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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday 12 April 2007
This show was recorded earlier (with all new material) while Leo continues his travels in Australia. Follow him on his blog and on Twitter, and look at his pictures on SmugMug.
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Dick Debartolo - Gadget of the Week
The Neuros OSD connects to your TV or home theater system and allows you to archive all of your DVD and video content.
Plug the Neuros OSD into your TV, connect your DVD Player or VCR, and hit play. Your movie will be safely and legally transferred into a digital library! It works with home movies too. Just plug your video camera into the OSD, push play, and your memories are digitized.
With the Neuros OSD, you can store hundreds of hours of video in one location (like an external hard drive), get rid of those bulky cases, put an end to DVD damage, and instantly access any of your videos with the push of a button on a remote. You can even transfer your video content to a portable device (video iPod, PSP, mobile phone, etc.) to watch on the go, or email your home movies to friends and family.
Steve Gibson - Mail Exploit
People would get a Word attachment and another file. The other file had a virus in it. When people opened the Microsoft Word attachment, a script ran that file.
If you expect to get a Word document from someone, that’s fine. If your not expecting it however, don’t open the email.
Hour 1
Q Dennis in Los Angeles - Old LCD Monitor turning dark
Sadly the back light in your screen (it’s a florescent bulb) may have worn out. You can get it replaced, but it’s really not worth it, considering monitors have dropped in price.
Cheaper monitors will fail you for color accuracy. You want to see on the screen, what you will get from the printer. By going to a less expensive monitor, you’ll lost even-ness of tone, less accuracy, and lack of additional circuitry. Many of the TV/Monitors have television inputs.
The Dell 24″ Monitors are great, they have lots of inputs. If you want a professional LCD for Photoshop, then you’ll spend a lot of money on a monitor.
Q Chuck in California - Video Calls
The program you need is Skype, which is free, and does video and voice calls, computer to computer for free.
You both need to have high-speed Internet, then you need a webcam (their very cheap). Logitech is the best manufacturer. You’ll want a USB webcam. Leo uses the Quickcam Pro, which is a good one - that’s a hundred bucks.
It just hooks onto the laptop screen. If you have a good connection, and they have a good connection, it’ll work great. You might also want to get a Logitech Clear Chat headset.
Q Patrick in California - Laptop Battery Charging
Batteries know when their full and tell the laptop to stop sending it power. If you overcharge a Lithium Ion battery, they explode, so they all have this protection.
Hour 2
Q Joe in Montanna - Pocket TV?
Sadly there’s really nothing you can do. You’ll have to get a portable digital tv.
Q Dan in California - Open Type or True Type?
Microsoft develop both, but Adobe really develops Open Type. You’ll be more likely to run into True Type.
Q Arron from Fort Collins - Streaming HD over Wireless
N is really right on the edge of HD. HD Content has a really large file size. Either an XBox 360 or a PS3 will stream high definition. You might want to try Ethernet.
It’s cheaper and easier to get an XBox than setting up a PC.
Q John in California - Getting a Notebook
Really when your choosing a Notebook, you want to make sure you try a bunch of them. A lot of people moving to Notebooks have a problem with the pointing devices. Try out a touchpad. Try out the clicking.
The Keyboard is always a compromise, and it’s usually the size of the function keys, the place of the arrow keys. You want to type on it to see how many mistakes you make.
Leo’s a fan of the Dell notebooks. If you can go to a store and try out the M1330 and M1530, then you should. Most desktops are the same, but a laptop is very personal.
Lenovo is very business based. They keep their quality up. Sony Vaio is another great brand. Make sure it works with Vista, and get Vista if your software works with it.
Laptops do not tend to last as long. Just by the nature of how you treat notebooks, you should be prepared to get a new one in a few years. They do seem slower sooner as well.
Q Tony in Atlanta - Laptop that can take a banging
The LCD is always going to be exposed, and that is very fragile. There’s no laptop made that could deal with a banging. Panasonic makes “Tough Notebooks”, and you could probably put a piece of Plexiglass across the screen.
You could just use an external mouse and keyboard, and that’s just a $5 part to replace. The OLPC would be great for these kids, and they cost only $200 each.
They plan to sell them in the US. That’s much more durable. You can find them at The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Website.
Q Matt in California - Virus Protection for iPod Touch
There’s no viruses for the iPod Touch. Theres not enough power for them to do anything. You also don’t need any antivirus software for the Mac.
Go to Mac Sales and get more RAM for that MacBook. You will want to get a bigger hard drive.
Hour 3
Q Biron in San Diego - Using a TV as a Monitor?
TV’s are designed by 400 lines from stop to bottom at best. You really need to get an LCD monitor. Their crisp, thinner, and last much longer.
You could go on eBay and make sure it doesn’t have any dead pixels. Look around for Tech Fairs, and near MIT they have Tech Garage Sales.
You can get a good LCD in the computer store for about $300. That’ll be about 27″. UBid.com is a good place to get them cheap. A 37″ TV is on there for $749.
Q Loui in California - Mac vs PC for Work
The reason people use Windows is for Business. You really need a Windows machine. Leo uses Windows everyday, without any security software at all because he knows what not to do.
Once you find a virus, trojan, spyware…etc you really need to reinstall Windows on all the machines. It’s not a bad idea to get the kids Macs, but you’ll really want a Windows machine.
Q Shaun in California - Microsoft Office Alternative
Open Office is free and reads and writes the same as Microsoft Office. You can also get Star Office which is based on Java.
Lotus Symphony is also based on the same codebase. That’s free from IBM. There is also Word Perfect which is owned by Corel. It’s still over $200, which isn’t inexpensive.
Q Tim in San Diego - Wireless Bridge?
Each computer needs to have it’s own unique IP address. That’s why you need a router. If you just want a hard wired ethernet router, that’ll run you about $40.
So long as you have one box somewhere that’s telling each computer what it’s IP address is, that’s fine. You should be able to have as many computers as you want using that Wireless Bridge.
You can just buy a WiFi Adapter and tell it not to do DHCP. That should then just pass it along and it should be as though you were just plugging the machines directly into the router.
Q Jerry in California - Charging for a Podcast
If you charge for a podcast and it becomes popular, people will begin pirating it. Just tell the users that you want users to pay for it as it takes your time.
It’s a tricky area. You might want to try Premium Cast. They run the backend for you. Premium Cast has a very good system.
Q Max in California - TIFF Files?
TIFF is a very high resolution file format for Graphics. Don’t use compressed TIFF. There should be no problems down the line reading TIFF files.
Q Don in California - What Antivirus?
Norton Internet Security slows down the system horribly. You need a good Anti-virus, and a good Anti-Spyware.
Nod32 for Anti-virus. Use your Broadband Router as a firewall. Microsoft Windows Defender is a free Anti-Spyware and make sure you install all the Windows updates, and keep the Windows Firewall turned on.
