{"id":21534,"date":"2019-09-21T15:30:25","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T19:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=21534"},"modified":"2019-10-19T08:59:04","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T12:59:04","slug":"taking-off-6-international-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/taking-off-6-international-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Off #6: International Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/gerdaltman_pixabay.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" style=\"width: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/gerdaltman_pixabay.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Stock image by Gerd Altman of Pixabay\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Stock image by Gerd Altman on <a title=\"Gerd Altman stock image: digital networking\/interfaces\" href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/illustrations\/board-interfaces-digital-global-1226674\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pixabay<\/a>: thanks!]<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">A<\/span>lthough I&#8217;ve been what one could call, generically, a &#8220;technology professional&#8221; for over forty years, I have intentionally limited the scope of technology I pay much attention to. (My thinking: if I control what I know about, I&#8217;ll limit what I&#8217;ll be <em>expected<\/em> to know about.) Consequently, I&#8217;m always behind the curve &#8212; I might (indeed, do) know <em>about<\/em> Tech X, Y, or Z, just not enough to be confident enough in making recommendations or providing support.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the current general configuration of our electronic stuff:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Two computers &#8212; a six-year-old desktop PC which alternately boots into Windows 10 or Linux Mint, and a&#8230; well, a maybe nine-year-old laptop (also dual booting, but most often into Windows). The desktop is &#8220;mine&#8221;; the laptop (nominally The Missus&#8217;s) I have used myself on a few trips here and there. (<strong>Update, 2019-10-19:<\/strong> The Missus mentioned this week that she&#8217;s thinking of getting a new laptop.)<\/li>\n<li>Two not-really-conventional &#8220;computers&#8221;: The Missus&#8217;s iPad Pro (now a few years old), and my <a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/store.google.com\/product\/google_pixelbook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pixelbook<\/a> (just got it over the summer). The iPad can be used in either WiFi mode, or in cellular mode if no WiFi signal is present; the Pixelbook does WiFi only.<\/li>\n<li>Phones: an iPhone 8 and an LG G6. Our cellular provider for years has been Spr*nt, but we&#8217;re still with them now more or less just out of inertia.<\/li>\n<li>A variety of media-related tech &#8212; several Roku boxes and a Chromecast.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So given all the above, what would we <em>have to<\/em> give up for a six-month trip to Europe? And of what&#8217;s left, what should we leave behind anyhow?<\/p>\n<p>The need to answer those questions has bumped me out of my comfort zone. But this is what I&#8217;ve got a handle on so far&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<span class=\"su-dropcap su-dropcap-style-light\" style=\"font-size:2em\">F<\/span>or starters, the two &#8220;real&#8221; computers we&#8217;ll leave behind. (We may completely divest ourselves of The Missus&#8217;s laptop; given the iPad and the Pixelbook, we pretty much never need to use the thing anymore at all.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><strong>Update, 2019-10-19:<\/strong> If The Missus does indeed replace her laptop, I&#8217;m not sure how that will fit into the equation: bring it in addtion to the two tablets? or maybe leave the iPad behind? (Slightly unimaginable but not impossible.) As the old Magic 8-Ball toy used to say: <em>Answer hazy; try again later!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The iPad and the Pixelbook and two phones &#8212; presumably, we&#8217;ll bring them (caveats below).<\/p>\n<p>As for the Rokus and the Chromecast, well, they&#8217;re still under investigation. (The biggest open questions relate to the availability of our &#8220;saved&#8221; content when not in the US; all those swaggering-big and blustery streaming-media sources get suddenly shy and squeamish when you raise questions about cross-border licensing and permissions.)<\/p>\n<p>The main thing I&#8217;m trying to wrap my head around at the moment has to do with wireless service in Europe. Here&#8217;s what I think I know, or maybe <em>need<\/em> to know.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We already know our present carrier has a satisfactory international plan we can use. (We know this because we used it last year, in England.) We don&#8217;t even need to replace our phones and the iPad.<\/li>\n<li>But we&#8217;ve contemplated switching carriers anyhow, for some time now: we&#8217;re paying a fortune for our plan &#8212; even sillier now that we&#8217;re no longer making any payments on the hardware.<\/li>\n<li>For mobile devices, The Missus has no desire to leave the Apple iEverything universe, and I&#8217;m committed to Android.<\/li>\n<li>So I&#8217;ve been investigating carriers, especially those with decent international plans and track records; I&#8217;m leaning toward Google Fi (their Flex plan). One thing I like about Google Fi is the whiz-bang network-switching cellular coverage which the &#8220;official&#8221; Google Fi phones offer; and I really like the pricing structure of the Flex plan. The big question mark about Google Fi: phones in general, and the Apple-vs.-Android thing in particular.\n<ul>\n<li>You can bring <em>any<\/em> phone with you to Google Fi&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and you can bring your old phone number, as long as your carrier allows that (I&#8217;m pretty sure ours does)<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;but if you want to take advantage of the network-switching thing, you&#8217;ve gotta use one of <a title=\"Google Fi phones\" href=\"https:\/\/fi.google.com\/about\/phones\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their specifically configured phones<\/a>. At the moment, these are limited to Google&#8217;s own Pixel phones and a couple of models from Moto (the G6 and G7).<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and support for the iPhone, in particular, is as of today only in beta (and at that, Fi support apparently has to walk you through specific configuration steps)<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and there may not be any support at all for cellular-ready <em>tablets<\/em>, like The Missus&#8217;s iPad Pro.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Another thing I like about Google Fi: all calls over WiFi, and all data generally, run through a VPN for additional security.<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;which, of course, reveals another area of ugly embarrassing ignorance for me: I&#8217;ve never used any VPN at all. So now I&#8217;ve gotta spend time scoping that out as well.<\/li>\n<li>I <em>do<\/em> know that both the iPad and the Pixelbook can access the Internet anywhere simply via WiFi&#8230; using a hotspot-equipped cell phone.<\/li>\n<li>A careful reader will observe that pretty much all this ignorance is simply within the domestic realm of technology: I really don&#8217;t know much at all about how it would change (for better or worse) in settings anywhere comfortably within the US of A.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Life used to be so much simpler when we all had landlines, period. (Ha.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Stock image by Gerd Altman on Pixabay: thanks!] lthough I&#8217;ve been what one could call, generically, a &#8220;technology professional&#8221; for over forty years, I have intentionally limited the scope of technology I pay much attention to. (My thinking: if I control what I know about, I&#8217;ll limit what I&#8217;ll be expected to know about.) Consequently, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4948,4949,17,21,18,19,1224],"tags":[4985,4986,4987],"class_list":{"0":"post-21534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-temporarily-expatting","8":"category-retirement","9":"category-04_technology","10":"category-oses","11":"category-computers","12":"category-internet","13":"category-phones-cellular-and-otherwise","14":"tag-vpns","15":"tag-cellular-plans-and-coverage","16":"tag-the-gods-know-what-else","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/gerdaltman_pixabay.jpg?fit=1280%2C903&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5Bk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21534"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21666,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21534\/revisions\/21666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}