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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 16 December 2007
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Ron Rosberg - Holiday Gift Guide
1. Zibra Open It - Easy to use Plastic Container Package Opener - Review and pictures
Price $7.95 - $14.95 Search the web for best price
2. Epson Dash or Zoom Picturemate 4 x 6 Photo Printer
Price $99.95 Cost per print .24 cents to .29 cents
3. Sirius Stiletto 2 Portable Satellite Radio
$329.95 or Price with subscription $299.95
Price 4. Sprint Palm Centro
Price $99.95 with two year contract
5. Canon SD 870 Digital Camera with 3″ LCD
Price $299 - $350 (Search the web for best pricing)
6. Eye.Fi Wi Fi 2 Gig SD Card - Transfers your pictures wirelessly to your computer and Internet!
Price $99.95
7. Apple Touch iPod
Price $299 - $399 (depending on 8 Gig or 16 Gig Model)
Price $180-$300 (Search the web for best price)
9. Ion USB Turntable
Price $99.95 at Costco (Note: There are several models that will be at higher prices)
10. Brite-Strike’s Lightning Strike Personal Protection
Price $79.99
11. Sling Box
Price: 3 Models from $129.95 to $229.95
12. Jawbone Bluetooth
Price $79 to $119.95 (search the web for best price)
Chris Marquardt - Lens Shopping
A 2.8 for $200 is a good price. Canon has good lenses. The Glass you keep for a long time, but the body you change. The lenses are what stay with you.
You can get lenses that you can put a lens on and put another lens in front of it, but backwards. This is a good way to get Macro photo’s if you don’t have a macro lens with you.
There are zoom lens that can do Macro, but most professional photographers go for 100mm Macro lens.
Tech News
Oakland police have arrested Hans Reiser, well-known open-source developer, for the murder of his wife Nina Reiser.
According to a Bay City Newswire report Homicide Lt. Ersie Joyner said, “During this investigation we explored all avenues of Ms. Reiser’s life, who she had contact with. We interviewed a host of individuals. All avenues all led back to Mr. Reiser being responsible (for) the death and disappearance of Ms. Nina Reiser.”
Hans Reiser is best known as the creator and primary developer of the popular ReiserFS, which is often used in Linux distributions. Until recently, for example, it had been the default file system for openSUSE.
This is the 60th Anniversary of the Transistor. It’s a simple electronic device, duplicating a vacuum tube. It’s very small. A month later another type of transistor was created. All three of the creators won the Nobel Prize. And really that’s the first major step of the digital technology we know and love today.
Moore’s Law predicts that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would be doubled every 18 months, and that’s held up for 40 years.
Hour 1 - Ask Scott Wilkinson
Q Al - Should I get 5.1 Surround?
There are a number of Single Box solutions (a single speaker that virtualizes surround sound). It can be done with these one speaker systems, but it’s not the same as having many speakers around you.
It works surprisingly well, but if you can, you should get surround sound. A number of companies do wireless digital speakers.
Q Steve - Getting an AV Receiver
Scott doesn’t really see much degradation. If you keep the cable’s relatively short, then it should be fine. Some AV Receivers have a repeater function. If your using Digital, sometimes you can see distortions in the picture.
The Yamaha Receivers have always been very good and also the Onkyo Receivers are good. You buy a 5.1 Speaker System that then plugs into the Receiver.
Q Missy from Los Angeles - Will the new DirecTV’s work with TiVO?
They have apparently worked out a deal, and they may have something coming out very soon. Comcast has also done a similar deal and they will also be releasing a TiVO.
We’ll learn a lot more in CES in January.
Q BJ in North Carolina - Contrast Ratios
There’s no standard technique, and their just trying to get the highest numbers they possibly can. Scott always gets far lower numbers than the manufacturers numbers. You can’t really use it at all.
You really want to see a full black screen and see how it looks. You should look at magazine reviews. Trust your eyes and look at the screen. You want to see how black the blacks can get.
Q Nick in California - Good LCD for Standard Definition
The Sony LCD’s are fabulous for Standard Definition. Sharp also make an excellent LCD that looks fine on standard definition.
Down the road there will be more 1080p content, so you’ll want to get 1080p to future-proof.
Hour 2
Q Richard from Los Angeles - Streaming Internet video on TV?
We should start by getting rid of your computer. You should get a device that can access the Internet using your TV as the display. If your computer has Video and TV out, then you could easily transport it using a wireless device to your TV.
You’d be getting your whole computer screen. If your sitting in the living room, and the computer is in the office, you’ll have to get RF based remote controls.
There’s lots of devices can do this. Avermedia Lite Key can do this. You may want to ask for the right device for you in the shop.
Q Ron from San Diego - Digital Photo Frame
Most frames understand JPEG images. You’ll want to look at the picture frames manual and check what format it understands.
Then you just load the photo’s from your computer onto the SD Card. Some frames have to have them in a certain folder. That’s not going to be a problem.
You may need a card reader for your computer. You can get them pretty cheap. Then it just shows up as a disk on your computer, and you just drag and drop them. A flash card reader are available for about $15 or $20.
Q Bill in California - Getting video from a car wirelessly
If you want it to look very good quality, you may be spending a thousand bucks. You can get cheaper ones. Take a look at this site, they can help you with everything.
Q Brian in Texas - Halo 2 is Choppy
Video games are the most demanding thing you do on a computer. There’s lots of computer that are made for surfing the Internet, using Word and email. It may just be that you don’t have enough horse power in that machine.
It may also be Vista. Because there’s so much action in Halo, your CPU is working hard, and then Halo 2 is 3D Graphics, so your GPU is working hard. Considering it’s a Core 2 Duo, and it has 3 gigs of RAM, then it all comes down to the Graphics card. Google the Video card model number and include Halo 2 in the search and see if people are having trouble with the game.
You should go to the card manufacturer and see if they have updated drivers. If all else is fine, then install XP. If it’s because there’s a motherboard video card, then you’ll want to get a new graphics card.
The best upgrade there is to Vista is to install XP.
Hour 3
Q Christie in California - High speed Internet in rural area
If you can get EVDO where you are, then it’s pretty quick. The economy is, they will only install high-speed data in areas where they will get lots of customers. The same applies with Broadband and EVDO.
You’ll want to go to Broadband Reports and find out what is available to you. Satellite is probably your best bet for a rural area like you, but it will be expensive.
You may also want to take a look at MohaveBB.com.
Q Joseph in California - Can’t scan
Considering you’ve reinstalled and upgraded, then it might be something that a new piece of software on your computer is doing.
The problem is, the fact that it’s 3 years old, Epson aren’t going to support it anymore. If something comes along that brakes it, Epson aren’t going to help you.
Leo is stumped. Try doing a system restore, which may fix it.
Q Melissa in the Bronx - Starting a Podcast
You’ll want to have multiple mics that are directional… that will force you to talk directly into the mics. You’ll want to be in the same room so you can look at eachother.
A Plantronics USB Mic for Skype which you can get for about $50, and they are pretty good quality. Leo uses them for guests on his shows.
You’ll also want to get a mixer, because the computer won’t be able to handle those two mics at the same time. You may want to use a USB Mixer. You could also get an omni-directional mic and share it.
Q Jeff from California - New Epson Printers?
Epson printers should be fine with Vista. There’s really no company that could survive making printers without being Vista compatible. All new Epson printers will work with Vista, it’s the old ones that cause problems.
The good news is the fact that their cheaper, and in 3 years, theres been some good progress made, their better. You might also want to just stick with XP until Microsoft forces you to go to Vista.
