Sunday, August 20, 2006
Tech News
Lithium ion batteries are very dangerous. If they are overcharged, they can burst into flames. There was an instance of when a Dell laptop exploded at a Japanese conference.
After all this news of exploding batteries, Dell is recalling 4.1 million batteries. If you have a Dell laptop, please call 1–866–342–0011.
Also, if you have an iBook G4 or PowerBook G4, there are recalls for those batteries as well.
If you’re not sure if your laptop is having its batteries recalled, go to Google and search for “battery recall [or exchange]” and then your laptop manufacturer.
11a-Noon
Q Jordan from Arizona - Compatibility between PCs and Macs
If OSX can’t network with Windows, you can run Windows on the Mac just in case. If you decide to run Parallels, get two gigabytes of RAM. also, make sure get you an Intel-based Mac. I’d definitely recommend Macs over PCs. If medical school has special Windows-only applications that are demanding on a video card, then I’d recommend a PC.
Q Martin from Long Beach - Converting analog video to digital on a DVD recorder
If you had a digital camcorder, you’d plug it in using Firewire and just play the camcorder. It may actually be cheaper to just go to a service bureau. Several DV cameras have a feature called analog passthrough. You can use that feature to record the analog tapes onto the DV camera and then plug in the DV camera using Firewire.
Q Toni - Printing on an odd-sized piece of paper
You don’t want to get ink on the roller. You need to configure both Word and the printer to print on the size of paper. Do the page setup first. The printer is ignoring your commands! You’ve done the right things. Sounds like a driver error.
Q George - Looking for a new desktop
Don’t get a Pentium chip. You want the cheaper, faster, cooler Core 2 chips.
Noon-1p
Q Odeo Question - Previewing images on Nikon D200 using a monitor
That’s something pros do all the time. I’m not familiar with the D200 specifications yet. Many cameras have video out. I know such a thing is possible.
Q Susan from Texas - Hooking up two iPods to the same computer
If two iPods are connected iTunes should deal with it automatically. The issue is that your iPod is not being recognized. Microsoft offers an autoplay repair wizard. You can see your policies on the computer by running gpedit.msc. I think the autoplay repair wizard is the best thing to run.
Q Odeo Question - Would like to see both clock and date in Windows taskbar
Tclockex will do it.
Q Kevin from Bellflower - RAM upgrades for iMac Core Duo
It’s pretty easy to upgrade the RAM in an iMac Core Duo. Apple has a guide to do it yourself. I bought the RAM for my MacBook at Newegg. Another good company is Trans International. If you’re not going to be running Windows in OSX, 1gb of RAM is fine.
Q Joe from Fontana - CD Drive will not recognize games that are not installed/Getting a new PC
The fact that both drives don’t work doesn’t seem to be a hardware issue. It probably is a software issue. Go into the device manager and check the drives. There are so many things that could have gone wrong. I don’t know exactly what it is. If you have the Windows install disc. You go through the Windows installation, act as if you’re going to install. Eventually the installation will show you the partitions on the drive. At that point, it will allow you to repair that partition. To me it would be your best hope.
The timing is great, all the new technologies are coming out right now. Any of the recent video cards will be great. All the latest games are more taxing on the video card rather than the processor.
Q Lisa from Costa Mesa - Computer brightness settings botched
It may be the monitor. It definitely sounds like something physical happened to the monitor. In the monitor settings, make sure the color profile is set correctly for your device.
Q Mac - Norton Antivirus asking to scan emails…but Norton’s not installed!
It may be a Yahoo thing. Don’t turn off the scanning from Yahoo because you mau just get a virus. The best way to do it would be to download emails from Outlook.
1–2p
Q Odeo Comment - Happyfish
He says Happyfish is a great podcast “catching” client.
Q Odeo Question - Updating Mac Pro video card to X1900-worth it?
It will do fine on Final Cut Pro and Motion. When I get mine, I will probably get the X1900 because it has 512mb of memory. Motion requires more memory.
Q Mike from Australia - Outlook Express links not working
When you use Outlook Express, make sure Internet Explorer is the default browser. The safest way to do this is to copy and paste or manually type in URLs into your browser.
Q Nancy from San Diego - New software all PC, but uses a Mac
You can get the low-end MacBook. Then, you can purchase 2 gigabytes of RAM from Newegg. After that, purchase Parallels. What you can also do is get the cheapest Windows-based laptop you can get, but make sure you get one with wireless networking, and also make sure you have 512mb of RAM and a CD burner.
Q Brian from Westchester - How to work on one file on two notebooks via a network. Text on Canon Pixma is poor, how do I fix?
It does not require a server to share a file. The solution would be to share a folder. This can be done in Windows via the sharing and security option. Gotomeeting (a sponsor of the show) can be used to share control of the same file, however both have to be in the same part of the file. If it is a text document, a wiki can be used which allows you to merge the changes together. File management systems like SVN will allow for file check-in and check-out.
With the Pixma, try reinstalling the drivers or download the latest drivers from the Canon web site.
Q Evan from Simi Valley - How does sites like snipurl make money?
They are not making money. Originally the sites used pop-up ads, but people stopped using those sites. Leo asked http://elfurl.com if they make any money and they said that they don’t.
Chat Logs and Show Audio
Chat logs available shortly after show ends.
Listener Comments
20 August 2006
Hello fellow Leo fans.
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Thanks!
Your search - hijackthis@swbell.net - did not match any documents.
For Toni — on printing on an odd size piece of paper. If I understand this correctly, it is printing on the edge of the paper and on the print roller. Perhaps she is putting it in the wrong side of the paper tray. Does it print on a full size sheet with the text only on one side?
14:21 by anonymous.
Hey BenListening will it make you mad if I get LAST EEZE?
To BenListening:
hijackthis@swbell.net is my email address for Hijack This logs to be sent to me.
Can’t get rid of Gen. Host process for win 32 services,don’t know where it came from.wants to close something, butnothing happens after click ok.
To never2old:
Are you using Zone Alarm?
There is another way to get the date to show in the taskbar without installing Tclockex. First, right click on the taskbar and uncheck “Lock the taskbar”. Then move your mouse to the very top of the taskbar. Your mouse cursor will change to a cursor that has both up and down arrows. When this happens, left click and drag the taskbar up one notch. Then right click the taskbar again and select “Lock the tasbar”. This will increase the size of your taskbar and allow the date to be shown underneath the time.
To Toni who had printer problems. When you changed the paper size and tried to print, the message to configure the print settings should have come up. HP has you using two pieces of paper and you answer how the paper goes into the printer, which side the paper is aligned with, etc. This would have kept you from printing on the rollers.
For the caller with the DVD Recorder, I would think it would have analog inputs. That would be the easiest way.
21 August 2006
Indeed, pulling the taskbar up if one has enough screen real estate and turning off autohide automatically displays the time, day and date for me. I’ve been using it this way for so long I’d totally forgotten there was any other way.
Some update somewhere along the line even put in a sycronization feature (online) so I even know its the correct date and time.
8:38 Monday 8/21/2006
WindowsXP has built in time sync capabilities.
Go to Start, Run & type Control.exe.
From the Control Panel select “Date and Time”.
Select the “Internet Time” tab.
Check the box for “Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server”
Now…if you have Zone Alarm, you will see a Windows service trying to access the internet when you log on…..it is checking the time.
Don’t forget to hit “Apply” & “OK”.
Thanks Ben for the reminder of your show.
Monday’s are bad enough.
— never mind being without any tech news!
22 August 2006
There we go again with the damm spambots (if reading after removal, there were 4 postings at the time, all the same crap) thinking they’re oh so clever and ruining it for the rest of us.
Anyway Leo gave us all the heads up on where he’d be (on a boat playing chess I think) so if you didn’t roll your own podcast this last weedend it could be a while yet before they appear—sorta like the old days but still quicker I’m sure.
My favorite call was Nancy from San Diego—she very kindly stuck to her guns to buy an inexpensive windows laptop becasue all she needed it for was the real estate listing program—so she saved about a grand over Leo’s option. The disadvantage is having two laptops of course but hey, its a thousand bucks less!
If I had time and space I’d get into the theory of why most of us need two machines to save thousands of dollars (of whatever make/model/os)—it has to do with the ever widening gulf between applications/activity that consumes all the computer’s resources, sometimes for hours and hours, and those applications/activity that doesn’t even work one percent of one percent, one percent of the time. Its a method by which upgrading can be done far less and frustration is mitigated at the same time. Chip, box and laptop producers have convinced most that the latest and greatest will solve all their problems though. Anyone who renders a DVD from a highly edited source knows how untrue that is because 14 hours of render time is still as unacceptable as 24 hours, but with a dedicated, fast (Athlon 3200+ range fast) and very cheap (sub $400 for a gig of ram, and 250 gig hd) machine for the high resource activities, I don’t care if it takes 24 hours or 14, and thereby I put the upgrade cycle off many many more years than the manufacturers would hope for. This method won’t work for gamers of course unless they are patient like I am, who only recently finished BF1942 (Battle of Britan rules!) and picked up a copy of Far Cry for $16.57 and am having a ball on my cira 2002 machine (although I think I cheated a little bit and put in a Radeon 9800xt a couple of years ago).
Which is like I said, why Nancy’s call was my favorite—she’s a straight thinker that isn’t cowed by the commercialism of the bright, shiny, and full of false promise, or by wasteful thinking.
I’ll bet Leo has dedicated machines just for editing and rendering eh? Find any holes in my logic?
Leo…You provide a great service! I trust you because you seem to really be involved in whatever ytou are talking about.
Be glad you are not still sponsored by Ipowerweb! Their customer service has really downgraded. Everything was fine with my website for a couple of years, and then it stopped forwarding e-mail. Tech support at Ipowerweb said that it was because I was on a particular server of theirs that is old and they are having trouble with. They suggested that I switch to their newer server and things would be fine. I said OK, but then they wanted to charge me for transferring the files! Feeling that it was not my problem in the first place, I declined to pay and asked, politely, if they would transfer the files at no charge because it was their problem the the e-mail was not being forwarded. They said, sorry no transfer. I could do it myself for free if I wanted too!
So I simply asked them to cancel the two websites they were hosting for me, and I would go someplace else.
Be glad they are not now a sponsor! Now you don’t have to say how wonderful they are!!!
…Bill Allen www.upfrontcoolers.com
Help! Is Acer AMD Athlon 64 X2 Notebook w/512MB, 100GB HD & etc., a good deal? Would it handle Vista? Thanks to anyone who can help me; ‘cos Leo is never available.
23 August 2006
08:33 by .
Those of you who plan to get Adobe “Photoshop Elements V.4,” don’t waste your money.
Try Corel “Paint Shop Pro X.” it makes “Photoshop Elements V.4″ like a kids toy, i.e., waste of money & time or both. I’ve been using “Paint Shop Pro X” for a while and fell in love with it. Only trying to help.
24 August 2006
I can’t speak for PSE4 since I stopped upgrading at PSE2 but I also have Photoshop 7 and Paint Shop Pro 10 (PSPX) and while you can do everything photo-edit-wise in all of them, I find PSPX far more intuitive and precise once I have all the adjustments and scripts customized to my like. PSE2 was never as precise or as customizable or seemed to get me the results I was looking for. Photoshop 7 blows the other two out of the water when it comes to special effects and hard-core manipulation but it also sucks at precise photo adjustment unless you’re at the expert level [maybe]. For instance I’m sure an expert would come up with good adjustments for carify and fade and high pass sharpen and texture preserve smoothing, etc, but in PSP10 they’re all presets I can adjust from…and that makes all the difference in the world for a smart, but not that smart, photo editor.
So hands down for common photo adjustments PSP10 wins for me BUT I’m not as happy with the color balance control in 10—I think it was better in 9. Tubes, or preset graphic images that can be “painted” into an image are a unique and fun aspect of the PSP line as well. For instance I can put a nice old wooden fence across the back-forty in no time flat! I penned up some turkeys and black cats once too—stupid, but fun.
