Random Tech Questions you want answered.

merphle wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

I have this laptop and I like it a lot. Only issue I've had with it is that the wi-fi card sometimes disappears. I think that's a Windows 11 issue, though, since it's been pretty stable the last 6 months.

Schrödinger's WiFi is a feature, not a bug.

WiFi, Bluetooth, and battery stuff has always been hot garbage for me in Windows. My theory is because these are technologies that were bolted on top of the spaghetti code pile that is Windows.

My basic desktop that doesn’t use any of these is rock solid. Every laptop that I’ve ever owned has given me grief in one or more of the above technologies.

PaladinTom wrote:
merphle wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

I have this laptop and I like it a lot. Only issue I've had with it is that the wi-fi card sometimes disappears. I think that's a Windows 11 issue, though, since it's been pretty stable the last 6 months.

Schrödinger's WiFi is a feature, not a bug.

WiFi, Bluetooth, and battery stuff has always been hot garbage for me in Windows. My theory is because these are technologies that were bolted on top of the spaghetti code pile that is Windows.

My basic desktop that doesn’t use any of these is rock solid. Every laptop that I’ve ever owned has given me grief in one or more of the above technologies.

Definition of technology: stuff that does not work properly every time.

When it works every time we call it a tool.

PaladinTom wrote:
merphle wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

I have this laptop and I like it a lot. Only issue I've had with it is that the wi-fi card sometimes disappears. I think that's a Windows 11 issue, though, since it's been pretty stable the last 6 months.

Schrödinger's WiFi is a feature, not a bug.

WiFi, Bluetooth, and battery stuff has always been hot garbage for me in Windows. My theory is because these are technologies that were bolted on top of the spaghetti code pile that is Windows.

My basic desktop that doesn’t use any of these is rock solid. Every laptop that I’ve ever owned has given me grief in one or more of the above technologies.

Add audio to the list of janky as heck technologies that barely works in Windows. That and bluetooth is always crapping out on me on my PC.

I have an old free Google Apps account with my on domain that I've had for a long time. I've always had a cheap host that just basically existed to redirect the mail to google so that I could have my own vanity domained email. I don't care about hosting a website with this domain, just getting personal emails.

I've looked around a bit to try to figure out if I could just cut out that web host and go directly from my registrars configuration to google without that host in the middle?

Up until now, the host was so cheap that I didn't care to bother, but they've been acquired I'm getting charged more now a month than I used to pay for a quarter. Plus their billing process sucks and every month they claim they can't process my credit card, requiring me to chat with their tech support to manually process the card.

MannishBoy wrote:

I've looked around a bit to try to figure out if I could just cut out that web host and go directly from my registrars configuration to google without that host in the middle?

Have you looked at Domains.google.com?
I bought my vanity domain from them years ago and they've charged me $12 a year to essentially give me a few custom dns entries to a family blog and a handful of email aliases if we don't want to hand out our primary handle.

Rezzy wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

I've looked around a bit to try to figure out if I could just cut out that web host and go directly from my registrars configuration to google without that host in the middle?

Have you looked at Domains.google.com?
I bought my vanity domain from them years ago and they've charged me $12 a year to essentially give me a few custom dns entries to a family blog and a handful of email aliases if we don't want to hand out our primary handle.

I think that came out of beta a few months ago. I will look at moving my domain over when I renew, but I think it's renewed for at least a couple more years.

I looked at this a few years back, and from what I remember yes you can have your domain emails redirected to Gmail. What you couldn't do is send FROM your domain email, it would always show your Gmail address as the sending identity ("on behalf of").

My daughter has a Windows laptop, I think an Acer, and its wifi performance is dank booty. Really the pits.

She’s tried a few USB wifi adapters, and I bought her an AC dual-band adapter, but none of them perform any better than the onboard radio.

Aside from ensuring drivers are properly installed, does this ring any particular causal bells? She’s running Windows 10 but I don’t have other specifications off-hand.

I’m going to have her look at Device Manager and see if there’s any alerts on network devices, but I feel like I dug in there when she was visiting.

muraii wrote:

My daughter has a Windows laptop, I think an Acer, and its wifi performance is dank booty. Really the pits.

She’s tried a few USB wifi adapters, and I bought her an AC dual-band adapter, but none of them perform any better than the onboard radio.

Aside from ensuring drivers are properly installed, does this ring any particular causal bells? She’s running Windows 10 but I don’t have other specifications off-hand.

I’m going to have her look at Device Manager and see if there’s any alerts on network devices, but I feel like I dug in there when she was visiting.

A lot of Windows laptops have replaceable internal wifi cards if you want to go a bit deeper to the point of opening it up. You'll have to research the model.

MannishBoy wrote:

A lot of Windows laptops have replaceable internal wifi cards if you want to go a bit deeper to the point of opening it up. You'll have to research the model.

Laptops are the hipsters of the m.2 world. They used it long before it was cool.

Dank booty is not a very technical description of the issue. Is it just slow? Constantly dropping? If the issue is happening with another NIC then I would start looking at factors other than the NIC/laptop.

Check your router settings and see if she is connecting to the 2.4GHz (better range, but more interference) or 5GHz band (better speed, but doesn't travel through walls as good as 2.4GHz). Might also try doing a signal test from areas she is having issues and tests in those places with other devices. Might just be too far from the router and needs a bridge/repeater/mesh setup to improve the signal in that part of the house.

Also, when cutting down on performance for battery life, the wifi is one of the primary things gutted.
You may try plugging in and/or setting the battery to performance to see if it improves.

Also, cordless phones and blue tooth can interfere with wifi signal.

Yes, I was imprecise, partially because she’s 1,200 miles away and so is the laptop. She gets very low throughput, on the order of maybe 100Kb/s (sometimes lower, rarely much better), and has experienced this both on my router last summer as well as my mom’s where she’s staying right now. Maybe at her mom’s place too.

The fact that multiple USB wifi adapters don’t provide a materially better bandwidth suggests to me it’s a problem either broad enough that the USB bus and wherever in the topology the wifi radio is, or it’s something in Windows that’s nerfing all wifi traffic.

I dunno, 100KB/s at a range of 1200 miles is pretty dang good.

#NotHelping!

muraii wrote:

Yes, I was imprecise, partially because she’s 1,200 miles away and so is the laptop. She gets very low throughput, on the order of maybe 100Kb/s (sometimes lower, rarely much better), and has experienced this both on my router last summer as well as my mom’s where she’s staying right now. Maybe at her mom’s place too.

The fact that multiple USB wifi adapters don’t provide a materially better bandwidth suggests to me it’s a problem either broad enough that the USB bus and wherever in the topology the wifi radio is, or it’s something in Windows that’s nerfing all wifi traffic.

Is she able to try an Ethernet cable just to confirm it's WiFi specific?

muraii wrote:

Yes, I was imprecise, partially because she’s 1,200 miles away and so is the laptop. She gets very low throughput, on the order of maybe 100Kb/s (sometimes lower, rarely much better), and has experienced this both on my router last summer as well as my mom’s where she’s staying right now. Maybe at her mom’s place too.

The fact that multiple USB wifi adapters don’t provide a materially better bandwidth suggests to me it’s a problem either broad enough that the USB bus and wherever in the topology the wifi radio is, or it’s something in Windows that’s nerfing all wifi traffic.

Has she tried reinstalling the driver for the built-in Wifi? Also how is she set for free space on the HDD/SSD? Windows performance will complete drop for everything including network if the drive is full. Tried running MalwareBytes and CCleaner (or whatever is popular these days)? Is it all network traffic or just browsing? Just in main browser or in all of them?

Troubleshooting this type of thing without getting hands on is a real pain

“Tech related”: is there a place you would trust buying a used/refurb iPhone/iPad from other than Apple directly? Apple only seems to have recent models and I want some cheap old ones for my kids who have a habit of breaking them too often to justify full price new ones.

Normally I hand down my old ones over time but that doesn’t keep up with the rate they break them.

Gazelle is a good place to look for older models.

Swappa.

Try local screen repair shops, or mall kiosks.

CNet had an article on this earlier this year.

They suggest, aside from Apple, hitting up Best Buy's refurb listings, which should give you some options older than Apple's. And after that, they suggest Gazelle and BackMarket.

If I was buying tablets for kids to beat the crap out of, though, I'd probably be buying some cheap Kindle tablets. My wife has a couple (in the rugged "kid-proof" cases) which have stood up to the abuse of a 1st grade classroom environment.

WizKid wrote:

Try local screen repair shops, or mall kiosks.

This is where we got my wife's iPhone 11 from. We have a local chain called CDR Electronics that does used electronics/movies/games/etc. We got it and did a factory reset just to be sure and then set it up for her.

Whenever I change my mouse settings on one computer, all the computers I am logged in to my windows account change as well. I have one PC I want to swap mouse buttons but only on that computer. Windows is being "helpful" by changing it on all my computers. Is there a way to set that for just one computer? All my searches find ways to change basic settings.

That sounds like something you should do in the mouse manufacturer's software (eg. G Hub for Logitech mice) instead of in Windows settings, assuming you have the option.

pandasuit wrote:

“Tech related”: is there a place you would trust buying a used/refurb iPhone/iPad from other than Apple directly? Apple only seems to have recent models and I want some cheap old ones for my kids who have a habit of breaking them too often to justify full price new ones.

Normally I hand down my old ones over time but that doesn’t keep up with the rate they break them.

I've bought two iPhones and a Macbook Air from Backmarket and have been very happy with the experience. In fact, one of the phones was DOA and working with their customer service was surprisingly painless.

Sounds like there are more options people trust than I suspected. Thanks! I was worried people would say "dont trust any of them".

*Legion* wrote:

If I was buying tablets for kids to beat the crap out of, though, I'd probably be buying some cheap Kindle tablets. My wife has a couple (in the rugged "kid-proof" cases) which have stood up to the abuse of a 1st grade classroom environment.

I'm a fan of Fire tablets. I use a Fire 10 as my primary tablet for streaming and have set my parents up on same. For kids tho it's not great. Their app store is missing lots of stuff. Adding Google Play is easy but then you can't get any screen time app to work at all. The built in one wont work with Play apps and the Play ones wont work at all on FireOS. I had them using cheap 8" Android tablets for a while with Google Family Link and it was fine for a bit but after those got old and slow and I switched them to iOS I realized just how much better that platform is for managing screen time. I already owned a ton of apps and games on there for them as well. Hoping to stick to iOS. I was tempted to buy iPod's and then they discontinued them I'll take another look at Fire's app store and see if it's still missing some critical ones my kids use. I have always used Play store on my (and my parent's) Fire 10 devices.

Edit: my kids heavily use iOS Messages and FaceTime on iOS to talk to relatives (a list I manage using iOS controls). My kids could adapt to a different app for those but their grandparents won’t They both play Pokémon go (which is not on Amazons app store). Tons of other games I own on iOS already. Etc.

I don't know how they are breaking them, but we have had great luck with the Laut kid cases. They are like a thick foam and my daughter has had hers in one for the past three years and it has been tossed around and dropped many times with no problems.

Example:
https://www.itslaut.com/collections/...

Do other people have a device charging station at home where they can plug in thing sand keep all their cables in one place? I've got a fairly rudimentary one with a 5 port charger and a basket on a shelf below, but at least it consolidates things.

Any recommendation on a holder for devices / the charger?

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Whenever I change my mouse settings on one computer, all the computers I am logged in to my windows account change as well. I have one PC I want to swap mouse buttons but only on that computer. Windows is being "helpful" by changing it on all my computers. Is there a way to set that for just one computer? All my searches find ways to change basic settings.

Maybe try and disable syncing settings...
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/sync-wi...

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Do other people have a device charging station at home where they can plug in thing sand keep all their cables in one place? I've got a fairly rudimentary one with a 5 port charger and a basket on a shelf below, but at least it consolidates things.

Any recommendation on a holder for devices / the charger?

I attached an Anker 4 port charger (2 USB-C/2USB-A) to the back of my nightstand using nano gel tap and just let the cords dangle behind it until they are needed. I keep an A to Micro-B cable plugged in for my Kindle and a C to Lightning cable for my iPhone plugged into it all the time. I like the charger so much that I bought a second one to use in my office and to take with me while traveling. It is able to charge the Switch and both my laptop and my wife's (not at the same time) plus phones/kindles so it cut down on the number of things we have to carry with us when traveling.