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I was God's mate. I spoke to you on the Tuesday.

Thursday afternoon there's this lovely courier man of me back door with a parcel for me.

All I know is we've been 24 hours mate. You had it sorted after five weeks of herald, raising herald.

Mate, I can't thank you enough.

Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years. The EFTM Podcast with Trev along.

Real Australians. Real questions. Every week.

You can text Trev now. Thanks to Vodafone on 047 657 657.

Great to have you company. Welcome back to the show.

A couple of weeks off. Well not off. I mean, jeez, I was busy. Where the hell was I?

Samsung? And then Formula One. That's right.

Yeah, I totally remember where I've been. I'm not lost at all. Don't worry about me.

Yes, two weeks ago we were at Samsung in San Francisco.

And last week I was at the Grand Prix in Melbourne trying to cover that as best I could for the today's show.

So it's been a couple. It really has. And the Samsung Galaxy S26 is a stunning phone.

I'll get it right up on that hopefully later this week. I've been using it as a permanent device for that time.

And loving it. It's a great phone. It's just huge. Like, you know, me, I prefer a smaller phone.

But everything it does, the privacy mode is phenomenal. Such an amazing technology.

I'm just blown away by it as a technology. I really am.

So, yeah, impressive stuff and really, really cool.

I will make sure I get that review up this week.

But no doubt the big stand out there is privacy mode. Camera features are great.

I did some test shots in Melbourne and different places.

But, you know, nothing, I don't reckon it's remarkably different or better than last time.

It's definitely incrementally better, no doubt. But the reason to buy this is privacy mode.

Without question in my mind. Great, great phone. Really, really cool feature. Very impressive.

And then let's not talk about the Formula One. I think we just ignore the fact that it happened.

And they consider trying it to be the first race of the year. Just for simplicity reasons.

Look, I've told the story before about how last year I was in a corporate box and left because it looked like it was going to rain.

And it was going to be horrible. This year I was with Atlassian in a kind of a corporate area on Turn 1.

It wasn't the craziest, fanciest place. It was very busy and packed. It was very hard to find a view of the race.

But we were just sitting around a table and the light had gone green on formation laps.

And, you know, we were talking. People were distracted.

People, even in the grand sale, they were going to get to the toilet for the last time, getting a drink or whatever.

This is just half an hour, 20 minutes before the Grand Prix.

You're not paying attention. And then suddenly you hear ooze and arse.

And you see Oscar's car smashed on the side of the track. And you realise the entire day is over for Oscar and for any Aussie fan.

And it was demoralising. It was literally gutted. I was gutted for him.

And I think I put so much hope into his performance and I feel for him in that sense.

But I watched the first 10 laps or so. It was awesome.

And then I thought, you know what, I'm going to beat the traffic here.

And our park is horrible to get out of. There's huge queues just to get out of the joint.

They need to work on that.

But it's because it's surrounded by roads and trams. So you can't just let people flow. People have got to cross the road.

They need to close more roads and let and put the public transport access at a different point.

That's the problem. They need a big underground train station like Sydney Olympic Park to make that work.

Anyway, leaving that aside, I had a great week and I appreciate everyone's feedback on the week.

It was a lot of fun. I got to interview David Croft, Oscar Piastri.

Who do I interview on Wednesday during the day?

I can't even remember now. Pervaltry Bottas at night. The head of Cadillac.

I mean, we had a lot of great checks. Oh, that's right. Jonathan Wheatley from Audi during the day on Wednesday.

Spent a lot of great people. Carl Reinhler came on the Today Show.

My mate Greg Rust spent a couple of days with Paul Murray.

He came down and stayed with me in my apartment down there and we had a good time.

It's weird how closely linked I am to motorsport.

Like we went, Paul Murray and I were walking through the V8 paddock and we were looking at the Toyotas

and Neil Crompton saw us and he knows Paul very well and he waved him in and then at one point,

Paul said, you know, Trevor and he goes, and he looked at me and he went, oh my God,

he didn't remember me since I had a beard and I've had a beard for 13 years.

But Neil Crompton, one of the nicest people in motorsport and I posted a bit on Facebook

and I went viral about Neil getting dutted on the supercars commentary

and that's nothing against the current commentary team. They're doing a good job.

It's against the management team that just booted the bloke, just filthy about it.

Anyway, not here to talk Formula One and motorsport, here to talk tech.

If you've got a tech question, I'd love to help you out.

I'd love to try and help you with your tech buying, your tech advice, whatever it is.

If you've had an experience you want to share with us, get in touch.

We've got a lot of calls to get through today.

We're going to talk dashcams, reversing mirrors, webcams, TV, scams, laptops.

We've got it all covered right here today on the EFTM podcast.

This is the EFTM podcast.

Great to have you company, happy to help you if you need it.

If you've got questions you want to help with buying advice

or you've got feedback on a product you just bought, love to hear from you.

O477657657, send me a text or use the EFTM app and click Ask Trev.

Helen's on the line, good day Helen.

Hello, how are you?

Very well, what can I do for you?

Looking for a laptop.

I've got a laptop that's a Dell, don't ask me what it is.

It's about 12 years old now and I won't do any more updates.

You've got the life out of it though, don't you?

Absolutely.

I'm just looking for something because I know nothing about laptops

and I just want to do banking, browsing, building a house

so I want to be able to look at things online that are better than on a phone.

You want a bigger screen to look at that stuff for sure?

Yes, yes.

There's a couple of things that I'd firstly want to narrow down here.

Do you really need a laptop or would a tablet do the job?

I don't know, you tell me.

Probably a tablet might do the job.

Honestly, a lot of the time.

I think about my mum, for example, she had a computer

and she would need my help all the time talking about this problem with her.

And in the end I said, can I just give you a tablet

because that's how she does her banking, that's how she reads her emails,

that's how she checks Facebook, that's how she browsers the web

when people send her photos, whatever it might be.

And look, in my mum doesn't have a keyboard for hers,

but if you wanted to, pretty much every good tablet has the potential

for a little folio cover that might have a keyboard in it.

So whether it's a Samsung tablet or an Apple,

they've got the option of kind of sitting down at a table and using it like a laptop.

And one of the reasons is, well, just price,

it's certainly cheaper to buy a tablet in broad sense,

but they're also more versatile.

So if you were to travel or just be visiting someone else,

your laptop's smaller and more portable in your bag

and you might have Netflix on it, hotel room, you can watch that,

it's just more versatile in that sense.

So the first thing I would do is for you to go and stand in a couple of stores

and actually just feel a couple of tablets and go, would this work for me?

Because then it's really just a matter of, okay, I'm looking for a laptop.

Again, your next question is Windows versus Mac.

Sounds like you're a Windows user.

I don't know that you desire to learn all the things new and take up a Mac laptop?

I do have an Apple phone.

My husband begged me to get one.

I've had a Samsung for years and it died rather quickly.

So I had to get a phone pretty quick.

So I went Apple and I've got an Apple Watch now.

So I like Apple, but I prefer Samsung.

Wow, okay.

There it is. It's official.

Don't tell your husband.

What would be your budget for a new laptop?

What's the most you'd spend?

Probably around eight to 900 bucks.

Okay.

So you're likely to want to try and get another 10 years out of this thing, I hope.

So I will say critically that Apple did only last week announce the Apple MacBook Neo,

which is $900.

So never before on this show have I been able to say to someone with a sub $1,000 budget

that I found an Apple for you.

So just to be clear, there is an Apple MacBook, the Neo, which is a beautiful looking device.

So it's worth having a little look at.

But sub $1,000, you've basically got a simple question of brand versus size versus style.

And here's the great thing.

There isn't really a bad laptop on the market.

You get what you pay for.

Now at under $1,000, you're not going to get the most powerful devices out there.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, Asus, for example, have a Chromebook that's $749.

That's not Windows.

Just to be clear, when you're in the sub $1,000 price point, you might see a lot of Chromebooks.

That's not Windows.

That's just Google Chrome, the browser built into a laptop essentially.

So just be cautious because there's not actually a lot of laptops under $1,000 that are running Windows.

But there's enough to make it like, OK, there's a HP.

There's an Asus.

I'm just looking on the JB Hi-Fi website, for example.

And there's Lenovo.

I think any of those three would be great.

They wouldn't really compete with each other other than to say, pick them up, hold them in the store

and see which one you feel like you like the most because of the lay.

Simple things like the layout of the keyboard can be vastly different from one computer to another.

You know, is it a big chunky heavy thing or is it a bit more portable?

That's what's going to make your decision because there's no point worrying about the specifications of a device at that price point.

You're not looking for high power and high performance.

That's right.

I would like you to consider the MacBook Neo.

It looks like a phenomenal device for $900.

But at the same time, I can see at JB Hi-Fi, I can see several Asus, several HP and at least one Lenovo.

None of which you'll have a problem with.

They'll all be great computers.

Right. And they run Windows, do they?

Yes, they're all Windows.

Yeah.

So just avoid Chromebook because you will see a lot of them.

That's more a school laptop or for someone who's keen to, you know, muck around with things.

Definitely not for you because you aren't where you're at.

So yeah, Windows, Lenovo, HP, Asus.

And I think the HP and Asus will probably be the best value there.

Like right now, for example, again, as the time of speaking to you on the phone,

one of the HPs there is reduced from $1300 down to $999.

I mean, that's excellent value.

Really good value.

I might have a look at that.

All right.

Happy shopping.

Thank you very much for your time.

I don't think you'll go wrong, Helen.

You'll be fine.

Okay. Thank you.

Good on you. Thanks for getting in touch.

Bye.

Cheers.

It's a tough one, but isn't it remarkable that for the first time ever,

I'm telling you to consider an Apple MacBook when you've told me that your price

and your budget is under $1000.

I never thought that would happen.

Never.

Never thought we would get to a point where I'd be including Apple in that roundup.

And I'm fascinated now to see.

As I said, I'm on the JB website.

I can see a few that have been discounted.

So just on the JB site, looking at the $1000 round that mark,

and I just sought from Heidello, you can see there's HP that's been reduced.

There's Lenovo that's been reduced.

Is that a reduction based on Apple's launch?

Or has that always been there?

I don't know.

There's a HP laptop that's been reduced from $849 to $749.

That's more than 10% off.

So not a bad time to be in the market for a computer if you think about it.

Not a bad time at all.

Because of this new found competition from Apple,

which never existed at this price point.

We've now got ourselves some very interesting prices.

A quick follow-up to Caller, who was on a few weeks ago.

Peter, I had a question about red-eye reduction.

And I think he struggled with my initial suggestions.

But we had a great text message from Malcolm, I think it was,

who said, a note from one of our...

Oh, sorry, this is a note to me.

I was listening to your current AFTM podcast,

and the gentleman Peter was asking about removing red-eye from old photos.

Adobe had a free product available on the Windows store called Photoshop Express.

It's a basic version of Photoshop.

I'm pretty sure it has red-eye reduction in the program at most.

You might need to create an Adobe account.

I think that's from Malcolm.

Thank you, Malcolm.

That is very good advice.

Yeah, I think I said at the time,

it's a weird feature that I don't think exists much anymore,

because you don't get it anymore.

Smartphones don't take red-eye.

Red-eye came from a flash.

We rarely use the flash anymore,

because we've got great sensors that are able to take low-light photography.

So for that reason alone,

you don't see red-eye reduction much as a feature.

But there you go.

It is possible to find.

Give a crack at Photoshop Express.

I'm looking for a reversing camera for a van,

but also including a dash cam.

And I'd like it, because it's a van.

It's got barn doors,

and so you can't see out in the middle the frame of the door

as it's right in the rear-vision mirror line.

So it needs a dash cam,

because, yeah, people don't like it,

but parking into them with a tow bar.

So I'm looking to replace the rear-vision mirror if I can,

rather than have a clip over one.

And so I've been looking at quite a few of them.

Have you looked at any?

It sounds like you're the expert, mate.

It's not something I've looked at, I'll be honest with you.

I mean, they're definitely around, obviously.

There are a few that you get that are like a separate screen,

but you're talking about getting rid of the mirror

and making the mirror digital permanently?

Yes.

Well, a lot of them are both.

They're a mirror, and if you turn them on,

then you get front view, back view, and reverse view,

but you wire it up to the reversing system in the car.

Yeah, what sort of money are you talking about?

What do they come up at?

Because I haven't really looked at many,

but I can see them at super cheap in the light.

What sort of money do you pay?

The thing that's sort of concerning me

is there's no brand name brands about them.

They range from probably 350 up to 850.

I was just going to say the exact same thing.

I don't see any recognizable brands anywhere here.

The only one is Alpine.

Okay, yeah.

I wonder if that's like a licensed thing or not.

Whether that's really Alpine

or someone's licensed the brand to play on them.

Yeah, exactly. Not sure.

The one that really shows up to me is looking interesting

is called Wolfbox, and that's Wolfbox G900 Pro.

Right, tell me more. Why?

Well, it just seems to...

One thing you can probably clear up,

between megapixels and...

So most of the others are sort of 1280 by 320p

or 1920 by 1080p.

And the Wolfbox, they're talking about megapixels.

It's 8 megapixels for the camera, so how does that...

Well, it's two different things.

There's the screen and the camera, right?

Because the screen has a resolution.

So the actual mirror, if you think of it that way.

And I would expect that to be quite an obscure number

because it's quite an obscure shape.

And then there's the resolution of the physical camera,

which you would see that as being like a 8 megapixel sensor.

But is it a 4K camera?

That's what you want to know.

You want to know, is it HD or 4K?

As I browse Amazon, so I've looked...

I just spent a bit of time looking at Repco and Super Cheep

and there's definitely some products there,

none of which I know, as I said.

And then you go to Amazon and I see all the Wolfbox stuff you're talking about.

I will say this about Wolfbox, they've got a lot of products.

So they can't be horrible because you just don't stay in business

that long if you're horrible, do you?

And they clearly have warehousing at Amazon

because they've got same-day shipping.

I could get one of these things shipped to me today.

I like the look of the Wolfbox because it's exactly what you describe.

It's the digital rear view mirror,

but it's also got a little camera on the front of it

so it's a forward-facing dash cam as well.

They do seem quite, shall we say, affordable.

That's what worried me.

$200 for crying out loud.

Yeah, that one doesn't replace...

That's only a clip-over one.

Right.

That hasn't got the facility where you can take the clip-on

and make it into a fixed mirror

where the next one up, the 900 Pro,

which is about $410 or something like that, $419,

that's the one that you can buy, the $27 bracket

to make it a fixed mirror.

Right. Yeah, I see it.

I know what's going to happen with clip-ons.

They're going to fall off when you hit bumps and all that

and it's going to drive you nuts.

That's true. That's very, very true.

This is the wide world of Amazon shopping, isn't it?

Oh, exactly.

I'll give you an example of where this feels for me.

In the kind of broadcast studio world,

there's lots of different products you can buy

for tripods and these cool dollies and lights

and all these things, right?

And then there's a brand called Neeword,

N-W-E-W-E-R, W-E-R,

and they sell all the same things,

lights for your studio, dah, dah, dah.

And I bought a few of their things

and it's pretty much all I buy now,

because you know what?

They ship quickly. I've got them.

You know what I do sometimes?

If it's a product I really, really rely on.

I don't know if you've ever seen the YouTube version

of Two Blaks Talking Tech or one of our podcast shows,

but we have this wide shot that moves

and I always thought to myself...

After the live presentation,

I don't know if YouTube's up to it.

That shot, I love that shot so much.

I bought a second one of those units

because I thought, man, if this thing dies,

I've got to replace it.

So I thought, you know what?

I'll just have one sitting here that's ready to go,

because I thought the product was that good.

And weirdly, this Wolfbox mob

can't give me the same vibe online.

You know, extensive amount of imagery,

extensive amount of products,

seeming to fit every part of the market.

Just learning along with you here,

that's the one I throw against the wall

to give a try to at the very least.

Well, I've got to try something.

So it's a matter of, yeah, if you're not...

If you haven't seen one pop up that sort of said,

you'd say, I'd go for this one.

Well, that's the way I'll go.

I'll just do that.

In the absence of a known brand,

then what we do is we go,

okay, how can we rely on this brand?

Now, they have not thousands of ratings,

but they have a lot of ratings.

And on Amazon, ratings and reviews are very hard to fake,

because they put a thing called verified purchase next to it,

which basically says that the person who bought it

left the review, which is great.

Now, are there some negative ones there?

Yes.

There's a dude here that says,

I'm an auto electrician by background.

I bought the hard-wired kit for my Toyota Prado.

It started, it worked as expected.

However, after some time,

the system began having grit glitches.

Now, I'm not seeing 20 of those comments.

I'm seeing one.

Yeah, that's right.

Every product has problems.

But if you look at the number of five-star reviews here,

it's pretty good.

And it's always the way,

when you have a problem, how you deal with it.

If he's just spat the dummy in,

I'll just put a negative reply in there

and not give him the company the opportunity

to answer his queries.

What can you expect?

One of the one-star reviews says,

not made for right-hand drive UK cars.

Okay, how does that matter on a reversing camera?

You know, it's kind of a weird one.

So if you actually read the negative reviews,

sometimes you can talk yourself out of it.

I might be talking about the dash cam

being on the left-hand side of the mirror,

but it's still on the mirror.

So why would that make a difference here?

You're six inches different.

I always put the dash cam

to the left-hand side of the windscreen

because I want it out of my view.

Out of the way.

Where I put a dash cam

is actually behind the mirror in my view.

I want it to be hidden by the mirror.

I don't want to see the thing.

No, well, I wouldn't want to either,

except I need the reversing camera.

Yeah, but that's a separate thing, right?

You want the dash cam part pointing out,

and then you want the rear.

Have you looked at, you know,

like, is there enough cable included for it?

Like, those would be the little things

that might drive me insane.

Is there enough cable for the rear camera?

Do you know that you can hardwire yourself,

or do you think you don't need

an auto-electrician to do that?

Well, in a van, it's not hard

because there's no roof lining.

So all I've got to do is get it past the front area.

Yeah, and yeah, there is an...

Where's the cable?

I think it was 18...

18 metres or something.

Well, you don't have it.

The van's not that big. We know that.

No, the old one might have been

after someone whacked into it, but the...

Yeah.

That's the reason.

I hear the thing.

You're in charge of the review, mate.

I want to know what it's like.

But if I was sitting with you

and we were about to buy something,

I think you've done good research,

and the Wolfbox looks like one worthy of a go.

Yeah, well, if I don't hear it from you guys,

you know, I have to do my own research, so...

Yeah, it's a tough life sometimes.

It is, but the bamboo printer, you know...

What model did you get in that frame?

H2C.

Okay, so you got the big one.

I got a P2S, and I'm just learning it now,

and she's there amazing.

It is. You know what?

And I think I said this

on another show or something,

but it's so good my wife let it come home.

So...

My wife sits and watches it.

You know, I'm...

She's talking about 3D print this, 3D print that.

Like, it's her new craft tool, and it's awesome.

Yeah, we love it.

We're buying filament like it's running out of fashion here.

Yeah, I'm doing the same here with this one.

It's going good.

Yeah, I've got to get my settings

a little bit more sorted out,

but other than that,

it's just stepping up from a five-year-old one

from five years ago.

Yeah, it's a vast difference, isn't it?

Different world.

All right, feel good to hear from you, mate.

Good luck, and then come back to us

with a full review.

The 900.

Yeah, we'll do for sure.

The whole bones made everything.

Everything.

All right, no problems at all.

Good luck, buddy.

I appreciate the call.

Cheers, Phil.

Take care.

Thanks, mate.

Look, it's not a product I've tested,

so I can't give you a guarantee on it,

but let's throw Phil to the lines

and get a review from Phil

in the weeks or months ahead

once he's installed that Wolfbox dash cam

and reversing mirror.

You're listening to the EFTM podcast.

You can text Trev now

thanks to Vodafone on 047-657-657.

Great to have you, company.

If you've got a tech question,

get him TouchSams on the log, eh, Sam?

Morning, Trevor.

Morning, mate.

Last time we spoke,

you had some issues, yes?

Yeah, so my new Wi-Fi Orbi system,

I couldn't get some of the network to work,

which was unfortunate.

And I assume we put you in touch with Netgear.

I mean, I feel like I went to some trouble there.

How did you end up, mate?

Yeah, thanks to your involvement.

You managed to escalate up the chain

and they end up booking an appointment

with a technician, I think, in the US, actually,

and they phoned us up

and we managed to solve it, which was great.

Oh, that's perfect.

So do you understand from the tech support what was wrong?

Was it, did it need to be reset?

Do you get a sense of it?

Because it was an Orbi system, wasn't it?

I mean, you know,

I definitely not had 100% success rate

with them working out of the box,

but it's very rare,

so I'm curious to know if you understand what the problem was.

Yeah, so very strange issue.

The firmware out of the box wasn't current,

so it needed to be updated,

but unfortunately, the system was showing

that it was actually the latest firmware already on it,

so they had to manually go into the settings

and upload new firmware to get it all to work.

Interesting.

So basically, it just needed a firmware update,

but it was tricked and thinking

all the time it was already updated.

Yeah, that's correct.

It was something I've never experienced before

where it was checking, doing an online check

and saying, no, you've got the current firmware,

but it actually wasn't.

Wow.

And after that, was it pretty much seamless?

Yeah, it took about an hour

in order for them to remotely log in,

go through each of the routers and satellites

individually, update new firmware to each one,

then reset the whole system, boot it all up,

and once it's done, it was up and firing

and everything was working perfectly.

Were you able to watch them do this,

or was it just like on the phone,

or were they just doing it randomly and automatically?

No, I actually watched them,

so I allowed them to take control of my PC.

Gotcha.

We used that remote access through our works,

I'm quite familiar with how it works.

I was pretty confident they weren't trying to scare me

out of anything,

but yeah, I managed to watch it.

It was quite a bit of a process.

The technician had to download software,

then go into the back end of it through my PC

and access the router remotely

and then individually update each file

and reboot it.

So yeah, it was a bit of a process.

But they got it done, mate.

You didn't have to pay for tech support on my shimmy?

No, mate, no.

Unfortunately, I think it was a nine o'clock at night

trying to get to the right time in the US for them.

But it was worth doing, mate,

because once it was done, it solved all the issue,

and now it's all running up and running perfectly,

which is great.

And what did you have before the Orbi?

What's your expectation on the system?

How do you rate it in terms of

being a successful purchase, therefore?

Oh, we had an existing Orbi system before,

but it was about eight years old.

So I kind of was familiar with the system,

but I wanted to hand that down to my daughter

and put that in her place,

and then I wanted to set a new Wi-Fi 7 one up,

and that's when all the drama started,

but it's all good now.

Just trying to do something nice for your daughter,

and it turns to buggery on you.

Absolutely, mate, that's it.

Oh, well, at least it's fixed now.

I'm glad that happened, mate,

and I'm glad you had the patience to see it through.

Yeah, excellent.

Thanks for your help, Trevor,

because without your intervention,

mate, she would have sat there talking to local support,

which was getting us nowhere.

So thanks again.

My pleasure, mate, any time.

Awesome. Thanks, Trevor.

Thanks for getting in touch.

Cheers, Sam.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes you've got to bump up the chain

a little bit.

Look, these problems are not always the common problems,

even for the tech support.

So I'm glad we could get that escalated and sorted.

Great to have you company,

and I would love to hear from you.

0477657657, or download the EFTM app.

Click Ask Trev.

Andrew's along.

Got any, Andrew?

Hey, Trev, how you doing, buddy?

Yeah, really good, mate.

What's happening?

Hey, look, I've been doing a few different things

over the journey,

and I wanted to talk to you about a Facebook scam

I came across recently.

I mean, what are we talking, Facebook Marketplace?

Yes.

You know, I've never dabbled.

I've never dabbled.

But mainly because I've seen so many of these body scams.

How did this one come about?

Were you selling or buying?

I was buying, looking for a secondhand PlayStation 5.

Right, yep.

So there was a guy there,

had, well, a lady actually,

had one on for about $350.

And I'm like, ooh, this, you know,

if it's good, it's good.

If it's not, it's not.

Let's give it a go.

Yeah.

Because they're normally around the $500 to $600 mark.

Right, okay.

So I messaged them and they said,

yep, it's available.

Can you please give us a $50 deposit?

Because this is a lot of interest.

And I'm like, yep, okay, that's reasonable.

They sent me a alarm bell ringing,

but I thought, no, I'll give it a go.

They sent across the $50

and trying to get an address off them

and when they're going to be home

and all that sort of fun stuff,

then I get another second message saying,

look, my husband is not happy.

He's with the 50.

Look, he'd be preferable.

If you're really interested,

can you give us another $100?

$100.

That's when I'm like,

part of me is like, yeah, this is not good,

but if it is real, I'll risk it.

You're still thinking this is a very good value?

Yes, exactly.

I'm thinking if it's legit,

no, I'm going to, it's a steal.

So I gave them $100.

So you're now $150 in?

Yes, I'm $150 in.

And I knew that at this point,

I'm thinking this isn't looking good,

but hey, let's do it.

It's $150 worth of research.

Yes.

So they said they were going to be home

at such and such a time,

so I went to the address,

which was two hours away,

across the other side of Melbourne

and nobody's home

and this lovely Asian family turns up

and I asked for the certain person.

Well, nobody here from that name.

So I'm like, so I'm trying to get in contact with them,

trying to get in contact with them.

And then the last row was,

oh, my daughter's sick in hospital

and we need $50 as an exit fee from the hospital

or something like that.

And that's when I'm like, yeah, no, I'm done.

Wow.

I mean, your alarm bell did go off early

and mine went off at a heightened pace

when you said deposit,

but then the second deposit,

isn't that funny how,

I've known you long enough to know,

I think you're probably reflecting on this going,

look, I was hunting the bargain.

The bargain was what was the carrot.

You knew it was a great price.

You were pushing for that

and in your own mind you're going,

it's worth it for the bargain.

But in the end, that alarm bell,

you should have trusted your gut basically, isn't it?

Oh, exactly.

And I've bought everything from a $5 spatula

to a $12,000 car off some marketplace.

I do trust them to a certain extent,

but I'm also aware of these guys doing this sort of thing.

But I just want to ring you to let you know

so that other people would be aware.

What action did you take after that?

Because obviously I'm tipping you pay ID.

I'm tipping the money was gone, gone.

What action did you take?

Did you report the profile?

What have you done?

No, I did report the profile,

but it was literally bank transfer.

So no pay ID.

So I did flag it with the bank,

but they're like, no, there's nothing we can do.

Yeah, look, it's bank to bank.

It's gone. It's a real person.

What's annoying though is the one thing I would say

is I would report it to ScanWatch.

Because the more you can feed them,

the better their information is.

It also, you know, your $150 loss,

you know, it's a big loss in a day,

but over the course of the year you'll move on from it.

But, you know, that should add up to the tally online

and not enough people, look,

not enough people talk about the fact that they got scammed.

Because it also feels like,

do you really want to talk about this

at a barbecue with your mates?

Like, honestly, most of the time you're like,

there's an element of shame.

And I keep saying to people,

we need to remove the stigma

around being a victim of scams

because if there's a stigma,

no one wants to talk about it.

And if no one talks about it,

no one learns about it.

Like, I'm trying to sell my father-in-law's car at the moment,

and I listed it, put his phone number down,

and I said, listen, just so you know,

just be very careful with anyone

that calls to say they want to buy it.

And I didn't get a chance to go into a couple of options,

but then the next time I saw him,

he said I had someone from Perth interested.

I said, stop you right there, trust me, they're not real.

Like, that's one of the big things with cars

is people that are somewhere else

and they just want to transport it,

and can you put a deposit down for the transport

or whatever, rubbish like that.

There's a lot of little ones that go around,

people don't know about, do they?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, you're a good man for coming clean,

and did you end up finding a PS5 anyway?

No, no, well, it's not for myself anyway.

We ended up buying one off Big W

for the Christmas sales.

You live and learn, mate, you live and learn.

Kids are happy.

What else is happening, mate?

Yeah, no, I just wanted to tell you about

my experience with Falcon TVs.

Oh, the JB Hi-Fi, like affordable brand,

for Falcon, for Falcon.

Yeah, exactly.

I consider myself a bit of a TV snob

because I got the big Samsung QLED,

85 to 55 inch and love it in the main room.

But I wanted something just cheap and easy

for my F1 car simulator setup.

Just the desk and the steering wheel, everything.

And what are you paying it on?

Xbox PC?

What's it connected to?

Yes, I've got my second Xbox,

my little Xbox Series S.

And I thought, well, I don't want to spend too much money,

but they had the deal on 50 bucks off,

normally 399 got it for 350 for a 43 inch 4K television.

I'm thinking this is, you know,

for the little time I'm going to use it,

it's going to be cool.

And I thought I don't buy too many lower-end TVs.

I'll give it a go.

And so I'm very impressed with the picture.

It's absolutely amazing,

like because it's got Google TV built in.

So YouTube videos and all that sort of thing

look absolutely crystal clear.

I was blown away for the money.

And so of course the Xbox looks decent.

But the only thing I would say

is you need a soundbar with those things.

Yeah, do you know what's a funny thing?

I think that people expect too much sometimes from them.

But if you go in knowing what you're getting,

and I've said this about Kogan TVs, Aldi TVs,

and I've never experienced their Falcon,

but I'll now use your experience in my own.

But as long as you know what you're getting.

So the way I look at it is,

there are 4K pixels on that screen.

So there's a lot of pixels on the screen ready to be lit up.

And if you feed it a 4K picture,

it's going to look amazing, right?

If you feed it a standard definition,

free-to-air television picture,

it's not going to do a great job of stretching that

and making it look better.

It's going to look like you're running SD on a bigger TV.

And then, of course, for 350 bucks,

how good can the sound possibly be?

Even a $100 soundbar will be immensely better than...

Well, that's what I did.

I got the matching $120 Falcon 2.1 soundbar,

and it's a little basic compared to my $1,500 Samsung soundbar.

Yeah, of course.

But for sitting there doing the F1 sounds

and the Supercar sounds when I'm driving,

it's just perfect.

That's awesome.

And you know what? That's a great endorsement.

It's exactly what...

and Ruslan Cogan hated it,

I don't know, it's 15 years ago or something.

I used to say this on TV when I was asked about a Cogan TV.

I'd be like, it's not the TV I'd put in my lounge room.

But for the spare room, the bedroom, the playroom,

the games room, what an unbelievable bit of value.

Especially when you know what you're watching.

Like, we've got in our kind of garage space,

there's a treadmill my wife likes to use,

and we've only just turned it around,

so it's pointing at this...

Like, I've got an 82-inch TV in there,

which was a linsar brand,

which is essentially the same thing, right?

It's the cheap version of Big W.

And you know what?

It's not even hooked up to an antenna,

because it'll look rubbish.

But what it does have is on it,

is Netflix and Stan and yada yada yada.

And so my wife's just watching, like, the Lincoln lawyer and stuff.

And they're 4K shows that come up looking spectacular.

So if all you watch is streamed content in high definition,

or 4K, you get pretty good value out of that TV.

And yeah, you could pick it apart.

If you played a movie through it, you know, with a dark room,

you'd probably notice the blooming of the light

and stuff like that.

But that's not what you're using it for.

You're using it as a great little escape

and a great little getaway,

and you've got a good price for it, mate.

So maybe you offset the PS5 loss with the TV saving.

Exactly, exactly.

Great to hear from you, and I appreciate you being so open

and honest about the Facebook scam.

And hopefully more people realise that, unfortunately,

there's some sick and annoying people out there,

and they're trying to take advantage of us every single day.

Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Good on you, buddy.

Great to hear from you.

Take care of it.

Cheers, mate. See ya.

Andrew, I reckon...

And I could look it up.

But I think Andrew's probably one of our longest term listeners.

He's been listening since the very, very early Your Tech Life Days.

Like legit going way back.

I'm scrolling through my emails now, Andrew,

if you're listening, because you are.

Andrew started following me on Twitter in 2010.

So that's coming up 16 years later this year.

And in that same, in July 2010,

he said, I listen to your podcast every week.

So, mate, legendary. Thank you.

And I appreciate you getting in touch.

We are actually also connected on Xbox,

but I bloody well...

I just struggle to play it.

Maybe when a new Forza Horizon comes out,

which I think is coming at some point,

maybe when a new Forza Horizon comes out,

I'll be back online because I like playing Forza Horizon

to find all the roads.

I don't play it for the true gamification of racing and all that stuff.

I just like driving around and exploring the worlds they create

in Forza Horizon.

I'm a simple, simple man.

Anyway, great to hear from you, Andrew.

Join the conversation.

Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for downloading.

Great to have you company.

Whatever it is you want to get in touch about, just do it.

847-657-657 or eftm.com.

As Dixie just said, Marilyn's on the line.

Good day, Marilyn.

Hello, Trev. How are you doing?

I'm very well. How are you?

I'm very well. Thank you.

What's happening?

So I'm an accountability coach.

You know what? Sorry?

An accountability coach.

Okay, well, I feel nervous now.

I feel like I'm lacking something,

and that is accountability coaching.

Because is that like, I don't know anything about you

or what you do.

But see, my problem is I've got a list in front of me

of 15 things I hope to do yesterday

and four of them are crossed off.

So I don't feel like I'm accountable.

Is this the kind of coaching I need?

Or is there something different?

It's kind of like that.

The accountability coaching I do

is people who have had a dream for years and years

and haven't actioned it,

and they want to action it.

So then I help them take the steps they need.

Right, well, Marilyn, I'm going to tell you a story

that I posted on LinkedIn this week,

just to digress, and then we'll get to your problem.

Sure.

10 years ago today,

or 10 years ago yesterday,

but 10 years ago today is the first day of this,

I quit my job and I did my own thing.

So I left a very, very comfortable job at SBS

on a very good superannuation too, by the way.

And I went and did my own thing,

and it was funny because I remember my wife,

it'd be 14, 15 years ago,

looking at me downstairs on a Thursday evening

or a Tuesday evening in the garage recording a podcast,

and she said something flippantly,

and I don't believe she meant it in that sense,

but she kind of flippantly said,

it's not like you could ever make money out of this.

And it was kind of like in the back of my mind

from that point on, and I went, I'm going to do it.

Well, it's been 10 years, and we're still going,

okay, mortgages paid every month.

I now own the office we're working out of,

and I think we're doing okay.

So maybe I needed an accountability coach 14 years ago.

Quite possibly.

Wow, what an amazing thing.

What gets you into that?

I mean, when I was at SBS,

I had a really good manager called Dirk Anthony,

and he was very big on coaching,

and it was the thing I'd never heard of in management.

I just thought coaches were in football.

And he taught me a lot.

Is that the world you live in?

Did you come from a corporate world and find this niche,

or what got you into accountability coaching?

So I was in the public service for over 20 years, loved it.

But I discovered coaching about 10 years ago,

became qualified five or six years ago in coaching.

So I've kind of been doing coaching at work loosely,

but then I resigned from my public service,

and yes, very good superannuation to pursue this,

because I needed an accountability coach to get started,

and I couldn't find one.

So I had to create my own systems and my own processes,

and I thought, well, if I need one, other people must need one.

Nice.

So yes, I got started, and here we are.

And with that spoiler, and we will get to your tech question,

but without spoiling it all, is there software involved

in the way you create accountability?

Because there's so many systems now around goal setting

and to-do list and all that kind of stuff,

or is it really just one-on-one sessions with Marilyn

to get me pumped up, fired up to get my shit together,

as they might say?

It's one-to-one.

Yes, there are apps.

There's productivity tools all over the place,

but a lot of the time we need someone to be our cheerleader

or someone to give us a bit of a strong word.

So it's that one-to-one.

I meet with people every week, once a week,

and we have email check-ins throughout the week,

as that one-on-one accountability you can't hide from me.

You're going to get this stuff done.

So that's what I do.

It's that personal approach,

because tech doesn't always land where we need it to.

I feel like I needed accountability coach in my life,

but anyway, what can I do for you?

So all of my work is online, virtual,

and I'm struggling to find a decent webcam.

So I like to look into the lens of the camera

so that the person I'm coaching gets that connection.

But in doing so, I miss out on those micro expressions,

those visual clues,

because I'm so focused on looking in the lens

that I don't actually look at them.

So I'm looking for a webcam

that doesn't have to have me staring in the lens.

And I've got a great little creative webcam.

I think it came from advice you gave on TV last year.

But Fantastic does the job really well,

except it's in the middle of my screen

and then hides them,

because I'm looking in the camera

and it hides their face entirely.

So yeah, I've been searching for months

and I can't find anything.

That's interesting.

So I would say straight up,

I've seen demonstrations online of some webcams

that purport to change your eye level and things like that.

I think those features are actually not going to be webcam based.

I think they're going to be software based.

So basically, if it doesn't already exist,

I'm sure Zoom will create a button where you go,

okay, I'm in a meeting and I want my eyes,

my eye line to be changed permanently, right?

So I think that's going to be a software thing.

I've just opened up Zoom on my computer

and I'm looking at it going,

well, the number one thing I do is,

what I do is I'm, because I'm guilty,

and most of us are,

of doing what I call pegging yourself,

which is always looking at yourself

and not the other person when you're on a call.

So you're actually looking over

on the other side of the screen looking at yourself.

And it might be the other person,

but what I do is I make the screen smaller.

And so it's only like five centimetres big,

but then I move it up towards the webcam.

So if I'm looking five centimetres below the webcam,

I still look like I'm looking pretty close to the webcam.

Now, I will tell you the one thing,

and I'm just testing it now.

I don't know if I can move far enough away from my computer

with my microphone and I'm going to stand up

because my webcam follows me.

And if I move, it follows where I move to.

And I think this might help you

because what you can do is stand back.

And so the further you are away from the camera,

the more obtuse the angle needs to be,

as in the bigger the angle needs to be

for your eyes to notice that you're not looking

at the camera or the screen.

So it might feel a little weird,

but like I'm sitting a metre of rolled

at least 60 centimetres back from where I normally sit.

And I'm not looking at the camera.

I'm looking at myself, which would be

the other person in your situation.

And I'm looking at my eyes going,

dude, looks like I'm looking at the camera.

Like I think I've nailed this.

So the webcam I have absolutely loved

since I first reviewed it is the Jabra PanaCast.

I'm pretty sure that's the name of it.

I'm pretty sure it's still available.

I can see it on Amazon.

It's got this weird, they call it intelligent zoom.

So if I was to walk four metres over the side,

it will actually follow me.

Apple does this with what they call centre stage cameras.

It's pretty cool.

It's a bit annoying for the other person

if you move too much because the camera moves with you,

like the screen moves,

but once you've found your position, it's all there.

And yeah, I think that I think it's a great camera.

It's beautiful quality too,

like legitimately excellent quality.

And I think that if you pair an outstanding quality video,

as in great quality picture, with a positioning,

and you can test this yourself by doing what I'm doing,

which is look at yourself on Zoom.

So just open up your own Zoom meeting.

There's no one in it.

It's just you.

So it shows you.

And now make the window like 30% of your screen,

top, middle, underneath the camera,

and then sit back a metre.

And you'll realise that actually it looks like

you're looking at the camera.

And then you just need to make sure you've nailed

the audio side of things.

So you don't want to sound like you're 20 metres away.

So get yourself a nice wireless microphone

so that you're relaxed but still sitting back.

And whether you have the speakers on or not doesn't matter.

But I think that'll solve the problem for you.

I think you will look absolutely like you're looking at the camera.

I'm just trying to catch myself looking up and down.

And you know how sometimes there's a millisecond delay

and you can see it?

Yeah.

Honestly, I stare at myself here and I go,

I feel like I'm looking at myself,

which means it looks like I'm looking at the camera.

So yeah, I think distance and quality.

So get yourself a Jabra panocast.

It looks like it's about 300 bucks less than 300 bucks.

It doesn't tell me whether or not it is coming from Australia

or somewhere else.

Can't quite work that out.

No, that says Amazon AU.

So it must be stocked in Australia, which is great.

If you're an Amazon shopper, you'll know what I mean.

And look, it's a genuinely excellent camera.

Worth it given it's your business.

Tax deductible given it's your business.

Not financial advice, not tax advice.

And I think you'll really like the camera.

And then I think just a bit of fun with placement,

whether it's how you sit, where you sit and whatever.

Game changer.

Because we're used to sitting so close to our computers

because the camera is there and you want to be in frame.

Whereas with this thing, it will frame differently

as you move around.

And the person isn't there at the other end.

Isn't doing it to look at you.

They're doing it to hear you.

So really, it doesn't matter what the framing directly is on you,

but you're right.

You will be able to better understand their reactions

to what you're saying.

And I guess it's a great thing because it means

they can't hide those shame reactions of,

she's about to ask me about when I said

I was going to call that guy and I haven't called him yet.

Is it mainly like individual, small business style?

I'm assuming that's what it is.

Yes, yes.

I'm totally flabbergasted by the idea of it, to be honest.

I really am.

So my focus has been on people who want to start their business.

But just being so entrenched in corporate work life

that they don't know how to kind of get started.

That's where I've spent most of my time.

I have a half-built website.

You might want to finish that.

Producer Rob, make a note.

We're calling back in a month for accountability purposes

to find out Marilyn's website address.

Sure, you're on.

So early April, you'll have to share your website address

with me and my audience or your accountability

coaching his career is over.

You are on.

Seems fair, don't you reckon?

It does seem fair.

All right, well look, let's do that.

We'll give yourself another camera.

Let's touch base in a month and see how the camera's going

and how your website's going.

Yep.

I'll be your accountability coach for the day.

Sounds fabulous.

Lovely to hear from you. Good luck.

Wonderful. Thanks, Trey.

Thanks, Teeps. Cheers. Nor is it all wonderful stuff.

That is like you just discover something new every day, don't you?

Like did anyone know that existed?

And I'm not lying.

I'm thinking I could do with a weekly call.

I could do with a weekly call.

And I'm not trying to get into business.

I'm just trying to stay.

I need a motivational accountability coach

just to say, well, I haven't done that.

Why is there things that are not crossed off on your list?

As I look at the studio across the room,

I've started ripping out the nano lease

because they were moving or something on the wall.

And now I'm like, I'm going to have to find time to do that.

I've got to do it before Steven gets here or we bag me.

There's some things that I'm accountable for

because there's people that come around.

Anyway, lovely, interesting stuff.

And we'll hear from her again early in April

because we like to keep Maryland accountable.

This is the EFTM podcast.

All right, let's do it all again next week, folks.

We'll be back next week, couple weeks before we travel again.

When am I leaving?

I'm going away on the 23rd of March.

We're heading to America with United

to see some future flight options.

That'll be exciting and interesting.

And geez, we've got some big things coming up.

We've got some big stuff burning for late April.

I'll be honest with you.

I'm pretty excited about that.

We shall see how it pans out.

I don't know yet, but something very big on the boil.

So pumped about that.

It's starting to ramp up.

The year is getting very busy, folks.

And I hope you join me along the ride.

Follow me on socials.

I travel along AU on Instagram.

I travel along on TikTok.

And you can search for travel along or facebook.com

or slash travel along to follow me there.

And yeah, just great to have your company wherever we are, folks.

And let's just keep pumping and do it all again next week.

Accountability coaching? And Facebook Scammers - we've got you covered

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