talkingDigital

It has been a big week for me. I dumped my DSL and moved back to cable Internet.

I didn’t do it for price or performance. I did it because the phone lines in my house keep shorting out and the phone company said it would cost nearly $300 to fix the problem. So, I jumped to cable phone and Internet service and dumped the phone company.

Changing Internet services is a painless process. I thought I would write this week about how to get broadband Internet service at the best rate and make the process easy.

First, there are three types of broadband to consider if you live in a populated area. If you live on the outskirts, your only option may be satellite Internet. The only people who should consider satellite Internet are people who live in the toolies and RV folks.

Everyone else should stick with cable, DSL or microwave wireless service.

Here’s a breakdown of the differences:

Cable – fastest and typically the most expensive option unless bundled with other services such as TV or phone service.

DSL – Tiered service offers different speeds at different prices, but all are faster and better than dial-up.

Microwave wireless – typically about as fast as the slowest DSL (around 256k) for standard service and faster speeds are available at an increased cost. Great if other options are not available.

If speed doesn’t matter, as all are at least 10X faster than dial-up, price will likely be the deciding factor in which service to go with. Shop around. Make sure to ask the following questions:

• What is the absolute lowest price I can get broadband Internet for?
• Is this price a promotion?
• What else do I have to commit to to get this price?
• How fast is this service?

These questions will not rule any service out, they will just help you compare apples to apples.

Once you have found the best price, go with it. Don’t worry if it is only a limited time offer. At the end of the term you can switch to one of the other services for roughly the same price.

Hopping back and forth between companies and services is easy as long as you set up a new email address with gmail, yahoo or hotmail.com. Switching to one of these free services will mean that you will never have to change you email address again.

If you are an AOL or MSN user, go ahead and cancel your dial-up service. AOL and MSN both work for free once you have broadband even if you cancel.

Following this advice and jumping from one service to another will stimulate competition in the broadband market and thus lower prices. The US has the most expensive broadband fees of any developed (and most under developed) countries. As long as people stick with the same service even after costs have gone up, the industry will see no reason to change their methods.

Rick wrote a great article on how to save money on your telecommunications bill a few months ago. Click here to read that article.

This week’s article is for all you old people. I am not writing to the seasoned citizens, senior citizens, the young at heart or boomers. I am writing this article to the people who know they are old. They prefer to be called old because they feel they have earned the title. Anyone who prefers to be called something other than old, is not truly an old person.

Every week, I get told by people of various ages, “I’m too old to learn this stuff.” Sometimes these people are 40 and sometimes they are 90, the actual age doesn’t matter.

No matter how old someone is, it is my observation that no one actually turns old until they give their consent. I have a 98 year old client who I have tutored for several months. I never need to write anything down. I just show her one time how to do something and she locks it away.

I have a 50+ year old client who has 10 pages of notes on how to send an email and he constantly tells me that if he doesn’t write down every detail his old brain will forget it. Essentially all aging people fit into one of two roles portrayed in the movie Grumpy Old Men. They are either Walter Matheu old or Jack Lemon old.

Whether you are an old person who longs to be young again or you are an aging person who seeks to retain youth, there are a few tools that will help.

Creams, exercise, prescription drugs and romance will all help keep you young, but there is one characteristic that all young people have in common…they all love gadgets. That’s right, The fountain of youth is not found in cosmetics, clothing or drugs. Using gadgets is the only thing that will keep your mind and soul young and active.

Here is a list of the best gadgets that I think all old people should learn to use if they want to age backwards.

1. GameBoy with Brain Age – www.brainage.com – The GameBoy is a video game system that you can take anywhere. While there are many fun games that kids can play, there is one game for the GameBoy that has been proven to take years off of your “Brain Age.” Brain Age is a game full of puzzles that test your mental reflexes and require little dexterity. Hospitals and homes for the aging have adopted the Brain Age game to help their patients and clients retain their mental faculties.

2. Palm device or Treo smart phone with Palm OS – www.Palm.com – It is important here that you get a device with the Palm OS and not Windows Mobile.

A Palm is a device that you use to track your appointments, addresses, alarms, medications, shopping lists, games, and even music and videos. It may seem like using such a device would decrease your memory and mental functions, in reality learning how to use and depend on a Palm PDA will open new worlds and capabilities that you are always been afraid to attempt before.

3. Digital Camera – Go buy any name brand digital camera and start using it right away. Not only will this give you a new hobby over night, it is extremely cheap as you don’t have to use film or make prints. Just have fun taking pictures.

4. Nintendo Wii – This is another video game system but it isn’t the shoot-em-up type game system that the youngsters play. The Wii uses motion control and the games are simple. Bowling, golf, baseball and boxing are a few of the more simple games that come in the box. You can add more games if you want, but the provided games will have you hooked right away. Recent studies show that 20 minutes of playing Wii sports games nearly equals 1 hour of walking. There is a great article on the popularity of the Wii with older folks here:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/samiljan/5868

5. An iPod or other MP3 player – If you enjoy reading or music, this is the perfect gadget to start with. All you need is a computer. An

MP3 player is similar to a portable Walkman or cassette player but instead of playing music from tapes or CDs the music is stored on a tiny computer inside the device. Rather than hold an hour or so of music, MP3 players hold hundreds or thousands of hours of music.

Using services like Audible.com or borrowing CDs from the library you can copy audio books, music, or spoken word to the device and listen to it anywhere you go.