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Saturday, April 24, 2004

Show #33

Show time!

Rick in Santa Ana wants a digital camera and a printer for his computer phobe wife. I recommend the Canon Powershot S400 and Canon i560 printer. They work together so you don’t need a computer to create prints. Any camera and printer combination that support Direct Print will work.

Kathleen in NJ is looking for screen covers for her tablet PC. She doesn’t want to scratch it. Fellowes makes ‘em. I like the Write Shield product, too. I also suggest Klear Screen to keep it clean. It won’t prevent scratches, but it does make the screen easier to write on.

Joe in Torrance is looking for a network controllable wireless security camera. I recommend the DLink Securicam.

Lori is a wedding photographer who has just started shooting digital. She uses iPhoto on an eMac and is having trouble with her photo printers. They don’t like the iPhoto file structure when she uses it to burn to CD. The photos are all in there, Lori, but you should probably not use iPhoto to burn them. Just insert a blank CD, drag the original JPEG files to the CD, then eject it. The eMac will burn them in a way that makes more sense to the photo shop.

Joanna in Orange seven year old drew on the screen with a ballpoint pen. Try Super Seal’s Monitor Lizard. It’s safe but an effective screen cleaner. Stay away from tough solvents like ammonia or alcohol - they can damage the screen.

Dan in Santa Margarita is buying a new notebook and wants some recommendations. I don’t like the Celeron - stick with Intel’s Pentium M processor, 512MB RAM, combo DVD player CD burner, 30 GB is ok. Make sure you get built-in wireless networking. Try the keyboard and pointing device to make sure you like them.

Keith in Marietta upgraded to XP from Me and is still having problems. He did a clean install on Microsoft’s recommendation. If a clean install of XP continues to crash I’d suspect the hardware. Might be time to get a new PC.

Shawna in Lake Arrowhead wants to buy a Sony Handicam that records on DVD. Stop. I don’t recommend the DVD based camcorders because the image quality is much lower than a tape-based camera. I don’t like the Sonys either because their low-light performance is so poor. My camcorder expert Robin Liss of CamcorderInfo recommends the inexpensive Panasonic PV-DV 53. I bought it and have been very happy with the low-light performance. I also think you’ll be better off buying a digital camera than trying tou se the camcorder for stills. Camcorders are 1 or 2 megapixels - that’s just not good enough.

Shane in West Hollywood wants a Tivo recommendation. Done. I recommend it highly!

Mary in Victorville having problems with Windows 98. I recommend she check for trojan horses using the free AVG Antivirus or the online Housecall virus scanner from Trend Micro. For manual removal information visit the Symantec Anti-virus Research Center. She should also install a good spyware remover like Spybot S&D or AdAware.

Mark in Woodland Hills recommends IMSecure to protect his IM clients. He also like Skype for Internet Telephony.

Steve in La Canada does forensics work. He’s analyzing a VHS tape and wants to know how to get the most detail out of it. Take a look at Ocean Systems’s dTective an excellent program used by police departments all over the world from Avid.

John in Fullerton has an interesting conumdrum. He is using a Linksys router to connect to the net. He has two computers: one running XP the other Windows 2000. For some reason when the XP machine is connected to the router he can’t see streaming video. The W2K machine works fine with the router. The XP machine works fine connected directly to the cable modem. So clearly it’s some interaction between the router and XP box. I suggest he check the port forwarding section to make sure the router isn’t blocking traffic to the XP machine specifically. He also should check the firewall section of the router setup to make sure he hasn’t turned on the Zone Alarm support.