Comcast Sticking It To Us

I don’t know if you noticed this with your December Comcast bill, but I wasn’t too pleased to see what they are doing effective 12/20/2019.  Although I am under an existing contract for a guaranteed price for my internet and TV through May 2020 — my fees will be going up.   I believe they can raise the fees portion of the bill even if you are in a contract.  If you are not in a contract, your fees will definitely be going up.   So here is the damage —  Broadcast TV fee (designed to capture what local stations charge Comcast for transmitting their feeds to us) $10 to $14.95, TV box fee (charge for that 1st cable box) $2.50 to $4.60, and the remote fee is going up from $0.18 to $0.40.  So this looks like an additional $7.27 if I did the math correctly.  Are the retransmission fees that Comcast is charged by the local stations going up?   I don’t know.   I also know that prices of most internet packages are going up $3 per month, however, I don’t think this applies to me as I am in a bundled promotion.  More and more people are cutting the cord and going with internet only.  Comcast is looking to make up for their loss in subscribers one way or another.  For a lot of customers in Connecticut, there isn’t much choice outside of areas where Frontier has fiber optic service.  The non-Fiber frontier service is pathetic.  There really is no alternative but Comcast.  Some of you have the ability to choose Go Net Speed.  They are available in limited parts of West Hartford and the New Haven area. Hopefully they will be rolling out beyond their existing footprint soon. A great choice for Internet only!

Best of 2019

I used to write this up in more of a newsletter format, but I just wanted to give you a brief sampling of some of the best products and services I worked with all year. 

Best Premium Smartphone: iPhone 11 — Apple really got this one right and they lowered the starting price by $50.  It’s an easy choice for iPhone owners

Best Mid-Range Smartphone:   Google Pixel 3a — Google brought out these phones mid-year that were in the same spirit as their old Nexus phones.  They are under $400 with a lot of premium features and they still have a headphone jack.  I hope we see a Pixel 4a in 2020.   We may also see an iPhone SE 2 or iPhone 9 sold in this price range next year.

Best Laptops:  Unfortunately — I can’t say that any Apple laptops are among the best of 2019.  However I really like 2 product lines the Lenovo Thinkpads and the Dell Latitudes.  Specifically I am a fan of the Thinkpad T490, E490, and X1 Carbon 7.  In terms of the Latitudes, I favor the 5000 and 7000 series.  They are solid, have great keyboards, and are built for the long haul. 

Best Desktops: I still like the 2018 Mac Mini and hope Apple keeps it updated for years to come.  I am also partial to Dell’s Optiplex and Lenovo’s Think Centre desktops, properly equipped of course. 

Best Backup Service:   Keep in mind that iCloud, Dropbox, or One Drive are not true backup services.  They are online file synchronization services.  This means that if you delete a file it will be deleted in other places. You should have an opportunity to restore the deleted file within a period of time.  I still love all of those services but they are not true backups.  If you have a lot of data that you can’t afford to lose, I highly recommend Backblaze or Carbonite.  Either service is $6 / month for personal use.