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Sunday, March 6, 2005

Show #124

NOTE: I’ll continue to answer calls after 2p today. We’re recording ahead for an upcoming vacation. Please help me out! Keep calling 1–800–520–1534 from 2–4p. Thanks!

If you’re in Northern California attend the Scleroderma Benefit at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Sunday, March 13. Mary Sue and Susan will be cooking. Tom Arnold, Dana Carvey, Bob Saget and Train will perform.

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Now it comes out that this wasn’t the first time Choicepoint sold our private information to crooks.

San Francisco’s Craig’s List is planning to beam the classified
ads on its site into deep space on May 15. Users are being asked for
consent with a checkbox saying “OK to transmit this posting into
outer space.” The company CEO bought the right to beam the messages
one light year into space from Florida’s Deep Space Communications
Network on an eBay auction.

11a-Noon

Phyllis in San Juan Capistrano - looking for a $300 digital camera

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. You’ll need to add additional memory, so allow for $50–75 more for memory
2. Shop around. Prices vary widely
3. Read the reviews at sites like www.digitalcamerainfo.com. Look for information on megapixel count (you want 4–5 megapixels), optical zoom 3–4x is good, shutter lag should be very short (this may be something you have to try for yourself - it’s hard to quantify).

Models I like:
Nikon Coolpix 5400
Canon Powershot A49
Olympus Camedia 5050
Kodak

Listeners write: There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom by Canon for $199 http://tinyurl.com/4hxtr

Currently $200 rebate on nikon coolpix 5400 at Nikon site.

Mark in Santa Ana - using Adobe Premiere Elements with a USB device

It doesn’t see his USB capture device. I’ll have to check, but it seems like Elements should. However, the workaround for now is to capture the video using the software that came with the USB device then import the digitized video into Premiere for editing. For most USB or Firewire Video capture devices to work with onder Video editing software that is nomtaly not supported you need new drivers and some plug-ins for the one your using.

Bob in North Hollywood - Windows 98 won’t start

The system won’t even boot. No POST code beeps either. There is some sound at bootup and he hears fans whirring, but I’d guess that his power supply is dead otherwise he’d at least hear some POST codes.

Time to buy an Mac Mini, or an Windows Media Center Edition PC with the DISCover PC Gaming Consloe Software. I wound say Media Center PC with DISCover Console and X-BOX for gamers, and Mac Mini or computer runing some kind of Unix for nortmal use.

I would say that he did not clean out his pc from dust and something burned out. I had the same problem a year ago with my old pc and it was because the processor had died from the fan not working. Eventually, my entire motherboard burned out. Word of Advice, Keep your PC cleaned.

Luke in San Pedro - DPI vs Image Dimensions

He says think of Kool-Ade: size of the glass vs. dilution

Noon-1p

Amber in Dana Point - email from Outlook Express

Mom wants to export messages to CD for reading at work. The only good way to do this with Outlook Express is to drag individual messages to the desktop.

Jesse in San Francisco - Mac OS X OCR

Podcaster who covers Disney stuff at The MousePod. He’s looking for an affordable Mac OCR solution. Omnipage is $500. Iris is pricey, too.

Nobody buys OCR at full price. All those publishers offer competitive upgrades for $100-$150. Even though all scanners are bundled with a crippled limited edition of some OCR, you still qualify. So, OmniPage Pro X Upgrade costs $99.99.

Take a look at FineReader by ABBYY Software at http://www.abbyy.com/macfinereader/. This is a reasonably priced OCR product for Macs. I’ve used the prior version on a PC and was very pleased. The price from the publisher (ABBYY Software) is $129.99. I tried the IRIS product (the free trial version) and was very underwhelmed. At least the trial version didn’t have text verification built in. It may have been the trial version, but I still liked the ABBYY product better. TextBridge used to be available, but seems to be PC-only now. —jak (So Cal)
Note that Finereader is not a native OS X application - runs only in classic. —Bill-in-Germany

Rick in Orange - Sony DV Camera won’t connect via USB

Not sure what the problem is, but in general you want to use Firewire (Sony calls it iLink) to import DV video. It’s much faster. Not only is IEEE1394 faster it’s more powerfull and relaebale then USB. If I hand to pick between IEEE1394 and USB I’ll pick IEEE1394. I konw that sound wared coming form on Windows user, but I do belive that.

Casper in Indianapolis - adding a hard drive and reinstalling Me

He has a Dell Inspirion 300 and he wants to put in a new hard drive. Problem is he can only use either a CD-ROM or a floppy - not both at the same time. How does he boot and install Me? Fortunately the Me install disc will boot by itself. Make sure BIOS Setup is set to boot from CD and then restart with the Me disc installed. You can also make a boot CD using Nero.

I never liked ME, in fact I downgreaded back to Windows 98 SE, now I’m use Windows Media Center Edition. I think it’s time for an new PC with at laest Windows XP Home, but I reamen paying the money and get Media Center Edition for ese of use and of corse the DISOcver Consloe Software. If you buy an new PC pelses buy one with both Media Center Edition and the DISocver Consloe Software.

Eddy in Northridge -

(Using Packet8 by the way)
Fixit Utilities
Shell32.dll

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,34362,00.asp
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?shell32
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-024.mspx

Why not use Windows XP’s System Restore Utility to Restore the state of your Machine
to a point before you ran the software that cleaned your registry and renamed some of
your system files. It would have been a good idea to have created a restore point right before
you ran the registry cleaner.

Matthew from NJ

in windows xp pro the auto rebuild of system files is no on by default you must turn it on in group policy editor under administrative templates, system, and windows file protection.

Tamara in Los Angeles - After installing OS X 10.3.8 her G5 takes forever to log in

I’ve checked Macfixit for user problem reports and I don’t see any adressing this issue. It takes her more than 5 minutes to log in both on her account and an unused admin account. Why?

Naturally she should try the standard Mac fix: repair permissions. Mike_B says that helped him after 10.3.8.

This happend to me also, If you are using an airport card try shutting it off. Do about 3 reboots then turn it back on. It worked for me… Jerry from the 1st State.

If you have a lot of fonts, that will cause what you’re describing. See this document forum more information: http://tinyurl.com/63tfm. What I did when my machine was having these issues was to remove all non-essential fonts and replace the ones I needed. I had almost 8,000!…Ricky from California.

MikeMac: You could also check your Startup Items (System Preferences/ Accounts/ Your Admin Account/ Startup Items) and make sure a recently installed application hasn’t added itself to your startup process; this happened to me and the culprit was my HP printer. It was slowing down all my processes from startup to network connectivity. Maybe the update and the problem are just a coincidence. MacFixIt recommends repairing disk permissions before and after installing updates.

CEKinFLA: I’ve used Mac OS X since 10.1 and never had a problem with updates. Here’s my secret: I always repair permissions before doing an update. I run Alsoft’s DiskWarrior to make sure that my hard drive and the directories are in good shape. Most important: I download the Combo updater from the Apple support site—not from the Software Update panel. Disconnect any FireWire or USB devices except your keyboard and mouse before you run the updater! When you’ve successfully applied the update, repair permissions again using the Disk Utility.

Tamara, you can go back now and run the Mac OS 10.3.5 Combo updater and see it that helps even though you may have already applied the update from the Software Update panel.

I’ve used this regimen and never had a problem yet! Good luck!

1–2p

Mark in South Carolina - stuck zipper

After every dozen boots or so his XP machine won’t reboot. He restores the drive from a clean image. It works immediately but fails in the same way a dozen boots later. Sounds like the hard drive is corrupting its data. Make sure the cables are ok, then use Spinrite to test the drive.

Bill in Lancaster - does GPS need line of sight?

Yes. GPS, the global positioning system, uses 24 satellites. To find its location a GPS device must be able to see three or four of those satellites. It won’t work if the receiver is inside, or can’t see the sky. Trimble has a very good tutorial on how GPS works.

Russ in San Bernardino - C++ runtime error

I’m hearing this a lot lately. I suspect it’s poorly written spyware (or a virus). The fact that he first started getting this error while using a P2P filesharing program, Ares, seems to indicate.

John in LA - he’s offering a utility to help Casper

If laptop won’t boot from CD drive, use John’s utility. (I’ll post it here after I check it out.)

Jo in Santa Monica - how to copy a video DVD

She had a DVD made of her granddaughter’s performances in school plays. She copied the files from it to her desktop and burned it to another DVD but it won’t play on her DVD player. That’s because you created a data DVD not a video DVD. For it to play properly in a standalone DVD player it has to be in a very specific format. I recommend just using the Copy DVD command in your DVD burning program. It will make an exact copy of the original that can play on your DVD player. DVD Shrink or Roxio DVD Copy will work.

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