2015

Product Replacement TODOs

  • Carrier: AT&T => T-Mobile
    • Many ethical reasons why that are mostly surveillance-related
    • T-Mobile's network is now excellent in highly-populated areas, but still lacking between cities. Is this good enough? Hopefully...
  • Search engine: Google => StartPage.com
    • Also for ethical (surveillance/centralized power) reasons. I've tried switching to DuckDuckGo and StartPage before, but their search results were too poor to tolerate, but I'm now more determined
  • Maybe phone OS: Android => Ubuntu Touch
    • I could at least run Ubuntu Touch on a used Nexus 4 (< $150 used), which could tether to my other phone (I know, right?) -- a Nexus 5 running Android -- to get internet access when wifi is out of range

Progress

2016.03.29: (1) I'm still on AT&T. T-Mobile's coverage was finally getting good enough, then they had to go and throttle :-\.

(2) I've switched my default search engine from Google to Disconnect Search (here's how; see "Web Search" section), which is working great.

(3) I bought a Nexus 4, put Ubuntu Phone on it, and developed CrypTag Scope for it! Still using Android on my Nexus 5 as my daily driver, though. Can't wait for Ubuntu Phone to do everything I need!

2015.01.09: A week or two ago I changed my default search engine on my main computer to StartPage. So far, so good-enough.

2015.01.08: I'm reading some anti-reassuring things about T-Mobile's network in my area that's making me hesitate to switch, though my coverage was very good in the limited places I went when trying T-Mobile for free for a week.

Hmm...

I could pre-pay for a couple gigs of data on T-Mobile and travel around a bit to see if their 4G LTE coverage is good enough... Not sure what I'll do.