The EFTM podcast – WiFi WOES and LEGO POKEMON!

[00:00:04] Voice Over: The EFTM Podcast. Talkback Technology. Got a question about tech? Trev’s here to help. Not sure what to buy? Ask Trev. Australia’s number one talkback technology podcast.

[00:00:33] Voice Over: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTM Podcast with Trevor Long.

[00:00:45] Voice Over: Real Australians, real questions, every week.

[00:00:51] Voice Over: You can text Trev now, thanks to Vodafone, on 0477 657 657.

[00:01:08] Trevor Long: Yeah, love to hear from you and can’t wait to take your calls. 0477 657 657. Tell your friends if you’ve got a tech question, uh, that’s all you gotta do is send me a text. I’ll try and help them out as best I can. Uh, that’s just what I enjoy doing. Uh, I can’t always solve your problem, but maybe I’ll be able to help you troubleshoot your way through it and find an answer. If you’ve got an idea or something you want to buy and you want to you know, toss it around and see what options there might be. I’m happy to help with that as well, whatever it is. We’ve got a bunch of calls to get through today, plus we’re going to talk LEGO. And there is a new bunch of LEGO in that SmartPlay series. Do you remember earlier in the year, CES? I went pretty nuts for SmartPlay because it was such a cool thing, so new, so, yeah, interesting. So we’re going to catch up with the global marketing director of LEGO SmartPlay, who is in Australia, and talk about what they’ve got next, which is something that is extremely trendy, uh, and, and not new, but they’re jumping on board. You’ll love it. No, it’s very good fun, um, and it’d be helpful one for parents, the little gift ideas for the end of the year, you know, that kind of thing. Um, so yeah, that’s all ahead. Uh, we’re back from London. Samsung’s got new phones. I’m using the, um, Pixel Fold 8. And I haven’t reviewed it yet. Uh, I don’t know when I’ll get to that, to be honest. Soon, soon. Uh, but it’s a, it’s a funny one, right? Um, I just realized I’m still recording my previous briefing, but I’ve turned that off now. Um, uh, it’s a good feeling in the hand. And here’s what’s really interesting. People talk about the size of it, right? I’ve got an iPhone 17 Pro Max that I use as our kind of content phone. Now it’s in a case, granted, but it’s the exact same width as the Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 when it’s in a case. So if you imagine looking at your hand holding a Pro Max size phone, so any of the big phones, Galaxy S26 Ultra, big phones, it’s the same size. But now if you’re doing this, so if you’re put a phone in your left hand, big phone in your left hand. You’ll, you’ll see the way we hold it. You’ve got 4 fingers on the, on the right-hand side of the phone, and your thumb is kind of up on the edge of the phone. That’s kind of default how we hold the phone. Now, if you do that with the Samsung Galaxy Fold 8, your thumb doesn’t even— it goes over the top of the phone. That’s how kind of small it is. Um, it’s a very strange feeling, but it feels really good in the hand. It feels wide, but it’s actually not that wide because when you compare it to other phones, there are phones this wide on the market. But here, I think my initial review for you is this: I’m still not opening it a lot. In fact, I’m opening it when I’m frustrated by the front screen. So there are times when you’re typing something and the keyboard’s taking up, at a guess, It might even be 50%, but like I’m in a WhatsApp chat here with Daniel from AFTM and I’m looking at it. So let’s say his name and information on WhatsApp plus the, you know, status bar at the top. Let’s say that takes up 10% of the screen then, and I’ve got the keyboard up, then his previous messages take up 40% of the screen. The cursor bar takes up 5% and then the rest of the keyboard takes up another, you know, 40% and then the Navigation buttons take up 5% at the bottom. It’s, it’s a lot of space for the keyboard to take up is what I’m saying. And there’s a couple of times I think I’m not— I did a lot of commenting on Instagram yesterday. Uh, we were on a plane and it was delayed and I was just scrolling the gram and I was getting pretty frustrated with some nut jobs who were talking about the OzAlert being a conspiracy and yada yada yada yada yada. Um, And I was trying to comment on them, right? So I’m just gonna open one up now. I’m gonna pause it. So, ladies video on Reels doesn’t take up the full width of the phone because it’s a Reel, right? It’s a vertical video. If I click on the comments button, comments now take up 60% of the screen. And now, if I go to type the comment, Fine, I can type, but if my comment goes over 2 lines, which I’m just going to have to keep typing until I get down 2 lines, it just starts to get really hard to kind of edit, and you lose everything. So you’re losing, yeah, what you’re dealing with. It’s, it’s not ideal. And so what happens is you open the phone by default, you go, okay, well, I’ll I’ll open the phone because it’s a bigger screen on the inside, but I didn’t really want to. And the other thing is you’re browsing, like you’re scrolling TikTok or anything, um, it’s, it’s such a big screen to be browsing TikTok or Instagram with anyone around. So in bed or on the lounge, go for your life, but don’t do it in an airport or something because everyone can see what you’re watching. So I, I’m, I’m not all in on it. I love it, I love the form factor, I’m not all in on it. And, and here’s the other thing, if, you know, we’ve seemingly continuously have to talk about Apple in the sense of this passport-sized phone, right? Apple will need to do better. I think that if apps like Instagram perform the same way on an iPhone folding Ultra thing. I think they’ll get panned because of it. People are more accepting of Android’s quirks. Apple’s very refined. That’s going to be very interesting. Anyway, beautiful phone, big fan, love it. Not sure I’d use it full-time is my summary review ahead of my actual review, so stand by for that. Anyway, uh, we’ve got people to talk to, we’ve got LEGO to chat about, and I’d love to hear from you. eftm.com, download the EFTM app. There’s more competitions every single week, folks. We’ve got dash cams up this week, don’t we? Is there a dash cam? Um, let me give you a little preview. Where’s my spreadsheet? I’ve got spreadsheets for everything, folks. Uh, July 28th, where are we? 27th. So Dash View this week. Uh, we’ve got a beautiful big JBL speaker the week after. Uh, we’ve got a great docking station from D-Link, uh, the week after that, which is worth $600. Uh, and then I can tell you this, we will have a product on August 17th, the week of August 17th, uh, that will be in, I think will be announced on the week before. So I can’t even tell you what that is. I’m gonna have to put it in the kind of competitions database with a kind of, you know, cloak of secrecy kind of picture or something. And then later in August, either the 24th or the 31st, Probably our biggest prize in, in— I’m going to say it’s our biggest prize this year. Many thousands of dollars worth of something. Plus we’ve got more gaming headphones coming in September. I mean, we got a lot. Um, so I’ve got, uh, you’ve got some stuff coming. I’ve got to fill a few gaps in, uh, September and October. And then I can confirm for you today, I can confirm the EFTM magazine is coming back. I am going to do it again, so we’ll see what happens in that too. Anyway, on with the show.

[00:08:59] Voice Over: Join the conversation, head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

Wayne — Wi-Fi mesh systems, NBN speeds and switching to Vodafone

[00:09:04] Trevor Long: Would love to have your company, whatever your question, doesn’t matter. Wayne’s on the line. G’day, Wayne.

[00:09:08] Wayne: Hey, Trev, how you doing, mate?

[00:09:10] Trevor Long: Really good. What can I do for you?

[00:09:12] Wayne: I was just looking at— I’ve got my Wi-Fi obviously at home, and I was looking at a router, but I’ve been sort of told that— or extender— but told that, you know, you I might as well go for a mesh system. So I just wanted some information. I’m pretty clueless in regard to this sort of stuff.

[00:09:27] Trevor Long: Well, don’t be clueless, mate. Be open to learning. And look, the simple thing is I did see your question in the Man Cave on Facebook. An extender, just for context, because I want you to know, because extenders are still available and they’re reasonably cheap. If you’ve got, you know, 5 bars of Wi-Fi coverage standing next to your router and then, you know, 3 rooms away, you’ve got one bar and you think, well, hang on, I’ll put an extender in one room back. Well, all you’re extending is what’s in that room, which is already poor Wi-Fi. And down the end of the house, it looks like you’ve got really strong Wi-Fi, but it’s really crappy. It’s not— it’s slow. Whereas what a mesh system does is it creates a literal, like, dome. I call it a dome of Wi-Fi. So you might get a system with 3— a 3-pack. One is a router, and two of them are what we call satellites. The router sits with your existing NBN connection, so you just plug it in there, and then that and the two little satellites, which just need power points— they don’t need anything else, they just need a power point— they can be, you know, one room away, two rooms away, and then another one kind of even a little bit further away. They link together themselves and they communicate directly, and then they emit a strong, fast Wi-Fi signal. So basically, it’s a, it’s a far better network. You should get 80 to 90% of the speed you’re paying for at every room of the home in reality. Now the problem is budget. The range is extreme. Have you got in mind a broad budget that might make you feel okay about spending?

[00:11:01] Wayne: Yeah, I did say $200,000, but I’m just, I guess I’ll be dreaming there. So I suppose I’m looking obviously above $500,000, that sort of thing, I guess.

[00:11:09] Trevor Long: Well, you’ve come to a good spot because you probably, for $499, you’re going to get a 3-pack system, which is— how big is your house, broadly speaking?

[00:11:19] Wayne: 4 by 2, standard sort of size. The Wi-Fi is pretty good inside. I probably more want it for like outside, you know, outside watching the footy or something like that. Sometimes it sort of drops in and out, that sort of stuff.

[00:11:33] Trevor Long: So before you do anything at all, before you spend a cent, I want you to do some data, do some analysis of your place.

[00:11:40] Wayne: Oh yeah.

[00:11:40] Trevor Long: There’s a great app you can get on your phone or your laptop or your tablet, whatever, called Speedtest. There’s lots of them. The one you want is from a company called Ookla. Don’t write it down, you’ll remember it when you see it. You’ll be like, ah, that’s the one, try and say Ookla. Anything with a double O is going to stand out, right? So Speedtest by Ookla, download that onto your phone and then stand next to your modem, your current one, and do a speed test and do maybe 3 times and you’ll get a number. And then stand down the back of the house and do a speed test and you’ll get a number. And then stand in the middle of the house and do the same thing. So you’ll get a sense of what sort of speed you’re losing over the distance of your home. And then quickly check those numbers against what you’re paying for from your telco. Because if you’re paying for 100 speed and getting 30, that’s crap. But if you’re paying for 500 and getting 400, that’s pretty good.

[00:12:31] Wayne: Yeah, right.

[00:12:31] Trevor Long: But a mesh system, when you put it in, will— you’ll— if you’re getting 100 at the modem, you’ll get 100 at the back of the house as well, or close to it. So There’s a couple brands. There’s TP-Link, there’s Amazon, and there’s Netgear. All three of them at JB Hi-Fi have great products, um, well worth a look. The, the Netgear product is a 2-pack, about $459. I think it would do the job. You just put one of them in the middle of the house and one of them where the modem is now. An Amazon eero, uh, 3-pack is $499. Again, would, would do a pretty bloody wonderful job. So if you can afford to push the budget to that level, then what you do is you think of your home as being the whole yard, not just a house. So when you’re spacing out these little boxes that you get, put one of them further into the home so it does start to help you cover the outside. And maybe one of them you could put outside. No issue. Just contemplate brick. Often in Perth it’s double brick. So think about windows being a better transmitter of Wi-Fi and things like that. But mate,, you will. It’ll be a game changer for you. And while you think your Wi-Fi is good now, if you do that speed test for me, I think you’ll be blown away by how much different it’ll be when you put in the mesh system.

[00:13:48] Wayne: Yeah, gotcha. All right, cool.

[00:13:51] Trevor Long: All right, mate, good luck. Happy shopping.

[00:13:52] Wayne: All right.

[00:13:53] Wayne: Can I ask another question? I’ve got my NBN with Dodo and I’m looking at moving away from them because they’ve cut off, cut off the email service and basically and stuff like that. I got me phones with Vodafone. I was looking at moving across to Vodafone. Is there any bad things about Vodafone’s internet?

[00:14:15] Trevor Long: Not at all. Just remember, they might try and sell you a non-NBN product because they have mobile towers. They may try and sell you a 4G or a 5G product.

[00:14:25] Wayne: Yeah, right.

[00:14:26] Trevor Long: And look, I’ll be honest with you, while it may seem cheaper, the thing is that it’s better for them Because if it’s, let’s say the NBN version of Vodafone is $85 a month. See, Vodafone has to pay the NBN $50 or more.

[00:14:42] Wayne: Yeah.

[00:14:42] Wayne: Okay.

[00:14:42] Trevor Long: Whereas if they sell you their 5G internet for $79, you think, oh, it’s cheaper, it’s cheaper. But that’s because they’re keeping all the money. Now, I don’t have a problem with 4G, 5G internet. Do you live alone?

[00:14:54] Wayne: Yeah.

[00:14:55] Wayne: No, no, I got family.

[00:14:57] Trevor Long: I would, I would much prefer if you lived alone or rented, then Vodafone 4G, 5G, amazing, because you can take it with you, you can move, one user, gonna be great. But if you’re on the NBN now, stick with the NBN and switch to Vodafone as an NBN customer and make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for. The big thing here is— I know you get a discount if you’ve got like 4 numbers with the exact one handset.

[00:15:21] Wayne: Yeah, yeah, which is better than nothing.

[00:15:23] Trevor Long: Make sure that if you’re signing up for the NBN 500 plan, for example, that’s when you want to make sure what speed am I getting? So stand at the modem and see what speed you get so that you’re checking them against what they’re selling you.

[00:15:36] Wayne: Yeah, no point having it if it’s not working.

[00:15:38] Trevor Long: Exactly.

[00:15:39] Trevor Long: Exactly.

[00:15:40] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Wayne: Cool.

[00:15:41] Wayne: All right. Thanks, mate.

[00:15:42] Trevor Long: Good luck, mate. Thank you.

[00:15:43] Wayne: Thanks, mate. All right.

[00:15:44] Trevor Long: Cheers.

[00:15:44] Trevor Long: Thanks for getting in touch. No worries at all.

[00:15:46] Trevor Long: There you go.

[00:15:47] Trevor Long: Wayne, who lives in Perth, he told me that before we started recording because he used to listen to me on 6PR and I’m not on there anymore. I’m only on Triple M. So if you want to hear me, tune into your local Triple M station regionally across Australia. And of course, whatever your question, get in touch. Just click Ask Drew.

[00:16:03] Voice Over: This is the EFTM podcast.

Gary — GPS trackers and AirTags for stolen farm equipment

[00:16:10] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Gary’s on the line. G’day, Gary.

[00:16:13] Gary: Hi, Trev. How you going?

[00:16:14] Trevor Long: Really good, mate.

[00:16:14] Trevor Long: What can I do for you?

[00:16:16] Gary: Look, I live in a small country area and we’re having a lot of equipment being stolen. Utes, trailers, farming equipment. And we’re just investigating the types of trackers or air tags we can get to make it one, a bit harder.

[00:16:34] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:16:35] Gary: For the things to get knocked off and two, for them to be tracked in case they do start rolling away without permission.

[00:16:41] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:16:41] Trevor Long: I mean, I just— I’m a big fan of the concept, but you need to be really cautious about what you think you’re going to get versus what you do get. Have you ever tried an AirTag? Have you got an iPhone?

[00:16:52] Gary: I do have an iPhone. I’ve tried find my phone and find my iPad. Yep. The things that— it’s not— it’s for our local Lions Club, and our footy club had a $30,000 scoreboard stolen a couple of weeks ago off a tandem trailer. They took it out the back road, cut the bolts on the scoreboard, smashed the scoreboard on the road, and then drove off with the trailer, we think, to go and knock off somebody else’s ute.

[00:17:23] Trevor Long: Ah, blimey.

[00:17:25] Gary: And we’ve had wood splitters taken. From the Lions Club, uh, bench saw and a trailer. So these are all things that don’t have their own, um, electrical system.

[00:17:37] Trevor Long: Yep, yep, I gotcha.

[00:17:38] Gary: So we’re looking for something that’s got a battery, can be tracked, um, preferably discreet so the person knocking the stuff off doesn’t know we’re tracking them.

[00:17:49] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:17:50] Gary: And not a high cost and not something that has an ongoing, uh, user fee or SIM card fee.

[00:17:57] Trevor Long: And that’s going to be your issue. So there’s two types of tracker. To keep it really simple, there’s what I would call a 4G tracker. And if you look online, you’ll find plenty of those. You’ll pay a couple hundred dollars for it up front, but it requires a SIM card, which will require an ongoing cost. Yeah, now you don’t have to pay per month. You could probably pay as little as— the minimum I would think would be $120 a year. You could find a 12-month SIM card that would work in it. But there’s, there’s two problems. One, the ongoing cost, and two, the battery. As you said, you don’t have an inbuilt electrical system, so someone’s got to remember to charge that thing now and then. And mate, the big question is like, how long will it last? I would argue most of them, like they say, um, I’m reading one online that says it does 200 days of standby. Now that sounds like a lot to me because all it takes— so I had one of these things once, and for fun I put it in my daughter’s suitcase when she went to school camp in Canberra, right? So only 4 hours away. But I was looking every 5 minutes and I drained the battery by the time she was in Canberra. So, oh, basically the more you ask for the location, the more you’re asking the device to do work and therefore you’re dragging the battery.

[00:19:16] Gary: So I didn’t think of that.

[00:19:18] Trevor Long: Yeah, standby. That’s why some of these things will quote a really long standby time. And the one I’m reading online says 14 days of live tracking. So great, it’s trackable, you know, for, for a week. But basically someone’s going to need to charge that battery every fortnight, if not every month. And just think for a moment if that was— if you were on roster to do that for this month and you didn’t get to it, forgot it, or was sick, and then the trailer was stolen and the battery was flat and you now feel responsible for the bloody thing. So it’s a lot of responsibility on someone to be in charge of charging the device.

[00:19:53] Gary: But you go on, that’s the first style of tracker, right?

[00:19:57] Trevor Long: So it’s constantly connected. It’s, you know, real-time tracking. So you could literally open an app and go, right, that’s where it is right now. Um, and it’s, it’s kind of a guarantee of knowing where something is. Obviously it is more discreet than others, and I’ll tell you about that in a minute, but it depends on where you put it. Um, but yeah, that would be the ultimate in tracking, is being able to really look at it at any time and know where something is in real time. However, the alternate is your AirTag, as you mentioned, right? 50 bucks. Uh, battery lasts a year, maybe two, certainly a year. Um, and theoretically you just open up your phone and go, where is it? But here’s how an AirTag works. An AirTag doesn’t, um, emit its location in real time. An AirTag is simply saying— it’s, it’s— think of it this way, an AirTag is just sitting there always. If it had a personality, it’d be going, hello, hello. It’s just always yelling out hello. And if someone with an Apple device iPad, iPhone, MacBook walks past or drives past that AirTag and it goes, hello, your MacBook or your phone goes, hey, how you doing? And it grabs the information and updates securely in the cloud the location of that device, which is why putting it on your luggage, great, because 1 in 3 airport luggage handlers is going to have an iPhone, um, let alone, you know, 1 in 3 of the passengers standing around the baggage carousel. So you’re going to get an update on your luggage’s location at some point when it arrives in an airport. But mate, if that trailer gets stolen, firstly, there’s no alert that it got stolen. Secondly, if the, if the theft— if the thief has an Android phone, um, it’s not going to update its location until it goes near someone with an iPhone, which it might do when it pulls into a servo or something, right? And thirdly, um, they are required now to essentially notify someone if it’s with them for a while. So if a thief drove for an hour or two with your trailer and it had an AirTag on it, the thief might get a notice saying an AirTag is traveling with you.

[00:22:09] Gary: Yeah, that’s— and with the AirTags, several people can have that when they first link the AirTag to your phone.

[00:22:19] Trevor Long: Well, one person has to own the AirTag, and then they can share it with at least one other, if not a couple of other people. And those people have to all have iPhones, by the way, as well.

[00:22:33] Gary: Yeah.

[00:22:34] Trevor Long: Um, so I’d be worried that an AirTag isn’t the right solution for what you— for your most high-end devices. So, you know, the wood chipper and the, and the, the scoreboard, you know, no, no use having an AirTag on that because it’s going to get driven away. A wood chipper or tools like a toolbox You know, anything worth, you know, $500 or more, I’d put an AirTag on it for sure because it’s cheap and easy. But you’ve got to remember, it is not a guarantee that you will see its location in real time. You might see, like, in my, in my, my mind, you might see that it went north. Do you know what I mean?

[00:23:14] Gary: Yep.

[00:23:14] Trevor Long: And last known location was on this road or in this house. But there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get a real-time location from it. And that’s a really important thing to know about an AirTag.

[00:23:24] Gary: So it’s not something you can track them driving down the road unless if they’ve got an iPhone in the car.

[00:23:31] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:23:31] Gary: Yep.

[00:23:32] Trevor Long: And by the way, they don’t know the iPhone is just— so the AirTag’s going, hello, and the iPhone in the back pocket of the thief is going, g’day, how you doing? And it’s grabbing the location, sending it off, and they don’t know a thing until at some point that iPhone goes, hey, just so you know, there’s an AirTag somewhere here and it’s been following us, and it shows them a map. Map of how long it’s been with them.

[00:23:56] Gary: And so the criminal mind might go, oh, do I have time to search for the AirTag?

[00:24:00] Trevor Long: The criminal, yes, exactly. They will either dump the trailer, throw the iPad out, whatever it is. They’ll very quickly move on from that stolen device. But you’ve lost it already, obviously. It’s, you know.

[00:24:14] Gary: But where I live, it’s— there’s a lot of back roads, but not that many towns.

[00:24:21] Trevor Long: I mean, the Weebrow. Not a great solution.

[00:24:25] Gary: Yeah.

[00:24:25] Trevor Long: And so you see the gap between the two styles of trackers. The cheap and ongoing free one is great for generally knowing where something is, and the other has an expensive upfront ongoing cost that is awesome for real time. But the downside is that battery must be recharged.

[00:24:46] Gary: We’re about maybe 600 meters from the wood where the wood splitter normally lives, that would ping all the time on my phone or I would just be able to find it. Well, what would be the distance?

[00:25:02] Trevor Long: It would— 600 meters?

[00:25:04] Gary: No.

[00:25:05] Trevor Long: But, you know, you probably drive past it or walk past it once in a while. But you remember, it doesn’t matter that it’s when it’s at your joint. That’s irrelevant. What matters is when it’s gone. And, you know, if they take it to a farm shed you know, just 2 properties away and everyone on that farm has an Android, you’ll never get a location again.

[00:25:24] Gary: And— oh, okay, until I—

[00:25:28] Trevor Long: until you drive past it or until someone else with an iPhone walks past it.

[00:25:33] Gary: Yep.

[00:25:34] Trevor Long: So if there’s, if there’s 5 people that work on a farm, farmyard, you know, 2 farms away from you and someone knocks off a wood chipper and says, I just bought this, and they put in the farmyard and they go, oh cool, we’ve got a new wood chipper, no one thinks it’s stolen. But if 4 of them have Android phones and they’re, they’re on shift for the, for the next 3 days, you won’t know. You won’t get an updated location until the 5th person with an iPhone comes, walks past the wood chipper, and you, you won’t get a beeping notification. You’ll just— next time you look and refresh its location, you’ll get a notification where it is. So it’s, it’s not vastly reliable in that sense.

[00:26:11] Gary: Is there any developments in the near future?

[00:26:14] Trevor Long: No, because, because, mate, the other You’re being very real about why you want to track something, right? But now think with a criminal mind and go, okay, I’m an abusive husband whose estranged wife won’t return my calls and I don’t know where the kids are. When I get the kids for my next visitation, I’m going to put an AirTag in their backpack so that that’s in their mother’s car and I know where she is at all times. You know what I mean? It’s a horrible, horrible thing that people can do, and that is why both Android and Apple phones will now get a notification after a certain number of hours, somewhat random, that there is an AirTag traveling with them. So my son, for example, um, uh, has an AirTag on his car keys, and if I drive his car for a day, no matter what phone I’ve got, Android or otherwise, I’ll get a notification saying there’s an AirTag with you because I’ve got his car keys.

[00:27:07] Gary: Okay.

[00:27:07] Trevor Long: Right, that’s good. We don’t want people using AirTags for tracking people, um, without their knowledge.

[00:27:15] Gary: It’s— yeah, I think I might just go back to the really big padlock. Padlock.

[00:27:19] Trevor Long: But I was going to say, it’s a funny thing because people often say about car security, I say, mate, get a Club Lock. Yeah, they’re an unbelievable thing. And the other thing, mate, is, uh, you know, you could invest, especially if the things are kept in a certain location and if there’s internet nearby, mate, security cameras with floodlights. Boom, the floodlight comes on. The person feels like, hang on a minute, there’s a camera there. I’m not going to steal it now because I might be seen. So a security camera with a floodlight is a really good deterrent.

[00:27:47] Gary: Yes, that’s on the shopping list as well for the Lions Club.

[00:27:50] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:27:51] Trevor Long: Sorry, buddy. There’s no real easy answer there for you.

[00:27:54] Gary: I appreciate all that information. That’s clarified from my basic, basic sort of little bit of research. That’s clarified a lot of issues for me.

[00:28:01] Trevor Long: Yeah, you can go back to the club and have a chat about it, mate. Happy to help with anything more in the future. Pleasure.

[00:28:06] Gary: Thank you very much for that, Trev.

[00:28:07] Trevor Long: Good on you, Gary. Cheers, mate.

[00:28:09] Gary: Cheers.

[00:28:09] Gary: Thank you.

[00:28:10] Trevor Long: Thanks, mate.

[00:28:10] Gary: Cheers.

[00:28:11] Trevor Long: Um, that’s a tough one because it’s really important you know what the devices can do. So many people think that an AirTag is a tracker. It certainly isn’t.

[00:28:21] Voice Over: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

Alex Millington — LEGO SmartPlay reflections and the new LEGO Pokémon range

[00:28:27] Trevor Long: I’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got a tech question, get in touch. Uh, and you can also text me 0477657657. Now, the year started as it always does at CES, um, with a bang. You know, big TVs and all those things. But there was a standout product at CES and it hit the market a few months later and it continues to grow. And it’s LEGO, the LEGO Smart Play concept, the LEGO Smart Play sets. It kicked off with Star Wars and is slowly evolving through many other things. And I thought we could reflect exactly on that whole launch and then talk about some of the new stuff with Alex Millington, who’s the Global Marketing Director for LEGO Smart Play. He joins me on the line. G’day, Alex.

[00:29:09] Alex Millington: Hello, good to meet you. How are you?

[00:29:10] Trevor Long: Great to have you on the show and welcome to Australia. I hope we’re turning on both the hospitality and the weather for you, mate.

[00:29:18] Alex Millington: Hey, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much.

[00:29:19] Trevor Long: Mate, it was a massive, massive launch in January. I’m sure it was a culmination of a long time in the making for you guys. But how do you reflect on CES? Is it kind of a blur now looking back on that?

[00:29:35] Alex Millington: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it feels a good while ago, but it was great fun. I think we wanted to turn up to CES to be able to kind of show that the LEGO Group is doing something completely new. And I think we did that. I think we put on a good show. And I think most importantly, we got the idea of SmartPlay out to a bunch of kids who are now in their homes and lots of people playing with what is a completely new way to play with LEGO bricks. So it’s, yeah, super fun.

[00:30:00] Trevor Long: And let’s do the 101 elevator pitch for people that might not know what we’re talking about, which would be wild. But LEGO SmartPlay, how do you describe it? Describe it to people when you meet them and they say, what do you do?

[00:30:10] Alex Millington: Yeah, sure.

[00:30:11] Alex Millington: So SmartPlay’s a completely new way to play with LEGO bricks. Essentially SmartPlay’s made up of a few things, but at the heart of it is a completely new little smart brick that looks a lot like the kind of LEGO bricks that you know and hopefully love today, but it’s packed full of really kind of tiny but impressive tech that allows kids to kind of play with, with a whole new kind of type of interactive play within LEGO, and it lets you kind of bring your LEGO sets to life. So like you say, we kind of launched at the start of the year and we’re excited to kind of bring a bunch of new things very soon to SmartPlay.

[00:30:47] Trevor Long: And the Star Wars launch was an epic decision and collaboration. Obviously there’s a lot of great Star Wars LEGO collaborations already, a lot of different sets, but to bring it into that playful zone, and that’s the thing that really really made it work for me was the idea that kids spend, like when I was a kid and we played with Lego, we would build the sets, but they didn’t last long. We would demolish them and build something else very quickly. And now I feel like there’s a little bit more of a bias towards holding onto the sets and playing with them as a set. But what you’ve done is make them even more playable. And I think that’s the great thing is seeing the joy of kids getting that actual excitement out of an interactive toy because it makes noises and it reacts to things. I’ll never forget the first time, I think it was you that showed me fueling up the X-wing, you know, using a, I think a blue fuel nozzle or a green spanner to get different sounds from the same Lego toy.

[00:31:53] Alex Millington: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s what’s so fun about my job, right? I get to kind of play with a bunch of this stuff. And I think, You know, like you say, there’s lots of ways to play with LEGO bricks, right? You can build, you can rebuild, but what we’ve also done with SmartPlay is allow you to kind of explore and discover a whole bunch of stuff once the build’s complete, right? So once you’ve built your set, then we know kids love to kind of tell stories, we know they love to kind of build worlds and compete and do all sorts of stuff with their kind of normal LEGO. And what we tried to do with SmartPlay and what SmartPlay does is just really extend that play and give kids even more reasons to come back and keep playing with it, right? You talked about the X-wing. I think what’s so fun with that is you can jump in, you can add your brick, you can do all sorts of stuff that you can do with just the build as it is. But then equally, once you pick it up and the brick sort of makes the sound as you move and react with it, it just really brings kids in. And we know it really helps any player, really. I mean, I’m not a kid anymore, but it still makes me want to pick it up and play with it.

[00:32:54] Trevor Long: We’re all kids at heart, Alex. We’re all kids at heart.

[00:32:57] Alex Millington: Exactly.

[00:32:57] Trevor Long: Hey, do you hide little Easter eggs in the set? Sets that— because there’s no manual to SmartPlay, there’s no real thing that says green brick will do this and da da da da.

[00:33:07] Trevor Long: Do you—

[00:33:08] Trevor Long: are there still things out there that people— because you’ve got to discover them essentially. That’s really the challenge, is discovering all the things that you can do with a SmartPlay set or a SmartPlay compatible set.

[00:33:20] Alex Millington: 100%.

[00:33:20] Alex Millington: I mean, like I say, so the brick sort of makes sounds, it doesn’t play sounds, it makes them, which means that ultimately that one brick can do anything, right? In the future, it can make any sort of kind of thing when you add it together with smart tags. And that means that, like you say, there’s a huge amount of interactions that you can discover in any one set. But it also means that we see— and we’ve seen post sort of January, also about kind of the year, right? We’ve seen a whole bunch of ways in which people are taking some of this stuff and putting it into other places and discovering new ways to play with stuff. And as we continue with Smartplay, we’re kind of launching something new. And there’s— you can download load new stuff onto that brick, which means that not only, like you say, will they kind of be able to build the set to discover stuff to start with, but there’s new stuff in the future too. So there’ll always be something new to discover on your brick.

[00:34:08] Trevor Long: Speaking of new, the term collect them all refers to a lot of things, but I think most people would think of collect them all as being a Pokémon phrase. So you’re teaming up with with Pokémon to create LEGO Pokémon Smart Play sets. This is gonna go crazy.

[00:34:29] Alex Millington: It’s so exciting. It’s a, I’m a huge, I’m a huge fan of Pokémon. So it’s been a real pleasure for jumping in with this one. And yeah, it’s gonna be super exciting. I think, yeah, like you say, collect ’em all means a lot to a lot of people, but I think this new iteration of how you can collect ’em all is gonna be even more exciting. We know that a lot of people that are kind of fans of Pokémon are also fans of LEGO. I think we, you know, we looked into it and it’s almost sort of 80% people that love Pokémon also love, love LEGO. So it’s a really exciting collaboration for us.

[00:34:59] Trevor Long: And it’s, I think it’s an interesting one when you look, there’s a lot of sets coming that were available through LEGO Pokémon Smart Play. And it’s a good moment to kind of remind people how it works as a parent. If you’re buying these things as a gift, you, you do need to kind of get your kids one of the Smart Play all-in-one sets to start out. But after that, once they’ve got something SmartPlay in their lives, even if they’ve got a, a SmartPlay set from the Star Wars, one of the previous Star Wars sets, you only need a compatible set to, to actually take the SmartPlay into the bricks and actually bring it to life.

[00:35:38] Alex Millington: Yeah, exactly. So I think that’s why we are really excited about SmartPlay compared to maybe some of the ways we’ve been able to do technology in the past, because, you know, we’ve We’ve spent a long time kind of being able to pack down this tech into something as small as, essentially as small as a kind of regular LEGO brick, which exactly to what you’re saying, right? Means that if you bought into an all-in-one set anywhere, then you can bring that to any comparable set in SmartPlay. So yeah, we’re launching with a kind of good selection, I think 10 different kind of compatible sets for LEGO Pokémon. And so that means if you’re bringing bricks that you’ve got before, you can bring them into your Pokémon and experience what that’s like. Or you can also kind of jump in now with the all-in-one sets that we’re launching with Pokémon too.

[00:36:22] Trevor Long: And so to talk about the compatible sets of this, because there’s so many of them, they’re essentially the characters, they’re Pokémon characters, but do they have a little associated, you know, bits and pieces with them, kind of like the Star Wars sets did as well?

[00:36:37] Alex Millington: Yeah, 100%. So, you know, we try to make sure we build our sets with our play designers to make sure that there’s a huge amount of play in every set that you buy from LEGO, right? And so So if you buy one of the compatible sets, then we’ve included a whole bunch of playthings within those sets that mean that even if you don’t have a Smart Brick yet, there’s still lots of play for your kids, right? After they’ve built their kind of creature, you can do all sorts of stuff. And there’s lots of, there’s Poké Balls, there’s kind of food, there’s all sorts of things that you’d expect when you were a budding Pokémon trainer. But equally, yeah, you know, each of the Pokémon has a Smart Tag embedded inside it, and that’s what tells the brick to become that Pokémon, right? And really feel like that Pokémon. So if you do have a Smart Brick, you can pop it inside and then start to see what it’s like to kind of really play with your Pokémon, right? So to kind of become that trainer and to start to nurture them, to train them, and ultimately maybe battle them.

[00:37:29] Trevor Long: Did you describe a job title as play designer?

[00:37:33] Alex Millington: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we’ve got kind of, in the LEGO Group, we’ve always had a whole bunch of different designers that work and create our products, but for, Well, working with Smartplay, we’ve really founded completely new kind of types of design. We’ve got a whole bunch of new kind of designers within the LEGO Group that are helping to design play. And that goes both in kind of model design and building the models and the physical objects out of bricks, but also now we’ve got interactive play designers that really, they take their expertise that we have in the LEGO Group about how kids play and how you get the most out of play with kids, but they do that in interactive ways, right? In designing interactive play that goes into these Pokémon.

[00:38:12] Trevor Long: Alex, I have worked out though what the worst job at LEGO is.

[00:38:17] Alex Millington: What’s that?

[00:38:18] Trevor Long: HR, human resources. Having to deal with the number of job applications you must get. I mean, honestly, that must be one of the— if you had a dollar for every time someone said to you, I wish I had your job, or I wish I worked at LEGO, you’d be doing very well.

[00:38:35] Alex Millington: I mean, it’s a real pleasure to work on such a fun brand, right? And work with a bunch of people that just really, really deeply care about making really awesome play for kids. So yeah, I can’t imagine myself doing it.

[00:38:44] Trevor Long: It’s so much more than that because it’s— you work at LEGO and then you’re like, oh, we’re doing Star Wars. Oh, okay, we’re doing F1. Oh, we’re doing Disney. I mean, what are we doing?

[00:38:51] Alex Millington: The star inside me is absolutely doing somersaults every day. It’s fantastic.

[00:38:57] Trevor Long: Good on you, mate. And it’s a lovely set. It’s a lovely system and it’s fun to see kids. Look, it’s fun to see adults play with it as well. Let’s be honest. Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:06] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:39:07] Trevor Long: But it brings a lot of joy to parents to see their kids have fun and it’s screen-free. That’s the most important thing here. This is screen-free fun for your kids that they can have with their friends when they come round and explore a whole new level of play.

[00:39:22] Alex Millington: That’s it. You just pick up the brick, pop it in the model and get playing. And I think one of the things that I’ve loved while kind of on this project, looking at kind of bringing Pokémon to life has been kind of, you know, we’ve gone out and we’ve obviously done a lot of work looking at this with fans families with kids and the amount of parents that jump in and just really want to kind of train their Pokémon up and try and beat their kid, but their kids do practicing and they beat them. It’s so fun. It’s really, really, really fun to see kind of, you know, parents and kids jump in together. And yeah, you know, I grew up and was a huge fan of Pokémon and the cards and all sorts of different things. And I think, you know, it’s testing my knowledge, I have to say, you know, when you’re trying to figure out whether a Water type is going to beat a Grass type or an Electric is going to beat a Water type. If you’re into your Pokémon lore, then you you can really go pretty deep to try and get that advantage over your opponent.

[00:40:15] Trevor Long: Well, this is not a question ’cause I wouldn’t put it on you, but all I’ll say is as a fan of LEGO and a fan of other things like Formula 1 and smart play, I imagine a world to come. I also have previewed at CES some other things that are a bit more broad and are just generic sets and things that you could do. And I could see so many creativity coming over the years ahead as a part of SmartPlay, uh, as growing as a part of the whole LEGO ecosystem. So well done to you and the whole team, everyone involved, and, uh, congratulations on the launch of Pokémon, mate. I’ll, um, I’ll sure I’ll catch up at another launch in the future soon, mate. Thanks for your time.

[00:41:00] Alex Millington: Thanks so much. Nice to speak to you.

[00:41:04] Voice Over: You’re listening to the EFTM Podcast. Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

Troy — Cheap prepaid internet options now his phone is paid off

[00:41:19] Trevor Long: Great to have your company and love to help you out if I can. Troy’s on the line. G’day, Troy.

[00:41:23] Troy: G’day, Trev. How are you, mate?

[00:41:24] Trevor Long: Really good. What can I do for you?

[00:41:26] Troy: Um, mate, listen, I’m just, um, I finished paying off my device and I own it now. S23 Ultra. Freedom! I know. Yeah, well, I just paid the last one last month, so— but I was looking for a, like, a cheap internet provider, like, because I just use my phone, I just hotspot off it. Oh, okay.

[00:41:48] Trevor Long: Right. Yep.

[00:41:49] Troy: And there’s only me at home. I don’t have any smart anything, any Google setup, Google House setups or anything.

[00:41:57] Trevor Long: Yep, yep, yep.

[00:41:58] Troy: Um, I basically just watch my TV streaming, and I maybe hotspot to a laptop occasionally. Um, and I was curious as to whether the, the Felix, um, prepaid would be a good option. Like, it’s unlimited for $40 a month, I think, at the moment.

[00:42:18] Trevor Long: So yeah, look, uh, that is a good deal. Um, unlimited sounds amazing, but you got to remember that after a certain point in time time. I don’t think it’s very long. I think it’s unlimited always at 40 megabits per second, which frankly, that’s not bad. That’s, that’s the speed that we all used to have at home 10 years ago. So it really, it really just depends how much you are genuinely using the internet and whether you notice those speeds. The good thing is, here’s the beautiful part of your life right now, is you’re not committed to anything.

[00:42:51] Troy: So, no, that’s right.

[00:42:52] Trevor Long: Yeah, go and, uh, I don’t know whether you can grab them at servos, but order one online, whatever you need to do. Get a SIM card, switch your number over, because remember you can keep your number and port over to Felix Mobile.

[00:43:04] Troy: Uh, you can do an eSIM, I think, download an eSIM with it.

[00:43:07] Trevor Long: Perfect.

[00:43:08] Trevor Long: And so use them, right? And to be honest, if you do it today, and at the time of recording it is— this deal might be over when you’re listening, folks, but it’s $20 a month for the first 3 months. So it’s even better.

[00:43:19] Troy: Yeah, yeah, well, that’s what got me interested.

[00:43:21] Trevor Long: So, mate, give it a go.

[00:43:23] Troy: For—

[00:43:23] Trevor Long: yeah, now it says 50% off for 3 months. I don’t think you’re locked into the 3 months because what I want to know is, after the first few weeks, do you notice if the speeds are bad? Like, because you’re on your own, you’re streaming Netflix on your own, whatever you’re doing. Like, I don’t— I don’t think you’ll notice.

[00:43:41] Troy: Uh, well, that’s what I was thinking. I think it’d probably be pretty good just for what I do.

[00:43:46] Trevor Long: Yeah, and then the— yeah, I mean, I, I would give it a crack. That’s as simple as that. Give it a crack and see how it ends up. Because your other option then is to look at another telco that does like larger 365-day plans with a huge amount of data. But they’re not like— this isn’t bad as well. Imagine this, 500 gigabytes of data for the year. So, you know, 40 a month for $200. That’s the Kogan Mobile price. Well, call it $300 if you’re a non-member of Kogan. So $300, that’s still for a whole year. But the other thing— the other thing, excuse me, that you want to work out critically over this. So I want you to consider the first month or two as a test. Firstly, do you notice the speed of Felix? Is that a problem? And if it is, switch to someone else. Secondly, how much data do you use every months?

[00:44:39] Troy: Um, at the moment, well, I’ve got a 500 gig plan at the moment. Um, yeah, yeah, well, because I stream everything through my TV, like a box, but that’s only— I only like— I don’t watch free-to-air TV.

[00:44:55] Trevor Long: How much are you using, mate?

[00:44:57] Troy: I’m usually— uh, I don’t use all of the 500, so—

[00:45:01] Trevor Long: but are you getting— mate, I use the 30.

[00:45:05] Troy: Oh, okay, okay.

[00:45:07] Trevor Long: So you need to know what you’re using, cuz that’s a bloody lot of data.

[00:45:12] Troy: Yeah, well, see, I’d leave the hotspot on even if I’m not—

[00:45:16] Trevor Long: do you know the number?

[00:45:19] Troy: The exact number I’m using?

[00:45:21] Trevor Long: I need you to find it out or spend the next few months finding it out, cuz that’s the critical part of you choosing your next plan.

[00:45:29] Troy: Oh yeah, yep.

[00:45:30] Trevor Long: No point. See, there’s no point signing up to a plan if it’s always going to cap out on data. So first, first question is, is the Felix Mobile unlimited data fast enough for you? Give that a go for a few weeks, and then if it’s not, you’re gonna need a number. You’re going to need to know, do I need 400 gig, 200 gig, 500 gig? What do I need? Because it’s, it’s going to determine how big a plan you get, and you’re probably going to end up being with like a major telco. Like, you’ll go to Vodafone, you’ll spend $65 a month and get enough data to do it, or something like that.

[00:46:03] Troy: Yeah, yep.

[00:46:04] Trevor Long: But whatever you do, let’s remember, whatever you do is still going to be cheaper than also paying off a phone at that rate. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but let me know how the Felix goes, mate, because that’s— the speed’s going to be your only issue.

[00:46:18] Troy: Yep, righty-o. I’ll run it for a month and I’ll let you know what, because ‘Cause I think I’ve got about another 2 weeks left before that I paid when I paid my last payment.

[00:46:27] Trevor Long: Yep.

[00:46:28] Troy: So it’ll be probably 2 weeks before I change over to it.

[00:46:32] Trevor Long: Give it a crack.

[00:46:34] Troy: Yeah.

[00:46:35] Trevor Long: All right, we’ll hear from you in the future then. I look forward to hearing about it.

[00:46:39] Troy: Thanks very much for your help, Trev.

[00:46:40] Trevor Long: Good on you, mate. No problems at all.

[00:46:41] Troy: Cheers, mate.

[00:46:41] Trevor Long: Have a good day. Cheers. Uru. That’s, we should get back to saying uru. G’day, group. I mean, it’s a great Aussie sign-off, don’t you reckon? We don’t say it enough. I’m trying to think who used to say it a lot. Someone was famous for it. Anyway, that’s a lot of data a month, so we’re gonna need to get that number. See what I mean about knowing what you use before you sign up to anything? You really need to know.

[00:47:08] Voice Over: Tech, cars, lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long. You can text Trev now thanks to Vodafone on 0477 657 657.

Dean — Troubleshooting painfully slow Wi-Fi speeds on the NBN

[00:47:22] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Dean’s on the line. G’day, Dean.

[00:47:24] Dean: G’day, Trev.

[00:47:25] Dean: How are you, mate?

[00:47:26] Trevor Long: Really good. What can I do for you?

[00:47:28] Dean: Uh, just curious if you can help try to isolate why my Wi-Fi would be so slow.

[00:47:33] Trevor Long: Oh, okay. Well, let’s try. What do we know? What do we got?

[00:47:36] Dean: Well, I’ve plugged, uh, I’ve got a, uh, mesh system set up and, um, I’ve been getting speeds no greater than 15 megabytes per second. 1.5? 500.

[00:47:50] Trevor Long: 1.5. And you’re paying for 500?

[00:47:53] Dean: Yep.

[00:47:54] Dean: It’s got me beat, mate. I can’t work it out.

[00:47:57] Trevor Long: Tell me about— do you know what NBN technology you have?

[00:48:02] Dean: It should be fibre to the premises, I believe.

[00:48:07] Trevor Long: Okay, fibre to the premises. So what is the box box look like on the wall where it comes into the home? What’s the NBN box look like?

[00:48:14] Dean: The out— are you talking about the outside box?

[00:48:18] Trevor Long: No, inside the home there should be something or a termination point.

[00:48:23] Dean: Yep.

[00:48:23] Dean: We’ve just got a fairly basic point where everything comes in for the internet and for the Foxtel and antenna point and everything. So it’s just a standard small black and NBN box that I’ve got.

[00:48:43] Trevor Long: Okay, so there’s a little black NBN box.

[00:48:46] Dean: Yeah.

[00:48:47] Trevor Long: Okay. And then plugged into that, that’s called the NTD, Network Termination Device. And then plugged into that is what?

[00:48:57] Dean: Is the mesh system. I’m happy to say the brand.

[00:49:02] Trevor Long: Yeah, go for it.

[00:49:02] Dean: Yep. The Deco mesh system.

[00:49:06] Trevor Long: Is it TP-Link?

[00:49:08] Dean: Yeah, that’s it.

[00:49:08] Trevor Long: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:09] Dean: Okay.

[00:49:09] Trevor Long: I’ve heard good things about them, so there’s no reason why that shouldn’t be a problem. And the telco behind it all?

[00:49:15] Dean: Telco. At the moment, I’m on my third telco trying SuperLeap.

[00:49:20] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:49:21] Trevor Long: So are you trying them for to fix this problem or are you trying them?

[00:49:24] Dean: Yeah.

[00:49:25] Dean: Okay.

[00:49:26] Dean: Basically, I’ve previously been with Telstra and had— I was lucky to get up to 50 speeds and I thought, well, the plans were just getting a bit too pricey, so I changed to a different provider and was getting less than 15, around 11 or 12, and they couldn’t explain it. So I’ve since switched to this new company, Superloop.

[00:49:54] Trevor Long: During all these tech support calls, have they ever asked you to plug a computer into the NBN box?

[00:50:00] Dean: No, a friend of mine has, and not to the NBN box, just into the Deco directly through Ethernet cable, but no one suggested to plug directly into the NBN box.

[00:50:12] Trevor Long: And when you did it Ethernet into the mesh, what did you get?

[00:50:17] Dean: I’ve got the tier into the mesh, uh, with 13.5.

[00:50:27] Trevor Long: Um, okay, so here’s the problem. Um, I only know with Aussie Broadband because I’ve been with them a while, I’ve got their app, but I can tell you the terminology to asked for. So the simple point here is I think there’s a problem, and I’m absolutely blown away that they have— have they ever scheduled an NBN contractor to come visit or fix it?

[00:50:50] Dean: No, nothing.

[00:50:52] Trevor Long: That’s disgraceful in my mind. So there’s a few things I want you to do. So if I have a problem, you know, with the connection What I start to do is I go, you know, you go through the system, you go mesh down to the Ethernet, and then the last protocol is plugging into the NBN essentially. See, that little NBN box is just the end of the network, and so you can actually plug a computer into it, but plugging a computer in might not just work. It may need to be reset. So, okay, if it was my connection, I would log on to the Aussie app and I would kick the connection and reset the connection, and and then plug in. But I don’t know if you can do all that through Superloop in any way. But first and foremost, on your own, just power the NBN box off, disconnect the TP-Link, and plug your laptop into that NBN box after you restart it, right? So restart the NBN box after 5-10 minutes and then plug your computer into it and see whether— if you, if you know enough, if you can see in the network settings whether it’s picking up an IP address. So if your computer picks up an IP address by plugging into that little black box, then you’re on the internet. And then, you know, if you Google AFTM and it works, then it’s working. Happy days. Do a speed test, because what that is, is that is the legitimate core of your network. And that’s you going, right, if I get 499 by plugging into the NBN box, then we know that it’s the mesh system, or it’s the cable between the mesh system and your— do you know what I mean? You can start working out those little things. But if you plug a computer into the NBN box and you get 14 or 30 or frankly anything less than 100, then you’re not getting the right— mate, that’s ridiculous. If you are genuinely on fibre to the— mate, even if you’re on fibre to the node, you should be seeing 60, you know, like you should never be seeing 12. That’s insane. That is ADSL speeds. So what I want you to do is I want you to try that. If it doesn’t work I want you to ring Superloop and say, is it possible to plug my computer directly into the NBN box? But you know what, mate, don’t tell them why. Just say, listen, okay, just say, listen, I live alone, I don’t have any other devices, I’ve just got a computer. I can’t— just, you know, make up a story. I can’t afford a Wi-Fi system, I just want to plug into the internet, right? Can I do that physically? And if they say no, then okay, I’m wrong, your technology doesn’t allow for for that, but I think it does. So push, push it a little bit.

[00:53:28] Dean: Okay.

[00:53:29] Trevor Long: And then if that fails, call, text me back and let’s, let’s get your address and everything and we will talk to the NBN and organize for them to escalate to some sort of service call. Because mate, that’s ridiculous. You should be getting 512 meg speeds, not 12.

[00:53:48] Dean: That’s, that’s exactly what I thought. I thought it was the cabling issues. So I’ve got new Cat6 cables. And connected that all up thinking it must have been something happening from the NBN to the, to the Deco system, the mesh system, you know. So I’ve been trying to work through every single scenario without knowing you can plug directly into the NBN box. So I’ll definitely give it a try.

[00:54:14] Trevor Long: Look, I’ve done it at my place and I know that you should be able to do it on Fibre to the Premises. Give it a try and let me know how you go.

[00:54:20] Dean: Will do. Thanks, Troy.

[00:54:21] Trevor Long: All right, buddy. No worries at all. Thanks for getting in touch. Touch.

[00:54:24] Dean: Appreciate your help.

[00:54:24] Dean: Thank you.

[00:54:25] Trevor Long: Cheers, Dean. No worries at all, mate. Far out, that’s insane. To be paying for 500, getting 12 and 13 is ridiculous.

[00:54:33] Voice Over: Tech, cars, lifestyle— this is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.

[00:54:40] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Thank you for listening, folks. Let’s do it all again next week. We, aside from all the competition stuff I talked about at the end, at the start of the show, I flagged before and I will flag again And then again, what have we got? Next week’s the start of August. So we’ve got a show on the, hopefully the 4th, the 11th, the 18th, and the 25th of August. So assuming we get your calls and we’ve got things to talk about. I think I can probably pull off a show. I don’t know that I can pull off a show in April. So we may then have September 1st, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks off because I’ve got IFA in Berlin, likely an Apple event, and then I’ve got the family joining me in America and we’ll be Disneyland and stuff. So Dodgers, no, no Dodgers planned, but Red Sox and Mets and Yankees. So yeah, I’m definitely taking a break.

[00:55:44] Trevor Long: Break.

[00:55:45] Trevor Long: So there will be a break later in the year, I think. And I’ll get producer Rob to remind me. Let’s— this will be a test of whether he listens to the end of the show, right? But, um, I’ll get produ— you know what he does? He doesn’t listen. He bloody searches the transcript for his own name. That’s what an absolute narcissist producer Rob is. I bet you any money he has Claude AI set up to search the transcript for produ— for producer Rob and alert alert him every time it happens. Anyway, what I’ll do for a bit of fun, I think we find some archives. So how about I try and find a, like, an OG Chip for Brains radio episode from like 2007, just for a giggle? And why don’t we find a flashback episode to, I don’t know, like maybe the, the iPhone week. Maybe we, we find like a 10-year-old iPhone episode or something like that. Anyway, let’s go back 10 years and, and 20 years or something like that. Broadly, during those 6 weeks— and the reason I say that is because if, if you go 6 weeks without a show, it’s possible your bloody podcast apps will stop giving you my show when I do come back. So I want to make sure you keep getting the show. So I’m not saying you have to listen to it, but I’d appreciate if you left your app downloading, if you know what I’m saying. Um, anyway, they’re just— I’m just thinking out loud that might be an idea for the end of the year, for, uh, the, the month of September and the start of October. Anyway, uh, thanks so much, folks. Let’s do it all again.

[00:57:21] Voice Over: This is the EFTM Podcast.