Cellular Internet Connections: It’s Not Just the Signal, it’s the Speed

Where most people look for pretty trees at the campground, we look for pretty cell towers!

by Chris Guld www.GeeksOnTour.com
We travel all over the country in our Motorhome and we depend on our website, GeeksOnTour.com, for our living. Internet connections are very important to us and we rely on Verizon thru our Android phones to provide that connection. We also live-stream a smartphone educational show every week. It’s called What Does This Button Do? and we do it from our motorhome. In case you are not aware, “Streaming” and “Internet Hog” are synonymous!
I have to be reminded that some people use their phones to make phone calls! Just to be clear, we’re only talking about Internet … Data … connections in this article. Voice is a different topic which may or may not be affected by the same factors.
Most people judge their cellular Internet connection by simply looking at the signal bars on their phone. 1-2 bars = bad; 4-5 bars = good. But that’s not always true.

Using Ookla Speed Test App

Signal strength is only one measurement, and in my opinion it is not the most important one. We have been in places where we were seeing only 1-2 bars, yet our Internet performance – the speed – was very good. We have also seen 4-5 bars and had low speed. We use the Ookla Speed Test app to check our speeds. We’ve seen download speeds ranging from .2 Mbps to 74. But, those numbers don’t always correlate with the signal strength.

In the image above you can see that the signal strength is not that great, yet the speed is VERY good! And, we’ve seen the results go the opposite way as well; where the signal strength has been registering 5 bars, yet the speed is <1Mbps.
When we pull into an RV park now, we drive around with our cell phones out and Ookla Speed test running. At each possible site, we’ll do a speed test. We were recently at the Thousand Trails park in Hershey, PA and we planned to be there for #48 of our What Does This Button Do?, so we really needed good Internet. When we pulled into the park, our signal strength was registering only 2 bars … of 3G. Not good. There were some areas where we saw no signal at all. Then we found one area with 2 bars of 4G, so we started an Ookla speed test and saw less than 1Mbps of speed. We thought we would need to leave and find another park, but we kept looking at other sites and doing speed tests. We found one, where Ookla registered 2-3 Mbps both up and down, so we parked. Surprisingly, we were able to do our show just fine.

Not all Cell Towers are Equal

Realize that the signal strength bars are simply measuring how strong the signal connection is between your device and the nearest cell tower for your service provider. So, there may be times when you are very close and have good signal strength, but it’s an old tower with outdated equipment. A better connection doesn’t help if what you’re connecting to isn’t any good. And vice versa – you may have a weak connection but if the cell tower you are connecting to has the latest and greatest technology, you may still get good results. Realize that “Old” and “Outdated” may be measured in months!
Cellular technology is very fast-moving. If you want to learn more about this, we recommend the excellent book: RV Mobile Internet Handbook by Chris Dunphy and Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia. You can find the book and much more on their website RVMobileInternet.com.

The Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

You can’t just look at the numbers and know how good your Internet connection is. I thought we would be unable to do our streaming show from the Hershey campground based on the numbers, but it went just fine. There are so many factors in this complex technology.  It’s your experience that counts. Browse to a website; did it load fast or are you still waiting? Try to play a Youtube video; does it start right away and continue straight thru or does it stop every few seconds to buffer? Try uploading a video; does it complete or does it die halfway through? If you’re not getting the results you want, there are signal boosters that will help, but only IF the problem is signal strength. If the problem is cell tower equipment quality, you may need to move!

Technology in the Passenger Seat

I remember when we had to schlep our laptop up to the RV park’s office and plug in to their phone line in order to use dial-up to get online.  Then came Wi-Fi.  You could browse the Internet from the comfort of your parked RV.  We even got a Datastorm Satellite dish that gave us high-speed Internet *wherever* we were parked – in the middle of the desert, or in the most remote national forest.  What luxury that was.  We live fulltime in our motorhome and we need to work to make our living.  Our work is primarily on our website so it’s important that we be able to connect wherever we are.

Then came cellular datacards, and cellphones tethered to our laptops, we could be connected to high-speed Internet even while driving down the road! How wonderful right?

NO.

I didn’t like it.  I’m a geek, but I have my limits.  It’s one of my guilty pleasures to be a passenger in our RV and simply enjoy the ride while my husband does the driving.  This is a time when I have permission to *not* work.  I enjoy watching the scenery and daydreaming about oh so many things.  When we're driving down the road in our self-contained cocoon-home, the outside world disappears. No stress. No worries. Just us and the rhythm of the road.

I don’t want to give that up.  How about you?

I have to admit that the cellular connection to Internet does work great – I succumb to the dark side once in a while when I need to answer some emails, or had a deadline for some other web work.  I was glad to be able to get my work done without sacrificing our planned destination.

Now, with a Smartphone in my pocket, I find myself checking my email and looking at my calendar, almost unconsciously, even while we’re driving down the road.  The Smartphone is just so quick and easy.   I find it to be a small intrusion into my traveling reverie, but I appreciate that it allows me to accomplish the necessary tasks without getting out a real computer.  I can put it back in my pocket and return to the hypnotic hum of the wheels on the road.

What about you? Do you use a smartphone while you are the passenger in an RV? Do you appreciate the convenience? or hate the intrusion?

Don’t Worry, Use Dropbox. You’ll have all your computer files anywhere you go

Do you worry when you leave home that you may need some files from your home computer? Do you worry when you travel that anything you create on your travel computer may get lost or destroyed before you get back home? Do you worry that the pictures you take with your phone will get lost or destroyed before you are able to transfer them to your computer? Do you worry that the USB drive where you keep your important files will get lost or destroyed, or that you didn’t update it with your latest work?

Don’t Worry! Use Dropbox!

Dropbox.com is a cloud storage service. There are many of them like Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Google’s Drive. We use them all, but we like Dropbox the best for 2 reasons:

1. It ISN’T Apple, Microsoft, or Google! So it’s not tied in any way with one of those accounts, and it works well with ALL.
2. It does the best job of Synchronizing among all your computers and mobile devices.

Synchronizing

Synchronizing means that Dropbox keeps a copy of your files on your computer - in the Dropbox folder – AND in the Cloud – in your Dropbox.com account – and it takes care of ensuring that when either one is updated, so is the other. All you have to do is save your file in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and Dropbox will create, or update, the corresponding file in your Dropbox.com account. It will also update that same file on anyone else’s computer with whom you have shared a folder, and make it accessible to any device that has the Dropbox App installed.

With Dropbox, you can:

1. Start working on a file at home, continue working on the same file on the road
2. Share a folder for a group of people to collaborate on project files, even when those people are spread all over the world.
3. Work on a file locally when you have no Internet connection, and it automatically synchronizes to the web and other shared group members when you do get online.
4. Create a group photo album where everyone automatically gets a copy of the pictures on their computer – not just a shared web album.
5. Start working on a file on your laptop, continue working on the same file on your iPad or Android smartphone.
6. Automatically upload all photos taken with a mobile device to your Dropbox.com account – AND synchronize with whatever computer(s) you have set up.

Using Dropbox has definitively eliminated any worries I have about my computer files. I know that I have access to all of my files and pictures (and they are the current, updated versions!) wherever I am and whatever computing device I happen to have available. I’ve been using Dropbox long enough now that I have actually forgotten what it is like to worry about my computer files. I don’t have a computer backup system any more. If a file is important to me, it’s in my Dropbox folder. In fact, I no longer use My Documents folder – unless it’s an unimportant file. I use my Dropbox folder in lieu of my Documents and I set up as many subfolders as I need to store my stuff.

How much space do you get?

The initial free allotment of space in your Dropbox account is 2 Gigabytes. For $10/mo you can upgrade that to 1Terrabyte. But, there are also many promotions that allow you to earn more free space. You can sign up for dropbox using this link and both you and I will get 500MG extra free space!
Every traveler needs a Dropbox! For more information, see the Dropbox Tour.
If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you can watch these videos.
www.GeeksonTour.com
Watch our weekly show on Learning Smartphones and Tablets:www.GeeksOnTour.com/weeklyshow

How to get the best RV Wi-Fi Internet access

David Bott, from OutsideOurBubble.com, explains how he gets Internet while on the road, what equipment he has, how to set everything up, etc. This is not a paid endorsement by David, so you get the straight scoop! As he says, it's a "quick and easy overview of what we use and how"--and he's an expert!

Renew your Verizon Unlimited Data Plan Now

Last year, I wrote an article, “Get your Verizon Droid or iPhone before July 7 (2011)” to urge new Verizon customers to act quickly.  Now, they’re at it again!  Last year, on July 7, Verizon ended the unlimited data plan for new customers.  This year (we don’t know exactly when) they will end it for existing customers.  Meaning, if you have an unlimited data plan now, when you upgrade your phone and sign a new 2 year contract, you will lose that unlimited data – there will be no ‘grandfather’ rights.  They will be implementing tiered and family sharing plans instead.  For more details, see this PCWorld Article.

So, if you are eligible for an upgrade, do it NOW.  I just upgraded my Droid1 for a new Droid Razr Maxx 4G (a great device!) yesterday, and they continued my unlimited data plan with no questions asked.  I now have unlimited Internet access for two more years. 

If you’re wondering why an unlimited plan is such a good thing, read my article from last year where I go into much more detail.  But, check out the current plan costs.  For $30/mo now you only get 2GB of data per month.  Although that’s enough for basic email and web-browsing on your phone, it’s not nearly enough if you like watching videos on your phone, or if you like to share your phone’s Internet connection with other devices – like many of us RV travelers do.

Current Verizon Pricing

Although I believe that an unlimited data plan is worth fighting for, it’s not as important as it used to be.  It used to be that overages were charged at .25/megabyte.  That added up QUICK!  If you went over your allotment by just 1GB, your overage charge would have been $250!  Now, the overage fee is a flat $10/GB.  So, if you have the $30 for 2GB plan and you use 10GB in one month, your bill will be $110.  That’s bad, but not heart-stopping like the per megabyte charge.

This tip by Geeks on Tour: a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as how to use Android smartphones, managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Can Facebook be your Rally’s Website?

by Chris Guld of Geeks on Tour

One of the first websites I ever built was for our wedding in 1998.  Since then, I’ve built websites for my own personal interests as well as for businesses and clubs.  Now, we’re holding an RV Rally, so I should build a website for it right, or at least a Blog?

Maybe not.

A normal website is primarily one-way communication. Social media (e.g. Facebook) these days allows us to have communications in multiple directions.  People reading your Facebook page can not only talk back to you, they can also  communicate with each other.  They can even share your page with their friends … can you say ‘word of mouth advertising?’

The rally that we’re holding is a joint effort between us – Geeks on Tour, and Phil and Tracey May of  TechnoRV.  Rather than attach the rally to either of our business websites, we’ve decided to try a Facebook Page.  This way the rally has a web identity of it’s own, separate from either Geeks on Tour or TechnoRV. 

The Techno-Geek Learning Rally Website/Facebook Page

Take a look and tell us what you think.  The URL is www.facebook.com/technogeeklearningrally.  If you’re not a member of Facebook, you can still see the page, you just can’t interact with it.  If you are a member of Facebook, click the ‘Like’ button to connect to our rally.

Benefits of using Facebook

First of all, it’s free, and Oh-So-Easy.  Beyond that, it’s interactive.  We really wanted our rally website to be a place where people could upload their own pictures and updates about what they were seeing and learning at the rally.  This is difficult with any other website.  With Facebook, so many people already know how to post pictures and update status, so it happens quickly and easily.  This can expand an event to be a virtual rally for anyone who ‘Likes’ the page.  By the simple act of clicking ‘Like’, anything posted by us on our Rally page will show up on your newsfeed. You can ‘attend’ the rally even though you’re thousands of miles away.

This is a pretty small rally on the ground … about 40 people, but the online rally in the Cloud can be hundreds!

Drawbacks of Using Facebook

Of course, the main drawback is that not everyone is on Facebook. As mentioned above, a Facebook page can still be seen even if the viewer is not on Facebook.  So, it still serves the purpose of a static webpage for everyone, and it is automatically interactive for anyone who does use Facebook.  You might be surprised at the percentage of RVers who use Facebook – it’s substantial, and growing every day. 

Another drawback, especially for large organizations where you’re bound to have someone unhappy about something, is that unhappy people can post to your page just as easily as happy people.  As the Admin for your page, you can delete offensive posts.  If the complaint is legitimate, you can build more good will with followers by keeping the negative comment and  responding in a helpful way.

What is a Facebook Page?

If you use Facebook you may think you have a Facebook Page, but you probably don’t.  What you have is a ‘Profile’ aka your ‘Timeline’ or ‘Wall.’  Profiles are for people, real people, with real names.  Once you have a Profile on Facebook, it is a piece of cake to create a Page for your business, club, or other entity.  It is so easy, it literally takes only 5 minutes. But, creating it is just the beginning.  Getting people to know it’s there is the time-consuming part.  You need to promote your Facebook page, just like you would any website.  But, once you get people to ‘Like’ it, they may promote it to their friends and help you build the readership with no further promotion on your part.

What is a Facebook Group?

Like a page, it is easy for any member of Facebook to create a group.   From your home page (News Feed) you should see a link in the left sidebar to ‘Create a Group.’  Where a Page can only be public, a Group can be Open, Closed, or Secret.  Facebook’s Group feature is intended to give small groups a place to collaborate.  Groups have members.  You don’t just ‘Like’ a group, you Join.

What is an Event?

An event is yet another entity within Facebook.  This one has a date, a location, and you can invite people.  People can respond to say they are attending or not.  Any person, page, or group can create an Event.  An Event can be for Public, Friends, or Invitation only.

Confused yet?

Me too.  It was really unclear whether we should create a Page, Group, or Event.  After discussing it, we decided to create a Page.  AND an Event.  This is our first Techno-Geek Learning Rally, but we hope it’s not our last.  The Page can grow its content continually while we also schedule events.  So, we now have the TechnoGeek Learning Rally page, plus an Event for the May 2012 Rally, and another Event scheduled for November 2012.  For the future event, you can get on the list by RSVPing that you’re ‘Maybe’ going.  This way, you should get all future notices about the Event.  We’re also hoping that the current Event gives us a way to communicate with just the people who are actually here at the Rally.  There are some things, like schedule changes, or other details, that we want to post to the few dozen  folks who are here, without bothering the hundreds who may have liked our Page. 

Other Rallies with a Facebook Presence

I notice that the other rallies we’re gong to this summer also have Events on Facebook, but not very many people have RSVP’d.  Without the RSVPs, you can’t use it to communicate with attendees, but the Events are still good for giving the details of the specific Event.

Good Sam Facebook Page
  June Rally Event

FMCA Facebook Page
  August Reunion Event

Escapade 2012 Group
  Escapade 2012 Event
 

It’s a Learning Rally!

Our event is called the Techno-Geek Learning Rally, not just because we’re going to be teaching lots of computer stuff, but also because we’re experimenting and learning ourselves!

Follow along and learn with us by Liking the page.  And, let us know your thoughts along the way!

 

Geeks On Tour is Jim and Chris Guld. They have been traveling the US in their RV since 2003. They teach fellow travelers how to use computers and technology to plan, preserve, and share their travels. They have both been involved in professional computer support and training since the early 80s. They maintain a family of websites including www.picasatutorials.com containing hundreds of articles, and www.geeksontour.tv where members can watch tutorial videos on all their topics.

Send and Receive Faxes while Traveling

A fax machine is certainly not high on your list when you travel by RV, but once in a while there is a need to send or receive faxes.  We use the Internet for everything else, why not faxing?  Even if you do travel with an all-in-one printer/fax machine, most of them will need a cable from a land-line telephone in order to work.  Read on and we’ll tell you about a couple of websites that we use for faxing – one for receiving and another for sending.

Receiving Faxes

Receiving is easier than sending.  All that is required is a phone number that receives the faxed document and redirects it as an attachment to an email.  We’ve used eFax.com for many years and have had no problem with our grand total of about 3 faxes per year!  Here’s how it works. You sign up for a free account.  You will be assigned a fax number.  Now you can give that number when anyone wants to send you a fax.  To them it’s just like sending to any other regular old fax number, but to you it looks like an attachment to an email. 

Is it really Free?  If you go to efax.com you will see an eFax Plus for $16.95/mo and an eFax Pro for 19.95/mo.  There is a free version, honest!  You need to browse to www.efax.com/efax-free in order to sign up.  With the free version you can’t choose your phone number, and you’re limited to receiving no more than 10 faxes/month.  You can’t send faxes with eFax free. 

Sending Faxes

It’s not worth it to me to spend $16.95/mo with efax to be able to send faxes, so when I need it, I use a different free service: FaxZero.com.  To use the free fax-sending service of FaxZero, you don’t even need to sign up for an account!  You just fill out the form with the name and the email of the sender (you) and the name and fax number of the receiver.  You can then type a note for the cover sheet and upload a document to be sent.  FaxZero will send an email to the address given for the sender.  When you see that email and click the confirmation, your fax will be sent.  You will receive another email to confirm that the fax was sent successfully.  The free faxzero is limited to faxes no more than 3 pages plus cover, and no more than 5 faxes/day. 

How to Scan a Document to Fax

If the document you need to fax is a physical piece of paper, then we have another step.  This is often the case because if it was on your computer – then you’d probably just email it in the first place!  Usually it’s a contract or a tax form that needed your signature.  If you have a printer/scanner, then you’re all set.  Just scan the paper, now you have a document on your computer that you can upload and fax with FaxZero.  But, what if you don’t have a scanner?  In a pinch, I take a photo of the document, but FaxZero specifies that the uploaded file must be a .doc, .docx, or .pdf.  Well, ok, if you insist … what I do now is open up my word processing program and Insert Picture, specifying the picture of the paper I just took.  Now I have a document file!  I might even use Word’s ability to Save As a .pdf file to make it smaller and more efficient.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

Of course, if you’re at an RV park with a Fax machine in the office – that’s probably easier!  What about you?  Do you ever need to send or receive faxes when you travel?  How do you do it?

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger. You can subscribe to our free enewsletter, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

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, or 1/2 Megabit/per second.  We were browsing the Internet at 20 times normal speed!  We never wanted to leave.  This was not only 4G, but it was extra fast 4G.

The 3G signal available from our same location was horrible.  It was extra bad 3G. Here’s a screen shot of that speed test:

That’s just over 1/4 Mbps!  Our spot in Franklin, Tennessee is the poster child for why you want a new 4G device.  With it, using the Internet was a joy. Without it was torture.

Data Limits

In the Tortoise and the Hare, the blazing fast bunny runs out of energy.  With our blazing fast 4G Internet connection, we quickly ran out of our data allotment.  Our mobile hotspot device was on a $49/mo plan for 5 Gigabytes of data transfer.  After one week and 4 Gigabytes of usage, we changed our plan to the $80/mo for 10 Gigabytes of data.  Today, May 28, we’re at 9.88 Gigabytes.  We’re in Ohio now, outside of any 4G area and we’re using our 3G Droid cellphones, tethered to our computers for Internet access.  Verizon’s penalty for going over our allotment really isn’t too bad – $10/Gigabyte of overage.  If we were still in the good 4G area that had lousy 3G, we would probably pay the overage.

To Buy 4G or Not to Buy 4G

If you’re going to buy a cellular wireless Internet device now anyway, why not get 4G as long as it also does 3G?  Notice the lights in my picture above of our mobile hotspot – there’s a 4G indicator light as well as a 3G indicator.  If it can’t find any 4G signal, it will connect with a 3G.  If you have a 3G only device – you’ll be very disappointed in Franklin, Tennessee!

If you aren’t already planning on buying such a device, then it’s a harder decision.  Is it worth upgrading when 4G is still so rare?  Pay close attention to the coverage map for your provider before deciding.  Geeks like us just gotta have it!

Your Mileage May Vary!

Don’t take any speed test, or anyone else’s (even ours!) experience as gospel.  Speeds vary from minute to minute, mile to mile, and computer to computer.  This story is useful just to let you know how drastic the speed difference *can* be between 3G and 4G.

by Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger.  Members can view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

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.  Over the period of one month, you might view 1,000 pictures on the web.  Watching a typical, standard quality, 3-4 minute Youtube video will use roughly 10 Megabytes. So you could watch 100 of those for 1 Gigabyte of data usage.  See this article from the folks at evdoinfo.com for a chart: What does 5GB (Gigabytes) Get Me?  Here’s another article for more detailed info on data usage for videos.  The only thing we tell people they cannot do is to watch full length movies.  Watching one Netflix movie online can use up to 2 Gigabytes of your allotment right there. 

How Did We Go Over Our Limit?

We had not watched any online movies, so how did we rack up so much data usage so fast?  First of all, for the whole winter season, we were in one RV park where we contracted with Bell South for a DSL line.  DSL is nice and fast and has no limits.  So, we got spoiled.  We didn’t have to pay attention to data usage all winter.  Now that we’re back on the road, we need to be paying attention.  Both Jim and I are sharing our mobile hotspot Internet connection from Verizon.

Once I got a notice from Verizon, I did some checking.  One culprit is my Windows Updates.  I had automatically received Windows 7 Service Pack 1.  I checked Microsoft’s site and learned that it was over 1 Gigabyte in size!  We are also preparing to deliver a seminar remotely using Skype and screen-sharing.  Our practice session probably cost us us a 1/4 Gigabyte.  A couple days ago, I purchased the latest Microsoft Streets and Trips program and downloaded it.  That was 1.3 Gigabytes!  Pretty stupid on my part since I already had the trial version installed on my computer.  We now have a 4G mobile hotspot from Verizon and we were so excited to be in a 4G area around Nashville …  I may have watched a couple episodes of Glee on Hulu because it worked so well … hey, I call that research!

What Can You Do to Limit Your Data Usage?

We need to go on a data diet!  Here are the things that we are going to do:

1. Always check for good Wi-Fi and use it when possible.
2. Stay aware of our current data usage by checking our account stats online at verizonwireless.com/myverizon and logging into our account.  If you don’t know how to do that for your provider, give them a call and ask.
3. Turn off automatic Windows Updates (Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update)  note: if you do this, make sure to do your updates manually whenever you’re in a good Wi-Fi area.  Getting updates *is* very important.
4. Turn off Carbonite online backup.  I love Carbonite, but it *does* use bandwidth to backup all new files I create to the backup website.  Since we’ll be on the road for quite some time, I’ll probably turn off the service completely and just use our ClickFree for backup.
5. Turn off DropBox.  DropBox is a great utility that synchronizes a folder of data across multiple computers.  It does this by uploading them to a website and then downloading them to the other computers, so it uses double bandwidth (data transfer usage) going up and down!  If I remember, I’ll turn it back on when I’m connected to a good Wi-Fi signal.
6. Stay away from Netflix and Hulu
7. Limit our Video Skype calls.

How Much Does it Cost When you go Over Your Allotment?

Verizon used to charge 25 cents per Megabyte of overage.  That adds up quick!  If you went over by a Gigabyte, that would cost $250!  The fees today are much more reasonable – each Gigabyte of excess will be charged at $10/Gigabyte.  Check with your provider and your contract to see what your overage charges are.  If you’ve had your contract for a long time, you may even have an unlimited usage contract.  If that’s the case … don’t lose it!  Any change in your contract may get you started with a whole new contract – with new limitations.  The unlimited usage contracts are highly desirable.

Can I Increase My Limits?

This depends on your provider and the plans they offer.  Verizon does currently offer a 10Gigabyte contract for $80/month.  We might just have to do that. 

Kind of like those real diets … so often I give up and go buy some clothes in a larger size! 

 

by Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger.  Members can view all of the videos in the Learning Library.