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Sunday 9 September 2007

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Tech News

This week has been a geek embarressment. Steve Jobs made a horrible miscalculation on Wednesday, when they made an announcement about changes. The re-designed Nano now plays Video. They also updated the classic iPod to 160gb of space. Everyone has been asking for an iPod Touch which is very similar to the iPhone, it plays Video, and also has Wi-Fi. Apple made a deal with Starbucks, you can see what’s playing in Starbucks and buy the songs. You can also use the wi-fi in Starbucks for free. He also announced that the iPhone is now $200 less!

Everyone is talking about the $200 less iPhone, and no one is talking about the iPod. Steve then posted a public letter saying that everyone will be given a $100 Apple store credit if they have an iPhone.

David Pogue from the New York Times said he wanted all $200. Leo believes you knew the price was going to drop, so you should have waited. Leo also believes that Steve is a “chess master” who thinks far into the future.

There are ways to get your money back - Credit cards have price gaurentee’s, and you also have 19 days to return the phone. Leo thinks that it’s a little babyish.

Leo did advise people should wait to buy the iPhone.

Chris Marquardt - Assignment Review and Filters

Recommended filters:

1. Polarizing - brightens colors but reduces light by about 2 stops
2. Neutral Density - sunglassess for your camera
3. ND Grad - a gradient neutral density filter, good for sky land shots

Take a look at the pictures submitted in our last assignment (Illustrating the word “Careful!”) on Flickr.

Don’t forget our new assignment. Take a picture illustrating the concept frame then upload it to the Tech Guy group on Flickr

Ron Rosberg - The Best of the iPhone without the phone!!!

Apple’s newest iPod the iPod Touch

Available September 28, 2007
Price $399

Epson’s newest 4 x 6 printers the Zoom and the Dash.

PictureMate Zoom - PM 290 $199.00

PictureMate Dash - PM 260 $299.00 (check the web for lower prices)

Going on a trip and need a large storage solution check out Kingston’s newest 8 GB SDHC card

Price $100.00

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Hour 1

Q Mark from California - Wants a color laser multifunction product.

Leo recommends you go to PCMagazine to compare the printers. They have always done the best printer reviews.

Leo uses an Epson Aculaser CX11. It’s a real fax machine. Laser can be more expensive upfront but it lasts longer. It has an excellent scanner and is a very good photocopier and does excelent color copies.

Leo has yet to see sites like review printers. Leo always recommends sites that have excelent ethics not ones that follow advertisers guidelines. PrinterInfo is also a very good site.

Also take a look at CNet.

Q BJ in North Carolina - Wondering if he can use the XBox HD-DVD player on a Mac.

It’s a USB player so Leo doesn’t think you need players. You just attach it and see if it works. It should look like a standard device. However Leo thinks the HD-DVD may not play back. However the HD-DVD should play with the new version of OSX (Leopard).

HP and Apple have both said their going with Blu-Ray.

Question 2: Wondering if there is a cheap solution antenna for the XM Radio he has in his car. It is however a special antenna, and there are special third party antennas. He wants to put XM on his computer.

Q Jan from Beverly Hills - Wants to use iWeb for another podcast. Does it index?

Leo doesn’t recommend using iWeb for anything as the source code has lots of extra stuff in it. It’s not SEO and although it looks fantastic, there’s no way to get out of it if you decide to get into anything else.

Use Wordpress. Wordpress has a very good Wordpress plugin and even includes an itunes and player plugin. Leo also uses Wordpress for his blog. It’s a free hosted way to do it.

Q Lloyd - He is wondering about Virtual PC for Mac.

The Mac will be fine but it will be slower. There is a big difference between the way it used to be done and done on the newer Intel Macs. It’s painfully slow, but if there’s a program that isn’t too demanding it shouldn’t be too slow.

Stay away from Games becuase that will be way to slow. The new Intel chips however support virtualisation. Using VMWare or Parallels is close to native speed, but running Windows on a PowerPC Mac like you have can be very very slow.

Q Brian in St.Lewis - How to get Audio books. What is a very easy player to use?

Use Audible for the books and on the Audible front page, they have a list of very easy devices for playing books. Look at the Digiset and also Samsung has pretty easy players.

Look at the BookCourier on the Audible Device Center.

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Hour 2

Q Lewis in Hollywood - User content and Flexibility on DirectTV Tivo Box

How can content from the Tivo be off loaded onto the Mac? You need to do what’s what known as Video extraction. The idea is “I just want to get it off my hard drive onto my computer”. DealDatabase.com is the only place you can still find out how to do that.

The other way is use the analogue hole. The signal isn’t as good as digital but it’s still very good, and you could then capture it and encode it.

Leo doesn’t know if the USB port on the Tivo is supposed to be for Data or a Wireless network connection. Leo knows that all Lewis wants to do is put it on his iPod, not to steal movies and provide a pirate copy onto the internet.

Q Steve from San Jose - The drive on his computer suddenly won’t boot

Try running Spinrite on the drive. It’s a program from Steve Gibson that is a very low level drive maintenance utility. It will find any errors on the drive and try to correct them. It’s completely independant of the operating system and then refreshes the sector. If a sector cannot be read or written to successfully, it will then map it out of the drive. It is however $80.

If you just want to record the data then simply put it in another computer and try and save the data. It’s a good idea to use Spinrite if you want to save the data on that drive, otherwise, it may be wise to just buy a new drive.

Q Matthew from California - Trying to replace the logic board on his notebook.

You can buy thermal compound online pretty cheap that comes in tubes. The whole point is to just make sure the heat sync and the processor has a good “connection”. Just put a tiny little dab otherwise the processor will overheat and the laptop will shut down. Make sure to clean off the processor and heatsync and make sure you get rid of it all.

Once both surfaces are completely clean, put one tiny little dab and press the heatsync down.

Leo is impressed he took the Apple laptop apart and replace the logicboard himself. Leo doesn’t think we are due for a new macbook pro til the next WWDC.

Q Peter in N.California - Problem between Razr V3 and his Plantronics Bluetooth device.

Leo believes that it’s normal for the device’s bluetooth to drop the cell phone. It’s hard to maintain the signal and they WILL drop out. It’s inevitable.

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Hour 3

Q Anne from California - Wants to donate a Dell laptop to someone but cannot boot.

If you want to clean the system and erase everything that is on the system by using Darik’s Boot and Nuke. You need to ask a friend to make the disk for you.

Most of the places you donate to can assess the equiptment and reinstall an operating system.

However it sounds like you have a BIOS Password set so you won’t be able to boot and nuke it. It’s odd that you have never seen it before. Just say to the place your donating it to that they will have to remove the bios password. They can do it for you and then just ask them to please erase the hard drive.

You can also call Dell and they may be able to help you.

Q Heather in Redwood City - Cheap inexpensive MFP

Leo uses the Epson Aculaser CX11. For a really inexpensive printer get a Canon Pixma which Leo also likes very much.

Q Gloria from Los Angeles - Laptop won’t shut down

If you hold the power button down for up to 30 seconds it will force it to shut down. However that’s not a good idea to do often as it can damage parts in the computer. Once it’s off, see if it shuts down normally from now on. If not there could be a piece of software that doesn’t want to shut down.

If it still doesn’t shutdown go through all the obviously open documents and check the palm software and turn it off in the system tray and see if that helps.

Q Bruce - Laptop is going in for service. Is it possible to rent a laptop.

Rent A Computer will do it. The people who are doing the repair may also give you a loan unit.

Just Google Laptop Rentals

Q Alan from California - Sync contacts from Outlook and Gmail

Try ScheduleWorld which will sync up your contacts for you.

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