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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 4 November 2007
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week
ATT Tilt Connected Mobile Device.
A great review of ATT’s Tilt
Price $299 w/2 Year Contract.
Make your Digital SD Camera Wi-Fi Eye-Fi SD Wi-Fi Card
Price $99.95
Pocket AM/FM Radio Recorder - Radio YourWay
Price $199.95
Tech News
Spammers have put up a website with a virtual stripper. And all you have to do is get Alica to remove a piece of clothing is to type in a captcha code. Captcha’s are used to make sure computers can’t automatically sign up for hundreds of accounts. Spammers are clever.
Microsoft have declared Internet Explorer as a standard. Companies don’t declare standards, the community do. Web coders have to order commands by saying “IE7 do this, Firefox and Safari do this, Opera do this”. It’s a lot of work. IE6 is a nightmare. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is only about 40% of the users on Leo’s web pages.
Flock 1.0 is out. It’s based on Firefox and uses Firefox’s plug-ins. It’s got a social feel to it. It has lots of social tools to it, like seeing Flickr photo’s.
Walmart is offering a Toshiba HD-DVD Player for $99 for this weekend only. They must be loosing money or not making any money, but $99 is a great deal. You have to decide what player you want before you get the movies you want.
There’s a big article in the New York Times about the Google Phone. And if the Times is doing an article on the phone, then there’s going to be a Google Phone. Google have more Phds than any University in the world. Their great programmers. Everything they do ties in with other Google projects.
Hour 1
Q Bob from Artesia - AOL software shuts down on Leopard
You need to get a new version of the AOL software. The older version was not compatible, so you do need to get the newer version. You can get that at beta.AOL.com, and if you can’t get online, then you’ll have to ask your son to get it for you.
Q Shaun from Ohio - Best cheaper HD TV Tuner card
Leo would go with an ATI on an XP machine. Because XP has been so patched up by Microsoft now, it’s as good and secure as it’s going to get. You should get the ATI HDTV Wonder which is an Over the Air card.
It’s not a bad idea to get a crossfire capable mother board for the future, but right now that will take you way past your budget. The Sapphire 1950 is an excellent card.
The case doesn’t matter, but the power supply will matter. It sounds like you are going SLI or Crossfire. You should definitely get 2gb of RAM and a Dual core processor.
Leo thinks your on the right track. ATI is the best for TV tuner cards. He thinks your going a good way and the systems gonna be pretty good there.
Q Jim from California - Mac can’t remember the wireless Network
There are issues with Leopard and the Airport Extreme. You should turn on SSID and a hacker can see the SSID anyway. You should just use WPA-2. Once it finds and Airport network, all the other networks are eliminated from the list.
It may also be that the Airport card isn’t waking up. You should check with Apple to see if there is a driver or firmware update or expect one soon.
You should also check that you don’t have “Disconnect from network by default”
Q Rob - Turning old Mac into Print Server
The printer should hook up fine to that old G3. You won’t have a chance with OS 9, you’ll have to use OSX. For $50, it may just be easier to get a new printer. The printer your using really isn’t supported by the Mac.
Your best bet may be if you can go out and get a USB to Serial interface and put it on one of the more modern machines and then share it off that machine. The tough part is getting the thing on the network. You’ll have to use OSX to do that.
Q Bill from San Jose, CA - Virtual Memory problems
XP does a pretty good job on managing the virtual memory. It’s generally just better to let Windows manage it. You can do more harm by changing the settings than just letting Windows manage it.
Hour 2
Q Mike from Bath, Maine - Gaming on a Macbook Pro
The Macbook Pro is a pretty good system. There’s no reason it shouldn’t. If you boot into Windows using Bootcamp, and you may have to turn down some of the graphical effects.
You should also get a 7200rpm drive, as they are much faster than the standards. The issue basically with Glossy is the fact that theres a lot of Glare, unless your working in an environment without a lot of light shining on that screen. Glossy has much vibrant color however. There’s nothing better for watching Movies than a Glossy screen.
Q Kate from California - Unhappy with Leopard
It whipped out all my applications, it’s ugly and it’s hard to manage spaces on the Dock.
Your applications should be in the root directory under a folder called Applications. Archive and Installs just takes the System Folder and renames it “Previous System Folder”, and then puts a new System Folder.
The good news is the fact you can go back to Tiger and just do an Archive and Install, and you can just throw away your Leopard system folder. You might want to change to Leopard again in a few months when new Applications come out and see if you like it better.
Q Raymond from San Fransisco - Getting a HDTV
You should really go with LCD for a 35″. Plasma is a good Home Theater screen, but aren’t as bright. There’s lots of good LCD choices out there, Sony and Sharp are both very good brands.
If price is a concern, the best selling LCD is from Vizio. The Vizio 37″ is the best selling LCD in the country. Some TV’s do better with Standard Definition then others. When your in the showroom, you should ask to see how it looks on SD.
If your going to be sitting 15 ft away then your definitely going to want to go for a 47″. To get the cinematic effect, your going to want to sit about 10 ft away. LCD is probably a better for wall mounting.
It’s very important to get good quality audio. You should at least get high quality stereo. You should definitely get an external stereo system. You may also want to get a Home Theater in a Box, you can get that for about $400. You want to look at a sub woofer, and maybe even 5.1 Surround sound.
Hour 3
Q Murrey from California - Vista score is low
The score you get is whatever the lowest score is. If your Video card only got 2 points, then your overall points will be 2 points. To be honest, it’s a kind of made up number.
What we have to figure out now is why the machine is running slowly. 5 is a perfectly good score. It’s not like you have a slowpoke system in any means. Even Leo’s system which has 4gb of RAM, Quad-Core 2ghz Processor and two 512mb Graphics Cards that are Cross-fired only gets a 5.4.
You can get updated for the drivers of your Wireless keyboard at the Logitech website.
Q Tom - Can I sync mail between Mac’s?
Because there’s so many email accounts, IMAP may not be the best choice. If you get alot of mail on any particular account, you may exceed the amount of mail allowed to you by your ISP.
The only way to keep the mail programs in sync is to use IMAP. The advantage is the fact that all the mail is stored on a central server and visible on all the machines.
The new Google Mail supports IMAP, so you can do that for free. The idea behind IMAP is the fact that any changes you make locally changes on the central server and on any other machines. There is one central message store.
Q Jeff from Los Angeles - Cheaper data plan than Verizon Wireless
You may want to get a separate account that’s data only. It’s about $60 a month but that’s for unlimited data. It’s not an unusual amount for what your paying. You may also want to look at Sprint, but you’ll have to get a new phone and also new contract.
Q Mark from Santa Anna - Upgrading from PHP3 to PHP5
You may want to go to the PHP website and they have some migration guides on there. Because you’ve got custom code, it may be a little harder to upgrade. If you use a CMS or well supported commerce package, they usually upgrade it for you.
To add XP to an existing Vista system, take a look at this guide from lifehacker.
As per burning software, look at Nero 6, it should work on Vista.
Q Anthony from San Jose - Spyware programs?
If you find Spyware, not just Cookies, but actual Spyware, your dead. You really need to reinstall Windows. The reason is the fact they hook this stuff into the system files, and so if removed, the system won’t boot.
As long as their just cookies, no one really cares. Leo does recommend that you turn off 3rd party cookies in a browser. The way cookies work, is that sites can’t read other site’s cookies.
There is however one exception… that’s add cookies. If the advert is from another server like double-click, then you will get a cookie from both. Then if you go to another site it will see that 3rd party cookie.
