What Does Airplane Mode Do?

Heard the horror stories of people who go on a vacation or travel for work only to find a massive phone bill waiting for them when they get home? Sometimes the people don't even actually leave the country, but get close enough to a border that their phone connects to a cellphone tower on the other side. This happened recently when I took my family to see Niagara Falls. We were close enough to Canada, and far away enough from any cell towers on the US side that our phones connected to Rogers, a Canadian cell phone provider.

What if you don't want to turn your phone totally off, but want to ensure that you don't use the phone or data services? Maybe you're travelling abroad, going into a hospital, or boarding a plane. Simply go to the settings in your smartphone (airplane mode is for smartphones only), and, usually on the main settings screen, you'll see a little switch for Airplane Mode. Just turn it on and voila! It's like turning the phone part of your smartphone off. For iPhone users, I describe Airplane Mode as turning your iPhone into an iPod Touch.

You'll still be able to connect to wifi, but no calls, texts or voice-mails will be sent to your phone while in this mode. As soon as you turn it off, all the above mentioned things you missed will flood in, so don't worry!

Practical Tip of the Day:
When traveling, be careful which wifi networks you connect to. While most are legitimate, some may be monitored by hackers who can watch what you do and even connect to your computer through their network. If you see multiple possible networks, ask an employee of where you are which network is theirs. It's not uncommon to see fake wifi networks with seemingly proper names.

Should I Get a Laptop or Desktop?

You've finally decided that it's time to upgrade. You know what price range you're looking at, what you need the computer to be able to do, and you've saved up your pennies. Time to get serious about looking at computers, but should you look at desktop computers or laptops?

Here are the questions I usually ask people who are in this conundrum:

1. Where will you mostly be using your computer?
2. How often do you travel?
3. What will you be using the computer for primarily?

If you'll be mostly using your computer at home, especially if it's mostly in a place like a home office, a desktop might be better suited. A laptop computer that stays plugged in sitting on a desk most of the time won't work very well when you do need to unplug it and take it somewhere. Rechargeable batteries are a lot like our muscles- if we don't use them, we loose them!

If you travel frequently, either for work or leisure, a laptop might be better suited for you. Desktops need to be plugged into an outlet to work, but laptops have batteries that can last for hours. I have seen people who get small desktops (like the Mac Mini) to take back and forth to vacation homes, but desktop computers are not as well suited to movement and travelling as laptops and therefor you should take caution when travelling with them.

If you have very easy to meet needs for your computer like web surfing, movie watching, sharing photos, word processing and the like, you can get an inexpensive laptop that can handle those tasks easily. If, on the other hand, you're making videos, editing photos, building websites, etc. you'll end up needing to spend a lot more money to get a laptop computer that's as powerful as a desktop computer. That's because making everything portable and during has a cost, and that shows up on the price tag.

Practical Tip of the Day:
If you do have high demands of your computer, but only travel once or twice a year, more and more people are opting to get a desktop/tablet combination. That way you have a powerful machine at home for when you need to make a movie, but then have something small and portable for your lighter needs while you travel. A desktop/tablet combination usually comes out to being about the same or slightly cheaper than an equally powerful laptop!