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...