Let’s Talk IPAD !

Here’s the third entry in our series about e-readers for RV’ers. It’s time to address the Godzilla of the e-reader world. Yes, we’re talking about Apple and its iPad tablet. If Amazon is King Kong, Apple is Godzilla. (In this analogy, Nook is Rodan; never underestimate Rodan.) While iPad isn’t a dedicated e-reader, many people use it as such. NOTE: Images are not to scale (we all know that Godzilla is much larger than King Kong). It wasn’t so long ago that ol’ Mister Black Turtleneck himself was standing on stage like some sort of Silicon Valley prophet, proudly holding his gleaming metal tablet aloft. The initial response was a collective, “Huh?” On that day Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a few snickers at the device’s name, which reminded some of a feminine hygiene product. A lot has happened since that fateful day in 2010 when Jobs unfurled the iPad to skepticism and derision. It turned out that Jobs was once again right. The iPad became the most popular consumer product since running water. People around the planet bought RVs just so they could more comfortably camp outside Apple stores while waiting to buy the latest model. Apple became more valuable than the Earth itself. You never know when NOOK might fly into the scene and crash Godzilla's party. As for Steve Jobs, in 2011 he moved on to that great product launch in the sky. I read the authorized Steve Jobs biography (on my Kindle – sorry, Steve), and learned... Read more

Part Time Mobile Internet Connections

As fulltime RVers, we have no problem signing a 2 year contract for Internet service from Verizon, but we know many people who only travel part time.  What are their options for mobile Internet service?  A couple years ago, your only option was to rely on Wi-Fi which is very UNreliable!  Now there are several options for short term cellular Internet connections.  The technology world moves fast, and nothing moves faster than cellular Internet plans, so take the information below as talking points only.  Check with your provider, and/or your contract for the details that apply to you. Verizon is the focus of much of the information in this article since it is what we use personally, and it is the most popular service among RVers.  There are links at the bottom for information on other providers. 1. Putting your Contract on Vacation: Even if you do sign a 2 year contract with Verizon, for example, you can put your service (and payments) on vacation for up to 6 months.   Be aware that vacation time will be added to the end of your contract.  That means, if your contract period starts on 1/1/11 and goes thru 1/1/13, and you put it on vacation for 6 months, your contract now goes thru 7/1/13.  Be sure to check with your service provider (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T etc.) for details based on your particular contract. 2. Bring your Own Device: People sign up for a two year contract because that is the way to get the device (Mi-Fi, or cellular modem) for a steeply discounted... Read more

Snowbird RVers can get DSL or Cable Internet Service

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.tv We write a lot of articles here about how RV travelers can get Internet service.  All the options are some type of wireless service (Wi-Fi, Cellular, Satellite) because there is no wire that stretches with your RV down the road! But wired is almost always better than wireless, it’s more reliable, it’s usually faster, *and* there are generally no usage limits.  So if you have that option – do it! What do I mean by a ‘wired’ connection? I mean DSL or Cable.  A service where you have a physical wire (or cable) to your Internet Service provider.  If you’re staying in one RV park for 3 months or more, you may have one of these options. We are currently staying at Paradise Island RV park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  We got here mid-October and we’ll be staying thru March.  There are telephone lines at each site in this park so we called AT&T to get DSL Internet service.  They turned on the service at our site within just a few days, and we are paying $42/mo which is supposed to adjust down to $19/mo promotional deal after the first month. No Yearly Contract This is the second winter season we’ve done this.  When we left last April, we just called AT&T and told them to discontinue service.  Not so long ago, you had to sign a yearly contract to get service, but that’s not the case now. The AT&T line gets plugged into a DSL modem and that in turn is plugged into our WiFiRanger... Read more

Rogue Wave by Wave WiFi

Review by Jim Guld www.geeksontour.com If you’re an RVer looking to improve your Internet connections, take a look at the Rogue Wave Wireless Bridge and Ethernet Converter.  I have been working with WiFi equipment almost since the beginning of the technology. I have an arsenal of devices, large and small, that I have collected over our years of RVing.  The Rogue Wave is the latest and I like it. The Purpose of the Rogue Wave Of the three ways to connect to high speed Internet on the road, WiFi, Satellite, and Cellular, WiFi can be the best. WiFi is available in many places and is reasonably priced and often free. WiFi was never designed to cover large areas or go long distances. It was made for small and home offices and Starbucks. Advances in technology and innovative designs can enable communication over much greater distances and over or through obstacles. The Rogue Wave is a device to extend the effective range of a WiFi Hotspot . It works exceptionally well and is easy to set up and use.  Here is a typical scenario for an Rver: You are in an RV park that advertises WiFi, but your computer cannot connect reliably to the Access Point. You can take your computer closer to the AP, and it works fine, but you want to work from the comfort of your own rig. The WiFi built into your laptop is not good enough. A better radio and a better antenna will give you a better connection. One solution might be a USB WiFi adapter. USB WiFi adapters require device drivers and... Read more

Which Internet Connection Works Better–Droid Smart Phone or Mi-Fi?

by Chris Guld of GeeksOnTour.com People have asked us this question and we give a stock answer because our personal experience has not pointed out a difference … until now.  The answer is a definite … “Yes!”  That’s right, Yes, sometimes the phone connects better and sometimes the Mi-Fi (mobile hostpot) connects better.  Using the Phone to Provide Internet to the Computer In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, we sometimes use our Droid Smartphone, with Verizon service, tethered to our computer to provide an Internet connection to our computer.  You can see more detail included in this ‘Gabbing with the Geeks’ video. Last week we were staying at the Thousand Trails park Kenisee Lakes in Northeast Ohio.  The Verizon signal wasn’t great, but it worked fine with our phones tethered to our computer.  Our mobile hotspot often couldn’t connect at all, and when it did it was abysmally slow.  So, our preferred method there was to use the phones. Using the Mobile Hotspot to Provide Internet to the Phone The most popular way to connect to the Internet on the road today is the ‘Mobile Hotspot’ – sometimes called a Mi-Fi.  Most major carriers offer them, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T.  Ours is a 4g Hotspot from Verizon.  This little device connects to the Internet and then broadcasts a Wi-Fi signal for up to 5 nearby devices to connect. We are currently in the Adirondacks of New York, and Verizon... Read more

Get your Verizon Droid or iPhone before July 7?

It’s been rumored for quite a while that Verizon’s unlimited data plan for smart phones will be going away.  I still can’t find anything official on Verizon’s site, their Data Packages page still states that Smartphone’s data plans are Unlimited, but this discussion on RV.net’s forum is pretty convincing that the unlimited plan will be no more as of 7/7/2011.  It will be replaced with a 2GB limit for the same $30.  If you’ve been considering this purchase, you should visit the store before the 7th. Is Unlimited Data Important? Your data plan is a separate line item from your phone’s voice plan.  Your voice plan gives you minutes of talk time, your data plan gives you Internet usage measured in GigaBytes.  If you just want your email, and some basic web browsing, and you only use your phone’s data plan for your phone, then 2GB may be sufficient.  But, if you want to watch videos on your smartphone, or if you want to use your phone’s data plan to tether to your computer, then you’re going to go over that limit.  How do you know you’re going over?  You can check your data usage at any time on your Verizon account.  There is also a setting to have Verizon email you when you’ve used over 50%.  The unlimited data plan means you don’t have to worry about it!  And, heaven knows, we could use one less thing to worry about! Do you want a Smartphone? If you’re anything like me, you do!  There is some... Read more

3G vs 4G: The Tortoise and the Hare

We recently purchased a 4G mobile hotspot from Verizon.  It’s a tiny thing with magical powers.  With just one press of a button, it turns the immediate area around it into a Wi-Fi hotspot.  You can plug it into a power source, or it will run on batteries for about 4 hours. A similar device, called the Mi-Fi, has been around for a couple of years, but those are 3G only.  The 4G Mi-Fi is coming soon. What does 4G Mean? Without getting unnecessarily technical, we are talking about the technology that Cellular communications companies use to deliver wireless Internet connectivity. The ‘G’ stands for ‘Generation’ so 3G is third generation technology and 4G is fourth generation technology.  4G is better.  It’s faster and it goes farther.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that it exists only in limited areas.  Below is Verizon’s coverage map, 4G is represented by the dark splotches, the red is 3G coverage, and the white is no coverage at all. How Fast is 4G? We live in our motorhome and happened to be staying in a friend’s driveway in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville.  It is a solid 4G area – and it was exciting to use our 4G connection.  Click a link – you’re there.  Watch a video all the way thru – no hesitations.  What a joy!  For those of you who like numbers, I ran a speed test using testmy.net and here’s the result: Read that as 9 1/2 Megabits/per second.  A really good 3G speed would be 500Kbps – that’s 500 Kilobits/second,... Read more

My On the Road Data Diet

How I Exceed My 5 Gigabyte Limit with Verizon This is not a good thing!  The point is to stay within your contract limits.  When you go over, there are extra charges.  Our contract allows 5 Gigabytes of data usage per month.  Check the image at right and you’ll see that we’ve used over 4 Gigabytes and we’re only on day 8 of 31!  Looks like I’ll have to go on a data diet for the rest of the month. What’s a Gigabyte? Data usage is simply Internet use as opposed to voice.  Voice plan usage from your cellular provider is measured in minutes, Internet/Data usage is measured in Megabytes/Gigabytes.  Data usage is also referred to as Downloading, Uploading, or Bandwidth.  Think of it like a stream of water going thru a hose, email and other text is just a trickle, video is a firehose.  You’re measured by how much data is going thru the connection – what you’re looking at, not the time you’re online. Each Gigabyte is roughly 1,000 Megabytes.  We teach people that 5 Gigabytes is usually plenty for a month of one person doing normal browsing, email reading and maybe some Youtube watching.  But, if you share that connection with multiple computers, or you watch a lot of video, then 5 Gigabytes won’t be nearly enough. Just to give you an idea, a large, high resolution picture that you view on the web may consume about 1 Megabyte.  You’d have to view 1,000 of those pictures to hit one Gigabyte of usage. ... Read more

WE’RE IN QUARTZSITE, ARIZONA

 By Monique & Barry Zander, the Never-Bored RVers  Monday we reset our old analog clock to Mountain Standard Time as we crossed into Arizona on our way to the craziest gathering of RVers on the planet.  We are here to visit the big tent filled with everything RV, plus the never-ending booths displaying gems and minerals.  And, we remember from our last visit that the swapmeet is an adventure all its own. To capture what we experience, I’m going to do this as a journal rather than an article, so you can see what we are seeing through our eyes.  NOTE:  Internet service is bad.  We found the library today and got online.  We’ll have another report tomorrow … I hope!   PART I – ARRIVAL Let’s start with Monday driving in from the west.  The first two days of the RV show had ended, and we passed dozens of RVs of every size and condition heading in the opposite direction.   As we neared the town, we began seeing rigs parked in the desert, scattered at random in proximity to hard roads that come to life each year in January for the RV invasion. Then we began seeing huge RV parks, crowded with rigs parked side-by-side, more densely populated as we approached town.  We were amazed, given all those rigs that we had just passed on their way out of town. On suggestion of veteran show exhibitors Ken and Carole Adams we passed the town, turned back westward and then north and drove five miles to a free BLM miles-long camping area.  We pulled in on a narrow path cleared... Read more

Motorola Droid: Verizon Data Roaming

by Chris Guld We use our Droid cell phones for Internet browsing, email, Facebook, Google Earth, and many other data applications.  We *Love* it!  So we were quite distressed this summer when, in Bowling Green Kentucky, they did not work.  Voice service was fine, but there was simply NO data service.    Kentucky is not a Verizon State We called Verizon and were told, very apologetically that, indeed there was no data service in Bowling Green, Kentucky (and much of Kentucky.)  Luckily there was Wi-Fi in the RV park where we stayed.  From Bowling Green, we went on to Cave City and had the same experience.  In conversations we heard that “Kentucky is not a Verizon state!” But wait!  We met people who had Verizon data cards and they were online just fine.  What the …? We soon moved on from southern Kentucky, and our data service returned to normal thru most of our travels this summer, but that discrepancy kept haunting me.  If data cards could get service, there’s *got* to be a setting somewhere on the Droid to allow access to data service. Data Roaming Setting worked in Washington The next time we experienced the lack of 3G connection was in Mary Hill, Washington.  I talked to someone else in the campground who was using a Verizon Mi-Fi very happily, yet I had no Internet connection on my Droid.  I hunted thru all the settings until I happened upon the ‘Data Roaming’ setting.  Oh – that sounds promising! Turning it on produced a scary “You may... Read more

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