Review of the FixMe Stick!

Give the link to the right a click or simply click HERE to see my review and experience with the amazing FixMe Stick! Scroll down after clicking the link to see my thoughts on it!

5G is here! Here's a quick explanation.

 

Well, 5G is here! Wow! Have you noticed any difference? I'm taking a long shot and going to say, probably not. Everyone is talking about it, and everyone is out buying those 5g compatible phones. If you happen to have a 5G capable phone, have you ever seen it say 5g? Again, I'll say probably not. 

Now I'm not being negative about this new technology, it's just the way it is being promoted,etc.  Lots of people are running out buying new phones, believing they will have 5G! It doesn't work like that, there is 5G available in Manitoba, and here is a great link to the coverage map of 5G.  5G coverage. See the purple areas, that's where 5G is available right now.

5G - With new phones in low-band 5G, you can combine two 100MHz channels for 200MHz usage—and stack several more 20MHz 4G channels on top of that. In high-band 5G, you can use up to eight 100MHz channels. But if you don't have the airwaves available, you don't get the speeds. Also, 5G signals do not travel very well and the high-band has limited range.

Low-band 5G operates in frequencies below 2GHz. These are the oldest cellular and TV frequencies. They go great distances, but there aren't very wide channels available, and many of those channels are being used for 4G. So low-band 5G is slow. It acts and feels like 4G, for now. Low-band 5G channels are from 5MHz in width up to 15MHz, so you can see they aren't roomier than 4G.

High-band 5G, or millimeter-wave, is the really new stuff. So far, this is mostly airwaves in the 20-100GHz range. These airwaves haven't been used for consumer applications before. They're very short range; our tests have shown about 800-foot distances from towers. But there's vast amounts of unused spectrum up there, which means very fast speeds using up to 800MHz at a time.  

Here is a Government of Canada link to the 5G networks and includes some other information that may be useful.

So a quick wrap-up, if you are not within about 500 feet or so unobstructed from the 5G tower, you will not get high-band 5G. And if you do pick up the 5G low-band, you may notice it is actually slower than 4G.

 

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Browser password managers

 

Is it OK to use the password managers that are built into Chrome, Edge and Firefox?  With recent updates to them all, the security factor of them has gotten much better. Straight answer is yes, they are safe to use, for the basic user.

If you just browse here and there, check email, and just simple things on the internet - yes this is an ok option and way better than using your birthday, dogs name, kids name, phone number, etc!

The only drawback to this is, its perfect to use on your home system. On a shared or public system, it can be dangerous.  If you look in the top right corner of your browser - and you see your little icon sitting there, that means you are "signed in" and the browser will usually auto-fill your passwords for you. But as long as that browser is open, your passwords are accessible!  On shared computers you should ALWAYS log out of the browser so that the next person doesn't have access to your passwords and any other information you store on your browser.

Another minor setback, is while you are on your computer with the browser open, and your signed in, the password information is accessible to hackers or anyone on your network that can intercept packets. Although I'm sure there aren't too many hackers trying to take over John Doe.  It is just a notable thing to keep in mind.

3rd Party password managers are even better than the built in ones. (See my article on these here - Passwords & password reuse) There are quite a few out there, both free and paid options.

Here is a list of a few great options, in no particular order:

1. 1password

2. Lastpass

3. Bitwarden (this is a great open source, free password manager)

4. Dashlane

5. KeePassXC

Having a password manager means remembering only one password, not a ton of them, and also helps with not having to repeat use passwords.

 

Stay safe.

 

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