Agreed, it’s so good.

Some forums are still reasonably active. I use Whirlpool fairly regularly. Mostly tech related, but has lots of other sections too.

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

If you search around you can find others.

It’s things like this that make me glad that my email service defaults to not loading any images/links/html. There’s a small button at the top to load them if I want.

Yes, I remember that! I recall thinking, imagine how good this will get in the future. Sadly it didn’t.

Exactly the same in Australia.

Yes, they are less prevalent due to Reddit and other social media sucking up a lot of the users.

They are still around though. One Australian forum that I’ve been on for years which is still very active is Whirlpool. Started as a tech forum and expanded. It’s very useful as source of info as it’s been around over 20 years and a lot of questions have been asked and answered there.

Nice. I’ll participate whenever I have some time.

I’m spending way more time!

I didn’t really like the community in Reddit that much. I used it more like a news feed. So I never read ‘all’, I just read my subs for a few minutes here and there, but I didn’t post and comment much.

Since coming here I post and comment a lot more. There seems to be more proper discussion here, despite being much smaller and quieter.

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

In terms of blocking ads, I run Adguard (lifetime sub), which blocks ads system wide - even in apps.

Synced bookmarks could be good though.

I have been with idrive since 2009. At the time they were the only ones that allowed backups of network attached storage on their cheaper personal plans. Everyone else saw that as an “enterprise” feature which required a business plan. Which was bullsh*t, because lots of home NAS devices were being sold.

Anyway, I haven’t done a recent comparison of services, but I remain happy with idrive.

Thesedays I no longer backup on a computer with a mapped drive, but directly from my NAS which runs the idrive software.

I had a catastrophic dual drive failure a few years ago, one failed and another failed during the raid rebuild! I was able to restore about 1tb of data and didn’t lose anything important.

They also offer backup and restore by shipping a drive to you if you want to avoid the huge initial backup or a total restore, but I haven’t used that feature.

They do also have a mobile app, but last time I tried it, it wasn’t great.

Wait - this changes everything!!

On desktop it’s mainly Firefox, on mobile it’s mainly the stock Samsung browser.

But I’ve started using Edge a bit more on mobile lately since I discovered its reading mode, which makes for a very clean readable format to read articles.

Yeah, I’m only keeping it because of the grandfathered deal. If they scrap that I’ll just cancel and save the money. Better in my pocket than Google’s!

I’ve been a bit stuck on Samsung phones.

If I think about why, it’s mainly due to two things, in order of importance:

1. One UI and Samsung Goodlock. I’m probably going to get roasted for this, but I like Samsung’s UI a lot more than other varieties of Android. When My Note 10 went in for repairs in 2021, a friend lent me their Pixel 6 Pro (they didn’t like it and went back to an I iPhone) For me it felt very basic and I was happy to go back to my Note. People hate on Samsung’s UI, but I reckon it’s gotten really good in the last few years.

2. The S-Pen. I’m not using it constantly, but I am using it several times a week and love having it there. Main uses for me are not to make notes (I’d rather type). I use it as a shutter button, planting my phone somewhere stable and taking less shaky photos. I use it to edit photos, so much better than using my finger. I use it to sign documents (probably only about once a month but it’s so handy to have it when you need it).

I do also like Dex for when I’m on holidays and I can plug it into a hotel TV with my mini Bluetooth keyboard/mouse. But that only gets used once or twice a year so I could live without it.

Given the above, I feel like Samsung has me by the b*lls right now when it comes to phones! I don’t know if that would be described as “loyalty”, but I have been sticking with the brand.

I’m relying on some of you folks to do a “trial” for me and let me know. Your efforts are appreciated 😛

Yeah. If it gets enshittified or sold to a dodgy company, I’d not hesitate to migrate.

Might bookmark this thread for if (when?) that time comes.

Using Authy. Pretty happy with it. It’s key feature for me has been the ability to easily restore if you lose, reset or upgrade your device, without having to mess around with your own backup and syncing.

Would suck to reset your phone and discover the sync had failed and the backup was not up to date.

I would like to have it on Wear OS though…

Yes, Connect For Lemmy had this.

Every few months I keep re-trying SwiftKey and the Samsung Keyboard, but I keep going back to GBoard because when I swipe it gets it right a lot more of the time than the other two.

Damn, that did a disturbingly good job of sounding like the real deal 😮