Hardware

T-Mobile Starlink satellite service – Beat the Dead Spots!

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T-Mobile Starlink satellite service is the main reason I moved from Verizon to T-Mobile. Verizon used to work great here (7-miles north of Old Town, FL) – but then they moved to 4G and service here became a dead spot. Used the old $20 Walmart flip-phones for Verizon, and when my 3G one went out early this year—all they had were 4G phones. Have fiber internet so the WiFi-calling worked.

Just registered as a T-Mobile Starlink beta tester—to test ‘satellite-powered text messaging’.

When I read about T-Mobile Starlink satellite service earlier this year, I checked out the phones they said would be compatible with the service, and moved my phone number to a T-Mobile account and got a “free” Galaxy A14 5G for the two-year contract. However, for the beta test – even tho the ‘Galaxy A14 5G supports 5G networks and various frequency bands, its compatibility with T-Mobile’s Starlink service during the beta phase would depend on whether it is included among the “optimized devices.”’ They don’t have a list of phones out for beta testing yet, plus limited spots for testers, so will wait ‘n see…

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Windows 11 24H2 – and Recall

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Windows 11 24H2 installed on my ‘Rose’ test computer yesterday (10/19/2024). Specs are: Intel® i9-10900K CPU, ASUS Prime Z490M-PLUS MoBo, MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER™ VENTUS XS OC GPU, and 32GB of memory.

Didn’t time it, but it is a *MAJOR* update and took time to download (Fiber internet) & install. Restart was required, and that also took time with several restarts during that process. Am seeing reports of an hour or more for the update – depending on computer’s age and your internet connection. Mine didn’t take an hour, but total time was over 30 minutes…maybe 40-45 minutes? It is a “full OS swap..”

What’s new in Windows 11, version 24H2:

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Media Library – Digitizing your DVDs & Blu-rays (Part 3)

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Part 1 and Part 2. This is Part 3 and looks to be the last part unless I go with a Media server at a later date. I might be doing something wrong because the intro page that lists what’s on a DVD or Blu-ray isn’t being cloned in the MP4’s (??). Nor are the normal advertising and warnings being transferred, which is great. 👍😉👌 Other than those issues, I am getting what seems to be the same quality as on the original DVDs and Blu-rays.

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Media Library – Digitizing your DVDs & Blu-rays (Part 2)

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Looks like this series will be in 3-parts initially, i.e., it may restart if I decide later to go with a Media server. Here is Part 1. Am a novice at this digitizing a Media Library, so my method is for those with low budgets and no experience either. 😉

Total costs at this point are $189.63 including tax and free shipping. The external Blu-ray burner drive was 42.69, and EaseFab LosslessCopy software was $39.95 on sale for 1-PC. After research, I purchased a Seagate FireCuda ST4000DX005 4TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal HDD Bare Drive for $106.99 last night – settled on this HDD after considering reliability, 7200 RPM speed, 3/5 warranty, and costs (there were cheaper & more expensive ones).

I already had some devices/components—which saved on my costs, but you may have to buy more items than listed above:

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