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Sunday 15 April 2007

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Tech News

Guests

Q Paul Thurott - Windows Vista tip

• Select one of a few windows and then click another one while holding the control button
• Then select the option to hold the windows side by side

Q Adobe Creative Suite 3 (Photoshop)

• Photoshop CS3 has all the features needed for pictures
• Extended version helps render 3d images
  • Doesn’t have any RAM overhead
• Tried to speed up boot time
• Layer alignment feature in CS3 will help you stitch various layers

Q Ron Rossberg - Delphi SkyFi/Ascendo/PocketDay

• Has a roof-mount antenna, remote, earbuds
• Can record up to 10 hours of XM programming
• Accepts & reads MicroSD cards
• Ascendo will allow you to transfer pictures to the BlackBerry
• Very easy drag/drop interface
• 5/5 stars by Ron
• Pocketday shows you all events in calendar to happen today on Blackberry
• Like a start screen

Q Rick Alber - Nikon Universcale

• Flash-based application that teaches about different things by size
• Developed in Japan by Nikon folks
• Can quickly zoom across the line
• Similar to the Powers of 10

Hour 1

Q Casandra - Upgrading the hardware from a PC

• Wants to upgrade processor and motherboard
• Leo likes MSI motherboards
• Go with the Core 2 Duo processors
  • AMD processors have just dropped in price, but Core 2 performs better
• Want to get a video card with 128mb of VRAM to run Vista’s Aero effects
• Anandtech has fantastic reviews for motherboards

Q Paul from Glendale - Got virus after going to dummy eBay page

• Probably took advantage of the animated cursor exploit
• Probably installed a rootkit
• Try RootKitRevealer or AVG Anti-Rootkit
• Once system is corrupted, can no longer trust your safety
• Only way to make sure you’re safe is to scan/backup your data and reformat/reinstall Windows

Hour 2

Q Janice from Rancho Cucamonga - HP printer & Mac not playing nice

• Want to get the latest drivers from HP
• If printer worked at Apple Store, make sure all cabling is set up correctly

Q Lida from New York - Email on the Treo 680

• Unfiltered email coming through from Versamail
• Using SpamAssassin on the server and get spam emails
• Probably filtering based on score on the desktop, but not on Treo
• Could set up email forwarding
• Leo says to move to IMAP to manage email on one central server from any device

Q Upgrading hard drive in a TiVo

• Cable Company may have disabled USB port
• If enabled, weaKnees will send you a kit

Q Steve from New York - AppleTV alternatives/Model Railroad Interface from the Internet

• A ton of things will be coming out soon to compete
• Only real competition right now is D-Link MediaLounge
• AppleTV works just fine with Windows
• JMRI may be of some help
• It is Java-based

Hour 3

Q Neil - Right click menu loading slowly

• Right click menus are extendable
• Some program you installed probably did not do a good job with that
• Can fix something in the registry
  • Look for “shellex”
    • From there, “context menu handlers”
• Can delete them
• ShellExView will allow you to view all the files in the ShellEx
• Here’s an article about your situation

Q Jim from Yorba Linda - Cannot connect to network over wireless

• Vista works great with WiFi in most situations
• Most probably a security issue on Vista

Q Nancy from Oakland - Someone else logged onto computer?

• Good behavior is the ultimate thing you can change
• There are no confidentiality standards at computer stores
• Once system is compromised, not sure whether you are secure ever again
• Copy off all data on the disk onto another source
  • Then use system recovery discs to reformat/reinstall Windows
• May want to uninstall Norton and get NOD32
• Would be a good idea to get a router
• Make sure Windows firewall is on

Q Craig from Studio City - Panasonic Plasma TVs

• Remember the 3 Ps
  • Pioneer, Panasonic, plasma
• Make sure it has HDMI port
• Take a look at how it scales low-quality signals (SDTV)
• Try before you buy
• Vizio is also a great plasma & LCD company

Q Brian - RJ45 ethernet connector not working on PC

• Installed Windows XP
• Only Dell Wireless working
• Make sure you get the right motherboard drivers
• If not showing up in device manager, a hardware problem