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Saturday, March 6, 2004

Show 19

I’m broadcasting from the Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort this weekend then it’s off to New York to appear on Live with Regis and Kelly on Tuesday morning. I’ll have to update show notes when I get back. Stay tuned!

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We’ve been talking about security and the Internet rumors that $20 bill contains RFID tags. Prison Planet.com says they know this because the RFID Tags explode when you try to microwave a $20 bill. We haven’t had much like trying this on our own.

For more info on RFID technology check RFID.org or the RFID Journal.

John from San Diego wants to know about emails that come with replies that appear as attachments.

Be very careful about opening attachments.

You can configure your email program to add previous messages in a thread as attachments, but this is a very bad idea. If you get an email with a reply that appears as an attachment, you can’t fix it. The person sending the email will have to.

Older versions of email programs do this. Make sure to tell your friends to always download the latest updates and patches for their email program.

Nathan from North Hollywood has a desktop and a laptop with Norton Antivirus 2002. The laptop subscription has expired. Can he use the desktop subscription on his laptop?

Norton Antivirus Professional includes a license for two computers, but most of them do not.

We suggest you download Grisoft’s AVG. It is totally free software and is just as good as Norton. You can download it here.

I don’t run antivirus. I never open email attachments and I always run updates. If you’re a seasoned computer user and you use good comptuer hygiene, antivirus software may not be necessary.

Sandy in Tennessee has MSN messenger on her husband’s new laptop. It always shows him offline, even when they know he is online.

It sounds like there is something off in the settings. Open MSN Messenger and go to Tools -→ Options. Also, check the privacy settings. A good way to troubleshoot is to open the settings in a Messenger that works and make sure all the settings are exactly the same.

Also, if he’s using Windows XP check to see if Internet Connection Firewall is turned on. Turn it off and see if that helps.

A Word of the Current State of Viruses and Worms

We’re in the middle of a Virus Storm, a War of Worms. Authors of Mydoom, Bagel, and Netsky are fighting it out inside virus code.

Viruses look very official. Some even look like they come from your ISP. If you get an email with an attachment claiming to be antivirus software, it’s probably a virus.

Tell your friends. Don’t open attachments, especially if they look official.

A good ISP will block them in the first place.

Paul from Venice has become a spammer and it’s not his fault. He gets over 100 return spam mails a day, but he’s not sending anything out.

Unfortunately, a spammer is using Paul’s address as his return address. This is called spoofing. This often happens if you have a common name. There may be nothing you can do but filter out the emails and learn to deal with it. This too shall pass.

Dan in LA has a question about using iCal or the Palm Desktop in OS X. The next version of the Palm OS will not be Mac compatible. Try Mark Space for a compatibility solution.

Jim in Fountain Valley just got a computer and was surfing the net. He went to a magazine site and started entering his information and it filled in the rest. How does this magazine know all his information?

They don’t. This is a feature called Autocomplete or Autofill (on the Mac). The information is contained in your address book or when you registered your software. It is in a secure file on your computer.

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David in Mission Viejo wants to know about multiple monitors. How do they do that with only one AGP port?

First, why do people use multiple monitors? For extra real estate.

You need a dual head video card. Try Matrox, ATI, or Appian.

Or you can put in one PCI card and one AGP card, but that’s a little more difficult.

Angelo from New York City is looking for a spyware removal system for his PC.

Try Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. It’s OK to use two programs at once. Make sure you update whatever spyware removal program you use with the latest spyware definitions.

Angelo also has a problem with Panther on his G4. He can’t get it to recognize his SCSI drives. Only OS 9 will recognize them. Angelo, you need a driver for the SCSI drive. From Apple’s point of view, SCSI is an old technology.

You might even want to take out the SCSI drive and replace it with internal drives that would be cooler, faster, and probably more reliable.

Jill from Los Alamedas is looking for a digital music player that she can use to play MP3s and listen to AM Radio.

Radio Your Way from Pogo products. It plays MP3s, AM radio, and it works a little like a VCR for radio. You can program it to record radio programs at a later time or date.

It’s only 32 MB. You’ll have to buy additional SD cards to store more music.

Dawn in Santa Anna just installed a new Lexmark printer on Windows Me and it kicked off her old Compaq printer.

You should be able to have as many printers as you want. It could be a driver problem or a problem with Windows Me, but there is no easy solution.

Tony from Brooklyn says his mom is getting a new computer and he wants to know how to set up her user accounts. Should she run as administrator?

No. She should run as a limited user and it will be harder to get viruses and harder for her to accidentally delete important files. Tony, create a limited user account for her, but also create an administrator account so she can download and update software when she needs to. Remind her not to use the administrator account on a day to day basis.

Caroline from Toluka Lake wants to know how ion hair dryers really work. They work by reversing the static. They also have hair dryers that use infrared to create radiant heat.

She also wants to warn people about spyware that she got when she was trying to download an MP3 from a free site. Even Ad Aware wouldn’t get rid of it. It imbedded itself into the Windows startup program. She had to go into regedit to remove it.

Al in San Diego reinstalled Windows 98 and cannot get Internet Explorer to work. It sounds like a problem with the cable modem settings.

In Windows 98 you want an automatic IP address (as opposed to a static one).

Here’s how to troubleshoot:

• Make sure you have a physical hardware connection. Check the back of your computer for a green link light.
• Ping the router. Click Start → Run → Command. Then type ping and then type the router’s IP address to see if you get a response back you should be able to transfer data back and forth.
• Release and renew your IP address. In Windows 98 go to Click Start → Run → Command. Type ipconfig/release_all and then type ipconfig/renew_all
• See if the DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) is working. In Windows 98 Click Start → Run → Command. Then type ipconfig into the box. Then you can determine if you’re getting an Internet address. If he’s behind a firewall, it should be a private address.

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Robert from Huntington Beach is a teacher at Citrus college and wants to give the students access to the files on his laptop while they’re on the network.

Robert is using XP Home so he can easily used the Shared folder.

First turn on file-sharing. Then open My Computer and put files in the Shared folder. Then click on “Share this folder” and a wizard will walk you through the process.

Nancy from Lake Forest has a problem with inappropriate content showing up on her computer every time she turns it on. She thinks this is happening because her granddaughter accidentally went to an adult site while she was shopping for shoes.

It sounds like her homepage is hijacked.

First change your homepage. It should stay that way. If it doesn’t, then you’ll need an anti-spyware software like Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware.

Also, go to Google and click preferences to turn on Safe Search. Search results will no longer contain adult sites.

Tom in Mission Viejo wants to change his BIOS setting to reformat the serial port.

When you boot the computer press F1, F10, esc, or delete. (This key changes depending on the type of computer you’re using. Check your manual if those keys don’t work.)

Instead of going into Windows you’ll go to the BIOS setting. (Warning: Stay away from the BIOS if you’re not an expert or if everything on your computer is working OK.) The BIOS is where you can change your configuration. You can also do this by writing software, but that’s a little more complicated.

Tom also wants to know how to move music files from an old computer to a new computer, but some of the individual files are too big to fit on a floppy.

If it’s a few files, you can zip them and then they might all fit. If it’s a lot of files the easiest thing to do is pop open the old computer, pop out the drive and pop the old drive into your new computer. The drive will show up on the desktop of the new computer and you can move the files over easily and quickly.

The main thing is to make sure you have all the drives jumpered correctly. (The instructions should be on top of the drive.)

Katiana in Orange is networking her computer at home wirelessly. She has all her hardware installed, but doesn’t know how to get all the computers on the Net or how to get the computers to talk to each other.

Getting them to talk to each other is easy in XP. Unfortunately, Katiana is using Windows 98 and Windows Me.
Go to My Computer, right-click on properties, and choose the Device Manager tab. You should see the network card. If not, then you haven’t installed the card properly. If this doesn’t work, press F1 in Windows for step-by-step instructions.

Setup really differs depending on the harware. Katiana is using a Netgear router, so she might get the best instructions on the Netgear website. They have a great configuration tool right on their site.

Edward in Santa Anna is running an 802.11b wireless router at home that doesn’t work all over the house. If he upgraded to 802.11g would he get greater distance on the wireless router? No. The opposite is true.

The 2.4 gig phones could be interfering. Try to change channels or reposition the router, but don’t go to 802.11g.

Also, what program do Web masters use to create graphics? Macromedia Dreamweaver is the standard. It comes with Fireworks, which is designed for web design and integrates nicely with Dreamweaver. You might also want to try Macromedia’s newer program, .

Drew from Manhattan beach wants to know if it’s better to wait for the new 64-bit chips for gaming or not.

Don’t wait 6 months for 64-bit since no new games use it yet and there’s no 64-bit operating system yet. Ultimately 64-bit will be the best, but not in 6 months. You’ll get the best bang for your buck with a high-end Athlon. Check benchmarks at Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware. If you want to overclock, check Overclockers.com.

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