Tech tips – news and updates
By Malcolm and John Harding of Compu-Home
PRICES of tech equipment are likely to rise noticeably fairly soon. Frankly, we have been a bit surprised that prices have been quite stable for the past year in the face of unusually high demand, but good things seldom last forever. As devices become more sophisticated, their components are often more challenging to manufacture and prices are bound to reflect that. Another basic fact is that wherever in the world the devices are manufactured, we in Canada almost always buy them from sources in the U.S. and it is not news that tariffs and supply chain issues can be described as at least chaotic. Importers into the U.S. and their Canadian counterparts along the chain have been absorbing increased costs to some extent, thinking that these increases were probably only temporary, or that they could be recovered by taking the American federal government to court, but most are now announcing they cannot afford for this to continue and consumers will be feeling significantly more pain before long.
TRAVEL with your cell phone may become simplified and possibly even less expensive, with the introduction of the eSIM (Embedded SIM card). The traditional SIM card is a plastic chip that is inserted into the phone to enable communication between the device and the cellular carrier – sort of like an ID card. For many users in recent years, the first stop in a foreign airport has been at a kiosk to buy and install a local SIM card, so that the phone can be used without incurring roaming charges back home. The eSIM can now replace the physical chip with a digital equivalent downloaded onto the phone, to allow plans and features that are more easily changed when necessary. Additional benefits of the eSIM are such features as making it easier to switch between carriers and even offering the possibility of one phone having two telephone numbers.
COOKIES (the digital kind) have a chequered reputation. They are tiny files that are installed when we are browsing to make it more efficient, but when thousands of them accumulate they take up space on our hard drives and more recently they are being blamed for making our browsing history available to the outside world in ways that we might rather avoid. Deleting cookies is relatively easy and has become a strategy that makes us feel like we are protecting our privacy but actually that is only the first step, if we want to do the job properly. Search for “Clearing Cookies is Useless…” by Gavin Phillips in makeuseof.com for a thorough (but geeky) approach to Internet security,or google “secure browsing habits” to find several effective strategies that you can easily adopt.
SOFTWARE for income tax year 2025 has become more complicated. Although Macintosh users have by now become accustomed to the fact that several popular titles do not have a Mac edition, the area is now muddied even further by some publishers also not supporting Microsoft Operating Systems prior to Windows 11. Turbo Tax and UFile, two of the most popular titles in this field have gone this Windows-11-only route. We fear that many users who have not yet adopted Windows 11 will buy software without realizing that they cannot use it. There are two options available as workarounds:
a) you can switch to another package that is compatible with your operating system, or
b) you can use an online, web-based version that will run on any browser (Macintosh or Windows) without any specific operating system requirement.
Sadly, at the time of writing, the Federal Government’s Canada.ca certified tax software page has not been updated to be helpful for Canadians looking for guidance for the 2025 income tax year. We hope that by the time you are reading this, the page has been brought up to date.
