 Hello and welcome to, what is this? Episode 309. Welcome, Bruce and Ed laughing there. Happy to have you. You were watching me eat earlier, but now I'm not. No, this is recorded. If they were watching live, you saw me eat breakfast, but we're finished now, for now. Anyway, good morning, how are you? Or good evening, good night, good middle of the night, depending on where you're watching us from. We are, this is a big milestone for us. I'm Bruce, by the way. And I'm Ed. And we are live from New York, noon New York time, Monday through Friday. Happy Monday. Yes. Or Tuesday, if you're in Australia, whatever, wherever. Or it could be like, you know, April, you could be watching this recorded. But anyway. Either way, we love you here. Yes. And this is a big milestone for us because this week, the reason I haven't been on Twitter a lot lately, if you've been following me on Twitter, is that we have been working really hard on this little web studio. In fact, let me bring it up. Let me see if I can show you what it looks like. Let's see here if I can get to it. But anyway, we've been setting up our little web TV studio. Oh, I know how I can do it. I can go to my website. If you go to BruceWagner.com, wow, look how that made us dark. If you go to BruceWagner.com, and then go to the flicker. Yeah, there it is. Let me bring this up so you can see it. There's a picture. I took a picture of our web studio. There it is. Can you see that? Wait, let me make it bigger. Where is it? Where is it? All sizes. Here we go. There. Can you see that? I don't know if you can see it or not. But anyway, if you go to BruceWagner.com, and you look at my flicker studio, you see. This is a little picture of what our web studio looks like, our little web TV studio here. So, you can see there's like wires and cables and stuff everywhere. But we've been working on setting this thing up for the last half a week or more. And this is a big milestone because now we're doing it for real. We're doing our show for real. But the plan is we're going to have somebody on Skype here, a guest host on Skype. And we're all set up to do that. In fact, if any of you guys have Skype, and you want to be on, let us know. Here comes some people. Cool. And Anthony, well you want to see if Anthony is ready to come in. But if Anthony gets on Skype then go to BruceWagner.com and click live show. Watch our live show. You made that? Click watch our live show. And then you will be able to go into the chat room and let me know. Just type into the chat room and let me know that you're on Skype. You need Skype. Where is my... So good morning everybody. Hello and welcome. I'm volunteering. I need Skype. Well if you need Skype, it's free. Just go to Skype.com. S-K-Y-P-E.com. Click download and install it. And if you have... you'll need a microphone or a headset. But if you have a webcam it's even better because then we can see you right here. And whoever wants to kiss lots of kisses. Kisses from New York. Everybody needs a kiss. And a hug. That doesn't cost anything. Especially on Money Mondays. Well it depends on where you're buying it. But the thing is that it's a really cloudy gloomy day in New York. So raining and ugly. But what's the temperature? It says 43 degrees and cloudy. Normally we get a lot more sunshine at noon. But looking good. So today's Money Monday. This is Dr. Frugal. I call him Dr. Frugal. He's the king of saving money. But we're going to talk about money things. This week we really don't have any official guest hosts lined up. We're just going to chat. We're just going to have a little coffee chat. You got your coffee? Yes. Okay. I'm using my Out in Television and Film mug. There's a shout out to them. Anyway. So this is our first broadcast with our new, well not new but our system. Our new Web TV studio. We got all these cameras and all these things. I didn't know what we were going to need. You know how technology is. You never really know what you need until you do it. The salesman says, oh yeah it'll work. Everybody says it'll work. You can do that. You can do that. Because it's true. When I was 18 I worked at a computer store and we know you can do that with a computer. With enough money and time. Lots of money. If you're Bill Gates you can make an Apple 2 Plus do amazing things. But the fact of the matter is that it doesn't always work the way advertised. And sometimes it works a lot better. Some things just plug it in and it works the first time and you're like oh thank you God. Other times you can just stick with it forever and it isn't going to work. We thought we were going to need five computers to do this because we're doing something really novel. I think it's novel. The key is we're doing it five days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We're doing a live video audio broadcast which hopefully it looks good. By the way, read the chat and tell us how does the video look good. They're saying voice impicks much cleaner than before. Much better than before. Because we're using a 3CCD camera streaming FireWire directly into a dedicated computer that is sadly using Microsoft Vista. But it was required because this really cool software from Adobe called Flash Media Encoder is what we're using and it is actually encoding it, our video, directly from a camcorder, not a webcam, but a camcorder into Flash and the audio track into MP3 before it streams it out live. And it's also recording it directly to the computer that way for our recorded version. So we're glad if it looks a lot better. Yes, and thanks to Bruce of course. He's the technical whiz. I've been just kind of standing on the sidelines just watching him go probably better. Oh hey! Shout out to Katie and Milan. I love you my darling wife. It says but at least you're in New York. It's even more dull at Catalonia by the sea. Catalonia. I think in Spain is what I'm thinking. Shout out to our friends in Italy. Hello! Everybody needs a kiss. So let's see, what else? Alright, so we're streaming it live. Oh, what I was getting at is we're doing it five days a week. We have a staff of two. We have a budget of zero. And we're doing some amazing things. This technology, somebody tweeted to me the other day and said, you know, can you imagine how much this little web TV studio would have cost ten years ago? That's just amazingly profound. In fact, I mean, you could have done the audio and the video and the cameras and all that, if you had a couple million, two or three million dollars. But the computing power, you couldn't have bought it for ten million dollars. You couldn't have bought the computing power of, you know, five dual core 64-bit. They didn't have that stuff. I mean, it would take mainframes, I think, to do that much computing power. And even if they had it, they didn't have the software of course. We've come so far in technical stuff. But today's Money Money, we're going to talk about that. And yeah, and it's become so cheap. And that's what we're talking about today. It's insanely cheap. But you know, what was this package that went on sale yesterday? It's a compact dual core 64-bit Athlon AMD, right? And with the monitor, whatever size that monitor is, 19 inches, it's all compact. And how much is it? $359, $359. Of course, this is in the US. This is actually appropriate. Because this is Money Monday, Saving Money. So if you need a computer, where is it at Staples? It's at Staples this week. It's actually a great deal. No, it's Staples.com. It's their package deal that they have. So if you're interested in a computer, it might be a good time to buy one, because it comes with a monitor for $359. It's crazy cheap. That's just crazy. And it's equal to the same computer we're using to stream this right now. Well, that is the machine. We bought it. In fact, we paid $70 more. Two days later it went on sale at another store, Staples, for $70 less, whatever. I mean, their computer sales are expected to be really down, the economy, and all that. So we used to think that getting a tower for under $400 was insanely cheap. Now getting the tower and a big widescreen high-def monitor, what is it, 19-inch monitor? It's very nice. Three speakers built in. We got it for $466. What is it now? $359 plus tax app. Staples.com. Okay. And they're not paying us. They're not a sponsor. So if they would like to pay us, call me and I'll give you the address where you can send the check. Right. And just to let you know that anything that we're talking about here, we're not getting paid for. We're just... Well, unless we say otherwise. Unless we tell you otherwise, of course. Okay. Now this little timer, we're going to introduce you to this. This is an iPhone timer. And this little sound means that we have to take a YouTube break for those of you watching on YouTube. Click the button to go to the next part. Okay. And we'll be right back after the jump. See ya. And we're back. This is part two. Hey. Wasn't that amazing? YouTube is so high-tech. We have a 10-minute limit on YouTube. But that's okay. You know, that'll change. Once we become a partner, I think we can have an unlimited time length. But for now, we'll do that. Right. Hopefully it's not too much of an interruption. Our three-second YouTube commercial break. Right. Where there's no commercial. Anyway, so this is like a test run. This week, we're actually... It's not a test run. I mean, we're doing the actual show. We're just chatting with you. If you have Skype and you've got a webcam right now and you're in the chat room, just type in your user name and we'll call you and we'll bring you up here on the big screen. Since we don't have a guest host arranged this week. So this week, we really... We have coffee categories, by the way. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So money is Monday. Money, personal finance, bargain shopping and all that stuff is Monday. Tuesday is body, health, fitness, health issues. Anything to do with money. I mean, sorry, body, health, fitness, nutrition. Fitness, nutrition, right. And then Wednesday's Love, which is dating, relationship sex and all that. And then... Then Thursday's Personal Technology Made Easy, which is one of my fetishes. Then Friday is Celebrity Stuff. And we've got some big stuff we're working on there. That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say for now. But I don't want to jinx it. So hopefully this week, since we won't be working with all the technical issues, we'll be lining up the guests so you guys can benefit from other people's expertise as well. So it takes a little time to set up a... If you want to do an audio podcast, it's so easy. I can give you the recipe in five or six steps, but that's on Thursday. You have to come back and watch Thursday's show for that. But to do a video like this, where you're doing it live and it's ending up as a video podcast and an audio podcast on iTunes and it's sitting up on YouTube and it's streamed live on Ustream, that takes a little bit more planning. That's what we did last week. But we did it in four or five days on a very, very tight little budget. So it can be done. And that's what we've been working on the last week. Now this week, we're going to be working on... Now that we've got all this set up, we're going to be working this week on lining up topics and fantastic guests. Because if we can get Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Deepak Chopra, whoever on Skype, they can be in Thailand. And we have tested this setup. With Skype it works fantastic. They can be in India, Thailand, Australia, California, any far off land. It doesn't matter where they are. And they're like big brother, like right here, bigger than life. And you can hear them like as if they're sitting right here, which is very, very, very cool. So this week, we're going to be working on topics and guests for next week. So we're going to get things on the role. Light your set. What does that mean? Yes, we're on the air. It is time for the show. It's 12 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern time, which is like 11 a.m. in California, 11 a.m. in Chicago and Houston and so on. Yeah, it's a great day here. So our lighting is based on having bright days. Well, yeah, see what we found out. Originally we did a poll and we said, what would be the best time for you to watch? People said 10 p.m. 10 p.m. was number one. 7 p.m. was second. So we thought, well, we'll do it at 10 p.m. New York time. 7 p.m. California, it's perfect. But as soon as we did that, we realized that we're dark and we're so dark we look yellow. Even with the artificial lighting, we're not lighting experts. I'm in TV and you guys have a good looking set. It just needs lights. Thank you. Hello. Thank you. If you're in New York, come on over. We will happily accept your advice. You need lights. Yes. Well, so anyway, what we did is we decided to make it at noon because we figured 99% of the audience, we're going to have eventually we may have hundreds or thousands of people watching it live, but we may have millions of people watching it recorded. So the main thing is that it looks good. And it's less important what time we actually do it. So we decided by lamps. We have lamps. The lamps are on. Anyway, what we decided to do is at noon it looks really, really, really good on a normal New York day because this room is all floor to ceiling glass, all wrapped around in floor to ceiling glass. So normal natural lighting looks fantastic. But today it's just the gloomiest, cloudiest day. Tomorrow, hopefully tomorrow you'll see a major difference, but of course we don't want to be dependent on the weather. And eventually we'll get more sophisticated. But remember, we're just, this is, you know, baby steps, baby steps. You know, at least you can see us and you can hear us. Right. That's the important part. We'll get there and hopefully we'll have interesting things that you will want to tune into. Continuous improvement. By the way, if you're in the chat room, you can type slash Nick slash and with no space, just slash and I C K and then your name and then it'll show up. Your name will show up on the list or you can just log into use stream. If you have a use stream account set up, which is free. So that way we know who you are and that'll help because we can shout out to your name. So let's see what was I going to say. Oh, so how does our audio sound like? Can you hear us? Do we sound distant or anything? Or do we sound perfect? CD quality. Let us know that as well, if you would. And while you're doing that just type it into the chat room. Remember, right now it's brucewagner.com is my website and you can click on the watch the live show. I'm sure you probably did that already to get here. But that's where you can also watch the recorded shows on demand anytime if you miss it live, of course. But we're working on setting up a website which will be bruceanded.com and bruceanded.com. Don't go there yet. It's not ready. But it will be. I'm working on that. Once that's set up, you'll be able to watch it on demand. You'll be able to listen to it streaming audio. You'll be able to subscribe via iTunes and you'll be able to download MP3's and all that stuff. Because I know that if you're in China or India or Australia or something like that, sometimes the buffering is just too much, especially with video. But you'll be able to download the video files directly or the audio files, podcasts, all that stuff. When you download it and listen to it, of course, it's going to sound fantastic without any buffering positive every few seconds. Alright, so you're welcome about Twittering about the show. We're going to be doing that every day to remind people that we're on. And this is still going right? The timer? Good. Okay. We're still on YouTube. Alright, so today's money Monday. Let's get to it. Because we're 20 minutes in. Monday is money day. And with this sagging economy, we like to stay positive because really, economic things are all in our minds anyway, so we want to put positivity out there. So instead of looking at the gloomy side of everybody being unemployed and everybody knows saying, oh, I'm busy looking for a job and so on, I'd like to think about it in a positive light, that this is the time to shop. If anybody has money, this is the time to buy real estate. This is the time to buy anything you ever wanted or needed. You can get the most amazing bargains right now. It's fantastic. So we didn't prepare anything, but I have some things to talk about and you probably do too. Yeah. We already talked about that PC deal, which is insane if you need a computer. Right. And what else? Well, yeah. I always like to start with travel because I'm always planning a travel something. And right now the latest, best travel bargains that I have found, which I'm desperately trying to get my family to chime in so we can all go together, is there's great, there's round trip flights from, well, this is from New York to Spain. Pretty much anywhere in Spain on Iberia Airlines, it's like 200 and in March and April is $260 and there's round trip including taxes. To where? To Spain. Yeah. And in May is $350 and also in November it's $250 again. So if any of you guys want to go to Spain this is the time. Vicky, Christina, Barcelona. Here we come. Italy's better. Yeah, Italy's beautiful. I love Italy's in Milan. She wants us to go to Milan. Yeah. What's your deal on that? You can go to Iberia Airlines, I don't know their website exactly, but I can look it up. Iberia Airlines.com. Yeah, Iberia. Anyway, Google. Google is your friend, Iberia. Just Google it Iberia Airlines. Yeah, Iberia.com, I-B-E-R-I-A and just plug in the dates you want and it'll give you the prices. But that's an excellent deal. I've never seen, you know, basically it's $150 to travel there and the rest is in taxes. So go figure it costs more in taxes to get there than the actual airline makes. So that's like the one that sticks out the best in my mind. Cool. Now, if you're on YouTube, continue by pressing the button to go to the next part and we'll be right back after this quick break. Just click the button and go to the next part to continue. Right. And we're back. Wow, that was a short break. It only took a second. Amazing. Anyway, all right, so back to Iberia. We're going to Milan. When are we going? Yeah. I was just trying to plan a trip for my family to go to Spain because we've been to Barcelona and we just love it there. It's just amazing place and we really would like to see more of Spain. So this flight is from New York to where? New York to Madrid, Barcelona. I mean, pretty much anywhere. New York or is it from anywhere? They're pretty much from New York right now. I mean, you're going to pay more than what I quoted you if you're going to come from somewhere else, but still that's still a great deal. You can get a cheap flight to New York and then just switch if you do your own connection. But make sure you allow plenty of layover time because they don't wait for you. Do they have the same deals from like Miami and other places, Atlanta? I'm not sure because I've only been checking New York because I figured anyone can get to New York for very cheap right now too. New York's easy to get to. But especially if you're coming through New York and you're doing your own connection, make sure it's the same airport because New York is not close to JFK. It's going to take you like half a day to get there and you really don't want to do that kind of a schlep. That's really nasty. If you can always come into the same airport that you're going to go back out of and allow three times as much time as you think it's going to take, especially for an international flight because it's just they do not wait. And if you're doing your own connections and you think, well, if I land at 330, I can make a 415 flight no way. Especially not an international flight. The other thing is, pretty much all of Europe is on sale, but that's like the cheapest to get to Europe. And sometimes when we go to Europe, we just basically get the cheapest flight that we can and then just jump on a train and go from there. And it's pretty cheap. If you want to go to Italy, that's like 300, 400 dollars right now too. So it's comparable. My wife, Katie, wants us to go to Italy. If you want to check out all the travel deals, a place that I like personally and I'm subscribed to on my email, it's called SmarterTravel.com and they're a dedicated staff there that talks about travel and they find the best bargains and if you subscribe to their email, they'll send them to you every time. Like last minute? Is it always last minute? No, not at all. I should say for the record, Katie is one of my Twitter follower buddies, Twitter buddies, Twitterati and they did this, one of those online, what do you call it, like tabloid things, Twitter newspaper made this spoof mock up of the first wedding via Twitter and they said that I got married to Katie, but I'm denying any knowledge of it because I don't remember this happening at all. And I'm totally being accepting Yeah, he's being a wonderful husband about it. He's totally accepting, but I would like to meet her someday. Since we are married. But anyway, we love Milan. Oh my god, remember Milan is like this part, Milan is like, it's sort of industrial city, but it's like the most amazing fashion nightlife, I love Milan Anywhere in Italy is awesome. Every place in Italy is very, very different than each other, but totally unbelievably awesome in its own way. I loved Italy a lot more than than I ever thought I would because everybody talks about it and I just, I don't know, I never had any interest really, but when I went there, oh my gosh, it's like magical Venice and Florence, the food in Florence the atmosphere in Venice, the Rome is, oh my gosh, the Vatican is mind blowing, and Milan was fantastic, so many things So, you can just say it out loud, you don't have to say it. Oh, you're talking about the lake? Yeah, I just wanted to further people that are in doubt. So I'm gonna, did you have something else to say about the? Uh, no. Okay. I'm gonna talk about this more on Thursday when we do their tech things but there's this new phone company that's really not new. I think it started in Florida, at least I know for sure it's been in Florida for a number of years now. It's now in New York City but they have it everywhere, like all over the country New York City seems to be one of the last places that they've added their service but now it's here, so I think it's really ready for prime time and I am switching to it from, I have an iPhone with AT&T, but what I'm doing, I'm in the process of doing is dropping AT&T off my iPhone because what I realized is I use my iPhone, you know, all the time they have battery issues, as everybody knows. We love the iPhone so much that we go into denial about things like copy and paste, search and find, battery issues MMS being able to send and receive pictures on the phone it has a lot of drawbacks, weaknesses, but a lot of people just kind of go into denial about that because we love our iPhone it's so cool. And it is fantastic for browsing the web because the way it renders a web page, I haven't seen anything equivalent yet although I'm sure there are some now, but what I find that I'm doing with my iPhone is most of the time I'm using it for email or browsing the web. Now email I can do on an airplane because it's offline, I use the email app, which is not the greatest, but it works. So I use the email app offline so it doesn't matter if I'm on an airplane or a subway, there's no signal I can do it on an elevator, I'm replying to my email and as soon as it gets a signal of course it syncs up, it sends everything out from the out box and it receives all the new stuff well you don't need any signal for that. And the other thing that I do is I browse the websites some but most of the time I have to say I have a generation 1 iPhone and the edge network I think it's called G1 or whatever it's so slow, I mean it's painfully slow It's kind of worse I think. I don't know but I just, maybe it's because we're getting more spoiled but it's so so so painfully slow that I really don't do it unless I absolutely have to. But I have to look up a showtime because we're on the way to the theater or something like that, I'll use it. But normally I don't, I wait until I've got Wi-Fi. If you buy one coffee a month at Starbucks you got free Wi-Fi at every Starbucks which is like every two blocks in Manhattan or Wi-Fi at home of course. So it's really not necessary. I find out with tax and everything I'm paying like $1.55 a month to AT&T and I'm not even using AT&T for my phone except as a phone. Now the phone quality has gotten worse and worse. I'm dropping calls like I can talk to somebody on the phone for 10 minutes and then I drop the call. It happens constantly and it's gotten worse I think where we live anyway. I think maybe I don't know if there's a tower down or what the heck is going on but every 10 minutes we're dropping a call the call quality is really bad and I can't hear. Like if you're on the street and I'm talking, there's no way you can hear anything. The volume is so low you have to be in a completely silent room. Or have your headsets on. Yeah. But I don't usually use the headsets. And then so if I want to hear you I have to put you on speakerphone and hold the speaker up to my ear. That's how bad it is. I have to put you on speakerphone and hold the speaker up to my ear. And then I can hear you in a restaurant. If I'm walking through Times Square, forget it. I can't even do it. I'm going to have to go inside somewhere. So what I found out with this Metro PCS service okay, first of all they have unlimited voice text messaging and data although the data is not that great because you're not, I mean the data is fine but you're not using it with an iPhone or a smart phone. It's a CDMA phone. But here's the thing. What I'm doing now is I have one phone for the voice calls which is a Metro PCS which is like a $29 phone in the sense that you get one month free service when you buy the phone. So it ends up costing you $29 for the phone. There's no contract, no credit check. And the voice quality is like a thousand times better than the iPhone. So I'm going to cancel the AT&T on the iPhone use the iPhone only as a mobile internet device. So I use it for my email. I use it for web browsing when there's Wi-Fi. If I really need to browse and there's no Wi-Fi, I just walk to the nearest Starbucks. No problem, right? And Wi-Fi, of course, is really, really fast. It's just as fast as your home computer on your Wi-Fi network. And it doesn't have to be Starbucks. You can use it anywhere. The public libraries have free Wi-Fi in the whole block. There's a lot of places. If you Google it, go to Google and search free Wi-Fi maps or something. You'll find that Panera Bread, lots of places now have free Wi-Fi. Or just freaking do your email and wait until you get home. And then when you get home, it'll automatically sync up for you. And that's what I use the iPhone for most of all anyway. And then my voice calls work. So many times, here's another thing about it. Well, actually, hold that thought. If you're on YouTube, click to go to the next part. We'll be right back after this jump. See you in a second. And we're back. Wow, that was a short break. Anyway, what I was going to say because you knew that thought is that the other thing about the iPhone, I mean, there's a couple other things. One, my battery is worn out. And I don't know, I mean, what was Apple thinking when they made the battery not removable? You can't change the battery without breaking it open and avoiding the warranty and all that nonsense. So basically the whole entire device is just as disposable as a worn out battery. That's wrong. That's not what they call eWaste. It's really bad for the environment. Imagine when the battery wears out, you throw the whole computer away and this is a computer. It's a little computer, of course. Well, it's ridiculous. So my battery is worn out because I use it excessively apparently. And it only lasts about an hour. If I leave the house and I'm using it the whole time, the battery only lasts about an hour. It's ridiculous. I think it's just because you've used it so much, because mine lasts a lot longer. The point is true that after a while it doesn't work because it's a battery. If you use the thing, that's what it's made for is to be used. So if it's so valuable that I'm using it all the time, I need it to last more than an hour. So I leave the house and we're going to the theater before the show even starts, the battery is dead. It's useless. As a phone, that is not going to cut it because you need that phone. You need the use of the phone. I'm browsing the web and it kills my phone. What's the point? You can't don't have a phone anymore. So that's one part. But then the other thing is, during that one hour that I'm using it, I'm using that Edge network and what happens with the iPhone I'm not sure if this is true on the BlackBerry or the other services but with the iPhone and AT&T, when I'm using that Edge network on the first generation iPhone when I'm using the web and browsing the web with that Edge network, all my calls go straight to voicemail. So while I have it for that hour before the battery dies all my calls go to voicemail anyway and basically I miss all the calls and then the battery dies. This is not a good thing. So the way I have it now, I'll use this only for Wi-Fi and what I'm doing also is I keep it in airplane mode. You see the little airplane up here. I keep it in airplane mode which means airplane mode on is the same thing as saying wireless off. So there's no wireless activity which makes the battery last like pretty much all day. So I just turn on wireless mode when I need it. Like once I get to the Wi-Fi network I turn wireless mode on and boom it syncs up everything it needs to or I browse the web, do whatever I want. When I'm done, I turn it off turn off wireless mode, putting airplane mode back on and my battery will last all day that way. Meanwhile I've got the other phone, the MetroPCS phone which is only for voice calls. I don't miss a single call and for 40 bucks a month I get unlimited long distance and local calling, even unlimited text messaging, even well I have the $45 plan so I can travel to any city in the US any of the major cities, almost every major city in Metro area has coverage except Chicago and DC that I'm aware of. Yeah, there's only two I guess, Chicago and DC. I'm sure they're obviously going to expand there soon but every other major cities like 600 cities or something it has coverage and I also have unlimited text messaging, international text messaging so I can text to my friends in London and so on. I mean for 45 bucks a month you pretty much get top of the line everything and it does have a little web browser it's got a little like, I don't know if they call it WAP but it seems a little bit more sophisticated than WAP, I would call it like mobile formatted web browsing but it does have a little web browser in their phones, the Metro PCS phones and by the way it's MetroPCS.com and what was I going to say, so I can go there and I can use Google and I can search for show times and stuff with this thing as well but you know if I have access to wifi of course it's a lot nicer to use the iPhone so basically yeah, somebody said I'm turning my iPhone into an iPod touch with a camera and that's true, it's basically what it is, it's an iPod touch with a camera, by the way that's the other thing I do I take pictures with it and the pictures come out great so I can still take pictures and you email the pictures anyway, you do not need AT&T to do that, like I'm telling you 99% of everything I do with this thing has nothing to do with AT&T and I've got a much better quality phone. Now the Metro, I mean phone service, Metro PCS that little $39 phone, the one I bought is a Nokia 1606 and with that thing I'm telling you I can get on the elevator, go all the way down the lobby and it doesn't drop a call. I can use it, where else was I using it that I couldn't believe. The basement and the grocery store. Yeah, deep inside the grocery store or normally on the iPhone, it only works when your signal is not that great. When you're standing right by the front door, that's where it works and if I go deep into the grocery store, he's back in the dairy department, I can't it drops the call for sure. But that thing works everywhere. Someone's asking can you watch TV on an iPhone? Technically, yes. No, not TV, no. No, no, no, YouTube, you've got YouTube only. Well, it doesn't have flash. iPhone does not have flash, you can only watch YouTube videos and only YouTube videos that YouTube has formatted for the iPhone, which it seems like now they're formatting all the videos on YouTube for iPhone eventually. But as soon as you upload a video to YouTube, it's not available right away. But it seems from my experience after about a week or a few days or something, it's going around and converting. Because what it has to do, do you know that? It has to convert every video into a special format for the iPhone. So every video on YouTube has to be reconverted, transcoded into a special iPhone video format. Because flash apparently, the internet, the connection is too slow to play on the iPhone. And even when it is like that. And how about through iTunes, can you get TV shows through there? Well, no, only video podcasts. So the only thing you can do with video on the iPhone that I know of is with the standard applications is YouTube videos and video podcasts, but you can't watch TV. When they're talking about TV, they mean TV. You can't watch it at abc.com, abccbs.com, you cannot watch those. Because it doesn't have flash, you can't do anything that requires flash on an iPhone, sadly. And they're saying it's whatever. I don't know if it's a limitation, it's got to be a limitation of the data network. And it's how big the file sizes are. Yeah, well, it's a big, that's what I mean. It's a big file size, and it's a streamed down, a big file through that data network, and it's just not fast enough to keep up. It's kind of like, it's kind of like dial-up, but I think it's probably even, I don't know, I don't know the technical specs, I'm not gonna tell you wrong, but it might be about the data speed of a dial-up connection, which is not good. They call it, you know, they call these things, like 3G, they call it cellular broadband, okay. Well, maybe it's broadband for cellular, but it's definitely not real broadband like we're used to at home. It's a whole other scale. So anyway, I think I'm gonna go for the Metro PCS2, just to, well, I will, eventually. You just told the whole world, so now you're committed. Yeah, well, I'm definitely committed to saving $45 a month. Well, yeah, because he's only gonna save $45 a month because he's got one of the smallest plans, rate plans on the iPhone. Of course, I had to have the, virtually it's unlimited because you know, you have rollover minutes and all that stuff. So I have rollover minutes on the iPhone so that it's kind of enough that I would never be able to use that many. And basically it's like the equivalent of an unlimited voice, unlimited text plan. And so altogether including tax, it was like $155 a month. Now, with the Metro PCS, including tax, it's about $53 a month. So I'm gonna save more than $100 a month, $1,200 a year. And the way he shops for deals, that's like two 10 day cruises a year that I'll get. I mean, you know, $1,200 is $1,200. No matter how you look at it, it's a huge savings. I know we're really spoiled with all of our fancy phones and it's almost like PCs used to be. Remember PCs used to be like, well, how big is your, how many gigahertz is your computer? How much hard drive do you have? You know, now it's like, you know, it's like whatever, it's just a little commodity. It doesn't really matter. Nobody's impressed. I mean, it's like whatever. They don't even ask anymore. You know, it's so cheap. It's like they're almost throw away. They're so cheap. All right, now we're done with this segment and press the button link to go to the next part and we'll be right back after the jump. See ya. Hey, oh, this is important, a really important point because a lot of people, you know, it's drilled into our head, we're brainwashed to think that, oh, breaking the contract. Oh my gosh, when I got my phone, I signed a two year contract or whatever, four year, it doesn't matter. You could have had a hundred year contract that you signed with Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile or some such thing. Here's the thing. Don't be afraid of breaking your contract. It's not like you're breaking the law. Breaking a contract is part of the contract. It's an escape clause. You're allowed to do it. All you have to do is pay a little fee or whatever the fee is. Now, what I found out, like in my case, breaking the contract is $175. But the fact is, I'm paying them $155 a month. So it's almost the same amount as paying them one month. So I pay them one month and I'm done. I never pay them another penny. So if you do the math, think about it. I pay them one extra month and never another penny. And then I immediately start saving more than $1,200 a year. It's so worth it to break the contract because mine is over in June or July or something like that. Why would I pay $155 a month until June or July for no real reason? No, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna break the contract which is an absolutely fine thing. It's not like it's gonna go against your credit or you did something bad. It's nothing wrong with it. You just say, I wanna cancel my account and I wanna pay the fee. They're happy to do it. People are so afraid they're gonna pay $175 just like they committed a crime. It's not. It's an option that's built in. You're allowed to do that. Does not reflect negatively on you at all. In fact, it just shows that you're smart. So you stop that contract. You stop wasting $155 a month and you start paying $45 a month and you get unlimited voice data text and international texting and roaming anywhere in the nation, blah, blah, blah. And it's a better call quality. So, and know MetroPCS.com is not a sponsor just for the record. They're not a sponsor or anything. I just, I really love it so far. I've only had, pardon me, I've only had it a couple weeks. So, I'll update you if that changes but so far I'm really, really happy with their service. It works, like I said, when they first started they were in Florida and we lived in Florida at the time and people hated it because the call quality was the worst. It would drop the calls all the time and it was really novel because it was unlimited voice from the beginning but the call quality was horrible. Now it's changed and I'm telling you it's better than AT&T so. And it's expanded to the rest of the country which makes a huge difference, especially when you travel. You don't wanna go somewhere and not have a phone that works. Yeah, we checked all the places that we go to frequently like Columbus, Ohio, Cleveland, Nashville, LA. Doesn't matter, I mean every place that we go to frequently. Most of all of Florida. Yeah, almost all of Florida. It's got coverage and it's CDMA I think it's called. So, it's the same as Verizon and I think there's one other major carrier that uses CDMA but anyway, that's technical. One thing that you didn't mention was that there's no contract with this phone. Yeah, I mentioned it. Oh, okay. There's no contract, no credit check or anything. So you can try it. Geez, I mean the phone that I got is, I love it. I'm not gonna get, on the Metro PCS I'm not going for the smart phone or the fanciness. No, you want just a simple basic phone that's gonna be for voice mainly. You can also use it for texting if you want to but mainly it's for me, it's a voice phone so that it's to make those calls and receive those calls without fail. And it's $79 for the Nokia 1606 and then they give you one month free which is my plan is $45 a month. So, 80 minus 45 is 35 a month. So basically it cost me $35 for that phone. You look at it that way. It's $35 for the phone and $45 a month for the service. So, if you don't like it, just throw away the phone or sell it on Craigslist, whatever, give it to me. But the thing is that you can just try it with no contract if you don't like it. In fact, I think you can even, well, you can return the phone if you talked on it less than 60 minutes, whatever. But anyway, you just try it for a month or two and if you don't like it, don't use it. You can also transfer your number and keep your number but I don't do that because what I did, I mean when I try things I'm very conservative about it so I got a new number because if I decided right from the start, of course, if I don't like this thing, I'm just gonna drop it and then I still have my old number. In fact, I have not canceled my AT&T service yet. I'm going to, I'm planning to but I'm gonna keep my AT&T service for like at least two or three months so I've had time to give everybody my new number. But I am giving everybody my new number and slowly, you know, it's a transition process and then if that way if I decide suddenly I learned something and I hate it, I can switch it back. I can just, you know, put a recording on the new one, give it out the old one or something like that. If I really had to, I haven't escaped to get back to it if I run into a big problem. But so far, I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it. I'm so happy I did that. So I'll give it maybe two or three more months on AT&T service just to give everybody migrated over to the new number so I don't miss any calls or connections there and then I will cancel the AT&T and just, you know, be on my new number. I'm not attached to a phone number that much because I can, you know, obviously we have email and, you know, the phone number can easily be distributed to whoever I need to reach me. And for those of you that are concerned about your number and keeping your number, in the US at least, I know you can for, I mean, it's some processing but you can keep the same number. Yeah, no, it's actually, yes, that's right. And it only takes about 24 hours. I was in the store when I was, there was a guy doing that. He was signing up for Metro PCS and this dealer, the dealer 42nd and 9th, they're really cool. The guys there, Mark and Mike are really cool. And it's not a corporate store as a dealer but anyway, there was a guy who came in and he wanted to keep his number and he said, well, it should be working. They say they quote up to 72 hours or something. He says, but usually like by tomorrow around one o'clock it'll be working. So it doesn't, you know, the only hang up there would be if you, you know, if you still owe Sprint some money or something and they won't release the number until you're paid in full, you've paid to cancel your contract or they're gonna bill you for it or whatever the heck is involved. And then they release your number so it's just paperwork stuff. But it happens very fast. It's very efficient now. So it's good. So there's no contract. If you don't like it, you just drop it, you know? Keep your old phone. That's what I recommend is keep your old phone, keep your old phone number, keep it active and just get a Metro PCS phone and then compare them side by side. And you know what I've even done is I've taken the Metro PCS phone and my iPhone and I've called him and I've called different people and say switch back and forth on the call waiting and which one sounds better. And for me it's like the Metro PCS is like a thousand times better call quality. And also I've called and left him a voicemail with the iPhone and then I've called with the new phone, left him a voicemail. I listened to both voicemails. There's no comparison. It's just a lot better quality. So I mean that's my experience in midtown Manhattan. Who knows, it might be different where you live. I don't know. I know that we have a global audience and Metro PCS is not available outside of the US. So this is maybe only relevant. But here's the point. Even if you're in Germany and Berlin or whatever, there are these new carriers, look for them because most, like the other major carriers in the US have what they call unlimited everything plans that are about $100. Like three of them are $100 and then Verizon's like 120 for the unlimited everything plan. Metro PCS is $40. And you wanna support those carriers that are giving really good call quality and unlimited everything. Whatever those carriers are in your local area because if you do that, the more people that jump ship and go with those companies, the more competition. Competition is always healthy. And then the major carriers are forced. Drives the price down. Yeah, the major carriers are gonna be forced to reduce the rates to more reasonable cost. And that's all good. It's always good. And I know that in Europe, it's almost, well I know in France it's like a monopoly almost with the phone thing and well not a monopoly but the government is in socialized or something. I don't know, but I don't really know. But the thing, yeah, some countries it's a lot more expensive than others. Cell service and some, like that's why texting has become so popular in some countries because the texting is expensive but the voice is even more expensive and you know, crazy expensive. We're really spoiled that we have really low cost cell phone service here. I mean, how can you get any lower than that? I mean, their lowest, what do they call it? Unlimited everything plan is $40 a month for unlimited everything. I mean, I don't think there's any place in the world that's that cheap. Canada's famous for its expensive cell phone service too. But that's why no matter what country, no matter where you live, you want to support these new carriers that are coming out with low cost service. All right, we'll be right back after the jump. Make sure you click to go to the next segment and we'll be right back. And we're back. We weren't gone long. We're back on the last or final segment, I guess, of today's show. Money Monday. And for those of you, we have live view streamers that are with us right now. And for those of you that are on here right now, well, just about a minute ago there was a screen that was fixed in the background and hopefully in the future, we'll have another fixed item up there that's of interest. So whatever you saw back there is of no relevance. It's a movie, it's a production company or something. This is a black screen. Black screen, yeah. Now it's my screensaver. Isn't that exciting? Yeah. But anyway, no, what's gonna happen is as soon as we get a guest on Skype arranged, the guests will be right here. So you're gonna see them like 1984 big brother right here. We'll be talking to them no matter where they are. So that's what will appear there in the future. So somebody says, I don't know who this is, but 28701 in the chat room, use streamer says, I have a track phone with no monthly charge and I can receive texts for free. Yeah, those track phones are good. And those are, I think that's like a pay as you go. Right. It's a pay as you go deal. Free paid plan. And they, no monthly charge is good. You can receive texts for free. That's fine. I don't know. Some of those are cheap. Some of them you can actually get down to like $10 a month if you don't use your phone much. But for people who use their phone a lot, like I do, you know, if you use 1500 minutes a month or something, there's nothing that can compare to an unlimited plan. Plus sending. Is that track phone here in the US? I'm assuming yes. Yeah, it's everywhere. It's not everywhere, but it's a lot. That's what Steve has in John Hobb. And one thing to keep in mind with some of those is that even though you might charge $50 of minutes that they don't, they expire after a few months or something. I don't know about track phones. What are you going to say specifically about track phones? No, but some of those pay as you go plans. That's right. The minutes might expire after three months or four months. So whatever you pay into your account, you know, those minutes can expire. So you really have 90 days, they're saying. Yeah, 90 days. And sometimes they roll them over if you charge more. Well, yeah, you have to... No, we're not talking about track phone. We're talking about prepaid phones in general. Some of them have a deal where they expire after 90 days. But if you recharge it and you add more minutes, then those may extend longer than 90 days. So that's kind of, to me, I mean, that's fine. If you hardly use it, if it's just a real occasional use thing, that's fine. But what I personally, it's very annoying if suddenly I go to make a call and it says insufficient funds on the screen or somebody's trying to call me and it won't work, then I don't like that. I want it to be automatic and unlimited. But that can come down to, you can get it down to like $10 or $20 a month and for very, very occasional use, that's fine. But I personally, I'd rather pay $30 a month and get the unlimited Metro PCS thing. Because then you have your home phone. Yeah, yeah, you can... That justifies that expense. If you have an unlimited plan, you can get rid of your landline at home, which a lot of people, like actually I read a statistic that Metro PCS customers, Metro PCS says that they're 80% of their customers use it as their home phone. So if you use it as your home phone and you have unlimited long distance in the US, you really can eliminate your home phone, which are not cheap. I mean, they're like $15 to $20 minimum, some a lot more than that. And if you eliminate your home phone, you pretty much paid for it and it's actually cheaper than having a home phone and a track phone. So that's something definitely to look into. Where do you get a Metro PCS? Go to MetroPCS.com. There you go, that's an easy question. I put the link in before, but I'll put it again because the people that are coming in live now can't see it. Yeah, but the recorded people, the 99% of our audience doesn't see what you're typing. Right. It's MetroPCS.com. It's just M-E-T-R-O-P-C-S.com. That's how you can find out about its coverage in your area and what the... You can find the local dealers and you can find all that stuff. Right. It's not available everywhere. It's not gonna work in the countryside. That's another thing. It works like in Metro New York City, it works all the way past Newark Airport. It works all the way to Westbury, Connecticut, I think. So it works in the major metropolitan areas, but it's not gonna work way out in the middle of nowhere in the country. Right. But for me, I don't care. First of all, I don't go to those places that often. Secondly, if I do go way out in the middle of the country, I'm gonna be with seven friends who all have a cell phone with Verizon or AT&T or something. So I'll, you know, if I need to make a call, I can make a call. The vast majority of people. Yeah, Milwaukee. It's in Milwaukee, but not in Chicago, so. They'll have it. Yeah, they have really good coverage, I think, in Milwaukee, that whole entire... Well, you look, just go to MetroPCS.com and look at coverage. There's a map of the whole coverage area. It'll show you the whole area that it's covered. Right. So what I end up with, like I say, is one phone for voice and a mobile internet device that I use just with Wi-Fi. And it works brilliantly. I don't miss a call and it works fantastic and the whole setup cost me $45 a month instead of $155 a month. So that's, I'm really happy about that. And the other thing I wanna say really quick, I know it's the very end of our hour, but I wanna say this too, if you haven't already, you might consider this. This month, this last month, I dropped cable TV. We canceled our cable TV box, you know, the cable TV service. We kept the internet connection through it, but we dropped the cable TV. So we don't have a cable box. We're watching all of our TV through the internet now, which is not as bad as you think, because now you can download, you can download pretty much all television and all movies and everything you'd ever wanna see, you can download through the internet now. And if you don't know how to do that, just watch our show on Thursdays because we're gonna get into all that stuff about exactly how to do it. It's really easy. And we watch movies, TVs, everything with commercial-free on-demand whenever we wanna watch it, and we don't have to pay for the cable box. Now, just for canceling that, by the way, like for example, in Manhattan, in New York City, there's no tax on internet service. Our internet service is High Speed Broadband 29.95 a month, no tax. On cable TV, there's taxes up the wazoo, you know how that works. It's like cell phones, there's a lot of taxes. We ended up saving $111.11 a month by canceling the cable box. And we were watching the internet. But we had an inline on top of it too, so that added to it. That's right. Our package included a landline and we canceled that. We never used it anyway. Well, we used it as a fax machine, but we don't need that. You can scan it in and use the email. Everybody uses the email anyway. So we saved $111 a month by canceling the cable TV, a cable box, including the landline and stuff, and keeping only the internet access. We haven't even noticed. I mean, it hasn't been a problem at all. So we save a lot of money by doing that. So cancel your cable TV box if you want. And because we had a full channel lineup on our cable TV, when we canceled it, then they canceled everything except the basic cable, I guess, or something like that. So we can still see some of the cable. No, they're gonna cancel everything. But you watch all your TV through the internet. Right. But at the point. But what I was gonna say was, you cancel your cable box, you cancel your telephone, your landline through it, and I forgot. Anyway, cancel your AT&T on your iPhone and just use it as a mobile internet device to get Metro PCS, you end up saving a lot of money. Right. And I think Nancy was asking Metro PCS have blackberries. No. Metro PCS is pretty much, in my opinion, for what I would recommend using it for is telephone only. So remember, you get that little $29 phone and you use it for voice calls. You use your blackberry or whatever device you have, you use a mobile internet device on WiFi. So my recommended solution, the Metro PCS for the voice and a mobile internet device for your WiFi. You do not, you have to have two pieces with this. If you wanna have the blackberry or the iPhone, you use it on WiFi and because they don't really have the whole smartphone thing for Metro PCS, it's voice. Yeah. Not yet, they're working on it though. We'll see what happens in the future that's yet to be determined. Sure. Our hour is up. Great. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us, guys. We love you all. Lots of kisses to everyone around the world and we hope to see you again and tune in to one of our shows later this week. Same time tomorrow, 12 noon New York time. But you can watch it on demand anytime you want. BruceWagner.com and soon we'll have the whole setup where you can watch it online at brusened.com. Thanks for joining us. Yes, thank you. Same time tomorrow. And follow me on Twitter too, BruceWagner on Twitter and EdwardGal. It's spelled like gel, Edward G-E-L on Twitter as well. Thanks, Gary. All right, bye. Have a happy, happy day and save lots and lots of money. Bye. Bye.