New Year new tech! But the same tech issues!

The EFTM podcast. Talkback technology. Got a question about tech? Trev's here to help. Not

sure what to buy. Ask Trev. Australia's number one talkback technology podcast.

I was gobsmacked. I spoke to you on the Tuesday. Thursday afternoon, there's this lovely courier

man at 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, hoping Australians would take

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You can text Trev now. Thanks to Vodafone on 0477-657-657.

Great heavy company. Thank you for listening and happy new year, folks. It's wonderful

to be back in the new year with the EFTM podcast. Thank you to producer Rob for sticking

around, signing on for another long-term contract to help me just make this all happen. He doesn't

know that yet, but he's done that. The spreadsheets will live long and large.

We're going to get to your calls today. You can send me a text, as Dixie just said, 0477-657-657.

I'd love to hear from you. No matter what your tech question is, we'll try and help

you out. We've got networking, iOS 26 laptops, old photos. We've got lots of

questions today on this show. Of course, we'd love to hear from you. Love to know what you

got over the Chrissy period. Any new gadgets in your life? Anything new and exciting? Something

you might have struggled with? Get in touch. I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to

know what was under Christmas trees. This Christmas just gone because my Christmas

tree is not really an indication of the world of tech, if we're honest, because my Christmas

tree doesn't really have any gadgets under it. My Christmas tree was filled with baseball

cards and Formula One goodies. The techiest thing under our Christmas tree was a 3D-printed

Cricut toolbox, Cricut being the crafting machine my wife loves. Harry found a really

cool little stand for all the tools. If you know what a Cricut is and you use one, you know what I

mean, the weeding tools, the squeegees, all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of little

implements required. You're like a surgeon when you use a Cricut. Harry found a design

for this thing. It was gorgeous. It's probably 15, maybe 20 centimetres wide and five or

six centimetres tall, fully printed, 3D printed on our Bamboo Labs H2C, which I've

been testing. I mean, we'll probably have to stop and talk about that at some point very

soon. I might get someone from Bamboo Labs on actually. I bought a 3D printer. I did a

quick TikTok on this at the end of last year. It took 11 years ago at Officeworks. It

was $1,500. It was a cube 3D and I got it working. It was great. I printed a chest

set. I printed little kids toys, little trains and things. It was difficult. You had a

glass plate that it would print on. You had to put glue down, but it had to be put

down at just the right time to make it sticky enough that the 3D printer would

stick to it. This buddy Bamboo Labs thing is unbelievable. Now it's a $3,700

machine. Grant you that. But you can have five reels of different coloured plastic

coming into it. It can print multiple colours at the same time and it just

doesn't. The pad heats up. That's what allows the plastic to stick and then

there's an app. There's a time-lapse camera in it. In real time, I can look

at it. It's unbelievable. It really is. As a passage of time, it's remarkable how

far we've come. That was probably the coolest tech thing under our tree and

it wasn't really tech. It was just created by tech. Let us know what was

under your Christmas tree. I'd love to hear from you. We'd love to help you

with any tech questions you've got. Bragg about anything. It doesn't have to

be a problem you've got. You can just be bragging about something you've

got. Something you've learned how to use over the break. Whatever it might be.

We'd love to hear from you here on the AFTM podcast.

I'd love to hear from you if you've got a tech question any time you like.

Let's go back to calls. Greg's on the line. G'day, Greg.

G'day, Trev, how are you? Yeah, really good, mate. What can I do for you?

Trev, I've got about half a dozen old laptops and I really want to get all the

information and photos off them, off the hard drive, before I get rid of them.

I was wondering, can you suggest anybody who would do that for me?

Are you a hoarder? What's happened? Why have you got so many old laptops?

No, no, no, not really. They've just outlived their existence and

I've just put them aside and they've all got charges and things like that,

but I'd love to get the information off them. Old photos and bits and pieces

and I'd love to take it off before I throw them away or recycle them.

The problem is there's probably a bunch of companies that could do a backup

and they all work, they all turn on, etc. Yes, they all work,

they all turn on and just outlive their capabilities and I wanted to,

at least extract the information off them before I got rid of them.

Yeah, totally. As I say, the problem is I think you could find someone to back

them up, which will just create an image of the computer, which is useless

to you on any other computer. What you really need is a more detailed

extraction, as you say, of individual things, but how does someone

random, so let's just say you take it to a shop for this,

how do they know what you want off it? Do you know what I mean?

That's the biggest challenge you've got because don't say all the images

because there's a billion images on a computer that are things like icons

and stuff. So how does someone determine what comes off it?

Is it just what's in the my documents folder, for example?

Yes, pretty much.

Like I said, I've saved a lot of stuff to external hard drives

over the years, but there's still things on on those old laptops

that I really I suppose I'd have to go through them with them.

Image by image or file by file and say, yes, save that before I just

discard them because, you know, there's a lot of sensitive information

on those hard drives and I'd like to I'd like to, you know, make sure

that nobody else gets them by mistake.

You've nailed the biggest problem and that's going to be time.

You're literally going to need to sit with them to do it.

So you better off doing it yourself is essentially what I would say.

I would say if you were to buy a high quality, high capacity

hard drive and each laptop, I mean, over the course of four weeks,

just to, you know, one and a half a week to one on a Saturday, one

on a Wednesday or whatever.

And just, mate, honestly, it's a drag and drop.

Just go, you know what, let's just move the my documents folder

because that's where 99% of everything's going to be your photos,

your documents, videos, files that matter.

They're going to be in the my documents folder.

So that plus maybe the downloads, if that's not in my documents

and the desktop, that's where your files are.

So if you were to get a high quality because it's going to get used

and you want it to last and then just drag and drop.

Because remember that drag and drop might be an easy thing to do.

But it's then so it's a 10 minute process for you to boot it up,

plug it in and then drag and drop.

But the computer might need to sit there for two or three hours

copying the files, but you don't need to supervise that.

Just do it all because then the other thing you can do

if you buy a good enough external hard drive,

you might be able to get one that actually has software on it

that manages your photos.

And then at some point in the future, you might be able to do

a search of those files and photos, which because they're all

in one place at that point and gets a bit easier.

True, true, true.

I imagine people listen to your podcast.

If anybody's out there that would be able to assist me,

I'd be happy to compensate them.

And if you could pass on my details, I'd be in.

I'm in Waverly in Sydney.

Well, I'll put the call out, otherwise, mate,

it's probably going to be one of those summer holiday break things.

Well, I've got plenty of.

And as I said, I've got a couple of old external hard drives,

but at the same time, you know, I'm not as technically

minded as I like to think I am.

So I think it downplaying how easy it is.

I really do. I really do.

I think the money you would spend on just one third of the work

on one laptop, going into one good quality external hard drive.

And then next time you fire up a movie or a TV show, just press pause,

start the transfer and then let it sit and do its thing.

By the time you watch the movie and maybe another one, it's done.

And then move on to the next laptop next time you're there.

But yeah, if anyone's got an interest, I'll let you know.

OK, and I've also got a stack of old video tapes, too.

I'd love to get transferred to digital as well.

But that's another that's another story.

The good thing about that is you don't need to sit with them while it's done.

And there are places that do that.

If you Google VHS to digital conversion, there are places that will.

They don't they're not cheap because it's not a person.

It's not the time of a person.

It's the time of a machine that you're tying up.

So with a hundred and eighty minute VHS tape.

Well, that's that's ours that is going to be put aside. Right.

So it's it's not ridiculously expensive,

but there's absolutely people that do do that.

So well worth a look for that one.

OK, I appreciate that.

Anybody that can help me, I'd appreciate some contact as well.

Get in touch and I'll I'll put you in touch.

Good on you, mate.

OK, nice to talk to you. Take care.

Thanks for the call. Good on you.

Yeah, I mean, I died.

I that's got to cost a lot of money to sit and do

so much better to do it yourself.

I would have thought.

But you know what?

I am stubborn like that myself sometimes.

You know, I just prefer to pay to get it done.

So if you want to help Greg, let me know.

Tech cars lifestyle.

This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.

Great to have your company

happen to help wherever I can.

Oh, four double seven, six, five, seven, six, five, seven.

Send me a text or a WhatsApp Ivens on the line.

Good day, Ivan.

Good day, Trevor. How are you?

They're really good, mate. What can I do for you?

OK, a couple of months ago,

I made the mistake of upgrading my

iPhone 11 from 18 to version ISO 26.

And for a couple of days,

I didn't realize there was anything wrong until I started

getting messages back from my friend saying,

who is this?

And I presume it's you, Ivan.

And so anyway, when in further investigation,

I found that my phone number had changed,

sending out i-messages.

Really?

Within.

And what was that number recognisable at all to you?

Well, it's two digits more than my proper number.

So what you're saying is if your phone ended in one seven seven,

it's one seven nine. Correct.

And on further investigation,

I went into my iPhone settings

and I had a look in there where it says

my phone and it said that it was the incorrect number.

So I went to edit that number and press save.

The save button worked, but the number remained.

So the only way to solve the problem

was to switch off i-messaging.

That means I can't back up my messages to the cloud.

Have you looked in this so it's still happening today?

Yeah, absolutely.

In the look, I don't even want to begin to understand how that happened.

I'm going to say that to you straight away.

That is the wildest thing I've definitely heard of.

So my wife, when she switched phones,

was issued a temporary phone number for the temporary SIM card.

And then that was changed by the telco.

And that temporary number suck around on her phone for a little while.

And I actually deleted it kind of the way you mentioned

by going into the my number setting and it kind of went away.

But that's that's different, right?

There's a there's a process.

There's a reason for that happening,

whereas you just did a software upgrade.

However, in in i-message or in messages,

I think is what it's called in settings.

If you're in in settings and then under apps, you go to messages.

Yes, and I didn't realize you could change the default messaging app

to WhatsApp. There you go.

I just clicked on it under i-message being on or off.

You need to turn it off to see this.

It says send and receive four addresses.

Yes. Is your email is your old number there or both?

No, no, I have my email address,

which I called, which I sent, which I use regularly.

And the then the new number with the two extra digits on there,

which talk are you with?

Tell Vodafone, I've been to Vodafone.

They've changed my SIM card.

I actually I actually think the problem lies within Apple

because I've spent numerous hours on the phone with Apple support.

I actually went to see a genius at Apple.

They took one look at it.

They took one look at it and said,

we can't help you.

You'll have to call Apple support.

They gave me the phone number and that's that's I've probably called them

probably 10 times and every time I get a new operator

or a new advisor, as they call them.

And they put me through the same.

They must have that on their computer screens,

the same spiel every time.

Resets your network settings, reset this,

try and save the new number and on the last three occasions,

they had me factory reset my phone.

Yeah. Take the SIM card out.

Then go to once I'd reset my phone,

go to the iCloud and download the backup to restore my phone.

But the first thing before the restore happened

was that the iPhone asked me what number do you want to use

and it displayed the incorrect number.

And I said, no, I don't want to use that number.

And and then it went through the the upgrade procedure.

Well, at what point did I ask you what number you wanted to use?

That's a very strange prompt.

Yes. OK. So about three questions into the factory reset.

And that was and and and I thought that was unusual myself

because it had no SIM card in there.

So when I finished the race, when I finished the download

and switch my phone back on, everything, of course, came back at.

But of the course, all my apps had to be downloaded from the cloud.

I then put my SIM card in and, lo and behold,

there was no reference to my number.

In your old, your old number.

Yes, your real number.

So I'm buoyed by the fact that you've done some factory resets

because that was where I was going to go.

But what I want to know is, have you done a factory reset

and set the phone up cold with no backup?

Yes. And the same thing happens?

Oh, sorry. No, no, no, I haven't done that.

No, what in desperation, I went and bought an Android

to get me through a certain period

because I'm in software support myself.

So and and I was getting I was sending out text messages

to people for support purposes

and they didn't have my number in their phone, obviously,

being the wrong number.

And so I had to do a quick fix in order to keep working.

Just listening. You're right.

I believe the problem exists somewhere in your Apple account,

let's say and and especially given your

your carrier has done things like SIM card

and you've done network resets and factory resets.

But the one missing link there for me

is doing a factory install of that phone.

So wipe it clean, set it up without a SIM card in it.

But don't. So set up.

I don't mind you using your iCloud account to log in,

if you know what I mean, but don't do a backup.

Well, that's where the well, that's it.

As soon as that happens,

I might have got the sequences wrong there.

But as soon as I log into my iCloud, that's what happens.

It asked for that number.

Without a SIM card in log in for that.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

So that's what I've told the advisors at Apple.

I said, look, I'll give you permission to go into my account

and see if you can find this number.

But they said, oh, we can't do that for privacy reasons,

even if you sign a waiver.

So I've had this.

I've had this number now.

Can you believe, Trevor, for 35 years,

we were actually on the ground level

when Vodafone came into Australia and I picked this number

because it's a binary number and we're in software development.

So I've done my research behind all this.

And that's why I reached out to you guys.

Fascinating. So look, so they're so let me be clear, though.

It is trying to think out loud here,

but it's so it's possible to set up an iPhone without an iCloud account.

That would allow you to then put us.

So I'm talking raw, just no apps, nothing, right?

Skip the iCloud part of the setup process.

It's also possible to send SMSes without an iCloud account.

But I message not, you'd need to log in.

That's right.

The most important thing to you is your phone number.

So I'm wondering whether or not you use a different iCloud

or a new iCloud to set the phone up.

What I want to avoid is a backup.

Yeah, well, that's well, the thing is, I can even if I've got

even if I have the iCloud switched on and the wrong number appears,

I can still make phone calls.

Yes, it's just an iMessage fault.

Right. So have you logged into the website?

account.apple.com and looked at your iCloud account?

Yes. And what phone number shows there?

The the three zero number, the wrong number.

Yes. So it's your iCloud account that's wrong.

How does one update?

It's corrupted somehow.

So can you I'm logged into my iCloud account right now, my Apple account.

Next to phone number, it says one and you can't delete it

because you need to add another one.

So can you add another number?

No, I've deleted both those numbers.

And then, yes, I did add my correct number.

And then it says I have to wait a certain period of time for it to

come across, you know, it was an instant.

And then when I looked at my phone an hour later,

well, that's the withholding period, apparently.

I noticed it was the wrong number again.

Wow.

Maybe it's because it's a binary number.

Right.

Well, I don't know.

Honestly, I and I'm really I have no where to turn.

Look, I'm operating currently by switching off my message.

It's not a big deal to me.

I don't get my messages backed up to the cloud.

So it doesn't really worry.

But I can't I want to upgrade to a new phone.

And I've had this one for a while now.

Yeah.

That's right.

So as soon as I want to get a new phone,

I'll be porting over this problem to the new phone.

And, you know, I'd like to I'd like it to be working,

you know, 99% reliability.

And strangely enough, Trevor, sometimes it goes,

even though that I message switched off,

it goes back to I message because people start asking

me who are you again?

Right.

So I get that.

So I know when it does switch over by itself because it goes

blue, the messages I send out are blue because that

signifies that you're sending within Apple.

So have they done a security check on?

Have you have you updated all your security protocols

on your account?

Passwords?

Well, yes, they have.

They absolutely have for the simple fact is that they

cut my account for 24 hours.

They just said, we've had too many log-ons to your

account.

We're doing a security check on you without me

asking them.

So sure enough, 24 hours later up to the dock,

my phone came back online.

Because I like all I was thinking was maybe someone

else is in your account.

That's that's that was my next thought.

It's like, could that be?

Yeah, what would they benefit from changing

your phone number by two digits?

Well, they might be screen scrapping my bank

account login details.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's just a it's just for me.

Oh, mate, you your head must be bruised and

batted from the brick wall.

And I feel normally.

Yeah, well, normally I can solve.

I'm in it.

As I said, I can solve things myself.

But this one goes way.

Look, it's within the Apple kingdom.

There's nothing I can do about it.

And they've never heard of this problem

according to the 10 operators I've spoken to.

Let me call Tim Cook.

No, I'm not going to call Tim Cook because I don't have his number.

But let me the very least.

So I know this is painful, but because you've

just given me 10 minutes of your time about it.

But if I can get from you and I'll get producer Rob just

to get you an email address if I can get you to dot point.

And I'm talking just top line.

We don't need the whole story would say dot point.

What's the issue?

What have you tried?

So, you know, genius bar, 10 conversations with support,

etc.

Yep.

And your contact details.

I'll forward that to my contacts at Apple and say

is there a high level executive supervisor,

superior support that can spend a bit of time

looking into this and digging under the hood?

Because it feels like this is,

this is outside the realms of any of the handbooks

in Apple support, I would suggest.

That's absolutely.

And strangely enough,

I've already got that right in front of me.

All those dot points.

Stand by.

All right, we'll get in touch.

Give you an email address to send that to.

And I'll then forward it onto Apple.

We'll be in touch to see how you end up.

Okay.

Thanks, Trevor.

All right.

Fingers crossed, Ivan.

Cheers, mate.

Good on you.

Bye-bye.

No worries at all.

I mean, that's wild.

That's, that's next level grievance.

And I'll be honest.

He's very good about it.

I'd be, I'd be yelling.

I'd be screaming.

I'd, there'd be words.

But I respect his, his calm approach.

Because he's an IT support guy,

he knows how support can go wrong.

He's also found a temporary solution,

but not ideal in any way, shape or form.

So let's see whether we can resolve that

in another way directly through Apple.

We'd love to hear from you, whatever is on your mind.

You've got tech question.

You want to buy something you need advice, whatever it is,

get in touch any time.

Alan's on the line.

Good day, Alan.

Yeah, good day, Trevor.

Thanks for the call.

What can I do for you, buddy?

I've got a problem with my two factor authorization.

Right.

With friendly enough with Coles and Woolworths.

So when you're logging into their accounts

and they go, we need to send you a text code.

Is that how you're using it?

That's right.

Yep.

So when Coles, Coles only last year

or about middle of the year,

they went into two factor and it hasn't worked.

It's had problems ever since.

It's never worked.

Basically, you click to get the code

and you don't get the code.

Really?

Really.

So I had enough.

Eventually, their solution was to

we'll just take the two factor off.

So that was their remedy.

So anyway, so I decided to go to Woolworths

and guess what?

The same thing happened.

But the other thing is Woolworths

have a separate selection for a callback.

So if I click the callback one,

which is the same number, same number,

I get an automated callback

that will give me the code to log in.

But if I click the SMS one,

I don't get anything.

Do they offer anything other than SMS

to Factual Authentication?

Do they offer an app,

Authenticator app,

or any option like that?

No.

Only SMS?

No.

Only, as I said,

Woolworths got the SMS

and the callback.

The callback.

But I mean, it's the same number.

So, yeah, it makes no sense to me.

But I mean, like, I'll go into vicinity, for instance.

No problem.

Yeah, right.

It's interesting.

I'm looking online.

I don't see any...

Yeah, I don't see it being a problem.

Like, there's no one complaining about it.

No.

I think if there was a big problem with it,

it would be certainly being discussed.

Yeah, that's what I think it's like.

I think it's the same.

What sort of phone have you got?

I've got an Apple i12.

Have you...

Do you know where the filtered messages are?

Is it possible that the messages are being filtered out?

No.

I've had a look in there.

So, I...

Yeah.

You looked in spam and all that kind of stuff?

Yes.

Yeah, I thought it might have been

somehow being blocked, but I mean,

maybe one side, but two.

Well, no, what I mean is, you know,

there's multiple SMS inboxes, basically.

There's unknown senders, messages, spam,

recently deleted, and you can create other filters.

Have you got any...

Yeah, it's not good or anything.

You've got internet security software installed on your phone?

Well, actually, I had...

I had trained on my phone,

but I've taken that off recently

because that was actually funnily enough

playing up with me, Apple CarPlay,

the VPN side.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, you don't need to use the VPN permanently, though.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, I mean, I've actually...

I thought about that,

so I actually did remove the train

because I'm not for a new or tomorrow anyway.

So, yeah, I thought, well,

I'll remove that just another thing to try, of course.

Yeah.

Wow.

I thought the only...

I mean, it's a strange one, isn't it?

I've got your platform.

Mate, look, the thing is,

these things are delayed often.

You get frustrated with them,

but they eventually come through.

The fact that yours are not coming through at all,

it doesn't baffle me that both supermarkets are doing

because they're probably using the same provider.

Yeah.

But, mate, there's something happening on your phone.

I think.

And without having it knowing that I can't narrow it down,

but I bet you if you took your SIM card,

I bet you if you took your SIM card out

and put it in another phone

without any software installed on it,

I bet any one of those messages come through.

That was what I was going to say.

I was just going to go by a Tipee phone

and put the phone number over onto the other phone

and see what happens.

That was my next protocol.

I will bet you that works.

And if it does,

then what I would do is I would factory reset your iPhone,

start again,

and don't install anything.

And as you install everything,

just check what impact it has on that,

that SMS validation.

Yeah.

I mean,

it could be one of the maps I've got on the phone

that could be causing a problem.

All you needed to do is give it access

and it might be,

might be moving those off.

So factory reset of the iPhone,

if it works on it,

just gone by $20,

the Android phone,

set it up.

If it works,

then come back to the iPhone,

do a factory reset.

Yeah.

I mean,

my other method was,

was there some sort of difference

because I use Kogan,

which is a byproduct of a phone.

No, no.

Absolutely no reason why it shouldn't work,

mate.

No reason at all.

No.

Yeah, okay.

Well, I think we might have determined

that there's probably something to do with the phone.

It feels that way.

But you go and do a test on a cheap phone

and make sure that he's working

and then bring it back

and erase that iPhone.

Yeah.

All right.

We'll see how we go.

All right, Alan.

Good on you, mate.

No worries, mate.

No worries.

Cheers.

Cheers, buddy.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure it's something he's put on his phone.

I'm just going to say that straight up.

But we'll wait and see

whether we hear back from Alan

about that one.

The EFT and podcast

thanks to SwanBuddy4K,

the doorbell that answers the door for you.

Great heavy company.

If you've got a tech question,

you know where to go.

Give me a call.

Get in touch.

Paul's on the line.

G'day, Paul.

G'day, Trevor.

Mate, what can I do for you?

Okay, so our problem

is that we would like to

scan a lot of our old photos

from the last 40 years.

Yep.

And scan them into our PC.

And so that's the problem to solve

and we've been not very

organised over the last many years.

And so my question is,

what's the best sort of software

to scan those photos?

So that's the first question.

And we haven't upgraded

our Windows operating system.

So we're still Windows 10.

So that's my question, mate.

Look, you won't have a problem with Windows 10.

That's totally fine.

There's a device you need to buy.

It's as simple as that.

And it's the greatest.

It's one of the coolest products I've ever reviewed,

if I'm honest.

It's called the Epson Fast Photo

with an F.

So F-A-S-T, F-O-T-O, photo with an F.

This thing is a photo scanner.

High-speed photo scanner.

Now, it's not cheap.

You're talking about 800 bucks.

But let me tell you this.

Once you've finished digitising your photos,

you can sell it.

Sell it to someone else

who's going to have the same problem you've got.

Now, you might get 500 bucks for it.

So you've only paid kind of 200 and something

to scan the photos.

But it does it so fast,

you will be blown away.

I can't remember the exact numbers.

But I've got to tell you,

I feel like it does a photo a second.

Like jup, jup, jup, jup.

So 60 photos a minute.

Maybe even faster, right?

And what it does is you can say to it,

scan the front and back

so that sometimes you've written on the back of a photo.

And so it'll save two images for each photo.

And what I did with it when I used it was,

you know, you've got those Kodak

or rabbit photo little envelopes

with 24 photos in it.

And you know those photos are from

Julie's birthday party in 1993

or whatever it is, right?

And so you grab that packet

and you put that packet in the scanner.

And then in the software on Windows,

you call it Julie's birthday party

and you give it a date.

If you know it, give it a date.

And what it does is it gives that date

to the digital photo as well.

So that if you're ever, you know,

looking at your photos in bulk,

it will know when, in what order they appeared.

So it's a very smart way to digitize your photos.

It's something that would, it takes time obviously,

but it's a nice like, you know what it is?

During the cricket,

you put the photo scanner here,

you put your laptop there,

you put a cold one there,

and you go, right, I'm going to do this one

and just make while you're watching the cricket

or while you're watching a movie,

you just get it done.

It's really an easy thing to do.

Now it's $800 upfront, I get that,

but for $800 you're getting a machine

that will literally do it for you

and a machine that if you look after it,

keep the packaging, et cetera.

I believe you could resell

because there's someone else like you

waiting for the exact same thing.

Wow, thanks Frank.

And when you store the photos,

let's say for example,

you store it in, you put a date to it.

Does it sort in date order?

Yeah, so it creates a folder

for the years, the months

and the events within there.

And then here's the greatest thing.

I actually then took that folder

and uploaded it into my Google Photos Library

in the cloud.

And so then, and this is honestly,

mate, I don't want to

become a crazy religious

leader for the Google Photo

religion, but Paul,

if you uploaded all those photos

into the cloud and then

named people, so what Google does

is it comes up with faces and goes, who's this person?

And I'm like, that's my Uncle Barry.

And then it'll find photos of Uncle Barry

from when he was a child because it's able

to facially recognize anyone and everything.

It's amazing.

So spend the time and money

digitizing your library

and then take the effort

to potentially put it in the cloud

and take advantage of the cool stuff that you can do

in the cloud now with photos as well.

Thanks, Trevor. Love you work, Merry Christmas.

All right, mate. Cheers. Thanks for getting in touch.

You're a good man. Cheers, mate.

Cheers, buddy. No worries at all.

There you go. Simple. And we've definitely talked

to that before here on this program.

It's such a great product, the Epson Fast Photo.

So well worth a look. I assume they still sell

on retail. I just looked on eBay. There's plenty of people selling

them brand new and some secondhand.

But if you have the 800, I would get it new

just so that you've got the instructions

and everything you need. But I can see one there

on eBay for $600.

It says parts only.

So maybe that means

it doesn't have the book and all those things.

There's someone selling a pre-owned one there

from Japan at 836.

Let's go Australia only.

Will we? Let's just look

Australia only.

And yeah, there's plenty

available. But yeah, you can still get it

in major retail as well.

0477657657

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today.

Get in touch.

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Great to have you company and we'll go back to your calls.

Get a hue.

What can I do for you?

We're with Spintel

at home for NBN.

What are they like?

How do you find them?

Very good.

At the modem.

If you're close to the modem, it's okay.

It's a

TP-Link VX230V

I don't know whether you're familiar with those or not.

When we get to the back of the house

they sell

a

TP-Link

HB210

which is only $150

of mesh system.

I don't know whether that's a good thing

or should I spend more?

Do they say that the HB210 connects

to the 230V?

Yes, they do.

So they're mesh extenders

for the existing

router that you've got?

Yes.

I just wonder whether they're

they seem a lot cheaper than

TP-Link

or other brands.

Totally.

You've got the bones

and now you're just building it out.

Look, the HB210

from what I can see has Wi-Fi 7.

That's great.

It's probably only disadvantages

that it's probably a dual band system.

So essentially

traffic from the further satellite

is coming back

on a network that you might also be using

and so there's a small amount of congestion

but it's probably not discernible

to the average user.

How many devices and people are in the home?

Only two people

but quite a few devices.

TV and laptop and Ring Doorbell

and security, Yarlo security

and

yeah.

I think it's a great

simple solution for you to be honest.

Nice and easy. Plug and play

and obviously you can buy

can you buy them as individuals or do you have to buy

a 3-pack or 2-pack?

No, you can just buy them individually.

They're 150 each.

How big is the house?

What are we talking in terms of range?

Distance?

My house is 32 squares.

That bedroom is probably

20 metres from the

motor miss.

I think

I'd grab two

just to be on the safe side

but good thing is, grab one, plug it in

see where it gets you to and then

plug the next one in. You know what I mean?

Like you could actually do it ad hoc.

Yeah, how do they

work better than an extender?

That's an easy

answer so yeah.

You've got me easily there and I must do a video

on that actually. I'm going to write that down right now

because people still, I thought we'd forgotten about

extenders to be honest but I've seen

a couple of people mention them

extender versus mesh.

I'm writing it down

literally because I want to do a video on it.

So an extender, let's say

two rooms from the modem

you've got three bars

of Wi-Fi or two bars of Wi-Fi

and then another two

rooms away you've got none. If you put

an extender where there's those two bars

of Wi-Fi, that room down

on the back is going to show

full coverage, full bars

from the extender network.

But all it's really extending

is the two bar signal.

So it's extending a slower internet

it's extending a

worse part of the network.

So it's really just amplifying

a poor signal. Whereas

a mesh is giving you

the full network in every

location and that's the massive difference.

It should theoretically give you

a large percentage of the speed that you're

paying for in every part of the home.

Right.

They're obviously restricted

to a certain distance too are they?

Yeah, Wi-Fi has limits

and that's why you've got

just remember it this way

you've got your modem, it's working

and you know it's working fast because you've tested it right next to it.

Then you put a satellite in

at a given distance

and you can work that out

just by plugging one of them in and going

one room away or two rooms away

and then I'm going to test the speed.

Then I'm going to bring it closer and see if it's faster

or put it further back and see if it's slower

and then you find that sweet spot

and then you can put the next satellite in

at roughly that same distance

and you build a daisy chain

and then that daisy chain creates a dome

of Wi-Fi over your whole home.

Nice.

So it'll be bouncing into signals all over the place.

Exactly. You'll be walking through signals

like Superman.

Yeah, sounds good.

Good recommendation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for getting in touch.

Cheers mate, any time.

It really is that simple

and it is annoying

because people still will sell you an extender

even though it ain't the greatest solution

in almost every scenario.

So yeah, just be warned of that.

A mesh system

is the optimal system to have.

Helping Australians

with tech questions for over 15 years.

The EFTN podcast with Travelong.

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and

there's plenty more competitions coming up.

There's competitions still running

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thanks to the magazine.

The comps are still there

and there will be many more after that

including something very big coming up.

What are we running now?

Ooh, as I look here

yes, this week is the High Sense

M2 Pro 4K Projector

that is I think one of the most

expensive prizes in the list

over the last 10 or 11 weeks

so the High Sense 4K Projector

this week that will be drawn on Monday

and then the Monday after we'll draw a

Netgear Nighthawk Wi-Fi 7 Router

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prizes

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New Year new tech! But the same tech issues!

BMW M2

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