Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday 17 November 2007
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson of the Perfect Vision Magazine
- BluRay convention, and a new Fox DVD format
- Disney and a bunch of BluRay manufacturers put on a festival
- They were trying to promote BluRay for the Holiday Season
- 7 of the top 10 films were BluRay
- 170 companies supported BluRay
- Even during the week that Transformers came out, BluRay still sold more titles
Fox were showing off their BluRay content, but also showed off their own addons to standard DVD’s. Fox will be releasing a DVD that allows you to copy the DVD onto your computer. It’s 480p, and will maybe be a little less than a DVD, but the quality will still be pretty high.
Scott thinks we’ll see $99 HD-DVD players soon on the market. We’ll only see lower prices soon.
Dick Debartolo - Gadgets of the Week
The XM XRC is a color player for XM radio, and allows you to pause and replay 60 minutes of your favorite show, and Song Saver lets you save 10 of your favorite songs to play later. You can also Flag a song you like, and any station that plays it, jumps to it.
It has a home kit, and a car kit. The list price is $149, but you can probably find it cheaper on the internet.
Steve Gibson - Security Tips
- Microsoft fixed the problem that is effecting lots of Websites, so make sure you stay up to date with these Windows Patches.
- Vista did not have this problem, only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
- This was a big one, so make sure you run Windows Update
Tech News
The Eee PC has been released from ASUS, which runs Linux. It’s a tiny little machine. The screen is only 7″ and yet they can’t keep then in stock. It’s only 2lb’s, comes with Skype, has a built in Webcam. It’s only $400. It only has a 4gb hard drive, but it’s a solid Flash drive.
Black Monday is coming up, and now, Black Friday / Monday is the same online and off line. People don’t tend to leave their houses, they stay home and use their high-speed connection. Leo thinks that a big item being sold will be HDTV’s.
John C Dvorak wrote a recent article in The PC Magazine entitled “The Vista Death Watch”. Apple has also released a new Mac ad about Vista, which you can see here.
There was a Shell32.dll Bug that was patched by Microsoft. If you don’t patch your machine, and you go to a website that’s infected, no matter what you do, you’ll get infected instantly. It was a nasty bug.
Hour 1
Q Mike in Washington - I’m confused with my Mac!
- David Pogue has a great book for Switchers.
- The first thing Leo recommends for Mac switchers, is getting a two button mouse. Apple has never wanted to get a two button mouse.
- There’s no start menu, you have to use the dock.
- You should also try Quicksilver which is an application launcher. You just press Ctrl and Space, press the first couple of letters and it launches it.
- The close button on the Window is on the left, not the right.
Give it some time, you will get used to using a mac.
Q Sean in Reading, PA - Should I get the new iLife and Final Cut Express?
The good news is, if you buy the new iLife ‘08, then you can still get iMovie ‘06. Leo would recommend you get iLife ‘08 because it has a lot of fixes and extra features. You should give Final Cut Express if your dedicated to it.
Q Bob in California - USB Turntables
The Crosley turntable is available by calling them at 1–866-CROSLEY and you can also get a catalog from them.
Q Kevin in Riverside, CA - Getting a HDTV
At 32″ to 42″ you’ll want to get an LCD. The only problem with LCD’s, is the fact that the Black’s aren’t as vibrant. You’ll want a Sharp or Sony. With the PS3 you’ll be all set.
Hour 2
Q Shane in California - CD Drive disappeared
Windows XP is very strange with the fact that sometimes installing things make the drive disappear.
- Open the Device Manager by Right Clicking on My Computer and clicking Properties
- You’ll then see a list of all the hardware you have on your computer
- If you don’t see an entry for the Drive, then it’s probable that the drive died
- If you see it, click on the drive, and delete it, it’ll then try to reinstall the device
- Restart your machine, and it should work again
Q Lynn - Zune and Yahoo! Music Store
For some reason, the Zune doesn’t support Microsoft’s own Play for Sure format! It drives people crazy. The people who get hurt by copy protection are honest people.
The Sansa and the iRiver’s are comparable in price and are good quality. You may also want to look at this article on removing the DRM protection.
You should try and buy unprotected music whenever you can. Amazon is one of Leo’s choices, because it’s unprotected and super-high quality. If there’s an artist you cannot get unprotected, buy their CD and rip it.
Copy protection doesn’t work on DVD’s, it doesn’t work on MP3’s… it’s only effective against Honest users. The industry is criminalizing honest users. Microsoft - get rid of the copy protection!
Q Mark in Ohio - Getting an Apple TV
The Apple TV is like a giant iPod. It’s not a TiVO… it cannot record. The only way to do it, is to get both as you can’t record on the Apple TV and you can’t get iTunes content on your TiVO.
Q John in London, UK - iCal Problems
iCal uses Helvetica. The font may be corrupted, and so you may have to open the font manager and see if the font displays properly there, if not, you’ll have to get it from the Leopard install disk.
If replacing the font doesn’t work, you’ll have to do an archive and install.
Q Martin in Georgia - Should I upgrade to Vista 64bit?
The general answer is no. Leo doesn’t think most people should go to 64bit yet. The only reason to use it, is if you want to use over 4gb of RAM. You have to get 64bit drivers, and some software doesn’t work.
Most people Leo talks to who upgrade to 64bit end up going back to 32bits.
Q Ruth in California - Upgrading an old business website
The first thing you’ll want to do is setup a Content Management System. Leo and Sascha who does the show notes for the show, use Drupal, but what you use depends on what you want to do.
In the old days, websites were static. You’d create the page in HTML and you’d put it up on the web. It would be hard to change, because you’d have to edit all the pages. On the modern web, this doesn’t happen… you create one entry into the database, and the website adds the design to that. It also means you can pull that database entry on many pages.
Wordpress is very easy to use on the consumer end. If your selling something online, you have to have one. Drupal is open source, free and does have e commerce built in. If you have the budget to get a Drupal designer, it’s a great choice.
Leo recommends looking at reference sites, look at similar businesses and see what they use… etc.
Hour 3
Q Dylan in California - Camera is very blurry when moved even slightly
If it’s having motion problems, then it’s probable that the shutter speed it having problems. You may have to set it to a higher shutter speed.
Leo uses a Fuji film compact camera, and Sony also make excellent compact cameras. You may want to look for a camera that has a low appeture.
Take a look at Digital Camera Info and they have excellent reviews.
Q Daniel in California - Garage Band can’t see USB Mixer
The Computer can only handle bits. So you can either get the USB Mixer turn it to Digital or you can have an analog input into the computer and then the computer will turn it to bits.
Leopard probably erased the driver that it needs to see that USB Mixer, so there should be a disk that came with the mixer and you’ll have to reinstall that software.
Also check with the manufacturer and see if they have released an update for Leopard.
Q Anne in California - Switching from Mac to Windows
Make sure you get an Anti virus, and Anti-Spyware. Now that your going to Windows, one of the most important things is behavior. No program can protect you from doing dumb things. Once you get these things, no matter what you do, your dead. Don’t open email attachments, don’t download software unless your absolutely sure it’s a safe source. You must use a broadband router.
Get ESET Nod32, and get Microsoft Windows Defender
Q Heath - Should I upgrade Vista to a better version?
Really considering it’s for your mother, she may not want to use Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. If all she’s doing is writing documents, and browsing the internet, then it should be fine.
When you pay more for a PC, it’s going to have more on it. All we’re really talking about is the different versions. For mom, Basic will be fine, however if she wants to start doing more, or she notices things are missing, then you may want to upgrade.
