Ask any one of my friends or family members and they will tell you what a klutz I am when it comes to losing or breaking a technological device. Conservatively speaking and without doing any actual research or digging for receipts, I would say that I spend at least $500 a year replacing gadgets that I've either lost, broken to the point of no repair or had to spend money on in order to repair. The good news for me however is that I'm not alone. A radio station polled its listeners recently and found out that 42% of people who have broken their phone do so by throwing it in the washing machine accidentally, among the other methods people have found for breaking their valuables.numerous other methods listed.
Photo Credit: DreamsTime.com
With 15 solid years of losing and breaking things behind me (I'd list more years but I didn't really own anything until I got to high school), it's only fair to share with you what I've learned and give you an action plan that is both proactive and reactive, and offers you the best case scenario whenever your technology situation goes awry.
Taking Care of Your Smartphone
If you have a walker like me and you're a guy, chances are you own walker bags which are designed to carry your belongings, or as I like to call them man purses or European carry-ons. I've successfully managed to crush several phones in such bags. Don't keep your phone in a bag that goes alongside heavy equipment a.k.a. a walking device. Also when you get into a vehicle or are separated from your bags, keep your phone in your pocket and if you don't drive a car, then don't take your phone out of your pocket until you've left public transportation vehicles with your phone in your possession. You might get lucky once or twice but generally speaking losing your phone on public transit means it's gone forever. Also don't take your smartphone into the bathroom stall with you, because even though your natural response to germs will kick in when you've dropped your phone in the toilet, you'll go against logic and put your hand in there to fish it out, and that's not something to be proud of. Especially once you've found out that it's too late and your phone doesn't work anyway. Thanks a lot water!
Making Sure Your Internet Connection Is Always Solid
There's nothing worse than wanting to stream your favourite TV show, a good movie or the big game only to realize that your internet connection is down and that the stream won't stop "buffering" anytime soon. When this happens to you, the easiest thing to do is look at the bottom right of your Windows computer icon tray or the top right of your Mac icon display and see if the little Wi-Fi icon is showing that it's disconnected. If it is disconnected, you should try these troubleshooting methods in order:
•Try simply clicking the option to reconnect.
•Restart your computer. If the connection doesn't reconnect automatically, reconnect by clicking the appropriate option.
•Reset both your modem (by unplugging the power button for 10 seconds) and your Wi-Fi router (again by unplugging it for a few seconds) and then reconnect the devices. Go back to your computer and see if your connection is re-established.
•Call your Internet service provider.
Usually if you implement the first three steps you don't have to worry about calling your provider in my experience. That said, it's also your responsibility to make sure you maintain everything with secure passwords that only you and people who are meant to use your network know. One thing I would suggest is being proactive with maintaining your Wi-Fi connection and the security of it. There's a free app that you can download called WiFi Analyzer - Home WiFi Alert that will track everything for you and let you know if there's a problem with your connection or security level. I've had my banking information stolen via my Internet connection so I don't take any chances these days and you shouldn't either.
Tracking Lost Devices
There's no worse feeling in the world to me than having something and losing it, especially when it's all your own fault. I personally go through a grieving process where I tell everyone on Facebook that my phone is lost and they have to email me because I inevitably know that somebody will feel bad for me and feel my pain. In fact the current phone I have is only a month old. You can guess why that is. I've never owned an iPhone before but for Android users, there are two solid options. One is to use the phone's built-in Android Device Manager (note that you have to allow the application to lock your phone and erase your data, which is turned off by default). Another option if you currently have your phone in your hand is to download the free app called Android Lost. While you can download the app without having the phone in your hand it will be easier to go through the settings and put together the preferences the way you want them.
For devices that are not phones you could always consider investing in a wide variety of key tags and GPS trackers that you can attach physically onto devices so that you always know where they are. Most of these devices come with their own apps, which means of course you can't lose your phone if you want to track other devices with it. I'm in the market for one such device these days and the only reason I haven't purchased one yet is because most of these physical tracking devices are limited to a certain range of distance, which won't really help when you've left your precious electronics on a bus that's heading downtown while you're walking to your home in the suburbs.
Hopefully you learned something from my experiences. Apply these lessons and you won't have to be that dude or dudette on Facebook and telling everyone that you've unintentionally disconnected from the world while you wait for condolences to show up in the comments section.