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Saturday 12 May 2007

Tech News

Intel finally began shipping its Santa Rosa chipset with an 802.11n draft wireless chip as well as an upgraded integrated graphics chip.

Guests

Q Steve Gibson - EEye Blink

• May replace all security software with one package
• Normal antivirus and antispyware software required constantly updating definitions
• Blink simply looks for activity typical of spyware/viruses and stops it
• The government even uses this software
• Neighborhood Watch edition is absolutely free
• Does not use definitions
• When “updating” it is actually building its database of suspicious activity
• Personal Edition is free for one year, and then $22

Q Dick DeBartolo - Wind up flashlight

• Uses LED
• UltraPower Zipping LED Pull-to-Charge flashlight

Q Scott Wilkinson - Buying your first HDTV

• Start with looking at your room
  • Decide where the TV will go and what size you need
• Do not want a square room
• Don’t want to put the TV near or across a window
• Do not want to put plasma or LCD TV on top of a fireplace
  • Wall needs to be very insulated
• LCD TVs are brighter
  • Better for ambient light situation
• Rear projection TVs are very bright
• Center it on the wall so more people have a good viewing angle
• Determine the seating distance to figure out the size of TV you need

Hour 1

Q Rick from Torrance - Boot Camp or Parallels or Stick with the Mac

• Only need Boot Camp or Parallels if you have Windows-only software
• Boot Camp turns your Mac into a full-blown PC
• Parallels allows you to virtualize Windows
• Office 2007 uses a new format

Q Linda - Printer dead

• No sounds coming out at all
  • Out of luck

Hour 2

Q Logitech MX610 wireless mouse lagging

• Lots of lagging with the mouse
• Get the latest Logitech drivers
• Try moving the wireless dongle around
• Try out a wired mouse to see if it’s a problem with the PC or mouse
• Always remember to check the batteries
• Maybe something else is using the same frequency

Q Tom from Los Angeles - Spyware on Mac OS X/Windows laptop

• In theory, Mac OSX can get infected with anything
  • OSX has good multi-user protection though
  • Hackers don’t want to develop for OSX
    • 95% of computer users using Windows
• Leo has never seen spyware for the Mac
• Be very careful about saying that it’ll never happen
• Stick with the Core 2 Duo
  • Faster than the AMD X2 because it has much more L2 cache
• Look at the Dell Inspiron E1505

Q Richard from Santa Clarita - DVDs burnt are stuttering

• Used Adobe Premiere Elements
• Try playing in another player to see if it is your player’s problem
• Then may want to tinker with settings in Adobe Premiere Elements
• Most likely player having trouble reading the disc

Hour 3

Q Buying a camcorder

• Wants a solid state camera
• Highest quality available is using tape
• Advantage of solid state is so you can edit on a computer easily
• Take a look at the Sanyo Xacti HD2
  • Leo loves this camera

Q Kurt from Pasadena - Buying his first computer

• PC is the better game console
• Mac is easier for beginning users to create content
• Go with 2gb of RAM
• With a Mac, you can use Parallels to virtualize Windows
• Go with the iMac

Q Sandy - Smart phone

• Take a look at the Blackberry or Treo
• The Treo with Windows Mobile is more like a computer
• Blackberry OS is specifically made for a phone