Behind the scenes of NZ Mobile plans

By Lindsay,
It's time to look at my mobile phone plan, as the 2 year anniversary is up.  Lets go and look at the plans available from the 3 main mobile carriers.  Hmmm...

What do I get for $60/month (my current Smartphone Plan)

Telecom - 100 mins, 300 txt, 1Gbyte data, up to $250 off a mobile when signed up to a 24 month term.
Vodafone - 100mins, 2500 txt, 1Gbyte Data, up to $300 off a mobile, plus 1 NZ Best mate (1000mins)
2 Degrees - 210 minutes,  2500 txt, 150 Mbytes data, plus 100 minutes per month for life.


My current plan with Vodafone has been called 'retired'.  It's similar to the Vodafone plan above, except I get free PXT's, and 3 Gbyte Data/month.

My analysis of the above plans is as follows:

1.  Bear in mind I looked at only 1 plan per telco that was closest to what I already had.  Each telco had many many plans, including pre-paid, and some with additional add-on packs etc.  Also there were special offers based on handsets.  The situation is very very confusing for someone thinking of moving or renewing.  Also the churning of old plans to be replaced with new plans also adds to the confusion.  Confused? 

2.  Vodafone seem to offer the best deal, especially with the best mate add-on giving you an extra 1,000 minutes per month.

3.  There really isn't any competition amongst the telco's.  I suspect that they are all happy to extract maximum return from their customers.

4.  What happened to the data plans?  I think that the mobile networks are hitting bandwidth overload, and that alternatives such as Skype and Viber, were seriously affecting the normal call minutes.  And PXT's have dissapeared as a free option (I currently have 1000 pxts/month).

I will remain with my current 'retired' plan in the meantime.

How to Protect your notebook data

By Lindsay,

Notebooks are very popular amongst thieves. You may think that becuase you have a user password to log onto your notebook that your data is safe. Not so. 20 minutes and a cup of coffee and your notebook hard drive is an open book to a 13 year old with just a small amount of IT knowledge. The key concept is that even though your notebook has a log on, by taking out the hard drive and connecting it to another computer access to the data on that hard drive is just a click away.

The answer is to have a program that encrypts the hard drive. You will typically have an added pass phrase to start the computer, then your normal log on is required. But the encrypted hard drive cant be read by any other computer, and the encryption can't be cracked by anyone - ever. I use Truecrypt myself (www.truecrypt.org) although versions of Windows come with BitLocker (which does the same thing), or utilities in notebooks that also do the same thing.