What I Use: Mexico (July 2025) (Premium)

Well, it’s been an interesting month-long visit in Mexico, which was supposed to be a two-month trip. But despite the relatively short stay, there were some interesting developments on the personal technology front.

We were originally going to stay until the end of August. But as noted in From the Editor’s Desk: Interstitial (Premium), my daughter unexpectedly graduated from college after passing her final class during the summer semester. And now her school is doing its first-ever summer graduation ceremonies. So we had to change our flights back to earlier in the month. Which is next week, so the return trip is suddenly upon us.

Anyway. We’re pretty well set up in here in Mexico, generally and from a personal technology perspective. So the basics of what we have and use here haven’t changed compared to previous visits. But we did make some changes related to the tech we use here, and there are a few other updates worth discussing too.

Here’s what happened.

Cellular connectivity troubles

I use Google Fi in part because of its terrific international coverage, but this service is frustrating in Mexico City, at least in our neighborhood, because Google uses the Movistar cellular network, which is garbage. I used to experiment with different data eSIM providers to work around this problem. And I had settled on Airalo despite it being a bit more expensive because it had been using the superior Telmex cellular network here.

So, before this trip, I purchased a 5 GB data eSIM from Airalo for about $16, which is reasonable, and installed it in my iPhone. And when we were landing in Mexico City, I configured the iPhone so that I would use that for data and my normal Google Fi eSIM for calls and texts.

Turns out, this was a waste of money. There’s no way to know when, how, or why this changed, but Airalo now uses–wait for it–Movistar in Mexico City. And instead of having a nice 5GB connection on Telmex, I had a mix of 3G and LTE connectivity on Movistar. Twice, since it would fail over to the Google Fi eSIM if connectivity was poor. Which it often was.

I put up with this for about two weeks. And then I finally looked at some other eSIM providers to see whether I could determine if any of them used Telmex. Oddly, Nomad now offers some that do (and some that don’t). So I grabbed a 3 GB data eSIM from Nomad in mid-July, and that was immediately better.

Weird.

“Home office” update

I set up a laptop-based More Mobile configuration on what’s essentially a kitchen table in our small apartment here in Mexico City as per this article, though the laptop(s) I use vary. The basics never change: It’s a laptop, a laptop stand, a USB webcam, an HP Thunderbolt 4 dock, a Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and Mouse, and a USB microphone with an arm stand. But I added a 24-inch Dell Full-HD monitor to the mix last year. Which was … OK.

Several months ago, I got a 15-inch 16:10 Lenovo USB-C display, intending to bring it to Mexico. But over three or so trips, it ended up never making the cut from a “what fits in my bags” perspective. But I finally brought it on this trip, with the goal of using that with the docked laptop in a two-screen configuration, rather than using the Dell monitor. And so that’s what I’ve done, though it required a bit of tweaking.

I have two laptop stands here, and though I assumed that the bigger, higher-quality metal stand would be the obvious choice, the plastic stand that I use for traveling because it folds up so small is actually more stable. So I use the latter for the laptop at the table-based “home office.” When I added the Lenovo USB-C display, I asked my wife if she wanted the Dell monitor, and she immediately accepted, and she’s enjoyed that setup, which is closer to what she does at home. But the Lenovo display needed some elevation so it could be closer in height to the laptop display on its stand, and closer to my eyes’ line of sight.

Naturally, I tried the stand I already had first, as it’s here, and I had gone to the trouble of traveling with this heavy thing on some past trip. But it’s not very stable, and it’s designed for a laptop, not a display. I figured there must be a market for this type of product, a stand or whatever for a tablet or USB-C display, and so I turned to Amazon (and then Amazon Mexico) to see what was available.

It won’t surprise most that there are many choices. There are VESA-like monitor arms that clip to the back of the desk, floor-based stands of varying heights, and a lot more. But in the end, I choose an inexpensive (like, roughly $20) YOMYM tablet stand that’s not available in the U.S., though I’m sure there are many similar products there, too. It elevates the display to a good height, and it’s solid and stable.

But it occurred to me in using it that it could be rotated such that the display was in a portrait orientation, rather than in a more traditional landscape orientation. And that’s how I’ve been using it. The Lenovo display auto-rotates, which is nice, and the 16:10 aspect ratio is better than 16:9 for portrait mode. I usually have Notion with my podcast show notes on that display, which I put to the right of the laptop.

Usually, this is enough. But when I record Windows Weekly, I need to have multiple windows open for Notion, a web browser (for viewing linked articles we discuss), a second web browser window for the video connection with the other hosts, and Discord for the Club TWiT live chat. And that is a lot of stuff that needs to be on-screen simultaneously for the small-ish laptop and external displays.

And after experimenting with various layouts, all lacking it finally occurred to me that I might have a solution right there in the apartment. My wife had been using a similar More Mobile setup with her laptop and an HP USB-C portable display, but now she’s using the Dell monitor and not that external display. So I asked her if I could have that. She wasn’t using it, so I put it on the old, shaky metal stand, in landscape mode, to the left of the laptop. So now I have a three-display More Mobile setup that, I have to say, works pretty well for me.

You know, except for that stand. So while I was writing this bit, a light came on, and I ordered a second YOMYM tablet stand. Which will arrive later today, because Amazon Mexico is amazing. Speaking of which …

Amazon Prime

We have Amazon Prime at home in the U.S., of course. And when we started coming to Mexico regularly, we discovered that Amazon is here, of course, and that our U.S.-based Amazon accounts work normally. And so we can order items from Amazon Mexico while we’re here and have those items delivered to the apartment, and on similar terms, with same-day, one-day, and two-day delivery options (with Prime, see below). The only trick is that some items sold through Amazon Mexico come from the U.S. or elsewhere and incur an additional importation fee. But those are called out, and when we shop at Amazon Mexico, we always go for local items when possible to save money. That’s what I did with the tablet stand noted above.

Our Amazon sign-ins work here, but our Amazon Prime account does not. So we don’t get Prime shipping choices, and each time we ordered something in the past, we would be asked about subscribing to Prime. We never did so, worried that maybe that would screw up our U.S. Prime account. But we ordered a few semi-expensive items this time, and I finally looked up. You can have both, and Amazon Prime is inexpensive here, about $45 per year, and it saves you a lot of money.

The Eero Wi-Fi node I discuss below would have cost roughly $125 here in Mexico. But in signing up for Prime here, I lowered the price to about $75. And so that more than covered the cost of Prime for a year. That’s good stuff, and I’m sorry I waited to look this up and then sign up. But it’s done now, and now that new tablet stand will arrive today. Which, again, is amazing.

Getting prepped for the second NAS

As you may know, I’ll be getting a second NAS while we’re in Pennsylvania in August and early September. I’ll get that set up and configured there and get it syncing with the first NAS. And then I’ll bring it to Mexico in mid-September and set it up here. And then the two can spend the rest of their lives syncing between here and PA.

Our apartment here is tiny, just 750 square feet or so, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a small laundry room in addition the main living space, a single room with living room and kitchen areas. The Internet router is in that living room space under the TV, and in an ideal world, the NAS would be hard-wired directly to the router.

This isn’t an ideal world, so I have to make do. We have an Eero Pro 6E Wi-Fi router attached to the router, and last year I added a second Eero router, this one an Eero 6 unit, in the bedroom so the signal could reach the Blink camera that’s out on the balcony. And that was the start of an idea.

In Pennsylvania, we have a three-node Eero Pro 6E Wi-Fi system, and we probably need a fourth node, not because the place is all that big, but probably because of the construction blocking the signals a bit. Originally, I had placed one of the secondary nodes in our living room space, but if I play Call of Duty from the bedroom, I get lag. So I moved that node into the bedroom where I can connect my laptop to it using Ethernet, and that “solves” the problem. And so I figured I could do something similar with the NAS that’s coming to Mexico.

To test that before the trip, I temporarily connected the NAS in Pennsylvania to one of the secondary Wi-Fi nodes instead of directly to the router (through a switch), which is in my home office. This worked fine, as it turns out, and though I didn’t really measure the speeds, based on what I see with COD on the laptop, my guess is that it’s better than straight-up Wi-Fi, though not as fast as being connected to the router directly over Ethernet.

I don’t want the second NAS under the TV in Mexico because of the sound. It’s not overly loud, but it’s noticeable, and I sit in that room to work every day, and it would be problematic. I’m also not going to put it in the bedroom for obvious reasons. And so I figured I could get a second Eero 6 Wi-Fi node and put that and the NAS in the laundry room, which is right off the kitchen.

Looking around the apartment after we arrived, I made a slight alteration to this plan. The NAS will still go in the laundry room, but I’ll put the Wi-Fi node on top of the fridge in the corner of the kitchen, drill a hole in the wall between the kitchen and the laundry room, and then connect the two via Ethernet, with the wire going through that hole. That way, the Wi-Fi node signal won’t be blocked by the concrete construction of this building.

I need a place to put the NAS, of course, so I spent a lot of time looking at different shelving solutions, online and in stores here, including options that might go around and over our washing machine. I obviously don’t want this thing near the floor, given the water coming into the room and the possibility of a leak. In the end, I went cheap, but effective. We had a plastic shelving unit in there with four shelves. And so we just bought a second one (roughly $20 US at the local Woolworths) and stacked them after removing the top shelf on the original unit. Plenty of space.

I was looking at the Eero 6 Wi-Fi node I had purchased previously, and it’s small enough that traveling here with it wasn’t a big deal. But I was surprised to see that I could get it cheaply from Amazon Mexico ($75 with Prime, as noted above), as electronics are normally very expensive here. So I ordered it and it’s set up and configured, and just waiting for the NAS. And that hole in the wall. We have a guy, so that will come together quickly.

Power, UPS, and voltage regulators

When we purchased this apartment in Mexico, we had to buy a refrigerator and washing machine, which we did, both at the local Home Depot. And we were advised in both cases to buy a voltage regulator to put between each appliance and the power receptacles because of potentially spiky electricity that might be problematic. These things are boxes that, to me, look just like uninterruptable power supplies (UPSes). And they just sort of sit there and do their thing.

I can’t say that the electricity here has been particularly unreliable, and we’ve never really had any issues with the power going out, and certainly not for any amount of time. But you want expensive appliances to be protected, and now that we’re bringing a NAS here, I will need a UPS for that. And a lengthy Ethernet cable, actually. I can buy the former locally. And I will bring the latter from home. (I have an article in progress about cables, so I guess I’ll have more on that topic soon.)

Anyway, we did have two minor power outages during this trip. And by minor, I literally mean that the power went out for one full second and then came back on immediately, both times. So no big deal, but in each case, it was enough for the Internet router to lose its connection, and those things take a minute or two to come back up.

Two one-second power outages, and possibly three minutes of downtime aren’t reason enough to spend $75 on a UPS, I guess. But I have all these electronics around the TV–two Apple HomePod Mini speakers, the Internet router, an Eero 6E Wi-Fi router, and an air filtration device, plus the TV itself–that all need to stay plugged in. And I had been using this weird Koblenz voltage protector with six power receptacles behind the TV, plus a cheap power strip, and it’s always bothered me.

This ugly thing connected directly to the two power receptacles behind the TV, it’s size meant the TV stand was further from the wall than I wanted, and it felt cobbled together. Worse, its six power receptacles are on two rotating stalks on each side, and they don’t hold the plugs well. So I would also push the TV stand up against this mess to help hold the plugs better. Stupid.

Anyway, I finally had enough, and we walked over to the nearest Office Depot to find a UPS that would sit under the TV stand and let me push the TV stand back where it belongs. I found a CyberPower UPS with a battery that’s allegedly good for two hours, so the Internet should withstand short power outages. Which we have obviously not experienced since I bought this thing. Whatever, it’s a huge improvement. And I can’t believe I waited this long.

Other changes

In From the Editor’s Desk: Interstitial (Premium), I described the battery pack upgrade I made to the Blink camera out on our balcony here, and the laptops and other gadgets I brought on this trip. Some of that is staying here, including the Nixive MagGrip Mini Tripod Pro that I had purchased to replace a cheap mini-tripod we had here that wasn’t working well, some CAT-8 Ethernet cables, at least one Thurrott-logo gadget bag, and whatever else.

My goal is to fly home with as little as possible, as always. But I have some items I’m not sure what to do with.

I’ll have at least four laptops here when all is said and done, maybe five. This is important for all kinds of reasons, including testing various Insider channels and upcoming new Windows 11 features. But I feel like I need a Chromebook Plus laptop here, too, and maybe even a Mac. I don’t know.

There are two Amazon Echo Dot speakers here that I purchased so I could use them as Eero Wi-Fi extenders, but that functionality isn’t supported in Mexico, so maybe they should come home. Again, I don’t know.

I flew here with three phones, and those are all coming back. I have multiple sets of earbuds, too many, so I will leave at least some here. I need to sort through all this. And probably today, given the schedule. As always, I need more time.

Looking ahead

We fly back to the U.S. on Tuesday, August 5, so just two days more. And this coming week will be a bit busy because my daughter is graduating from college. So we’ll be heading down to Charlotte, North Carolina by car on Friday and will be there through the weekend. And we’re stopping in Washington D.C. for two days on the way back. The rest of August is pretty open, so I’ll order the second NAS and the drives and extra RAM so that they arrive that month and I have time to configure the system And there is that Google Pixel event on August 20, with the small possibility that I’ll get whatever new Pixel folding phone.

September will also be unusually busy. I’ll be in Berlin for IFA 2025 early in the month, and then we’ll be back in Mexico sometime mid-month, so I’ll bring the second NAS there then. And then we head to Hawaii for Snapdragon Summit and the second-generation Snapdragon X reveal in late September. So we’ll fly there from Mexico and then return here and stay in Mexico until mid-to-late November. That’s a problem, maybe, for the September Apple event. The timing will determine whether I get a new iPhone, so we’ll see.

During the next trip to Mexico, I’ll get the second NAS set up here in the laundry room with its own UPS and that long Ethernet cable. And hopefully that will work fine. Based on my experience with the first NAS, I suspect it will work wonderfully, and I’m looking forward to making it happen.