This is my first FB post using my smartphone as a wireless hotspot. After a fair amount of research, talking to sales staff, and working with customer service over the phone, the hotspot is finally up and running (I’m testing it as I type with Lady Gaga singing “On the Edge of Glory” on the Howard Stern Show – it’s working very well). The hotspot raised the price of my MetroPCS plan from $40 to $55 a month, but I am now able to say Sayonara to Comcast at a combined monthly charge of $110 for wireless and TV. I will get TV from the internet from now on, since I watch rather little of it anyway. MetroPCS’s plan provides 2.5 gigabytes of streaming per month at the “blazing” 4G speed (G stands for gigabyte). 2.5 gigabytes is 5 hours of video streaming (e.g., YouTube) or 15 hours of music or 300 photos or 30 apps/games. Email and surfing is a very low 50 kilobytes/minute (1024 bytes=1 kilobytes; 1024 kilobytes=1 megabyte; 1024 megabytes=1 gigabyte). Once you use your 2.5G allotment, the speed goes down to 3G, but there is no extra charge. There is one downside: 3G speed may cause YouTube, etc., to stutter and hang – but there is a solution. Buy a “Chromecast” USB thumbdrive for $35 that inserts into the USB port on flat screen televisions, and then stream whatever you are watching on your laptop or tablet to your TV. The Chromecast has a buffer, which compensates for the lag in streaming over the internet. To find out how easy it is to order a Chromecast, simply Google it. However, a word of caution: since Chrome is owned by Google, there may be some limitations on what content you can stream with the Chromecast since Google may want you to use its services (in other words, it might be incompatible with Apple’s and other services). It’s website says it works with NetFlix and YouTube (and Hulu, whatever that is) but I don’t know much else about either the Chromecast or the other available services, so check first. Well, off to my email . . .
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 01:14:49 +0000
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