I'm going to try Bugspop1's suggestions. I have Xfinity1 and ATT routers, so it may be perilous and require calling them again for help. Also both routers have been replaced in the past 2 weeks because of other problems: The ATT router suddenly and mysteriously stopped allowing any telephone caller ID and calling features...the technician who replaced the router said he didn't know why this happened or what caused it. ATT provides 3 mbps speed, which is (from my experience) not fast enough for Amazon video, so we use ATT mainly when Xfinity isn't working. We have just one phone connected to ATT. The Xfinity/Comcast router was replaced last week because of tv issues. I got fed up with the poor service on the last cable boxes. All channels not HD were stretched to fit the format of our HD tvs. So all the people on tv look like they weigh 500 lbs. Comcast refused for months to provide info to change this in the setup menu of the cable box. So after hours on the phone to them and several trips to their store, we now have tv that shows HD and SD in the proper formats. I also had to accept yet another phone line from Comcast, their bundle, to save money. Their internet/tv bill was $270. The new bill including phone is now supposed to be $190. The stupid downside to this is the Comcast rep said I have to call Comcast on the phone number they provide, otherwise they won't provide any support. I already have 4 phone numbers so this is very annoying to me. After the cable boxes were replaced the internet router was reset by Comcast when they set up the cable boxes. That evening I logged in to the xfinity web site and saw that some videos would play and others wouldn't. CNN wouldn't play anything at all (though accessing the site outside of the xfinity portal allows some videos to play). So I called up Xfinity support who weren't helpful at all. They actually said they don't support video playback help issues on their own site! So their support is less than adequate imho. I tried the suggestions about changing video quality...Amazon works ok in SD. In HD videos start off in very poor quality and gradually get better. I don't use amazon streaming when I'm out of town because the site only streams in HD and would quickly use up my data allowance. Windows Defender is up to date. Nvidia has automatically updated it's drivers several times since I got the MSI laptop. The MSI also did the update where it installed a new version of Win10 (It took about 17 hours). There isn't any software in common on the two laptops. I tried a system restore on the MSI. It didn't help, but it didn't hurt. I uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe flash several times. If I can get inside the router setup menus is it easy to figure out if the routers are allowing adobe flash video? I'll keep working on this....

maifleur, I don't think you're stupid but sometimes you are misinformed and a bit stubborn about it. Telecommunication and infrastructure investments are all about population density and population levels. Another example of that was how rural areas were so late in getting electricity in the 20th century compared to many urban areas that had it many decades sooner. Today, if you want high speed internet and cell phone coverage, living in a rural area is a choice unlikely to be helpful. "Tracfone buys their feeds but so does every other carrier" Very much not true for the larger carriers. Both Verizon and AT+T operate their own networks (mostly, not entirely) and several of the smaller ones do also, in large part. If not, why would there such wide differences in the coverage maps? "People live where they have homes." People usually live where they have employment, not where they have homes. Are you suggesting that someone who owns a home in a 4 house town in North Dakota is going to stay there unemployed rather than move somewhere they can get a job they're qualified to do? I don't think so. I do remember Roaming charges. I even had that happen not that many years ago when I was up in the Sierra foothills in an area that had some little podunk cellular carrier. When the charge appeared on my bill, I called Verizon and they reversed it. The "R" symbol always appears when I use my smartphone abroad because its connection to a non-Verizon system is a form of "roaming".

chisue, you if you have a Whole Foods near you, you must try their dark chocolate salted caramels. They are better than any I've ever eaten before no matter the cost. They are fresh, I've tried to hunt down where they come from and its a chocolate company in L.I. NY. Please, try these. They are hidden in Whole Foods, no one knows they are even there. They are fresh in a clear plastic container with Whole Foods name on it. In my store they are stuck in a corner in the produce department. They are the best caramels I have ever eaten and I've bought the best. I always loved the Ghiardelli and bought them. But found the Whole Foods ones and thought I'd try them. OMG! Jane

I used to have multiple Yahoo email accounts back when Yahoo clubs and IM were popular in the early 2000s. I had German, Italian, and French accounts (*.de, *.it, and *.fr), and I decided to pretend to be a woman (Thérèse D'Extase) for my French Yahoo profile, and she was also a dominatrix. Unfortunately, this attracted too many friend requests from men in Switzerland and France. I did have a fair number of friends through my German and Italian profiles, but I did get tired of chatting in German and Italian (sometimes at the same time), although I did find it good practice for switching between languages at the drop of a hat - something that I am not the best at doing. I had a long chat in German once through one of the German Yahoo groups only to find out that he was in Los Angeles and American. I lost interest in Yahoo after they stopped supporting clubs. My brother and I had a club called "Venice Beach Bros" and we did meet a few local people through that club, including Bathtub Girl, who used to have podcasts from her bathtub in Venice, just a few blocks from our house. After a while, I found the Yahoo popup IMs to get annoying. At that time I was also doing web design and hosting, and I managed POP email accounts for our clients. I really prefer this time of email to the free email, partly because it allowed me to save emails on hard drives.