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Sunday, October 2, 2005

Tech News

PC World’s Best 100 Products of 2005 is pretty right on.

eDonkey calls it quits.

BitTorrent gets $8.75 million in venture capital.

Remixed movie trailers:

• The Shining as a Nora Ephron movie
• West Side Story as a zombie flick
• Titanic

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11a-Noon

Zach in West LA - wireless network printing

His HP all-in-one works fine with wired computers, but not his wireless laptops. This can happen when the wireless computer becomes the master browser. Tom’s Networking describes how to fix the Master Browser problem. The entire article has excellent troubleshooting suggestions.

Sam in Sherman Oaks - to buy or not to buy a Mac right now

(He recommends Mueske Hillcrest Farms bacon.) Tough question. If you need a new mac now, buy it now, but if you can wait a few months I would. The new Macs look to be much faster, and the new Powerbooks will really benefit from the Pentium M.

Mike_B in New Jersey - will operating systems become obsolete?

Ultimately, yes, but for right now most developers continue to choose to optimize programs for the OS they will be running on. With more and more development for the net I expect that to change.

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Noon-1p

Dan in Riverside - advice for switching to Mac

Get a two-button mouse - that’s the biggest issue for most Windows users. Despite Apple’s refusal to ship a two button mouse, right-click and the scroll wheel work just fine in nearly all Mac apps.

Other areas that are sources of confusion: there’s no Start menu. Most utilities and recently used docs are under the Apple menu, use the Dock to launch programs. I recommend using a launcher program like the free Quicksilver - it’s better than the Start menu once you get used to it.

Also, Apple puts all menus at the top of the screen, not the top of the window. It makes sense because your mouse always goes to the same place, but it is confusing to Windows users who expect menus at the top of each windows.

Quasimoto adds:
Get a 2 button mouse with “horizontal” scrolling. Great for when you are in Finder with folder view to scroll left-to-right. I would recommend the Logitech MX 1000 Laser Mouse. Rechargable and has additional programmable buttons for other shortcuts.

I tried the “Mighty Mouse” in the Apple Store. If you’re a PC user, takes some getting used to and since its Apple’s first multibutton mouse, not that good. Stick with Logitech. Nice feel in the hand.

Additional resources for “switchers”:
1. Go to this webpage: “http://www.apple.com/switch/”
2. Transfer files from PC to your new Mac: “http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/software.html”
3. Book: “Switching to the Mac: Tiger Edition” see: “http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006608/qid=1128292016/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7545182-2330454?v=glance&s=books&n=507846”
4. Watch this video on a Mac User “switching” to the PC: “http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/01/a_mactopc_switc.html”

Irving in Torrance - XP Problems

His install failed halfway through. Probably best to try again - and make sure to completely format the drive during the install.

Brian in Fountain Valley - motherboard suggestions

He needs AGP and has an Athlon 64. I recommend anything that uses the Nforce motherboards.

Aaron on the 405 - scanner for dental xrays

I suggest a scanner with light in the lid as well as the bed - something like the Epson Perfection 1670.

Cat60- If Aaron doesn’t want to buy a scanner- I digitize my radiographs by putting them on an x-ray view box and take a picture of them with a digital camera (flash off). I can then adjust contrast, crop etc in Photoshop prior to attaching them to a patient file.

Richard in Camarillo - sorting the Program menu

right-click on the menu and select Sort by Name

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1–2p

Marissa in Carson - laptop power supply broken

Her Compaq Presario notebook power connector is loose. All the Compaq repair people are telling her she has to replace the motherboard, but I say all it takes is a little solder. Any suggestions about where to go to get this done?

One caller says find a CB Repair shop!

I’ve repaired a number of Compaq laptops with broken power jacks. It’s a big job because the jack is on the main board that is on the very bottom so everything has to come out then go back in later. I can do it for $90.00 but I’m in the Phoenix area so it would have to be shipped to me for repair, about $12.00 or so each way. I do more DVD recorders these days and have more info on my website here: http://www.drx9000repair.netfirms.com

I didn’t hear all of the problem but I live in North Hollywood and soldering is simple.<billcary-k6rtw@juno.com>

Win in San Fernando Valley - T30 Thinkpad

He has 512MB of RAM but it only sees 256. He replaced the motherboard, saw 512MB for a while, now he’s only seeing 256 again. What gives???

Steve in Phoenix says: Having the 2nd memory connector not work is a fairly common problem in the T series laptops according to the thinkpads.com chat group. Some owners have resorted to putting a piece of foam on the cover to press the ram down into place. Thinkpads don’t use shared memory.

Sounds like the OS or Bios is using part of the ram as shared memory.. The problem you desribed sounds like this could be the problem.

To make sure it is a bios problem i would load knoppix live boot cd http://www.knoppix.org/ this will allow you to boot to a different os, there by eliminating for sure weather it is os or bios, make sure your bios is upto date also. Good luck.

Tammy in Santa Clarita - converting her old 8mm film to DVD

Companies like Video Conversion Experts will do this for 13–45 cents per foot. You can do an ok job yourself with a projector, light box, and digital camera.

Direct 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm film to DVD Conversions. 50 Locations in So. CA. www.swanphotolabs.com

The Library of Congress has a good article on conserving old film stock.

John in LA - Free-to-Air Satellite TV

I only know what I read.

Steve in Phoenix says:
Free To Air or MPEG 2 satellite is good for free digital channels.
Google FTA and MPEG 2 or look on ebay and you can find a
lot of info on it. I’ve been using it for several years to watch G4.
G4 has digital sound though so it requires a receiver that can
handle AC3 sound such as a Vbox ABA2030.

Most of the channels are on Ku band but a few are on C band as
well such as G4. A lot are foreign broadcasts but some are in English
like the news from the U.K. You need a stand alone or pc card
receiver and small Ku or C band dish. Any old DirecTV or
Dishnetwork dish from a yard sale will work for a lot of the Ku
band channels but not the weaker ones that need a larger dish.
You can’t get DirecTV or Dishnetwork though because they are
scrambled. You can only get the Free channels, hence the name.
The skyvision guide is good and also Lyngsat,
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html
http://www.sadoun.com/

Satellite information resources:
www.satelliteguys.us
www.global-cm.net
http://skyvision.com/pages/information_center/fta_channelguide.pdf

Matilda in Burbank - gaming PC is unreliable

make sure it’s not running too hot. Motherboard Monitor works with most motherboards - if it’s running at 50C or hotter look at cooling it better.

klokwkdog in RI says: is computer and/or video “overclocked” (pushed beyond mfr. spec.)? It may be running right near the edge of stability. Check for fan(s) and heatsink(s) clogged with dust. Speedfan for windows will show thermal and fan data without booting to the BIOS. Careful of static if vacuuming (not if humidity that day’s super-low).

Mike in Murietta - Mac testimonial

Tip: Mac OS X swapfile
Open /Application/Utilities
Open Terminal
Type or copy and paste the command below:
sudo dynamic_pager -f /var/vm/swapfile -s “size”
(replace “size” how many bytes you want the swapfile to be, but by defualt it is 67108864 which is 64 MB.) One thing to use sudo you have to enable the root user. To enable root user follow next tip to do this.

Tip: Mac OS X Root User
Open /Application/Utilities
Open Netinfo Manager
Than click the lock in the bottom left cornner of the window or goto the Security Menu, then select Authenticate.
Then go to or go back to the the Security Menu and select Enable Root User.

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