computers/cellphones/wifi. Rant?

Good morning: I often seem to have problems relating to computer technology that has outrun my education. we seem to have power outages at least every week here in the country, near Jackson, TN. After an outage, which we notice when the room lights go out for a few seconds or hours, we try our computers and cell phones, they sort-of work but we cannot print. Why must we fiddle for hours sometimes to get the printers working?
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Example: yesterday evening my wife handed me a "THUMB-DRIVE" with a Word document on it. I could not get my Word program on my computer to send the document to my printer 5 feet away! Today, when I started my computer, the document printed unexpectedly and perfectly without human intervention.
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I don't know how most of our stuff works.
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I do know that several important devices in our house are powered by (UPS) boxes, which contain a lead-acid battery, similar to my 1941 Ford Model 9N. Wonderful!!
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I do know that some or all of our household devices somehow utilize a THING (ADSL 2+router) made by NETGEAR that is connected to a copper cable that is connected to an ATT PEDESTAL beside the ditch along our road. We have WIFI, but I do not know how it works. I do know I often have to turn on the WIFI feature at my computer startup so I can connect to the internet.
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Our cell phones talk to a cell tower a mile or so from our house, which seems to work ok most of the time. I have driven by the cell tower, it has an auxiliary generator (diesel) marked KOHLER. Modern technology, I suppose??!
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I suppose if I am ever lying injured or disabled in our back field, I will be glad my cellphone works, and has a location feature (which is dependent on satellite communication, I think).
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Maybe I should take a course at the local COMMUNITY COLLEGE to learn more about computer technology. about two gallons of gas round trip for each classroom session; and what is time to a retired person?? HA HA. Just ranting...
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Dennis M. in W. Tenn.
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If you're serious about wanting to learn, use your favorite search tool (mine is DuckDuckGo) to search for info. Google DuckDuckGo and others understand plainly worded questions.

how does WiFi work, what is WiFi, explain Bluetooth, etc will get you more reading material than you can ever plow through. I recommend 'how does a home network router work You'll either be informed or confused. Maybe both, I know I am.
 
DMartin,

If you don't know much about technology, you know more than I do. One thing that I do know is that my Epson printer, which sits right next to my computer, actually
gets its information from the computer via WIFI. There is no cable from my printer to the computer, so, if the WIFI is disabled for some reason, the printer won't
print. It sounds like your computer has queued up a document, but can't send it to the printer. Then, when your WIFI comes back up, the printer prints it out.

But then, I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk technology.

Good luck,

Tom in TN
 
Good afternoon, Tom in TN and others: Tom, I think you have described what happened here overnight. The computer could not find the printer last night, but this morning it found it immediately and printed the document. I have no cable for printer, it relies on WIFI. Thanks much!
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Dennis M. in W. Tenn.
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My go to is fix to shut the computer and printer off for 20 seconds and turn them on again. The same with on the router and modem: shut them off or unplug them for 20 seconds and restart them. I do this while I look for the manual and more often than not everything is working fine before I find the correct page in the manual.
 

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You don't say, but I assume you connect to your printer over WiFi. When power goes out, everything has to reboot. Different devices take different times to reboot, with the result that the printer may try to connect to your router before the router is ready. Wait a couple of minutes once power is restored, then cycle power on the printer; it should then reconnect to your home network.

It's best to connect everything close to your router using ethernet (cable) rather than WiFi. Ethernet is a lot less fussy about reconnecting when the network goes down.

Also, make sure your phones are connected to your local WiFi network after power goes down. They may drop the WiFi connection and use mobile data instead. When they're on mobile data, there's no way to print to a printer on the local WiFi network.
 

I wonder if maybe everything could always run/power by battery, and the battery would recharge when A.C. power is good.
 
> I wonder if maybe everything could always run/power by battery, and the battery would recharge when A.C. power is good.

What you are describing is an Uninterruptible Power Source (UPS). Home office versions have been available for decades, and they're reasonably priced.
 
Yup! My cheap home UPS handles a modem, router and computer just fine, and that keeps WiFi connections working. The printer is too much load for it, having that shut off rarely causes problems.

The lead acid battery in the UPS is generic, last 3 to 5 years and is replaceable for around $25.
 
I don't like the way they make you re-buy everything every few years. The computer I'm using now had windows 7 on it and the power supply went out. By the time I got around to replacing the power supply they dropped the service for 7. The computer would operate but I couldn't access the internet. I had to have someone install windows 10 to be able to use the internet. Then I had some photoshop software on the computer but it wasn't compatible with windows 10 so I'm suppose to buy it again.
 

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