big argument is that letting the FCC (A government entity) regulate the internet would cause even more problems. It is put in this way: Right now, as a customer, you have a choice. With the FCC regulating, every company would essentially become the same and the choice would be ripped away from you.

Given those 2 big points, let me show you why there is an argument. The way that the large internet companies argue, introducing the Tiered Internet Model would give them more money to invest in infrastructure. However, what is the goal of any company? To make more money. The fear is that without any FCC Regulations, the Internet Companies would start Tiered Internet but then have no incentive to actually invest the money, but instead just line their own pockets. The Tiered Internet Model would also impact low income customers who would not be able to afford the faster tier and then be stuck with an internet that is slow and worse than someone able to pay for a higher tier. It is not only going to affect the customer directly but indirectly too. Without FCC regulation, Internet Providers could cut deals with companies like Netflix. For example: Verizon and Netflix could cut a deal where Netflix would be the only movie streaming service available on Verizon Internet or at the very least, stream faster and with higher quality than a competing service. That would cause the customers to pay more since a deal like that would cost Netflix a lot of money, driving up their subscription costs.

In regards to the argument that if the FCC were regulating, the customer would have little choice left is just absurd. The Internet Companies pretty much have a monopoly on the industry anyway. Most Americans only have 2 – 3 choices of internet providers.

There are more arguments on both sides but those are the two that come up again and again. Honestly, I think the underlying problem is not Net Neutrality but the monopolies that have sprung up causing there to hardly be any competition and driving prices way up. An Op-Ed Piece in the New York Times from 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html?_r=0) really explains the underlying problem. In France and much of the other civilized parts of the world, internet is cheap. How cheap? Imagine getting 1000mbps up and down for $33.00. You can in Seoul, South Korea. Look at: http://oti.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/The_Cost_of_Connectivity_2013_Data_Release.pdf for more information about the prices around the world.

We’ll see what happens but personally, I believe that nothing is going to get fixed until we do something about the Internet Company Monopolies and their chokehold on the industry.

Read More

Thoughts on Destiny’s Special Editions

July 8, 2014 Gaming, General No comments yet

If you have bought a game in the past few years, you know the multiple options you have. There is obviously the “normal” version which just includes the game but what else can there possibly be to create not one, but multiple “higher” versions of the same game and not only that, but charge a lot more for the same game?

Let’s take a look at Destiny. Destiny for those of you who don’t know is a game releasing on August 9th, 2014 from Bungie (creators of the Halo Franchise). Click HERE for more information on the game.

Yesterday, Bungie announced the different versions of the game being released. There are 3 “Special Editions”: The Digital Guardian Edition, Limited Edition and The Ghost Edition. The Digital Guardian Edition is retailing for $89.99, the Limited Edition comes in at $99.99 and the Ghost Edition comes in at a whopping $149.99. There is also an expansion pass that retails for $34.99 and includes the first 2 expansions (it is included with all 3 of the special editions).

The Digital Guardian Edition is simply just the game and the expansion pass, which does make sense if you think you are going to purchase the expansions down the line anyway. If you were to buy the expansions singularly, each one is going to retail for $19.99. So in total if you bought everything separately, you’d spend $99.97 OR $94.98 for the regular edition plus the expansion pass. The next 2 special edition’s price tags make a lot less sense.

The Limited Edition comes with the following (taken from HERE): Limited Edition SteelBook™ Case and Game Disc, Guardian Folio, “Arms and Armament” Field Guide, Postcards from the Golden Age, Antique Star Chart, A Unique Ghost Casing, An Exclusive Player Emblem and An Exclusive Player Ship Skin.
INCLUDES THE DESTINY EXPANSION PASS

The only things that are useful to the player from a gameplay standpoint are the digital items you get, everything else are extra physical items that do little more than sit on a shelf and for that, you pay $10 more than the Digital Guardian Edition. It doesn’t seem that bad when you break it down like this but considering the items are most likely cheaply made (I can’t be sure on this yet, but when I unbox my Limited Edition I will be sure to make a follow-up post), it costs Bungie almost nothing to mass produce the items.

Then there is the Ghost Edition that comes with the following (taken from HERE): Ghost Replica, Limited Edition SteelBook™ Case and Game Disc, Guardian Folio, “Arms and Armament” Field Guide, Postcards from the Golden Age, Antique Star Chart, A Unique Ghost Casing, An Exclusive Player Emblem and An Exclusive Player Ship Skin.
INCLUDES THE DESTINY EXPANSION PASS

The ONLY thing that is different here is the Ghost Replica (I believe the Ghost is like your companion in the world of Destiny, think Navi from Zelda Ocarina of Time (Click HERE for more). What exactly is one supposed to do with a Ghost Replica? I guess display it on a shelf but for $50 more for what comes down to a dust collector, personally, I can’t justify the price. Apparently they are only making a limited amount of Ghost Editions but there is no way the package will gain value in the long term as an opened box. If you’re planning on not playing the game and not opening a Ghost Edition it may possibly be worth something to someone at sometime. If you have that kind of money to buy a Ghost and a Limited then go for it but for your average gamer, the Ghost Edition seems to be a lot of money for nothing.

I am fully aware that as I get older, I am becoming more cynical and money conscious but it’s a hard sell for anyone at $150 for a bunch of physical items that are essentially useless except as a shelf item or conversation starter.

Read More
Social
Recent Posts
Archives