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Sunday, February 22, 2004

Show 16

Coming up today…

My “moblog” is online at leoville.textamerica.com. Checkout TextAmerica’s main site for all sorts of interesting moblie phone photo albums, including the San Diego fire archives.

Steve in Irvinehas a two year old Dell that won’t boot, but he does get POST codes: a series of beeps designed to tell you what’s wrong when it’s so bad that the computer can’t communicate with you on the screen. The wonderful PC Guide has a list of post codes and what they mean.

Ed in LA has a Macintosh Titanium Powerbook won’t burn data discs. It can make music discs with iTunes but the Finder level burn doesn’t work: it creates coasters. You could try a third-party burning program like Roxio’s Toast

Jim in Hemet wanted a recommendation for an anti-spyware program. It’s ok to have more than one. I recommend Spybot Search & Destroy and Adaware. In fact every computer user who goes online should have three types of programs running all the time: a firewall, anti-virus, and spyware killer. My recommendations for free programs in those categories:

Firewall: the Windows XP firewall is ok and better than nothing, the new firewall with Service Pack 2 will be even better, but until then use ZoneAlarm.

Anti-virus: The free AVG from Grisoft is just as good as any commercial program. Make sure to update regularly to protect yourself from new bugs

Spyware: The free Spybot and Adaware should do the trick. Pest Patrol is a good choice if you have bigger problems with spyware or trojan horses.

Maria in Beverly Hills looking for multi-function printer with a built-in fax (many of the inexpensive units use your computer’s fax modem, which means the computer has to be on to send or receive faxes). PC Magazinerecommends the $500 Brother laser printer MFC-8420. They also liked the lower cost Brother HL-5040.

Monica in Santa Monica is buying cable Internet service from Adelphia. They want to charge her $85 for the cable modem, but can’t she use her old dial-up modem? Unfortunately not - even though they’re all called “modems” your DSL, dial-up, and cable modems are completely different beasts. You may be able to save money by buying a cable modem from a retailer, though. Check with your cable company to find out what kind of modems you can use - in most cases any DOCSIS capable modem will work.

Valerie in Laguna Nigel just bought a laptop and was wondering about buying an extended warranty. I don’t usually recommend them - I prefer to self-insure. But it does depend on how good the original manufacturer’s warranty is. If it’s a year or more parts and labor I’d say forget the extended warranty. On laptops ask if the warranty covers the screen, and ask what kind of damage it covers. What happens, for instance, if you drop the laptop or sit on it? If the warranty only extends the manufacturer’s warranty, forget about it.

Rick joined us from MacMerc to tell us about the Pepsi iTunes hack. Let’s see if KFI can equal the SlashDot effect.

Paul in Monrovia Mac Beige and White G3 - after a power outage he gets the blinking diskette. He reinstalled OS X and it worked, but the problem resurfaces when he unplugs the system. He replaced the battery (good call) but it still happens. He also got an interesting error picture of a hard drive with a bite taken out of it(!). Apple describes the error pictures here.

I’d suggest first zapping the parameter RAM by holding Command-Option-P-R during boot. Wait for a few beeps then let the machine restart. You may want to reinstall the firmware, too.

Chris in San Bernardino is having trouble with Norton Anti-Virus. When it’s running his video driver reverts to 16 colors and 640×480. Ick. The problem with a program like NAV is that it has to put its hooks deep into the system to protect you. And this can cause isolated problems. I haven’t seen this particular problem before - and there’s no mention of it on the Symantec support site - but the easiest solution is to use a different anti-virus. Try the free AVG from Grisoft. It’s just as good and less intrusive.

Vern in Santa Barbara system pauses during surfing, word processing, DVD playing. First check to see which XP service you can turn off at BlackViper’s site. If you notice a lot of modem activity during the slow downs your computer may have been co-opted by a hacker. Make sure you update your anti-virus and check your system!