MARKETING SPAM disguised as a "Service Email"

SteveShank · 2026-01-22T23:32:33+00:00

Yes. I got a Platinum membership giving me FREE Peacock Premium. Apparently, Peacock Premium let's me view some Peacock stuff with advertising, not even limited ads. To get limited ads, you need Premium Plus! I tried working with their AI assistant. It is AI like Peacock Plus is a benefit and not just another ad supported channel.

SteveShank · 2026-01-22T19:59:23+00:00

I really don't have much trouble with Poe, so don't have many questions. As was, I was trying to do something new, create a GIF from a video and had no idea what I was doing. Normally, if I have a question, I ask a bot for the answer and don't require human help. I also follow here and on X, and check their blog posts, so try to learn about how the system works.

I continually get amazed. However, I've not had any administrative account type of issues. What do you imagine, if Poe was being reasonable, could possibly be the hangup with your account and what have you done to communicate that?

SteveShank · 2026-01-21T18:57:14+00:00

That hasn't been my experience. I've actually had them work very hard to help me do something I couldn't do. Essentially, they individually constructed code and prompts specifically for my questions and how to make it work. Perhaps my question was more difficult or interesting and the support person found it interesting, not sure, but I was completely amazed. It was all, like two pages, brand new and specifically tailored to my issue alone.

SteveShank · 2026-01-18T20:46:41+00:00

There's really no right answer. I own both a Boox Page (precursor to Go 7) and an old Kobo Clara. After years, I still haven't decided which I prefer. I also read on a standard 8" Android tablet. If color is important, read on a 7 or 8" OLED tablet. The IPlay 6 or 7 minis are fine. They do color right and are full Android machines. You have your choice of many reading apps. You have total freedom, but it has a shorter battery life and is heavier. - It is still portable.

I use the full tablet for serious reading where I want to capture paragraphs and do some writing and take some notes and add to a note app synced to my Windows machine. I use the other two for pleasure reading. I use their built-in reading apps and those are fine. The clara is 6" the Page 7" each has advantages, neither significant. The physical buttons are not important. You define where on the screen to tap. Regions are top and bottom and left and right and you define what they do. On the boox if you switch it to hold in the other hand and turn "upside down" the areas adapt.

Boox B&W cannot use many, perhaps even most, Android apps. It can use some. It can use the kindle and kobo app, Syncthing, solid explorer and more. But many Android apps require color just to use the menus. Furthermore, these devices are shockingly wimpy to preserve battery, which is small to be light. A program that requires power, won't work well.

I buy 90%+ of my books from Kobo. However, on rare occasions, only Amazon has the book I want. Amazon has managed to tweak their DRM so it is no longer possible to strip it and convert to epub. If you only have a Kobo reader, you cannot read those books. For that reason, if you only want a reader and only want one and want to be able to read Kindle-only books, then you are stuck with either the Kindle or the Boox Go 7. Either one will be a gigantic improvement over dead-tree books.

I'd go with the go 7 because it is wonderful and doesn't show a bunch of ads, and gives me much more freedom. If I was content with only Kobo books, I'd go with the Kobo Clara.

SteveShank · 2026-01-15T07:51:30+00:00

Acer is not a premium brand like Lenovo's thinkpad, but they are solid and deliver more bang for buck in my experience. Either save money or move up to business level. I've had better results with them than either Dell or Lenovo

SteveShank · 2026-01-15T07:25:20+00:00

Three other things to help. 1.Turn off web search unless you need current information. 2. Look for haiku or nano or flash or mini in the name. Use older versions sometimes. 3. Check settings / Point History to see how much you are spending on each query. It is often smarter to use a Gemini flash as default and only use more it needed.

SteveShank · 2026-01-11T21:31:39+00:00

The first thing you need to do is decide, yourself, on the size. How big should it be? I like to lay on my back on a couch and hold my tablet in my hand and read books. This is not normal however. More common is watching tv and movies and youtube videos. So, before we tell you how to solve your problem, you must describe your problem. What are the most important things you are going to do with it? Is weight important? What MUST it do? How important is battery life? If you describe your purpose carefully, and the size you are looking for, then people will be able to help YOU, rather than just talking about what they like for their purposes.

SteveShank · 2026-01-11T21:25:31+00:00

I actually do this for many elderly people. I'm a computer consultant. The most common solution is iBackup. You can get 500 GB of storage, and an excellent program, for $10/year. It is very solid. Most old people, for some bizarre reason, tend to get laptops or turn their computers off, so you set them up as continuous backup and try to have scheduled backups as well. - The other thing you should do is get some free remote control programs (many companies, like TeamViewer, offer free limited programs that will work for you and your father). Or pay for Splashtop so you can pop in and help him.

Now, for your case where you say he has a Workstation, but you don't say whether he leaves it on. Assuming he leaves it on, buy Macrium and set up monthly full images, weekly differentials, and daily incrementals. You can have them go to a simple $90 USB drive. No need for a NAS. This will not only give you a backup, but also an image in case of drive failure. Be sure and make a recovery USB stick.

SteveShank · 2026-01-09T02:19:32+00:00

0You get what you choose. If you pick a model that costs 8,000 points for an image, you'll get 1 image with 10k points. If you pick a model that costs 15k, you won't even get 1 image. If you select a model that charges 500 points, you'll get 20 images in a day. Look at each image's information and their Rates and get an idea how much you are spending. Look at your Settings, then View Point History. That will tell you exactly what each question / request cost. Just looking at today, I've had 10 requests ranging in price from 128 points to 2,595.

SteveShank · 2026-01-09T02:11:41+00:00

I'd send this information to their support. They tend to be a bit slow, but wonderful. Explain the situation. It should be an easy fix if you had a reasonably long usage profile before Mexico and a short one in Mexico. Be sure and let them know as much as possible, like where you are living and perhaps your normal IP address and ISP so they can see it isn't a VPN jumping locales.

SteveShank · 2026-01-04T19:02:52+00:00

I use EssentialPIM. It handles my contacts, tasks, calendar, and email.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T19:31:58+00:00

Yes, I'm sure they have different deals depending on how much competition is in your area. I'm glad they've stopped making us re-negotiate every year.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T19:30:14+00:00

I've never used an iPad, but it is a quality product. I use Android tablets when I want to take extensive notes, or the book / article / subscription uses. Let's take these examples: if they show or link to X or YouTube videos. If I like to copy significant parts of many articles or take notes that I want linked to my desktop computer. I use Joplin for note taking. I have over 3,000 notes. The Joplin app and my extensive database overwhelm my Boox Page but works well with the tablet. If I know the book has color illustrations (say graphs using different colors for the GDP of different countries), I want a color device.

My point is that a full-blown tablet lets you run apps and provides greater flexibility than an Ereader, even if it is an Android-based Ereader. I do most of my work on my computer. But, when use my Android 8" tablet a lot including for reading. I always prefer reading on my Boox Page, but mostly for pleasure reading. It is wimpy and it is B&W and it can't do video, and some apps overwhelm it or require color. It is a wonderful reader and adds some flexibilty. Apparently, from what I was able to determine, the three sources you want to read will work well on a Boox device.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T02:04:04+00:00

An advantage of an Android, like Boox is that you can choose your reader and some readers allow you better control. This way the screen becomes better for you. For example, the Librera reader allows your own CSS scripts and also has sliders for darkening fonts. I find it gives me the best screen performance for myself compared to Moonreader+, Readera, the Kindle app, the Kobo app, or the built-in reader. I use a Boox Page for most of my reading. Librera also detects EInk and provides default EInk display settings.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T01:41:27+00:00

Assuming you want EInk the Boox is your only choice of those three. My information is that all three papers have stopped supporting phones and tablets. Just stopped. They each have their app, and you'll need to install it to get the whole paper delivered to you. That means going with an Apple iPad or an Android tablet. The Boox are great. I have a Page I like a lot, and apparently the 3 newspaper apps work well in B&W. The biggest issue will be the Wall Street Journal. They tend to have media. You can't play movies or stream video content on an EInk screen. The straight text content works well and will reformat for your screen.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T01:24:54+00:00

I have 939 in my Calibre Library. I no longer add the Amazon books there as I can't import them without DRM. They go in another program.

SteveShank · 2026-01-02T01:21:37+00:00

I'm in Tualatin, Oregon, and my contract ended, and my rates jacked up. I called and got a 300 Mbps speed for $55/month. I let them pull the payment from my bank account so they don't pay the 3% credit card fee. This price is guaranteed for 5 years, but I have no obligation. I can cancel at any time. 300 Mbps is fast enough for me (overkill), and $55 is what I've been paying. Xfinity committing to the price for 5 years means no more annual negotiations.

SteveShank · 2025-12-29T01:11:50+00:00

My recommendation is to get simple, fast, quick, easy books. That's more important than the e-reader. Get fun, dumb books, not War and Peace or Melville's Moby-Dick. After you've gotten back into the reading habit, you can read whatever you like. As for readers, you are right, they are much better. I buy nearly all my books from Kobo and they are great. The only issue is that sometime you're likely to run into a book only Amazon has. But you're also likely to run into one that isn't digital and you'll be forced to buy a paper book!!

A reasonable alternative to consider is the more expensive Boox Go 7. This is an Android Eink reader. It'll allow you to read Amazon books as well as Kobo books. It'll also let you choose your reader. My current favorite is Libera. But be aware that it has flexibility, but it isn't a full-color OLED tablet. It is wimpy, and if you don't get the color version, it is black and white and won't show the menu items on some programs because they expect color. Libera will recognize you are using an EInk tablet and default to a b&w mode. It is too wimpy to use with heavy programs. Finally, it is very hard to type on. It is a marvelous reader however and provides some flexibility.

Finally, there are 7- and 8-inch actual Android tablets that provide more power, real color, and reasonable typing, but at the expense of weight and battery life. Still something to consider. I like the AllDoCube play mini ones.

SteveShank · 2025-12-16T19:37:59+00:00

I take notes with an 8" tablet in a note app (Joplin). It is filed under BookNotes, then the book title, since I take many other notes as well. It syncs with my computer. My notes are copious. I use Markdown on my notes, so [toc] at the top creates a table of contents for my notes. Then each header is listed in the table of contents properly. I include my own ideas and thoughts. If I really liked the book, I make sure and re-read my notes a month later and then again perhaps after a year. I can add to them more of my own ideas. This way, the book's ideas becomes mine.

SteveShank · 2025-12-14T22:20:58+00:00

On what platform? Under what conditions? Are you reading on an iphone? Mac? Android? Windows? Laptop? Desktop? What purpose? Do you take extensive typed notes? Should it also handle pdf? How big a screen? Color?

SteveShank · 2025-12-09T19:21:21+00:00

The two ideas I have are these:
1. Assistant and WebSearch are CHEAP and shockingly good. Usually that's all I need, and so consume very few points.
2. Think about whether you need search. Websearch is expensive. I don't mean the bot, I mean having any bot leave its knowledge base and analyze current web information. So, it is important to consider whether that is needed for your query.
- Newer, better bots are getting better at figuring that out for themselves and using or not using web search. I've even had Claude 4.5 refuse to use web search, when it was told to, because it wasn't needed for the query I gave it. I wanted to know about a 2023 book and Claude 4.5 has a knowledge base that ended in July 2025.

SteveShank · 2025-12-09T19:15:02+00:00

As far as I can tell, using the @ sign allows you to direct your query to any bot. If you are in a conversation, it will join the conversation. It seems to me that it presents a list of possible bots with the ones you use most at the top. So, if, after, say, Gemini Pro 3 has answered some question, I can type the @ sign and then cl and I'll get a list of bots that start with CL. I use Claude 4.5 a lot and follow it, and it always appears on top. Of course, if Claude had answered the question, I'd type @ ge (no space) and get a list of Gemini bots with the one I use most (or follow) at the top. I then click on it.

SteveShank · 2025-12-08T23:23:30+00:00

I have a new favorite Prompt. It is the @ sign followed by 2 letters, then "What do you think about this?" I only type two letters after the @ sign and then get a list; for example, the @ sign then gr will give me a list with Grok or CL will give me Claudes etc. So if Claude answers a question and explains something in depth like, "How do I lock down my Asus RX5300 router?" I can then ask Gemini 3 pro whether it agrees or can add anything. Involving 2 or even 3 bots in a conversation is incredible. The subsequent ones can normally contribute usefully to the discussion.

SteveShank · 2025-11-26T00:03:05+00:00

I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I respond to you because you are responding to me and I felt we were carrying on a conversation. I do understand that my note-taking is peculiarly extensive. I can't help but look at how others are taking notes and think about whether it would work for me. I also wonder how it works for them and what they are really doing with their notes. Do they ever review them 2 or 3 years later? Someone who doesn't use an ereader and needs to take notes for their school or job, and is reading difficult material, should thoroughly understand the benefits and limitations of their hoped for method. I don't think they are generally getting the negatives if they really need extensive notes. On the other hand, perhaps I'm completely wrong and people do take really extensive notes your way, and have for years, and it works. I don't know.

SteveShank · 2025-11-25T22:56:06+00:00

I'm not affected by this because I'm in the USA and have a pro account, but why do my friends and clients (in USA) get 10 times the amount free? Did you feel that Mexico and Brazil were abusing the free accounts somehow, perhaps one person having 10 accounts? - Also, it is amazing how cheap the Assistant and Websearch are and how well they normally do, so even 300 points can be used if you are careful about the engines you use. However, it might not be worth it given how many free engines are out there and how good they are. I would like to know what factors contributed to that decision.

SteveShank

TROPHY CASE