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Saturday 26 January 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson - Scott’s new blog
Scott’s Email: scott.wilkinson [at] sourceinterlink.com
Scott has decided to setup a blog to start answering people’s questions. Email him at the address above to ask him your question and find his blog here.
You can also email him telling him what you would like to see in the UltimateAVmag.com.
Dick Debartolo - Gadget of the Week
This week’s gadget is the Logitech diNovo Keyboard. It’s thin, and has Lithium Ion batteries, that will last about a month between charges.
It’s very good looking, however will set you back $199. It’s not available just yet.
Steve Gibson - Microsoft Windows Steady State
Windows Steady State allows a system to always be returned to a fixed configuration that is easy to set up.
Essentially it locks the system down, so that anything that changes will be flushed away the next time it’s rebooted.
It works great for Libraries, Schools and Hotels. It also allows you to lock a system down to whatever degree you want. It’s like the group policy editor on steroids.
If you want to use it at home, you will need to partition the drive, which will allow users to save it to certain folders or drives. Administrators can turn the suspension off to save new settings and install software.
Tech News
When you look at what happened to the stock market and it’s been going down, and then you look at the tech market, and people like Apple have had their best quarter ever. Apple stock went up quite a bit just before Macworld, and then it’s stock went down right after. It’s a very strange thing.
Apple said that they may not have such a great quarter next quarter. It’ll be up, but it won’t be as great as this quarter. Their revenues were $1.96 Billion, and over $1.8 Billion in profit. There’s been a 5% Growth in iPods, 17% Growth compared to the previous year. Apple sold 2.3 Million iPhones, and yet the stock just went down.
Leo has no stocks in any tech companies. Microsoft also had a great year. XBox sales went up 70% year to year. Their revenues were $16 Billion. While the economy may not be doing very well in the US, you can’t say Tech hasn’t been doing very well. Although they only sold 100 Million copies of Vista, whereas there were 250 Million PC’s sold in 2007.
Vista sales are even starting to go up although. News is starting to leak now of the next version of Windows. Windows 7 may even be out as early as 2009. It may be a response to the problems of Vista. It will basically be Vista with some of the features that they couldn’t get into Vista.
More and more people choosing Windows XP for now, as it’s all patched and it’s running well. Vista may be one of these releases that everyone skips and goes to the next version, in this case, Windows 7.
New PC sales went up 14% to 16%. Most of the 250 Million PC’s sold last year were shipped with Windows XP. A lot of people skipped Windows ME, and maybe that’s what’s going to happen with Vista.
Hour 1
Q Mary in Georgia - Moving to Leopard
Leo likes Leopard a lot. The Dock is a little different, but you can set that to the classic style, but you’ll want to go to Leopard eventually because there’s a lot under the hood that takes advantage of things like multi-cores and eventually we’ll see software take advantage of that.
Leopard will run just fine on that G4 Powerbook, but Intel Macs are just faster. We haven’t had great Dictation on the Mac for quite a while, but Mac Speech will be using Dragon Naturally Speaking’s engine, and it actually works very well.
Most of the time your going to see stuff still come out for your Powerbook.
Q Paul in Toronto, Canada - Drobo or Windows Home Server
Drobo is basically a big USB drive. Right now it has to be connected directly via USB. It’s a little pricey, but you can slot in drives and it RAID’s them. It takes only SATA drives, and it adds them up and adds the capacity.
The Windows Home Server is Ethernet, costs less, you can use it as a big hard drive or RAID, and possibly the best for you is the fact it has Media Streaming. The best choice for you would be the HP MediaSmart Server.
Looks like the best choice for you would be the HP MediaSmart Server.
Hour 2
Q Mark in California - Browser Problems
When you’re using Slim Browser it’s just a customised version of Internet Explorer. That means that any security flaws in IE, you’ll have with Slim Browser.
Vista is good on a new system. Windows keeps information on what your default email program is. Because [http://mail.google.com | Yahoo! Mail]] is web based, it won’t load. You need to have a program on Windows that tells Windows that Yahoo! Mail is your default email program.
Run Yahoo! Messenger and make Yahoo! Mail as your default mail program. When you install Y!IM, it installs a little stub application that opens your default browser into Yahoo! Mail. That’s the work around.
Q Robert in California - My Documents folder stays on Desktop
There’s a number of reasons this can happen. One could be a damaged registry. You should look at all the places where Start Up items exist.
The registry is such a bad design and is so easily damaged. You need to run ‘regedit’ by click Start, Run, CMD, regedit. It may be a spyware problem, but you will want to look around in there.
You could also look in msconfig.
Q Lance in New Mexico - First Laptop
Different manufacturers make compromises to fit things into a laptop. Dell makes very good low price laptops. Microsoft was going to pull XP off the market in November, but they couldn’t because it’s in high demand.
Go ahead and get that Dell, Leo thinks you’ll like it.
Q Jim in California - Computer freezes up upon IE Launch
It might be, the computer is getting busy. If it’s always been doing it, you may want to call Sony and tell them it’s not working.
There’s definitely something wrong with it, it’s been doing it out of the box. They’ll give you another one.
Q Justin in North Hollywood, CA - Accessing files remotely
You need to find a port that the military aren’t blocking. LogMeIn has a service called Hamachi which uses standard secure ports which means they wouldn’t be able to block that.
Hour 3
Q Pat in California - Windows is counterfeit
When you install the updates, it installs Windows Genuine Advantage. What you’ll need to do is call Microsoft, and you tell them the truth. You moved the copy of Windows to a new machine, and they’ll fix it for you.
Microsoft Activation Hotline: 1–866–740–1256
International callers should go to this page to find other numbers
You can upload your video’s from your digital camera to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Google Video, Blip.tv, and Revver.
Q Rose in California - Bluetooth Headset
Leo recommends the Plantronics Voyager and the Jawbone. Get one that is comfy. You can get devices from Jawbone and other manufacturers, you can get a custom moulded ear piece.
Go to Avery Sound, you’ll find these devices. You might also want to get a Bluetooth Device for your car, that uses your car stereo system.
Driving on your phone will be illegal in the State of California soon, joining other states and countries like the United Kingdom.
Q Stephanie in California - Vista Mail can’t get mail
It sounds like you don’t have your DNS settings correct. Normally you don’t have to mess with those, however because you moved to broadband from dial up, you’ll need to tell Windows to get all it’s settings from the router.
You need to go into the connection settings on the laptop and tell it your now using Ethernet not dial up. Just go and delete all your Dial Up connections.
Because it’s WiFi, it can be a whole other set of issues. You’ll have to just play around with the settings. You might want to call your DSL Provider or take it into a store or shop and they’ll be able to help you.
