It has been a while. When I’m teaching, I get caught up in preparation of my courses and spend less time writing blog posts for this website. But that doesn’t mean I stop playing with new tech. Below are a few things I’ve been messing around with, and as you know, I’m doing all this for you, my students. So here goes. Let’s start with computers.
As you know, I’m a die-hard Chromebook fan. And like all Chromebook fans, we ‘need’ several Chromebooks. And as if 5 Chromebooks wasn’t enough, I decided to pick up yet another from Amazon when they had an incredible sale going on, and here it is:
Acer Chromebook 11, Celeron N3060, 11.6″ HD, 4GB DDR3L, 16GB Storage, CB3-132-C4VV
This puppy cost $148 (incl. Tax, free shipping), which is an incredible price for what you get. Retail, the before tax price is $210, so this was a bargain. And something else to note; this Chromebook looks very similar to my Acer R11 that I reported on here. The R11 is my favorite Chromebook of all time and on a good day costs around $200. The R11 has more memory (32gb) and a touchscreen, and the screen rotates 360 degrees to behave like a tablet with screen rotation, etc. Still, the Acer 11 (non-touchscreen) is a very capable Chromebook and is recommended at the $148 price-point for those looking for a good, bargain-priced Chromebook. Great battery life, durability, processor speed, nice keyboard and good screen resolution are some of its many attributes.
While on the topic of computers, Costco recently had the Acer ET322QR 31.5″ Curved Full HD Monitor on sale for an incredible $170 (plus tax, free shipping).
Some might say, why the heck does one need a monitor this large (nearly 32” diagonal). ‘Need’ doesn’t really apply in this case, but I have always had multiple monitors attached to my PCs and I thought having a large (curved) primary monitor would help. And boy does it! I love the larger monitor. It’s especially useful when editing videos and developing PowerPoint slides for my classes. And large monitors definitely spoil you and make it hard to go back to smaller monitors. Add the screen curvature and it feels very natural working in close proximity to this monitor. Did I mention, “I love it!” Yeah, I did…
Having gone large in the monitor domain, I’m also playing with small tablets and PCs. My two latest acquisitions include the 7” Fire HD tablet. After moving up to the 10” Fire tablet, I thought I was done with the smaller form factor. Not so. I bought the Fire 7 Tablet with Alexa, 7″ Display, 8 GB, Black from Amazon during one of their sales for $30. I invested in a 128gb micro-SD card for another $24 and was ready to roll. This tablet is used primary for video streaming, from the tablet’s SD card to a Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD and Alexa Voice Remote streaming media player.
The other mini computing device I’m playing with is the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Motherboard. Yes, I already had a couple Raspberry Pi 3 Bs, so why did I need another. Well, here’s the thing (that ‘need’ word again). I didn’t need it. This article explains the differences between the B and B+, but these words from the article explain why I bought the B+; “You probably don’t need the 3 B+, but you should buy it anyway.” The best part of the Raspberry Pi investment is the price. There are 3 parts to consider when buying a Raspberry Pi. They are the motherboard itself ($39), a 16gb micro-SD card ($5), and case with power supply ($16.50). That’s a total investment of about $60 for a very capable little machine once you have added the NOOBS (New Out Of Box Software) system. I’ve written about the Raspberry Pi 3 before (here) so I’ll not cover that ground again. Suffice to say, the Raspberry Pi 3 B and B+ are very capable little PCs and should be considered for those interested in playing with tech without having to make a huge investment.
Now on a completely different topic, let’s talk about cell phones. A little while ago I was introduced to a new cell phone service called Unreal Mobile. The two interesting things about Unreal are price and service. First price. $10 per month, that’s it. Unlimited text and talk, and 1gb data. Plus unused data gets rolled over and rather than charging more for data if you happen to run over, Unreal slows transmission speed from LTE to 2G. For those who don’t use a lot of data, this is an ideal plan at a great price.
So now about service. The Unreal service I’m testing uses a GSM phone (the type of radio used by Consumer Cellular and AT&T phones). For a penny, Unreal sent me a SIM card for my unlocked AT&T phone (and iPhone SE). Insert the SIM card, install the Unreal app, configure the service and you’re off to the races. As a note, Unreal uses AT&T’s towers (great service in most places in the US).
Another interesting aspect of Unreal’s approach is that it uses an application on the phone to make and receive phone calls. This means your phone calls are only ever using data on AT&T’s network. That appears to be how Unreal keeps their prices so low. And it works – really well! Also of interest is that once you have signed up for Unreal Mobile, you can now make and receive calls from any Wifi-connected device (phone, tablet, etc.), simply by running the Unreal application and signing into your Unreal account.
And though I haven’t tried it, you’re supposed to be able to make calls to and from international locations as well. There is a $5/month fee for this capability, though I would think you could make and receive calls internationally anyway as long as you had a Wifi signal regardless. I’m thinking of sending one of my phones to Iceland to test this. I’ll let you know how that works out.
This is it for this post. I have been playing with a number of IoT devices as well (WeMo, Nest, LaCrosse, etc.) and will be writing about them at a later date.
