The IT outage that crippled the world last week could have been a whole lot worse, would you believe?

On Friday afternoon (Sydney time) airlines, banks and retailers were experiencing system failures and the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death) and were simply unable to do business.

It turns out, CrowdStrike a security company that 99 per of the world’s customers had never heard about until that fateful day, had uploaded an erroneous update that didn’t agree with the system which sent it into meltdown.

Ironically, the system behaved precisely as it was designed to do. When it detected an issue, it shut down to protect itself.

It was one line of code that stopped the world.

But it’s hard to believe that this issue, according to Microsoft, who’s Azure cloud platform suffered the outage, only affected 1 per cent of all Windows machines around the world or 8.5 million Windows devices.

It just so happened that these machines were in the front line when checking people in, when people were trying to purchase something with their credit card or withdraw money from their bank or ATM.

There are countless other businesses that you wouldn’t have heard from who also suffered from the outage because they couldn’t connect to the Microsoft cloud platform used by 85 per cent of the world’s computers.

Luckily there were backup systems for mission critical and life and death situations like the military, emergency services and hospitals.

Others are calling for airlines and banks to also have a backup system.

But that would be like having a backup car in case your regular car didn’t start.

This system is robust and usually bulletproof so the outage we experienced the other day, undoubtedly the biggest in history, is an extremely rare occurrence.

There may be some merit to the argument of having a smaller standby system that can handle things while the other system is down and perhaps running on the Mac or Linux platform.

For companies already using Mac and Linux it was business as usual last week while the rest of the world came to a standstill.

Despite the problem originating with independent cyber security company CrowdStrike, a $100billion US company, Microsoft says it is supporting customers impacted using its ecosystem.

David Weston, Microsoft’s Vice President, Enterprise and OS security said: “Since this event began, we’ve maintained ongoing communication with our customers, CrowdStrike and external developers to collect information and expedite solutions.

“We recognize the disruption this problem has caused for businesses and in the daily routines of many individuals.

“Our focus is providing customers with technical guidance and support to safely bring disrupted systems back online.”

Days later IT managers around the world are still cleaning up the mess and the backlog resulting from the outage.

This whole incident demonstrates the world’s reliability on technology, and particularly the Microsoft cloud platform.

The same systems that provide the speed and convenience we take for granted in our day-to-day lives is the same system that can throw our lives into turmoil when it’s not working.

Thankfully those days are a rarity.

But still, it wouldn’t hurt to have some cash on hand just in case.

The post Would you believe the massive global IT outage could have been far worse appeared first on Tech Guide.

My affair with Tesla is over. It was great while it lasted but I’m now I’m back in the arms of my ex – Mercedes Benz.

My five years driving a Tesla felt like a fling. I was loving it until Tesla suddenly said it was all over and turned its back on me.

My intention was to upgrade my current Model S to the Model S Plaid – I actually placed my order two years ago – but Tesla sent me an email that basically said “look, we need to talk”.

The affair was over. In the email Tesla said, “it’s not you – it’s me”.

They said they weren’t going to make the new Model S in right hand drive. I was heartbroken. They said they appreciated everything we’d done together but it was over.

To make me feel better they even offered my one of their siblings – the Model 3 or Model Y – if I wanted the relationship to continue.

But that’s not who I fell in love with.

I bought my Tesla Model S five years ago in 2018 when you could count the number of car companies making EVs on one hand.

Tesla first caught my eye back in 2017 when I was offered the Model S to drive so I could write about my experience on Tech Guide.

Here was this amazing car that represented the future. I was immediately smitten.

At that time I was driving a Mercedes Benz E Class – a beautiful luxury car – but at that moment it felt old school in comparison.

The younger and sexier vehicle suddenly had all my attention and, when my lease on the Merc ran out in 2018, I decided it was time to make the move.

The new car was all electric, had a sleek design and was filled with tech. This was the car I was meant to own – and it felt like I’d know it all my life.

At the time Tesla was an up and coming brand that had a huge cool factor – it was the new kid on the block taking on the old and stuffy car manufacturers.

When kids are fascinated by your car and wave to you because you drive a Tesla it said to me that the brand is cool and therefore I must be cool as well, right?

I was gulping the Kool Aid by the bucket, and it felt like I was part of a movement.

The rise of Tesla has been remarkable. The point of difference was Tesla was only making electric cars and approaching car manufacturing from a completely different direction than the traditional car manufacturers.

It reminded of when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 and turned the smartphone market on its head.

Apple approached the iPhone from the computer side – it was a computer that made phone calls while everyone else was trying make a telephone more like a computer.

Tesla and Apple have a lot in common – a tech company with visible and easily recognisable CEOs and millions of fanatical fans of their respective brands.

But ironically Tesla cars were never compatible with Apple’s CarPlay – a feature I have never really enjoyed until I got into my new EV – the Mercedes Benz EQE 350.

Over the years, Tesla made a lot of ground and endeared themselves to customers because they were the underdog in the industry.

This was despite the fact that investors were death-riding them and they were months behind in their manufacturing and were really struggling to meet the increasing demand.

What saved Tesla was that customers were patient. And loyal.

The wait for a Tesla was like a badge of honour. It showed you were up with the times and wanted to help save the planet.

Tesla put the blowtorch to the other major car brands and forced them into creating their own roadmaps to coming up with their own electric vehicles.

And that’s exactly what we’re seeing now. Hundred year-old car companies now have EVs and a plan to be full electric in the next decade.

If there was no Tesla to not only rock the boat but capsize it – we’d still be shopping for petrol cars.

Tesla also had first mover advantage when it came to creating a network of electric vehicle chargers at a time when most drivers weren’t even considering an EV. Their impressions of an electric car were the equivalent of a golf cart.

But five years is a long time in the auto industry and today it’s an entirely different story.

If Mercedes Benz had an EV five years ago, I would have bought that – but they didn’t and that’s why I told them I want to see other people.

In the five years Mercedes Benz and I were apart a lot has changed. Mercedes Benz had made a lot of changes and looked better than ever before.

I see that Tesla breaking up with me was probably a blessing in disguise.

It forced me to consider other brands and naturally Mercedes Benz (I had four Mercs before I bought the Tesla) was at the top of the list.

The Model S Plaid I ordered was going to cost more than the Mercedes Benz EQE 350, but it was still pretty spartan and minimal and, frankly, lacked the luxury that Mercedes Benz offered.

But I don’t regret buying the Tesla – it wasn’t as luxurious or as well built as a Merc – but I looked beyond that.

What it lacked in luxury and build quality – it made up for it with the cool factor, performance, technology, software updates and new features appearing overnight.

My new Mercedes Benz EQE 350 is amazing and it has so many features that surprise and delight with nearly every feature I had with the Tesla now onboard – and in many cases features and luxuries and safety features that were lacking in the Tesla.

Today everyone has now caught up with Tesla in terms of EVs.

For a first time EV driver, Tesla still has extraordinary appeal because they were first cab off the rank and are top of mind when customers think of an electric vehicle.

I think the biggest worry for Tesla is whether they can keep their customers. They sell their cars online – there is no face to face dealing with anyone.

It’s the same deal if you have an issue or need a repair – it’s all done through the app and really lacks the human touch.

Mercedes Benz, and all the other established brands, don’t want to sell you one car – they want to sell you your next five cars.

The delivery of my Mercedes Benz EQE 350 was like a ceremony – it felt like an occasion.

To be fair my Tesla delivery in 2018 felt the same – it was a momentous occasion.

But today Tesla is delivering so many cars in Australia – only Model 3 and Model Y – the delivery is usually short and sharp.

Tesla, it was great while it lasted, and I want you to be happy. I don’t regret the time we had together.

Mercedes Benz, it’s great to be back.

The post Hey Tesla the affair is over – I’ve now gone back to my ex appeared first on Tech Guide.

“Ask not what your country can do for you –  but what you can do for your country” – prophetic words from President JFK but words that also apply to today’s situation about the government’s  coronavirus contact tracking app.

The app, which is expected to be released in the next week or two, will remember all the people you spend more than 15 minutes with via the Bluetooth connection of their smartphones.

But the contact tracking app will only be successful if a significant number of people download and use the app.

To succeed in staying a step ahead of the spread of the coronavirus, 40 per cent of the population needs to get onboard. That’s a lot of people.

According to government services minister Stuart Robert the app is voluntary and won’t be used to track users.

It only uses Bluetooth short range technology to detect nearby users. It will not be using GPS.

Robert says if two phones are within 1.5m of each other for 15 minutes, a name and number is stored and encrypted on the smartphone. Not on a government server.

To put this into perspective, anyone who’s ever signed up to use a social media app, food delivery app, ride share app, gaming app and music app have shared much more information.

In comparison, the contact tracking app is quite minimal in terms of the data its asking for. And this data is encoded so no one can read it – just like it would be on the servers of Uber, MenuLog, Uber Eats, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Apple Music.

But despite these assurances there has still been a remarkable amount of pushback from Australians who have said they won’t be using the app for fear the government will somehow use this data against them.

We’re pretty sure the government knows your name and number already.

We’ve been conditioned to make online connections with care and to try to keep our personal and financial details private.

I’ve often been the one advising about these very precautions so in my next breath I would never admonish or criticise people who won’t be using the app.

That’s their right.

We live in a free country, we live in a democracy and are well within our rights to completely ignore this app.

Just like it’s not compulsory to give to charities, volunteer to fight bushfires and help other people.

Today we’re faced with an extraordinary situation that calls for extraordinary measures.

But for us to get through it requires more than just staying home and practicing social distancing.

It also requires trust and compassion and consideration.

The contact tracking app will be a game changer for health officials if you or anyone you come into contact with contracts coronavirus.

Manually tracking people you come into contact with would take days and by that time the disease could have spread even further.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison likened downloading the app to national service.

“If you download this app you’ll be helping to save someone’s life,” he said last week.

Now to be clear, the app would have less tracking and invade your privacy far less than social media or using any of Google’s services like search or maps.

Ironically, many of the people opposed to the app and their perceived invasion of privacy decided to express these sentiments on Twitter and Facebook – two platforms that will know more about you and what you do and where you are than the coronavirus app ever will.

And on top of that, once this is all over you can simply delete the app – and then all the data it collected and encrypted would be deleted as well.

That’s what the government says and it’s time for all of us to believe them.

I’ll be downloading and using the app from day one.

I’m sure, like me, you want things to get back to normal.

I’d like to have a swim at the beach, grab a drink with my mates, have a meal at a restaurant, sit down for a coffee, go to the footy and watch a movie in the cinema.

We took these things for granted a few weeks ago.

For things to get back to normal, we need to do our part and download this app.

A way to incentivise downloading the app could be using it as a pass to get people back doing the things we like.

When the pubs, cafes, restaurants and cinemas open again, it might be a condition of entry to have the contact tracking app on your phone.

We owe it to our fellow Australians, including a lot of elderly people in isolation, to do our bit and help stop coronavirus in its tracks.

If it means having your name and number encrypted on another person’s phone for a few weeks that’s a small price to pay to safely regain our lifestyle.

Don’t do it for you, do it for your country.

The post Why we should all do our part and download the coronavirus contact tracking app appeared first on Tech Guide.

It’s been two years since I went solar with panels and a storage battery in my home. And the investment has paid off handsomely – saving me close to $8000 in electricity and petrol costs in that time.

In October 2017, there were 27 solar panels, a Solar Edge inverter and a 10kW Sonnen battery installed in my two-storey home in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

Ironically the day I met with Natural Solar – July 1, 2017 – was the same day electricity prices increased by 20 per cent.

What better time could there be to make the jump to solar?

In another fluke of timing I was also in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the new SonnenFlat system that would lead to me having a $0 bill from my electricity company.

In fact, since then I haven’t received another bill from Energy Australia.

I was actually the first SonnenFlat customer in the southern hemisphere.

Here’s how SonnenFlat works.

All customers who sign up to SonnenFlat are all linked.

Sonnen (a German company which has built a factory in South Australia to manufacture storage batteries) became my new energy providers.

As SonnenFlat customers we all generate electricity through our panels and store the excess power in our Sonnen batteries.

Now all of the Sonnen batteries – and there are now more than 3,000 of them in Australia are linked.

All SonnenFlat customers form their own tiny part of a smart grid.

For a flat rate of $40 a month, Sonnen manages the grid and shares the power generated by customers where it is needed.

Sometimes I’ve received power and sometimes I’m sure I’ve supplied some.

But, apart from my initial investment, $40 is all I pay for my electricity every month.

That’s cheaper than my mobile phone bill.

I mentioned my initial investment – it was just under $19,000. That’s for all the panels, the inverter, the Sonnen battery and installation.

Now $19,000 is nothing to sneeze at – it’s a decent amount of money.

But I looked at it as an investment in my home and in my family’s future.

That’s about the same amount of money a family would spend on a kitchen or bathroom renovation.

But the big difference here is that a kitchen or bathroom can’t pay you back over time.

One suggestion, if you don’t have that kind of cash laying around is to redraw on your mortgage and pay it back with the money you save.

My electricity bills were between $3,000 and $3,500 per year. And that was based on prices from two years ago – that figure would probably be significantly higher if I was still on the grid.

Now, after installing my solar panels and battery, I’m paying just $480 a year.

So if you whip out the calculator, I should recoup my investment in five or six years.

And the solar panels and battery have a lifespan of more than 20 years.

But it actually gets even better.

I also decided to buy an electric car – a Tesla Model S to be precise – and half the time I charge it at home through my solar panels and battery.

So now I’m saving on petrol costs as well.

My previous car before the Tesla was a Mercedes-Benz E200 which cost me about $3000 a year in fuel and other running costs.

Petrol prices are also on the rise so I’ve also stepped out of that price spiral as well.

So all up my savings are pretty solid between my electricity and fuel costs.

I’ve had my Tesla since May 2018 – seven months after installing my solar system – and in that time have saved close about $2000 in the costs of running my car.

Now throw in the $3000 a year of saving electricity and I’m looking at a saving of almost $8000 in the first two years of ownership.

At this rate my system will pay itself off in less than five years. And I will save more than $70,000 during the life of the system.

Suddenly that $19,000 investment is looking pretty good.

And I haven’t even mentioned the environmental benefits as well. That’s gravy on top of the financial savings.

I’m doing my little bit to reduce my emissions and use clean energy to power my home and my car.

The Sonnen battery has really become the heart of our home and it has gone beyond just powering my home with the addition of my electric car to the equation.

The reason I installed the system was so that I could step outside this cycle of price rises and not be at the mercy of the energy companies.

And now that I drive a Tesla, I have also dodged rising petrol prices as well.

I hope I can be an example to others about the possibilities with the exciting solar and battery technologies available to us.

The post It’s two years since I went solar and the savings have been enormous appeared first on Tech Guide.

If ever there was an argument for returning to having just one on-field referee in the NRL it was the Grand Final between the Sydney Roosters and the Canberra Raiders which descended into farce after a crucial refereeing error.

Many are arguing the blunder may have robbed the Raiders of a premiership.

Sportsbet has even refunded punters who backed Canberra to win – a total of $1.35 million to more than 38,000 customers.

With less than 10 minutes to remaining, the Raiders contested a bomb on the Roosters’ line which bounces back into the arms of a Canberra player.

Referee Ben Cummins clearly signals for six more tackles and the Raiders play to the whistle with Jack Wighton being tackled with the ball.

But in the run of play, pocket referee Gerard Sutton tells Cummins the ball had actually come off a Canberra player which made it the sixth and last play.

Cummins alters the call to “last tackle” on the run.

But by this time Wighton, thinking his team had another set of six tackles, is tackled in front of the Roosters posts instead of kicking the ball and trying for a repeat set.

Cummins orders the changeover while a bewildered Wighton gets up to play the ball again.

The Raiders five-eighth actually plays the ball and repeats the six again signal he saw from Cummins a few seconds earlier.

In the next set of six tackles, the Roosters made a bust down the left side and scored the winning try.

The NRL’s greatest fear was realised in the game’s biggest match of the year – a refereeing error potentially costing a team the premiership.

The issue here was the differing opinions of the two on-field referees.

in this case, the main referee (Cummins) makes the six-again call before the second referee (Sutton) corrects him.

And that’s your problem right there.

Two referees means two different opinions and interpretations.

And in the fast pace of a rugby league match that could have dire consequences.

Unfortunately we saw that in the biggest game of the year last night – the NRL Grand Final.

NRL adopted two on-field referees in 2009 in a bid to improve the standard of refereeing in the game.

There is a main referee and a pocket referee who offers an alternate point of view to the action.

We have seen many instances where decisions have been overturned on the run.

A common one is whether is whether a team has a goal-line dropout or a 20m restart and it’s not unusual to see that decision changed.

Another common decision that is reversed is deciding which team has the scrum feed after a ball goes into touch.

But these all occur during a break in play when the referees actually have time to change their mind.

In the case of last night’s NRL Grand Final, the reversal of the six again call was made with the ball in play and affected Canberra’s attacking decision.

Consistency, or lack of it, when it comes to refereeing decisions has been the bane of the NRL in recent seasons.

The introduction of the Bunker brought technology into play to break down the game into thousandths of a second from various angles to adjudicate the tough calls.

But even this has resulted in numerous howlers over the years.

At the end of the day, despite all the technology at their disposal, it’s still a human being making the decision.

Having two referees on the field means there are two interpretations for every single incident whether it’s a knock on at the play the ball, a team being held down for too long in the tackles or a forward pass.

In the old days with one referee, the players had to live or die by their decision.

The referee called it as he saw it and that was that. No one in his ear and no second referee to second-guess his decision.

It’s not uncommon to hear referees questioning each other over decisions.

In a game as fast as rugby league this just won’t cut it.

And unfortunately, we saw the worst possible consequence in an NRL Grand Final that potentially robbed a team of a premiership.

Replays from last night’s game show the ball actually did come off the shoulder of Raiders replacement Bailey Simonsson when he contested the bomb against Roosters fullback James Tedesco.

But with Cummins signalling six again, the Raiders thought they were back to tackle one rather than kicking the ball in a bid to gain a repeat set on the Roosters line.

By the time the call is reversed, it’s too late for Wighton to kick the ball and set up a try scoring opportunity.

This isn’t like changing the decision on who feeds a scrum, whether a ball was knocked on or stripped or whether a team taps the ball from the 20m line or has to do a dropout from the goal line.

This was an on-the-run decision that altered a team’s approach to their attack and potentially the result of a game.

We have even seen obvious blunders go unchanged.

One that comes to mind was in the Melbourne v Canberra semi-final two weeks ago when the Storm  winger was ruled to have gone into touch when replays clearly showed he was still in the field of play.

In this instance, there was ample opportunity to review this decision and reverse it.

But nothing happened.

The game continued and Canberra won the match.

With so many officials off the field –  including the touch judges and the Bunker –  surely this means one referee should be able to handle things in the middle.

Let’s say Cummins was the only referee on the field last night and play continued with the six again decision.

The Raiders may have scored the match-winning try.

And then the Roosters would have a case to argue. It wouldn’t have been the first time a referee got a call wrong and probably not the last time.

But it is the confusion between the two referees like we saw last night that is the issue.

Players have no choice but to play to the whistle and that’s exactly what Canberra did.

The fact that it occurred during a Grand Final with the game poised on a knife’s edge is the real tragedy here.

And this was after another farcical turn of events early in the match when a Raiders charge down of a Roosters kick ricocheted off a Roosters trainer.

The Raiders were in a position to regather the ball and continue their attack downfield.

But because it hit the trainer off a Raiders player who made the charge down, a scrum was ordered with the Roosters awarded the feed.

And that was the correct call – as unfair as it seems.

The rule states that if a ball hits a referee (in this case the trainer) a scrum will be packed down with the attacking team given the advantage.

In the next set of six, the Roosters scored their first try.

The NRL needs to take a long hard look at the refereeing for the 2020 season.

The 2019 Grand Final, which should have been the game’s showcase match of the year, will forever be remembered for this massive refereeing blunder rather than the skills and sportsmanship of the players on the field.

The post Why we need to return to one on-field referee after massive NRL Grand Final blunder appeared first on Tech Guide.

Can you believe NBN Co is thinking of charging customers extra for using the connection they are already paying for if they want to stream video content through Netflix or Stan?

I looked at the calendar and was shocked when I saw it wasn’t April 1.

NBN is understood to be floating this “Netflix Tax” to its retail service providers in a proposal and trying to take their temperature to see whether they’d support such a move.

That section apparently read something like this: “Would your organisation support the development of a price response whereby charging of streaming video could be differentiated from the charging of other traffic/services?

“Would your organisation be likely to productise such a mechanism if developed by NBN.”

Are you kidding me?

A $51bn network that would charge you extra to stream content?

It was our understanding they wanted to build the network of the future.

Take away streaming content for a moment. This is only something we’ve been doing for the past four or five years.

The internet we had pre-Netflix worked just fine.

So now that we’ve spent all this money to supposedly make the internet better and faster – they now want to charge customers even more for the way they use that connection.

Just typing out that last sentence sounded ridiculous let alone putting it in a proposal to the most popular retail providers in the country.

Could you imagine a telco asking a customer who already pays good money to access their cellular network and use a certain amount of monthly data, for even more money because they want to stream video instead of just browsing and accessing Facebook and Instagram.

Customers would march on their offices before dropping them like a bad habit.

Our internet connection, like our other devices, has improved over time.

It’s called progress and, in the case of the NBN, it came with a $51bn price tag.

And as a result what we do with that connection changes as well.

Netflix became possible because our broadband connections – even most pre-NBN connections – could handle it.

And now they want to charge us extra for that. I don’t think so.

Other countries are already laughing at the NBN – this move would just make it an even bigger punch line.

If this proposal goes ahead and the Netflix Tax is adopted then your NBN service will cost a lot more per month.

Perhaps the NBN should go back to some areas and make the network better.

But where do you draw the line? Will YouTube be attract a usage tax? That’s streaming video content as well.

What about the upcoming services like Disney+ and Apple TV+?

How do you think Apple would react if they knew their Australian viewers had to pay even more money to the NBN on top of their monthly fee for the service.

The banks tried to do the same thing to Apple when Apple Pay was introduced.

Three of the  four big three banks tried to gang up on Apple and, at one point, the banks even suggested customers should a few cents extra to use the service.

Apple’s response was “we’ll see about that”.

Today three of the four banks now offer Apple Pay to their customers at no extra cost.

There will be a similar backlash if the NBN provides a connection and then charges you extra based on how you use that connection.

One of the NBN’s concerns, and the motivation behind this inane proposal is the fact that when everyone is streaming content, the bandwidth takes a hit and our connection performance drops.

Like we said – pre-Netflix and pre-NBN – the internet worked.

Are you telling me that even after spending $55bn to dig up the whole country to create the National Broadband Network it can’t serve up a service that’s good enough to not have to ask for even more money to watch Adam Sandler’s latest movie on Netflix.

Or is this just a way to justify a price gouge?

Are they creating a reason to charge customers extra?

What’s next social media tax? Monitoring your smart camera tax? Answering your Ring Doorbell tax?

What about making FaceTime and Skype video calls tax?

The result of this action could drive people to take up 5G home broadband services instead of the NBN. Telstra and Optus are already making good progress with their respective 5G networks.

Optus is already offering customers within its 5G footprint $70 as month unlimited data plans with a minimum speed guarantee of 5oMbps.

This move by the NBN might drive more customers in to the 5G telcos arms.

This NBN  proposal has already opened a can of worms on the mere suggestion of a Netflix Tax.

Imagine the outrage if they actually go ahead with it.

The post The NBN may charge a “Netflix Tax” – you’re kidding me right? appeared first on Tech Guide.

Telstra introduced their Smart Modem Gen 2 last year that offers a 4G back-up in the event of a service outage. Sounds pretty good right? Except it’s not. And calling it Smart is verging on false advertising. Here’s why.

A reader has been in touch with us for the past six weeks and asking what they can do about their Telstra cable broadband connection that has been virtually non-existent for the last couple of months.

Telstra were pretty vague about why the service was being affected and frankly our reader was tired of talking to people in the Philippines about it with no result.

Tech Guide decided to get involved and tried to escalate the issue.

Telstra responded by sending them the Telstra Smart Modem Gen 2 which has an embedded 4G SIM card.

So when the Telstra cable connection isn’t working, the 4G SIM card seamlessly kicks in and creates a connection to the network’s impressively fast 4G LTE network.

This all sounds great but in practice it didn’t work out that way as our reader quickly discovered.

The issues continued for our reader despite having the Telstra Smart Modem with the 4G SIM card inside connected at his home.

Wasn’t this modem supposed to offer the 4G connection if the outage continued?

My reader’s frustrations continued so we decided to do a little investigating.

My suggestion was for the reader, who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, to connect to his wi-fi network and perform a speed test.

And that’s when we discovered the issue.

There wasn’t an outage at all. There still was a connection but it was just 0.2Mbps – so slow that it was virtually a non-existent connection.

A quick check with a contact from Telstra confirmed the fact that the “Smart” Modem will only offer the 4G back up connection when there is a complete outage – 0Mbps.

But at 0.2Mbps, which is so slow that you can’t stream audio, video or look at a web page let alone run an app or look at social media, the Telstra Smart Modem and the 4G SIM card that can come to the rescue just sits there useless.

Telstra have a couple of options here:

Number one, remove the word “Smart” from the Smart Modem name.

Number two, how about creating a threshold that tells the modem that when the connection falls under 2Mbps that the 4G SIM card will kick in and take over the connection.

And in the midst of all of this, to add insult to injury, our reader received a text message from Telstra saying they were increasing his internet speed. 0.2Mbps – that’s a massive speed increase.

At the time of writing our reader was still disconnected and still waiting for a phone call from Telstra.

The post Why the Telstra Smart Modem is not so smart appeared first on Tech Guide.

Labor leader Bill Shorten’s plan for half the new cars sold to be electric vehicles by 2030 highlighted how little Australians know about EVs – including Mr Shorten himself.

It was good to see a politician talking about electric cars but his lack of knowledge about electric cars and the infrastructure required to even get halfway to this goal was clearly evident.

And his embarrassing assumption that an EV only takes 8-10 minutes to charge – which he said which he said on live radio – leads me to believe his goal looked better on paper or the back of a coaster than in reality.

I can speak with a little authority about electric cars – I own one.

It’s been nearly a year since I bought my Tesla Model S – one of the best decisions I ever made.

With an election looming, Labor wanted to get out on the front foot with an environmentally friendly announcement and came up with their bold electric vehicle goal which was made when I was on holiday in Paris last week.

The fact I was in Paris is relevant – more about that later.

One of the first reactions to the ambitious announcement to achieve 50 per cent of new vehicles by 2030 was if it was doable in the first place.

There’s a few factors that suggest it’s not.

First of all the penetration of EVs in Australia is miniscule – 0.2 per cent – so to take that figure to 50 per cent in just over 10 short years is unlikely.

In other countries in Europe and Scandinavia that figure is closer to half.

But not in Australia thanks to the lack of government incentive.

Another thing holding back EV sales is the price.

At the moment electric cars are not cheap.

To buy an EV today you’ll be spending well over $100,000 for a Tesla Model S or a Model X or a Jaguar i-Pace.

My Tesla Model S was about $140,000 on the road.

Later this year Tesla will release its more affordable Model 3.

Many Australians put down their deposit for the car sight unseen more than three years ago and are still waiting to spec up and order their car.

Tesla says the Model 3 will be on Australian roads in the second half of this year.

If it takes Tesla – the leading EV car company – that long to bring a car to market then it’s a similar time frame for other car manufacturers.

Expect to see EVs from Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW, Volvo and Porsche in the next few years.

At the moment, an electric car is a luxury vehicle. There is a slight discount in the luxury car tax but that’s about it.

Part of Mr Shorten’s plan is to reward businesses that buy an electric car with a 20 per cent tax deduction on the vehicle.

Companies would lease these vehicles which is already heavily tax deductible anyway.

That’s what I did with my Tesla. I leased it through my business for about the same price as my previous vehicle – a Mercedes Benz E200 – and my tax deductions are the same because of the percentage of driving I do for business purposes.

Other car companies like Hyundai are just entering the Australian market with more affordable solutions that are within reach of most new car buyers.

But as it stands, the cheaper you make an electric car the more range you give up.

One of the costliest parts of an EV is the battery.

In a country like Australia where you can drive for hours and not see another car, that’s going to be an issue.

And therein lies another problem.

With that many EVs on the road – even if Labor’s plan hits 20 per cent of its target – there will be a need for some serious infrastructure to allow the vehicles to charge.

Count how many petrol stations there are today and imagine the same type of facilities in place to power EVs to reach their destination – especially on long drives.

Petroleum company BP has invested in a vehicle charging company with a vision to transform its service stations with chargers at one end and petrol bowsers at the other.

Tesla has led the way with its network of Superchargers which allows drivers, including myself to drive anywhere in eastern Australia.

And there also numerous chargers in shopping centres, car parks and hotels where EV drivers can top up their vehicles.

The issue here also is getting a charger with a plug that fits your car.

Each car maker is different and there is no industry wide standard so compatibility will be an issue.

Tesla offers charging adaptors which will allow a driver to recharge from a non-Tesla charger.

And unlike what Mr Shorten said on radio – it takes a lot longer than 8-10 minutes to charge an electric car.

Hell, my smartphone can’t be charged that fast so there’s no way my car – which has a battery several thousand times larger than my phone – will take a bit longer.

I charge my Tesla for day to day driving to 90 per cent and only charge to 100 per cent if I have a long drive ahead of me.

Usually when I’m at the Tesla Supercharger – I can go from about 25-30 per cent battery to 90 per cent in about 50 minutes.

Tesla’s new V3 Superchargers will bring that time to about 25 minutes when they start rolling out in Australia at the end of 2019.

I also have a charger at home which can charge my Tesla Model S completely in about four hours which I usually do overnight.

Now remember I said I was in Paris when Mr Shorten made this announcement?

One thing I noticed when I was there were the numerous places where you could charge an EV.

Paris is a built-up town with most people living in apartments so many don’t have garages and they park in the street.

Yet EV drivers can still charge in many places where they have set up what look like parking meters near regular parking spots. These are actually car chargers.

That’s something Australia needs to adopt regardless of Labor’s unachievable target.

Now where does all this electricity come from?

I’ve had people snipe at me saying I still need to burn coal to provide the electricity to charge my car.

I quickly put these fools in their place when I explain my home is kitted out with a large solar panel array and a storage battery so the charge I put into car comes directly from the sun.

But that’s not the same for other people.

Tesla say’s 90 per cent of its drivers charge their vehicles at home using their standard electricity supplier.

So here’s Labor’s conundrum.

If by some miracle there are 50 per cent of new vehicles running on electricity, it’s going to put an ever greater demand on our electricity grid which can barely cope with only 0.2 per cent of Australian cars being electric.

Labor’s environmental stance has always been a lot greener than the Liberal party and it also drives home its concern with climate change as another point of difference.

Part of that is a goal to rely on more renewable energy.

So imagine what sort of demands we’ll put on the grid if Labor gets anywhere near its EV target.

We’ll be faced with a situation where anyone buying a new EV will be asked to ask to invest in a solar panel and battery system – starting at about $15,000 – so they’re not putting added pressure on the grid.

I think electric cars are the future – that’s why I bought my Tesla and I applaud Labor’s intentions.

But words and numbers written on a piece of paper and announced through a press release is one thing – but the reality is a totally different proposition.

What we need is a plan but all Labor has come up with is a slogan and an election promise that it will never keep.

The post Why Labor’s ambitious electric car goal is an electric dream appeared first on Tech Guide.

Did you know that your water resistant iPhone is not covered under warranty for water damage? A couple of Tech Guide readers found that out the hard way this week after their iPhones were soaked in their pockets during a downpour.

Now you’d think that a device with an IP67 rating – which means it can be submerged in 1m of water for up to 30 minutes – would be able to handle a bit of rain.

IP stands for ingress protection with the first number the rating for solid particle protection and the second for liquid ingress protection.

Our readers contacted Tech Guide after being refused a warranty repair at the Apple Store.

Both had a similar story – they were out in the rain with their iPhone X in their pockets and “then the phone started playing up” was how one of our readers described it.

The other said: “it poured down, had the phone in my pocket, it got wet and the screen stopped working.”

And both had the same result when they went into the Apple Store to repair it only to be told that water damage is not covered under warranty.

Tech Guide contacted Apple on their behalf to investigate.

Apple responded quickly and sent us a link to a support document outlining the IP ratings for their iPhones.

iPhones have only had an IP rating (water resistance) since the iPhone 7.

The document states that the listed iPhones “are splash, water and dust resistant and were tested under laboratory conditions.”

The document also goes on to say that these iPhones “are resistant to accidental spills from common liquids such as soda, beer, coffee, tea and juice.”

Our readers argued “that you can take the iPhone to a depth of 1m  for 30 minutes but the phone in your pocket that gets wet is not covered.”

The second reader said: “no matter how much I argued the point they (Apple) would not warrant my phone which for a device that is advertised as water resistant I thought was pretty weak.”

The Apple document outlined what customers need to do to prevent liquid damage. It said to avoid these:

– Swimming or bathing with your iPhone

– Exposing your iPhone to pressurized water or high velocity water, such as when showering, water skiing, wake boarding, surfing, jet skiing, and so on

– Using your iPhone in a sauna or steam room

– Intentionally submerging your iPhone in water

– Operating your iPhone outside the suggested temperature ranges or in extremely humid conditions

– Dropping your iPhone or subjecting it to other impacts

– Disassembling your iPhone, including removing screws

Apple’s document also goes on to say users should also minimise their iPhones exposure to soap, detergent acids or acidic food and any liquids like perfume, insect repellent, lotions, sunscreen, oil, adhesive remover, hair dye and solvents.

But Apple also made special mention of the following sentence in the document:

“Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Liquid damage is not covered under warranty,” the document said.

This can be interpreted as saying that water resistance may actually wear out after a certain time.

One of our readers said he purchased his iPhone in June last year which still places it within the 12 month warranty period.

Can water resistance wear out after less than 12 months?

“This is an $1800 phone. I never thought that it would have any problem at all,” our reader said.

“I was just walking and it started raining, yes it rained hard.

“They (Apple) just said bad luck.

“It’s not a cheap phone and it is not old. I have done nothing that they don’t market you can do with the phone – less in fact.”

iPhones have a Liquid Contact Indicator just inside the SIM tray.

If a customer takes in a faulty iPhone, one of the first thing Apple will check is the LCI.

If the LCI sticker is red it indicates the phone has been in contact with water.

So for an iPhone with an IP67 (iPhone XR, iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus) or IP68 rating (iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max), this LCI indicator is still there to detect if water has managed to somehow get past the advertised level of water resistance.

On the Apple website there are images of customers standing in the rain using their iPhones.

Apple’s website also says of the iPhone XR: “The most durable front glass in a smartphone, sealed and precision-fitted with the aerospace‑grade aluminium band, helps create an enclosure that’s water-resistant up to 1 metre for 30 minutes.”

Previous iPhones have also been shown on the Apple website with water splashing over them and labelled as being “precision engineered to resist water and dust”.

Regardless, Apple has stuck by its water damage warranty policy and our two readers must now pay for their iPhones to be repaired.

The bottom line is that water resistant doesn’t mean waterproof.

Tech Guide also contacted Samsung about its policy on whether water damage was covered under warranty.

Samsung phones have an IP68 rating which can withstand being submerged at a depth of 1.5m for up to 30 minutes.

Samsung told Tech Guide that cases of water damage are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

It takes into consideration whether the water damage is the result of customer neglect or if it is an issue with the phone.

An inspection is made on the spot and if an issue falls under warranty, Samsung will endeavour to provide a loan phone for the customer until the repair is completed.

The post Why your water resistant iPhone is not covered under warranty for water damage appeared first on Tech Guide.

My love of rugby league is pretty obvious. So is the pride I have that I’ve played the game at the professional level with the mighty South Sydney Rabbitohs. So the opportunity to lace on the boots again in the NRL Masters was one I pounced on.

I saw it as a bit of a challenge to get out of my comfort zone and see if I could still play and compete like I did back in the day.

There’s a few more miles on the clock since the last time I played. At the age of 51, the body wasn’t as shredded as it was when I was 20.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little anxious (although not as anxious as my wife) about getting injured and whether my current fitness level was up to the task.

I felt like Rocky in the film “Rocky Balboa” who wanted to climb in the ring one last time to prove that he can.

This was no title fight for me but, like Rocky, there was still “some stuff in the basement” that I wanted to see if it could still stand up against other players in the NRL Masters.

The NRL Masters – open to players 35 and over – has modified rules and safeguards.

We were “getting the band back together” with my junior club – the Botany Rams – my South Sydney junior league team I started playing with when I was five years old.

I would go on to play 11 seasons with the mighty Rams which included seven premierships and two seasons when we were undefeated.

The friends I have made playing with and against over the years are still my friends to this day and the NRL Masters presented an opportunity to play with some of these guys yet again.

Two teammates I’d been playing with since I was five included Steve Mavin (who went on to play for Souths and the Bulldogs) and Noel Goldthorpe (who went on to play for St George and even played in two Grand Finals).

And here we were again – the three of us playing for Botany Rams together 46 years after we laced on our boots for the first time together.

It was an amazing feeling being back together in the colours of our junior team after all these years.

The NRL Masters is open to teams across Australia and the rules of the game are modified to cater for the older players with a limit of two players to a tackle and short 15-minute halves.

There was also the option for players to wear red shorts (50 and over) and gold shorts (60 and over).

If you’re wearing your club’s regular shorts then players are allowed to tackle you and you can tackle them.

In the red shorts, players can only be grabbed in a tackle and they can also make a two handed touch to stop their opponents.

In the gold shorts, players could only be touched and in defence they only needed to touch other players.

There were 108 teams that entered the tournament which was played at the Runaway Bay Sports Complex on the Gold Coast.

The Botany Rams had a squad of about 20 players – all blokes I knew really well and had been friends with for decades.

Just being with these guys on a footy trip was like a step back in time.

The Botany Rams clubs always had a lot of spirit and a remarkable level of camaraderie and those same feelings kicked in again instantly when we were together again on the Gold Coast to contest the NRL Masters.

The tournament was a not a competition – in other words you didn’t win or lose matches and there were no semi-finals and finals.

This format was designed to prevent teams from getting too serious. We had five games and you could only play for pride.

For me the biggest decision to make was whether to play in the Botany Rams green shorts and play full tackle or pull on the red shorts that players 50 years or older have the option of wearing.

I was leaning towards the red shorts but decided to go for it in the green shorts to start with and see how it feels. I could always put the red shorts on later if it got too rough.

I’m happy to say I ended up playing all five of our games in the green shorts – they go better with our green jerseys that look like the Australian rugby league jersey anyway.

I was nervous before the first game – here I was again in my playing gear, wearing boots and wearing a mouthguard – the last time I did that the internet hadn’t been invented yet.

But incredibly, I snapped back into the mindset of playing like my last game for Souths was last week.

I was always methodical with my warm-up and stretching and that’s what helped me prepare myself.

All the other players – my teammates and opponents – were in the same boat and there was no shortage of quips about how we were “too old for this”.

But against players slightly younger, the same age, slightly older and much older I thought it was a pretty level playing field.

From the first game I discovered it was all played in the right spirit.

If you wanted to charge up hard with the ball you’re going to get tackled with the same level of energy.

We found a satisfying middle ground that challenged us but that didn’t threaten to put us in hospital.

There were occasions where things got a little heated and we found it within us to stand up and meet the challenge.

One match in particular from the NRL Masters comes to mind.

We were up against a team that had made some serious preparations (we found this out after the match) and they had whittled their 80-strong squad down to their top 25 and had also been training for months.

For them it was go hard or go home.

Our Botany Rams team, while we had not trained together a single day before the tournament, had a star-studded side with numerous players who played in the NRL including Steve Mavin, Noel Goldthorpe, Darryl Neville, Graham Lyons and myself.

But we also had a bunch of blokes who weren’t going to let the person beside them down.

This team, through a combination of seriousness and the fact they were lining up against a number of former NRL players, really turned it on with hard runs and solid tackles.

Personally I copped a few heavy hits but also put my body in front of a few players and stopped them in their tracks.

With the ball we also played pretty well moving it out wide and also backing up through the middle.

I played in my usual hooking position so I packed into every scrum, tried to give good service out of dummy half and also ran the ball like a forward.

My proudest moment was when I ran the ball from dummy half and sprinted past markers and into a yawning gap beside the ruck.

The tryline was 50m away and no-one was going to stop me – except the rules.

You can’t score from dummy half – I was told by my support runner Ronan Byrne so I offloaded and gave him the easiest try of his career.
But I told him that I still wanted to claim that try as my own.

We won that game, despite our opposition’s grumbles about a couple of referee decisions.

The Botany Rams had stood up when we needed to. And it was a moment of great pride for all of us.

The game meant nothing but in our hearts we had won our own mini grand final.

Speaking to my wife Jo on the phone after our last match, she could sense how much this tournament had meant to me.

“You sound like you’re 20 again,” she said. It felt like I was 20 again. It felt like an achievement to get through these games and play to the best of my ability.

And that’s exactly what we did and the feeling of satisfaction for me and my teammates was immense.

For the record not that anyone was keeping score, we won four out of five games – our only loss a narrow one in our first game which we had no idea what to expect being our first year in the NRL Masters.

Some teams had played as many as 13 times and that experience showed.

I can understand why they wanted to come back. It was a great experiences, a well-organised event that was played in the right spirit.

Every team we met was friendly and all there for the same reason – to have fun playing the game they love with their mates.

Rugby league is the greatest game of all – so you can’t blame us for wanting to keep playing.

NRL Masters – see you again next year.

The post Why I came out of retirement to play in the NRL Masters appeared first on Tech Guide.

Here we are, a week out from the start of the 2019 NRL season and the talk isn’t about which team is the favourite to win the premiership but about sex tapes shot on smartphones by players.

The timing couldn’t be worse.

The fallout is gut-churning and not to mention damaging to the game at a time when rugby league will be competing for our attention against things like Game of Thrones, Netflix and Fortnite this winter.

With women making up a large portion of the NRL viewing audience, these sordid tapes which demean the women in them, will land like a body blow to the game.

And the alarming thing is this predilection to document and share almost everything we do, including in the NRL players’ case their sexual conquests, has become so widespread it’s sickening.

It’s now easier than ever to record video, audio and take photos in an instant thanks to the smartphones in our pocket.

And sharing is equally effortless.

Look at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – for many people these platforms are how they shout “look at me” and “look at what I’m doing”.

Now I’m all for sharing what I do as all my followers and friends know.

But the problem we’re facing is knowing the limit to what’s acceptable, what’s tolerable and, most importantly, what’s appropriate.

For these NRL players in hot water for sharing these debasing sex tapes, it plays into the condition for many young people that what we did, what we saw who we met and who we had sex with means nothing unless we’ve documented it and shared it with the world.

And it’s not a case of just filming and photographing what we happen to come across each day.

It’s actively pursuing a course of action for the purpose of photographing it and sharing it with our friends and followers.

Plenty of YouTubers make a great living shooting prank videos that get millions of views.  But they don’t worry about the victims – as long as they get the eyeballs.

That, ladies and gentlemen, has become the modern culture – to be seen, to get likes on your posts and for your Instagram pictures – no matter the cost.

This type of behaviour provides some sort of validation for the sharer that they also hope shows they are relevant and popular.

Back before mobile phones and before even the internet existed, it was a different world.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

If a fight ever broke out in the school yard years ago, the first reaction would be to step in and break it up.

If that same fight broke out today, there would be footage from every angle because the onlookers would have whipped out their phones to film it and upload it to YouTube or social media for those valuable views and likes before evening thinking about prying the fighters apart.

I’m the last person who is going to bemoan smartphones. It’s become an indispensable tool that keeps us connected.

It’s also arguably the device that has significantly changed our behaviour and attitude.

And not everyone is guilty – we all use our devices in different ways.

For these players embroiled in the NRL sex tape scandal, they are in their 20s and have never know life without the ability to instantly capture and share what they are doing.

Oversharing for most people under 25 is what they class as regular sharing.

We’ve all heard cases of kids barely in their teens involved in sexting – sharing naked and semi naked pictures of themselves.

It’s alarming how common and widespread this issue has become and a lot of these same users grow up thinking it’s OK to film themselves and their friends having sex.

The technology that has so easily made this possible has at the same time desensitised us to the consequences of sharing such material.

And this is not even taking into account the women in these videos who are treated like play things and made to feel powerless.

The videos in question were shared on a social media platform – and right there is where the plan went off the rails.

It’s easy to capture video but it’s even easier to share it.

You’d think these NRL players are tech savvy enough to realise that the second the video has been shared they’ve surrendered all control.

Unfortunately they’re not smart enough to think about the consequences if it gets out and the potential it had to damage and even end their career.

Police have now stepped in, and rightly so, because the videos were shared without consent.

This isn’t the first time players have been involved in a sex tape social media scandal.

Last year South Sydney players were embroiled in drama during the semi finals when a woman went to the media after players allegedly exposed themselves during a video chat.

But that little episode also points out how accessible players are through social media. There would no shortage of offers from women to get close to superstar players.

I’ve got no problem with what consenting adults get up to in private. That’s their business.

But the second they start recording and sharing that privacy is shattered. Then it becomes everyone’s business.

The message here is clear – keep your phone or your privates in your pants. When both are out, it may just end in tears.

The post NRL sex tapes show why we’re stuck in the oversharing culture appeared first on Tech Guide.

After hearing about other people’s NBN stories for years, we’ve finally been connected ourselves to the NBN – and it was an interesting experience all round.

We’ve been successfully connected and I have to say, I’m very pleased with the result so far.

At our place in the south east Sydney, our NBN service is delivered with Fibre to the Curb which means there is fibre running up and down my street and it is brought in to my home via the copper line from the pit outside my house.

I discovered the NBN was available when I received a phone call from Aussie Broadband after registering interest on their site a year earlier.

They called me and I told them straight up that after being an Optus broadband customer for more than 20 years I thought it was appropriate to give Optus the first chance to provide me with my NBN service.

My next call was to Optus who started the signup process and the transition from my current service to the NBN.

At the outset I knew I was always going to choose the fastest plan – 100Mbps down and 40Mbps up – which is what Optus calls Speed Pack 4.

I was told to expect a call within 24 hours to work out the time when the NBN would be able to come out to my home and link my service.

Turns out, the Optus staffer was supposed to tell me I would receive a call within five days. The call came after four days and I learned the NBN would be at my house in a week and half on December 13.

My appointment was between 8AM and midday and there had to be someone over 18 at home.

That was no problem, I had cleared my calendar and was looking forward to finally connecting.

On the day, an NBN technician named Steve arrived and asked me if there was a Telstra cable coming into the house.

At first, I was confused, and thought he meant a Telstra internet cable. When I said there wasn’t he told me he couldn’t do the job.

But by cable, he meant telephone cable and a short walk around to the side of my home confirmed, in fact, that I did still have my Telstra phone line coming in off the street.

This is how Fibre to the Curb is connected to your home – via the existing copper phone line.

Steve then went into the house and found the closest phone point to that external Telstra line-in which was in the very front corner of my home which happened to be my home theatre.

But I explained I wanted the modem located in my office which is one room further back in the house.

Steve went into the office and checked the phone line and told me it wouldn’t be able to work in this room because the cable wasn’t linking back to the Telstra box on the side of my house.

Instead the phone cable was running up to the Optus box on the side of the house which in turn fed into the HFC cable running along the telegraph pole outside my home.

I’ve had this cable connection for more than 15 years and because I included telephone services, Optus have to shift my phone cable up to their box to connect to the HFC.

Fast forward to December 13, 2018 and this turned out to be the issue would prevent me from completing the connection today.

I called up a tech contact of mine from Optus and he and NBN technician Steve were included in my conversation so he could explain what needed to be done.

For me to connect the modem in my office it would require the telephone line being brought back down from the Optus box back down to the Telstra box closer to the ground.

Steve from the NBN said he was unable to do this as he was only obliged to link the service to the first available point in the home.

He said I would have to take this up with Optus to complete the connection.

My reasoning was that Optus moved my phone line 15 years ago to upsell me phone services, then by me staying loyal to Optus for the NBN that they would move the line back again.

Trying to explain this to the Optus tech support team, who are located offshore, I found really difficult.

And to add insult to injury, my cable service which was still running in the background had suffered an outage.

So the Optus tech support team were trying to focus on fixing my cable service (I later found out there was an outage in my area) rather than expediting my NBN connection.

They even offered to send out a technician for my cable service to check it out but I said I would prefer if they send the techie to connect my NBN.

After a few more phone calls, Optus said they would send someone out to reconnect the phone line back to the Telstra box.

I was disappointed Optus didn’t anticipate that this would be an issue. After all, they were the ones who moved my phone line all those years ago.

They knew I was migrating to a Fibre to the Curb service and would require that phone line to be in the right place.

My other disappointment was realising the gap between where the NBN’s responsibilities end and where Optus customer service begins.

It was the NBN technician that came to my place to activate the service but in my case I needed a little extra work which the NBN were not prepared to provide.

Optus, through sheer goodwill, sent out a technician but I understand that they were not obligated to do that and I would have had to pay for an electrician to do the work.

It’s hard to say if I had chosen another ISP instead of Optus if they would have gone that extra mile to fix this issue.

Forget me being Stephen Fenech, Tech Guide editor – I thought the fact that being a loyal Optus customer for more than 20 years would have been enough to get Optus to my place to fix my problem.

The very next day, the Optus technician turned up and 40 minutes later the line was reconnected.

I plugged in the FTTC Network Connection Device to my phone line and all the blue lights were on which meant I had a connection.

From here I connected the supplied Optus modem (it was their entry-level modem router and not the superior 802.11AC modem that comes if you bundle in Fetch TV) and I was up and running.

I excitedly jumped on my iMac and ran a speed test and was only getting 45Mbps down and 18Mbps up.

I sent a screenshot to my Optus contact and said it was not as fast as I expected.

Minutes later, an Optus customer service agent was calling me.

I explained the situation and they checked my account which said that I registered for Speed Pack 3 – 50Mbps down and 20Mbps.

My shoulders slumped with disappointment as I explained I that I distinctly remembered ordering Speed Pack 4.

They said they would have to contact the NBN and their IT team to upgrade my plan and get me that faster speed.

And 24 hours later that’s exactly what happened. I received another call from Optus support and they instructed me to run another speed test and the needle pushed around to 96Mbps down and 38Mbps up – which is close the promised 100/40 plan which is usually referred by the typical evening speed of about 80Mbps.

But since I’ve had the connection, the speeds have been in the low to mid 90s even in that busy period between 7pm and 11pm.

With my old Optus cable connection, I was already getting speeds in the 90s.

But for me one of the biggest improvements will be those upload speeds which will not only enable me to upload podcasts and video files faster than ever before, but it will also provide faster access to things like my Ring doorbell and other security cameras which rely on a decent upload speed for me to view them quickly through an app when I’m not home.

That was a massive improvement, and rather than waiting a minute to see who is at my front door with my Ring doorbell, I was able to connect in seconds.

Well that’s my story. I’m finally on the NBN and the service is great with speeds that I was expecting.

So far, so good.

The post We’ve finally been connected to the NBN – here’s our experience appeared first on Tech Guide.

Apple’s announcement this week of the iPad Pro was a significant one and not just because it’s an impressive and powerful product  but because the company decided to replace the Lightning port with the widely used USB-C.

Many see this as the beginning of the end for Lightning with fierce speculation that the 2019 iPhones may also follow suit and adopt the universal USB-C as standard.

Apple has always marched to the beat of its own drum.

And it has the right to do that since it has always had end-to-end control of its products – its own hardware running its own software.

The company has always used proprietary methods to connect, sync and power their devices and sparked an entire category of accessories in the process.

We saw this with the old 30-pin connector before Apple upgraded to Lightning in September 2012 to coincide with the release of the iPhone 5.

So why is Apple offering USB-C instead of Lightning on the iPad Pro such a big deal?

Well, it means the iPad Pro is now suddenly compatible with other products and peripherals like monitors, cameras and external hard drives.

If Apple want customers to take the iPad Pro seriously as a laptop replacement device, this is exactly what they needed to do.

The “closed shop” approach limited the effectiveness of the iPad Pro when it only offered a Lightning port.

Getting data on and off the device wasn’t always easy and linking it to other devices was only possible wirelessly if at all.

USB-C offers so many benefits including high speed data transfer and fast charging.

The iPad Pro, while still maintaining its strong identity as an Apple product, will be more compatible with other non-Apple devices like the company’s MacBooks and iMacs.

It will be welcomed by customers who previously may have overlooked the iPad Pro as their computing solution.

So will Apple also go down the same path with the next generation of iPhones in 2019?

Now the company has decided to make the move with the iPad Pro it is highly likely.

From the simplest of things like remembering to take the right cable for your iPhone to the ability to save and upload data on the device, the move to USB-C would certainly increase its appeal.

The iPhone never has and probably never will have an expandable memory card slot but adding USB-C would provide one extra way for users to handle the data they want on their device.

It would make it easier to connect things like an external monitor, a portable drive or a USB drive and make it more like our laptop and desktop computers.

And let’s face it, the iPhone is one powerful computer that just happens to the he one that’s in millions of people’s pockets.

A move to USB-C would make it even more like computer. And you’d also be able to find a charging cable a bit easier if you get stuck. The iPad Pro’s USB-C port also allows power out so you can charge your iPhone with it as well.

The post Will Apple replace the Lightning port with USB-C on the iPhone like it did with iPad Pro appeared first on Tech Guide.

There’s been a lot of hysteria about the use of the Opera House sails being used to project the Everest barrier draw – an event that will last all of 10 minutes. It’s a projection – they’re not repainting the thing.

Facebook has been flooded with petitions to oppose the move that was proposed more than a year ago.

Let’s look at the facts:

* This move to promote the Everest – the world’s richest horse race by Racing NSW – has been going on for more than 12 months. They initially asked for the Harbour Bridge but were offered the Opera House by the NSW Government A YEAR AGO. This event will put tens of millions of tourism dollars into our economy. I’ve seen plenty photos of my Facebook friends all dressed up and socialising and drinking at various race days on Facebook. These same people have had a splurge on the Melbourne Cup and attended a boozy lunch and had a bet or entered a sweep? But suddenly racing and gambling is evil?

* The Opera House has been used to promote and celebrate many other sports and companies over the years including cricket, rugby and the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras among many many others. Samsung (a major corporate partner of the SOH for years) transformed the iconic building into a massive canvas to promote the Galaxy S4 phone launch in 2013 and projected photos taken with the phone on the Opera House sails. Samsung actually built large wooden structures around the entire site. No one had a problem with that.

* The outrage about this promoting gambling is equally ridiculous. If you don’t think people bet on cricket and rugby you’re out of touch. And how do you think the NSW Government funded the construction of the Opera House in the first place? With a lottery that ran until 1986. It was gambling that helped pay for the the SOH in the first place.

* I get the feeling most of the hand wringing going on about this whole issue is to protest 2GB’s Alan Jones who had an aggressive interview with the SOH CEO Louise Herron. I’m not here to defend Alan Jones – his interview style is the same for men and women. He doesn’t let anyone talk no matter their gender. But many are also under the false impression that he forced the hand of the NSW government. It was done and dusted before that – and the NSW opposition along with the PM and the Labor party agrees it should go ahead as well.

Surely there are many far more important things we can direct our outrage towards.

There are farmers killing themselves, pensioners afraid to turn on their lights and air conditioners because of spiralling energy costs and petrol priced higher than Chanel No 5.

Show me the petitions for those issues and I’ll sign them in a heartbeat.

The post Should we be outraged about the Everest projection on the Sydney Opera House appeared first on Tech Guide.

The new iPhone is how much? That’s been a common response since Apple unveiled its latest, biggest and most expensive iPhones today.

There were three new iPhones announced and they have no home buttons, no headphone jacks and not one of them is under $1,200.

The iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max start at $1,629 and $1,799 respectively.

The most expensive model – the iPhone Xs Max 512GB is an eye-watering $2,369. They go on sale next week.

The iPhone XR starts at $1,229 but is not available till the end of October.

No other tech company, besides Apple, could get away with that sort of price tag.

And not many companies have the same brand loyalty from customers either.

The iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max are beautifully designed and packed with the latest features and technologies.

They also deliver a high-quality experience for the features we use most – the camera to capture life’s moments and the display for us to enjoy our favourite content in high-quality anywhere.

When the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs are released next week it’s a good bet there will be lines around the block to buy it.

Is it worth the money?

That’s an individual and subjective question.

All of us carry around a mobile device and are attached to it constantly and people are willing to pay a bit extra to make that daily experience even better.

After all, this is a device that will be used for two years, if not even longer so the cost compared to the other things we spend our money on is relatively small when spread out across that time.

We don’t buy phones because they make good calls or send good messages.

We buy good phones because they take remarkable pictures, allow us to stay connected with social media and provide a platform to enjoy the latest apps and watch the latest content.

The iPhone is a lifestyle product and also a little bit of a status symbol.

Having the latest shiny new iPhone says a lot about a person – they’re up with the latest technology, they have a certain amount of style and they’ve got a few dollars in the bank.

I’ve already seen all the jokes where people are calling the iPhone Xs the iPhone Excess.

These new iPhones will certainly appeal to “phone people” who value their device and use it constantly.

You’ll find most of the people complaining the loudest about the price of these new iPhones are customers who see the mobile phone as just a way to just make and receive calls.

They’re just like the people who see their car as a way to get from A to B. But don’t say that to “car people” who see their ride as their pride and joy.

It’s a similar kind of feeling with people and their iPhones.

But you certainly get what you pay for with the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max.

If you are playing Apple Keynote bingo – you would have heard the word “beautiful” numerous times during the launch event.

That’s another reason why Apple devices come at a premium – they are meticulously designed and work with Apple’s own software to create an experience and an ecosystem you can’t get anywhere else.

But these high prices could also play into Samsung’s hands.

Just a couple of weeks ago the company released its new flagship smartphone – the Galaxy Note 9 – which is bristling with new cutting-edge features.

But it’s also hundreds of dollars cheaper than the new iPhones. The new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 starts at $1,499. The 512GB Note 9 is $1,799.

Samsung, the number one global smartphone manufacturer, may even attract some “switchers” who might decide to give the Galaxy phones a try after seeing the high prices for the new iPhones.

In fact, Samsung includes a USB dongle with its new Galaxy devices to make switching from an iPhone even easier.

The difficulty of this process, which was a barrier for “switchers”, has now been removed.

But there is no doubt Apple will be basking in the hype they’ve created until these new iPhones are available.

And you can bet your bottom dollar (many customers will be putting down a lot more than that) that there will be massive lines outside Apple Stores when they go on sale next week.

And if you’re wondering why Apple became the first trillion dollar company, this is why.

The post Are the new iPhones worth the money? appeared first on Tech Guide.

Kmart will no longer sell DVDs and Blu-ray discs in their stores with the remaining stock heavily discounted in a massive clearance sale to create extra space for more kids products and homeware items.

Even the company’s website says “this product is no longer available”.

At our local Kmart at Westfield Eastgardens, all of the remaining DVDs and scare Blu-ray discs were now down to 50 per cent off.

That meant you could have bought Star Wars The Last Jedi on Blu-ray disc earlier this week for $17.50.

Other DVD titles including recent releases were as cheap as $3.

But at the Eastgardens Kmart store, the space formerly occupied by rows of DVDs has now been replaced with rows and rows of books.

So Kmart can’t argue they are getting rid of a dying product because demand for physical media is still reasonably high as is the demand for printed books.

Other major retailers including JB Hi-Fi, Big W and Target will continue to sell DVDs, Blu-rays and CDs.

The Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association says physical packaged entertainment is still worth more than $800 million per year in Australia despite the fact disc sales have dropped 11 per cent year-on-year.

Kmart drew some criticism on social media for their decision to pull out of DVD sales.

“Getting rid of CDs and DVDs for kids rubbish – shame on you Kmart – you’ve lost a customer,” one woman tweeted.

“Kmart should leave the DVDs, not fair,” another tweeted.

“I don’t buy them from Kmart but come on, if there are customers buying them, supply them. Streaming doesn’t have everything,” was another response.

But not everyone was sympathetic.

“Get over it people, get Netflix,” a man said in a tweet.

Sure, we have Netflix and Stan and all the streaming services but for viewing full high definition and 4K content there is just no beating a disc

Streaming a movie in 4K is not the same as playing a 4K movie on disk. For purists like myself the bit rate from a disc is far greater than that achieved streaming.

This means better quality and a smoother picture.

Plus a disc doesn’t rely on your internet connection to determine the playback quality.

The fact that a disc offers a “repeatable experience” will always win out for me.

Streaming high-definition is okay but I would still prefer the Blu-ray because my system can upscale that to near 4K quality.

Kmart mainly stocked DVDs – which is standard definition – and only had ever had a sprinkling of Blu-ray at our local Kmart and 4K was never offered.

I’ve always been a massive movie collector but I’m always attracted to the best possible version of the film.

Today that is on 4K Ultra HD disc.

But because of Netflix and Stan and iTunes all these other streaming services I won’t even buy Blu-ray disc any more unless it’s a movie I really love and there is no 4K version available.

Is this the beginning of the end for physical media for home entertainment?

I certainly hope not especially with the numerous products available to enjoy such high quality entertainment at home including amazing smart TVs and audio systems.

It would be a shame if streaming content was our only option.

I know not everyone is as fanatical about me when it comes to watching movies in high-quality.

I went to the trouble of creating a dedicated home theatre to do just that.

If I want to watch a 4K movie, I’ll choose the disc every time.

The post Is Kmart’s decision to stop selling DVDs the beginning of the end for physical media appeared first on Tech Guide.

Receiving your energy bill can be frightening. Shocking is probably a better word because shocked is exactly how most Australians feel when they open it. But there is a way out, I know – I’ve already found it.

It involves solar panels, a storage battery, a German company called Sonnen and its new SonnenFlat system.

In fact, I became SonnenFlat customer number one in Australia and now my electricity bill is $0.

And I’m going to tell you how yours can be $0 too.

Here’s how I did it.

On July 1 last year I called Natural Solar, Australia’s leading solar and battery installer, to get an idea on what sort of system I could get for my home.

Ironically, it was the same day electricity prices had just increased by 20 per cent.

But at that same meeting, I was given another nugget of information – the introduction of a new system called SonnenFlat which was going to be announced in a few days.

Naturally, as a tech journalist, I was happy to get the scoop.

But I was even more interested in learning how it could reduce my electricity bills to $0.

Here’s how it works.

First you install solar panels and a Sonnen battery – Natural Solar went through all my electricity bills and worked out a solution that was right for me.

These aren’t a “one size fits all” solution so having experts from Natural Solar to guide me was invaluable.

I ended up with a system that included a 7.56 solar system made up of 27 panels, coupled with a SolarEdge inverter and a 10kWh Sonnen battery.

And at that point I became the first ever Australian recipient of the SonnenFlat system.

The idea behind SonnenFlat is to link every Sonnen battery in Australia, including mine, so we can share and receive power when needed.

Sonnen does all the work adjust your account with your electricity provider when you become their customer.

For this service, it would only cost me $40 a month (that’s less than what I pay for my mobile phone plan) to become part of the Sonnen grid with the guarantee of receiving a $0 bill from my electricity supplier.

With all of Sonnen customers generating power through our panels across the country and storing it in our batteries – we will all now form part of a virtual grid which Sonnen is able to manage remotely.

$40 a month was right for my place but there are also $30 and $50 plans for different sized homes.

All up, my system cost me just under $19,000 to install and with the $40 per month payment I would be saving more than $2500 this year alone.

I could have gone completely off the grid but I would have required a system more than twice as expensive as the one I have now.

But with my current system, and my small monthly payment for SonnenFlat, I will never have an electricity bill that will shock me ever again.

If you do the maths my electricity was costing me $291.54 per month.

Now for just $40, Sonnen can provide an annual consumption allowance and offset every cent of my electricity prices from the traditional retailers.

Yes, I did need to invest $19,000 to get to this point but that’s exactly what it is – an investment. It has added extra value to my home.

$19,000 is what many people would spend on a kitchen or bathroom renovation.

But unlike a new kitchen or bathroom, the Sonnen system will pay itself off in just five or six years.

That return on investment is actually likely to happen faster because the price of energy today may well be twice as much in a few years.

As the first ever SonnenFlat recipient, Sonnen is my new energy retailer and my reliance on the traditional grid is now zero.

Sonnen, which makes up a quarter of the global battery market, is the utility of the future and it’s a first for Australia.

There are other battery solutions on the market but Sonnen can act as both a home battery system and my energy retailer at the same time.

Now let’s crunch the numbers.

With the July price rise, my electricity bills were expected to be more than $3000 this year based on my usage over the past 12 months.

By paying $40 a month – my annual energy costs have come down to $480 plus GST.

That’s a monthly saving of $210.49, a quarterly saving of $631.47 and an annual bill reduction of $2,525.88.

The Sonnen batteries are purpose-built for home storage and has a guarantee of 10,000 cycles which is the equivalent of 20 years use.

So over the lifetime of the system, I will be saving more than $50,000 in energy bills.

My home in the eastern suburbs of Sydney is a two-storey, four-bedroom home with three bathrooms, fully ducted air-conditioning, a dedicated high-end home theatre system with 4K projector, for TVs, two fridges a large washing machine and dryer and a home office with multiple computers and four monitors.

The average household, up to $2000 of the annual budget is for power bills so it makes sense to explore alternatives that will shield families from the inevitable power price rises of the future.

It wouldn’t surprise us to see it become mandatory for new homebuilders to include solar panels and a storage battery.

Natural Solar and its association with Sonnen has made solar a risk-free investment and given us certainty at a time when electricity prices are spiralling rapidly higher.

If you want to avoid bill shock, the solution is right here.

www.naturalsolar.com.au

The post How I became the first SonnenFlat customer and got my electricity bills down to $0 appeared first on Tech Guide.

We were in Chicago recently for the Apple education event, it’s a city that has been the location for numerous movies including one of our favourites – The Untouchables.

We tracked down the actual locations of some of key scenes of the movie set in the Prohibition Era of the early 1930s.

The film, directed by Brian De Palma, tells the story Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and his band of Untouchables (including Sean Connery in his Academy Award-winning role as Malone) in their pursuit of gangster Al Capone (Robert De Niro).

Chicago has been the backdrop for other memorable films including Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, High Fidelity and The Dark Knight.

But in our trek around Chicago we found and matched numerous scenes and shots from the film with our own pictures.

MICHIGAN AVENUE BRIDGE

This is the setting for a scene early in the movie where Ness (Costner) meets officer Malone (Connery) for the first time.

It was filmed on the Michigan Avenue Bridge underpass – not far the site of the new Apple Store.

In the film, Ness is despondent after busting out on a raid that didn’t result in a seizure of illegal alcohol.

He tosses a piece of paper off the bridge and Malone has words with him  before asking him why he (Ness) is a carrying a gun.

SOUTH LASALLE ST

This cul-de-sac with buildings on all sides was an ideal filming location.

It served as headquarters for the Untouchables (actually the Rookery Building) and the backdrop the film’s publicity shots with all four of the men and their firearms.

In one scene from the movie they cross the street for a raid at the Post Office across the road.

The Post Office is actually the City National Bank and Trust Company Building.

This same location was used for some key scenes in The Dark Knight.

UNION STATION

This is the setting for perhaps the most iconic scene in the film on the Union Station main staircase.

Here we see a deadly shootout to prevent Capone’s bookkeeper being hustled out of town.

The tension of the scene is increased with the addition of a number of innocent bystanders including some navy officers and a mother trying to get her child up the stairs in his pram.

As Ness helps the woman up the stairs with the pram, Capone’s men usher the bookkeeper in from the top of the stairs before the gunfight begins.

Ness, loses control of the pram before dispatching two of Capone’s men with a shotgun and switching to his pistol.

Sharpshooter Stone (one of the surviving members of the Untouchables) hears the commotion and races to the scene, throws Ness a spare gun and stops the out of control pram at the bottom of the stairs.

He takes aim at the Capone hood threatening to kill the bookkeeper if he isn’t allowed to escape.

But Ness tells Stone: “take him…….”

The post We revisit some of The Untouchables shooting locations in Chicago appeared first on Tech Guide.

Worries about privacy on Facebook is nothing new but this week they reached a new level and droves of users are contemplating leaving the social media site after it was revealed the data of 50 million Facebook users was accessed without their permission.

Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm from the UK, allegedly gained access to the data using a research app called “This is your Digital Life” which was shared to Facebook in 2014.

At the time, more than 270,000 Facebook users signed up to the service which offered payments for personality tests.
But what we didn’t know was that the app also harvested the information of the user’s Facebook friends as well – without their knowledge and therefore without their permission.

So basically, if one of your friends used the app they unknowingly gave it the go-ahead to tap into your information as well.

Cambridge Analytica says it had done nothing wrong and followed Facebook’s terms and conditions and API (application programming interface) structures.

All this was revealed by a whistleblower who used to work for the company who said they had exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles.

It has been alleged the information gathered was used to influence the 2016 US Presidential election and the Brexit campaign in the same year.

Facebook has come under serious fire and defended itself by saying it wasn’t a data breach.

The app was removed from Facebook in 2015 with the firm allegedly telling the social media site that all the data had been deleted.

If this is the case, Facebook must have known this data was being collected.

Facebook doesn’t charge a fee for people to use the social networking platform.

The currency they gain is your data which they use to help advertisers zero in on the customers they want to target.

For example, the advertiser wouldn’t know your name or address, but it would know your age, relationship status, the area where you live and the things you like and share in your profile.

That’s where the value lies for an advertiser so they can target their ads at the right audience.

We’re unsure about the level of detail about the data that was collected from 50 million Facebook users but it has created enough concern for people to consider whether they should stay on the social media platform.

Ironically, most of the chatter we saw about people possibly leaving Facebook, was shared on Facebook.

But do you need to quit Facebook to keep your data safe? Not necessarily.

The “This is your Digital Life” app is like one of those many annoying quizzes that you see your friends sharing on Facebook.

You’ve seen them – IQ quizzes, what date will you die, what is your real age, what job should you be doing and so on and so on.

Anyone who shares their results creates an invitation for their friends to take the same quiz and for their data to be collected as well.

And Facebook’s terms and conditions allow this, that’s why you’re seeing them in your feed.

But the good news is, you can easily protect yourself and your information.

And no, you don’t have to quit Facebook.

Here’s what you can do.

Click on the downward facing arrow in the top right corner on your browser and scroll down to Settings.

From here, look down the left side until you come to Apps.

Click on this and it will reveal the apps you’ve allowed to access your and your friends’ information.

On this page you can make a choice to disable those Apps, websites and plug-ins.

You can also see a list of all the individual apps which can access your profile and you can choose to either edit the settings of each one or remove it completely.

You will be surprised at how many there are.

If you choose to edit the settings, you can select what information you are comfortable in sharing including your friends list, relationship status, relationship interests, your date of birth, your work history, status updates, education, events, your hometown, your current city, religious and political views and all of the pages you have liked.

When people join Facebook, most don’t realise that privacy settings are an “opt out” situation.

Facebook assumes you want to share everything, and users have to take the time and trouble to edit the settings until they are comfortable.

We live in a world where data has become one of the most valuable commodities.

But the choice of how much of that data we share is still ours to make.

The post Can you stay on Facebook and still keep your data safe? appeared first on Tech Guide.

The saying that you only miss something when it’s gone applies even more when you’re talking about the internet. Or the lack of internet as I have experienced in my home for close to two weeks.

The internet is something you take for granted at home – like electricity and water. It’s just as essential for Australian households.

Until I recently I couldn’t speak more highly about the download speeds with my Optus cable broadband. It’s not unusual to hit 100Mbps per second but averages well over 50Mbps even at “Netflix hour” after dinner.

Upload speeds, on the other hand, have always been appalling. It’s lucky to break 1Mbps – not the best when I’m uploading review videos to YouTube and my latest podcast episodes.

But lately it’s been a completely different story.

Since January 22 the Optus broadband cable connection in my area (I live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney) has almost ceased to exist.

During the day there are bursts of the speed I’m used to but that would come to a grinding halt from early afternoon till I went to bed in the early hours of the morning.

Speeds of an evening were lucky to break 2Mbps – if we’re lucky.

I contacted Optus through my media contacts and they were quick to respond and put me in touch with their technical support team.

They explained there was an issue in my area. The fault appeared to be the inability for the network to handle the traffic.

But today, having slow or no internet can impact in many more ways than it did a few short years ago.

Before it was a webpage that took longer to load or an app that can’t connect through your wi-fi.

Today the impact is far greater.

Streaming Netflix, Stan or Foxtel Now was out of the question so it’s back to regular free to air or Pay TV or watching something off a disc.

If you’re streaming music on Apple Music or Spotify you’re out of luck as well unless you sacrifice your mobile data over 4G.

Our smart products were also rendered useless as well.

Our security cameras were all offline and we were unable to see who was at our front door with our Ring 2 video doorbell when were were out.

All of these products not only need a connection but also  require a decent upload speed as well so you can remotely log in to them.

That’s when you check your security cameras – when you’re not home.

But if your home internet connection is down or slow, you’ve got nothing. It’s like not having a camera at all.

Same thing goes for other connected products and appliances which are designed to give users control when they are not home.

Without that home connection – you can’t call them smart.

So no starting your washing from your phone, or telling your robot vacuum cleaner to start cleaning or remotely turning on the air conditioner on a hot day to come back to a cool home.

I like to play Call of Duty online and to be competitive you not only need great reflexes but also a great connection.

I tried to play but the lag was just terrible. You could be the quickest draw in the world, but if your internet is slow or non-existent you might as well not even bother to play.

Optus were pretty apologetic about the situation – but apologies don’t solve my problems.

At first I suspected the slowdown was a result of the Optus HFC cable infrastructure being wound down to make way for the NBN which is scheduled to be connected between April and June in my street.

Optus confirmed this was actually not the case and that engineers were still working on the problem so the service would work at its optimum level until it was no longer required.

I can only hope the NBN gives me a high speed and reliable connection.

The post Losing your internet has a far greater impact on our connected lives – we found out the hard way appeared first on Tech Guide.