What I Use: Mexico City (February/March 2024) (Premium)

Today is our last day in Mexico City after five weeks here, our longest continuous trip outside the U.S. so far. This was a nice proof-point for some future in which we split our time more evenly between two places.

We had various goals for this trip, but the one I’m most interested in is that we’re leaving behind enough clothes that we could fly here in the future without needing to bring a thing. This is the logical conclusion to almost two years of trips in which we slowly brought and then left more and more things here. And now we’re pretty much whole, with everything we need from clothes and toiletries to computers and other electronics, and everything in between. I even bought a second CPAP so I can leave it here. I’m looking forward, almost, to flying home most unencumbered with an almost empty bag. This will be a first, but I hope for it to become the norm.

In some ways, we eased into this. There is something inherently uncomfortable and entitled about even having a second home, especially one in another country. But I try to remind myself that this is OK if only because this modest 750-square-foot apartment is literally all we own. We rent in the U.S. and will continue to do so, and we will keep downsizing as needed to remain as mobile as possible. The future is uncertain.

But this one is in the books. My wife and I have made several trips to Mexico City in where we just lived here, experienced the day-to-day, and tried to map our usual work schedules and lives to this place. That’s always worked out well: Thanks to many years of home swaps during which I honed what I now think of as a More Mobile setup—not to mention ongoing improvements in the hardware, software, and services we both rely on—we can work from just about anywhere. That our place here is, well, our place, only makes it easier. It’s just normal and natural, no different from working at what I still think of home. Even though this place, too, is home.

That said, we’ve both worried a bit that we’ve gotten too comfortable here. Even before we found and then immediately purchased this apartment, we discussed using Mexico City as a base from which we explore the rest of this vast and diverse country. But we haven’t strayed outside the city since we bought the apartment, in part because there’s so much we love right here, and in part because we’ve needed to do so much here to make it a home.

As that came together, we’ve discussed what we think of as side trips, a tradition that started during our home swaps. Perhaps a long weekend in Oaxaca, or Querétaro. And each trip has come and gone with us staying right where we are. Two weeks, three weeks, now five weeks at a time. We talk about it. And then don’t do it.

This time, an excuse manifested itself. Thanks to a new neighbor with a local partner, we were introduced to an incredible handyman who does electrical, plumbing, and carpenter work. We hired him to complete the big-bucket to-do items here: Paint the stark white walls, install a few electrical receptacles, swap out the bright blue/white ceiling lights for warmer bulbs, add lighting above the mirrors in the bathrooms (so I can finally see my face when I shave), and install shelving in the bathrooms. He completed this work in an incredible 4 days, which I still have trouble believing, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. We’ll have him back on the next trip for a few more upgrades.

Also helping matters, our kids visited us last week, and we gave them the option of perhaps making a short side-trip or just sticking to Mexico City. Both of them separately voiced a desire to go do the hot-air balloon thing, so we stayed here and built the week around three big events, which worked out well. And saved us a lot of money because we didn’t have to worry about a big enough Airbnb in some other place.

So I jokingly referred to our time here as a staycation of sorts, but with our Eternal Spring channel on YouTube so focused on Mexico City and Roma Norte especially, sticking to this area is probably not a horrible idea. We did at least accumulate a lot of content for future videos to tide us over until the next trip.

Moving on.

There were a few changes on this trip from a personal technology perspective. The biggest change is a set of long-wanted improvements to my More Mobile setup here. I wrote about these changes in More Mobile: Mexico City Changes (Premium) and An American PC Display in Mexico (Premium), but the short version is that I’ve been using a non-optimal setup here, at least for podcast recording, and though I had made several attempts to rectify this situation over several trips, I finally pushed through and arrived at something sustainable.

The center of this setup, a laptop, will change with each trip. But in general, I prefer using laptops with the biggest screen possible, and my wife and I are both now using previous-generation 16-inch HP laptops of whatever stripe, and this has mostly worked out pretty well. But not perfectly well: The PC I had brought here for my wife’s setup had a weird USB issue that prevented her from working effectively on her More Mobile setup, so I ended up swapping PCs with her so I could reset the dodgy one. It seems to be working better now, but this might have been part of the issue that inspired me to write Meltdown (Premium). It’s hard to say.

Looking past those problems, I mount whatever laptop I’m using at the time on a Nexstand portable laptop stand in a semi-ideal one-cable solution that includes an HP Thunderbolt 4 Dock that’s powerful enough to power almost any USB-C-based laptop and has enough ports for all the connectivity I need. I use Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse (temporarily unavailable for purchase at a reasonable price, but coming back soon) and a Dell 4K webcam that I hope to one day not need as the built-in webcams in laptops keep improving.

None of that is new. But on this trip, I purchased a KDD Microphone Boom Arm Stand and a Youshares shock mount with pop filter big enough to hold my Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB cardioid condenser microphone. This setup isn’t as high-quality as the HEIL setup I have at home, of course, but it was inexpensive and meets my needs nicely: I mount the base of the boom arm to the kitchen counter that my work table sits next to using the included vice grip and it works well. No more silly boxes to correctly position the mic close to my mouth.

I also purchased a Dell P2422H Full HD Monitor. This is nothing special in many ways—it’s smaller than the displays I use at home and offers a lower resolution—but it’s much bigger than any laptop display and is very inexpensive (especially for Mexico, where electronics can be quite expensive), and it’s made a big difference. My wife would like to get one potentially as well, though her desk may not be deep enough. That’s a problem for another trip, I guess.

The other big change is tied to that handyman: One of the two power receptacles he installed is right below my desk/table, on the bottom of the kitchen counter below the stove.

Now, I don’t have to worry about draping extension cables over to the only set of power receptacles in the kitchen, which was terrible and hard to keep off-camera during podcasts. I did buy a Tessan multi-plug outlet extender with surge protection and four USB ports before this change, however, to accommodate all the wires. But we’ll find a home for that elsewhere in the apartment, I’m sure.

Related to that, I keep two Anker 20-watt power strips with extension cords here, and they’re invaluable: Each has three power receptacles, two USB-A ports, and one USB-C port, and I keep one next to the bed for charging devices overnight and one, now, under my desk/table. I also brought the Anker Nano 3 47-watt two-port USB-C charger from home so I can plug two phones into a single receptacle, but I will bring that home with me. Anker equipment is the best.

Our home Internet was stable, reliable, and fast during the trip, with no outages or issues. But I’d like to get a mesh wireless system in here, preferably the same three-node Eero 6E Pro system we use at home, so I can put up some cameras on the balcony so we can remotely watch the sunset up the street while we’re away: The Huawei router we got from Totalplay works fine, but the signal can’t reach that far. But this upgrade, too, is an issue for another trip. Plus I will wait for a sale: The Eero is expensive.

In From the Editor’s Desk: Can You Hear Me Now? (Premium), I wrote a bit about our experiences with two eSIM services, Nomad (my promo code is PAUL65GE) and Airlo (my referral code is PAUL5847), but I had positive experiences with both. Nomad is generally less expensive, though a sale brought down the price of the Airlo eSIM I used at the time, and my key takeaway is that your mileage will vary based on where you are in Mexico because each connects to a different network(s) here. In our neighborhood, Telcel is the best choice for whatever reason, and that’s what my wife’s phone (which is on Verizon) is connected to. I’m using Google Fi for my primary number, and that uses Telmex or Moviestar here, and the connectivity isn’t as good. There’s little doubt I will be making some further changes down the road.

On this trip, we extended our temporary residency here by three more years, and in 2027, we will apply for permanent residency so we never need to go through that again. Among other things, this status gives us a Mexican Registro Federal de Contribuyentes (RFC) number, basically a social security number or tax ID, that will help us get a local bank account and permanent phone number, but we’ve avoided both successfully so far, and we have been able to pay our apartment-based bills successfully. We halfheartedly went in search of a phone number at one point—going with Telcel, of course—but we ended up giving up on it. Yet another problem to solve on a future trip. Or not.

I flew here with two computers: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16 that I reviewed here and the refurbished HP Elitebook that I ended up using. But as I write this, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 that I also reviewed here is being reset so that I can pack it up and ship it back to Lenovo: The company was nice enough to ship it to me here in Mexico City, the second time it’s done so for a review laptop. And though I didn’t travel with it, I did have a solid four weeks of extensive use. And it’s one of those products I’d be happy to own and keep using. Lenovo will soon open a refurbished store, so maybe that can happen.

I’ll also fly home with two laptops: The X1 Fold, as I need to return it to Lenovo, and a now out of date older-model HP ZBook Firefly 14 with a 16:9 display that is no longer viable for screenshots for the Windows 11 Field Guide. I will find a home for it when we get back.

I brought four phones to Mexico City, which sounds ludicrous, and is. But there’s always a reason: In addition to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra that I had hoped to review while here—I will complete that when we get back—I brought my Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and Google Pixel 8 Pro for comparison purposes and to test those eSIM services. I also brought the older Pixel 6a that has the eSIM for our pay-as-you-go Mexico eSIM, though we ended up not needing that. The iPhone and Pixel are terrific flagship smartphones, and while there is a lot to like about the Galaxy S24 Ultra, I’d be lying if I said that I can’t wait to finish up with this frustrating (to me) device and let my wife give it a shot. More on that soon.

In Problems Persist in the Pixel Ecosystem (Premium), I wrote about my issues with the Pixel Tablet, Pixel Watch 2, and Pixel Buds Pro. And since then, I’ve made some changes.

I brought my aging iPad Air here—it will be three years old in a month—and had mostly used it as a base for laptops when I worked from the bed, but after writing that article, I powered it up, updated it, and its apps, and started using it again. And, sorry Pixel fans, but there’s no comparison. I would still like to get a newer tablet this year, but the iPad Air is demonstrably better at just about everything than the Pixel Tablet, but I can’t go back. So I’ll likely recommission it as a smart display when we get home.

I also brought my old Fitbit Charge 5 just in case, and while I probably would have ridden out the Pixel Watch 2, the device decided for me about 10 days ago when it inexplicably stopped charging. I did all the usual troubleshooting, of course, but in the end, I charged the Fitbit and just moved back to that. And I very much prefer it: This is a smaller device that doesn’t get in the way as much, and the battery life—5 to 6 days vs. 1 day for the Pixel Watch 2—is hard to argue with.

That said, I did purchase a Samsung Fit 3 while here, from Amazon in the U.S. (it was too expensive in Mexico), and so I will experiment with that when I get home. This may be the Goldilocks wearable I’ve been looking for as it combines the best elements of a smartwatch (bigger color display, but not too big) with the best elements of a Fitbit wearable (two weeks of battery life). Time will tell, but it’s inexpensive and looks promising.

I wrote about these separately, but I made some big software changes here, too. I moved to Dashlane for password management, and love it for its passwordless authentication. And I moved to LibreOffice Writer for day-to-day (non-book) writing.

That second one requires a bit of explanation.

I am happy with Typora but for one nuisance that’s very specific to my situation: I paid for the thing, and I sign-in with my email address and product key when I install it, but its makers only allow you to do this on a handful of computers. I use a lot of computers—counting a few resets, I used six (!) different computers on this trip alone—and the way that Typora handles this is not elegant, as it requires me to continually find and (re)paste in that product key (plus type my email address twice for some reason). I reached out to Typora’s developers to see about paying more for a perpetual key I’d never need to reactivate, but they took several days to get back to me and then suggested that I use it unregistered as needed. Which involves manually killing a pop-up annoyance window each time. And is, in short, no solution at all.

So I did what I always do and experimented with various options. This included a few other Markdown editors, some promising but none just right. I even went back to Microsoft Word briefly after researching whether it was possible to somehow turn off all those annoying banner advertisements that triggered my exodus from this app in the first place. One tip noted that if you prevent Word from getting software updates, that would work. I took the time to customize a minimalist Quick Access toolbar that provided the handful of command buttons I wanted. But the banners came back. And that’s what led me to research the best Microsoft Office alternatives. And here I am. Using LibreOffice Writer somehow. I could not have predicted this, but the app works great, and so I will continue using it. Crazy.

I make a point of always experimenting with alternatives to the apps and services I use, and while the password manager and word processor experiments noted above were positive enough experiences to warrant my switching, that’s actually rare. More commonly, I go off on some experimental tangent, run into roadblocks, and then go crawling back to whatever it was I was using previously. And while I don’t usually discuss these “failures”—which, honestly, are not failures at all—two that occurred during this trip may be of interest.

The first is something I’ve been working on for months: I love Notion, but it has one major glaring issue. It doesn’t support a reasonable offline mode. So when I’m flying home tomorrow and offline, I won’t be able to access the many, many notes and documents I have in there across Thurrott.com, Eternal Spring, Hands-On Windows, the Windows 11 Field Guide, and whatever else: I use Notion extensively, and while offline use isn’t a day-to-day thing, it’s still a concern.

I’ve tried just about every Notion alternative imaginable, from obvious choices like Microsoft Loop and Obsidian to less familiar solutions like Anytype, AppFlowy, Craft, and others. And none of them are just right. So I will keep looking. But whatever I use would ideally offer offline use in the form of a local file store that I could simply sync via OneDrive or Google Drive. And if it could copy/paste cleanly into WordPress, all the better.

The second failed experiment is similar in that it’s an ongoing effort, and I keep trying and not getting there. I currently use three different graphics apps, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Affinity Photo, and Paint, the app that’s bundled with Windows. And this is complicated, because each is good at some things, or better than some things than the others. And I can’t seem to push back even one of them let alone settle on a single app that can do it all. For example, I use Affinity Photo for the video titles I create for our Eternal Spring and Thurrott.com videos, and while you’d think Photoshop Elements would be up to this task, it’s just not.

So I once again spent a bunch of time experimenting on this trip. I used things like The GIMP and Paint.NET, both of which are inadequate—GIMP is far too complex and Paint.NET is just a basic bitmap editor—and I tried, again, to consolidate between Photoshop Elements and Affinity. In the end, I may just end up sticking with one or the other, but I’m not there yet. If I do, I will get the latest Store version of whichever app I settle on. And while I was vaguely hoping that Paint had somehow evolved enough to meet all my needs, it has not: Its handling of text is laughably unsophisticated. I wish there was a LibreOffice-type solution for this that was free, cross-platform, and easy to use. But there’s not.

As I write this, we’re closing in on lunch, and after that’s over, it will be time for me to pack and see what the return trip looks like. I’m expecting a normal laptop bag experience, but my luggage should be almost empty. I may just leave it here, if so: Perhaps we could go back and forth with one bag from now on.

I can’t wait to find out.