Make sure your tech is primed before the family arrives
If you’ve got family descending upon you for the Christmas holidays, then it’s time to up your tech game. From keeping everyone’s gadgets fully charged to making sure your home Wi-Fi doesn’t get bogged down, it pays to make Christmas tech preparations.
Here, then, is how to ensure the holidays run smoothly – at least from a technology standpoint!
Prepare the guest Wi-Fi
When guests arrive, they’re bound to ask for your Wi-Fi password – especially if the cellular reception is poor. To keep everything secure and to ensure the Wi-Fi runs smoothly, you’re better off creating a guest Wi-Fi network.
Most broadband routers offer the option, but you’ll need to check your router’s manual. If so, it will allow you to provide guests with their own network, with its own network name (or SSID) and password.
This is worth doing for several reasons. First, it means you don’t need to dish out your own password, which should be long and complex for maximum security. You can set something slightly more memorable on the Guest Wi-Fi, because it’s more limited in what it can do.
The guest network will be isolated from all other devices in the home, so there’s no chance that someone on your Wi-Fi could access shared files on your computer or use resources such as your printer without permission.
What’s more, you can often place restrictions on guest networks, such as limiting bandwidth or downloads, ensuring your broadband doesn’t get dragged down by visitors.
Boost your charger capacity
Everyone will arrive with smartphones, not to mention any new handheld consoles, tablets, ebook readers or other gadgets they’ve been given for Christmas. Power sockets are suddenly at a massive premium, not least because you’ve got Christmas lights occupying sockets in family rooms where people want to leave their devices to charge.
Get ahead of the game. For example, it might be worth investing in a cheap USB charging station. This model only occupies one power socket, but has ten USB ports – although be warned that it’s limited 5V output will not deliver fast charging.
Alternatively, make use of other USB sockets already dotted around the house for charging purposes. Devices such as smart TVs, games consoles, routers and television set-top boxes often have unused USB ports on them that can be pressed into action for charging devices. They’re particularly well-suited to charging low-power devices such as smartwatches and headphones.
Bring on the party games!
How to get the kids off their phones to play party games? Don’t. Bring the party games to the phones.
The Jackbox Party Pack games are brilliant for this. You host the game on a computer or games console connected to a big screen, and then everyone plays along on their own phone or tablet. You might all have to draw something on your phone and let other players guess what your drawing is, or answer daft trivia questions.
There’s a huge variety of games and lots of different packs to purchase if you get bored of playing the same old challenges. Just beware: some of the Jackbox games can be a little puerile. Tick the family friendly option in the game’s options to ensure you don’t get anything unsuitable for younger players.
Set up multi-room music
Keep listening to the same Christmas tunes as you move from one room to another by setting up multi-room music. If you’ve already invested in a smart speaker system, such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home, this is simple to do.
You’ll find the instructions on how to set up multi-room music on Amazon Alexa here – remember this can apply to devices such as Fire TV Sticks as well as the various Echo speakers.
With Google, follow the instructions to create a speaker group here, while you’ll find the instructions for Apple devices here.
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