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Saturday, June 19, 2004

Show #49

Live from Leoville Labs, it’s Saturday afternoon! Links and additional information from the show will appear here… in time.

Don’t forget to download Total System Sweeper free from www.getprivatenow.com - use my name Leo.

Cory Doctorow, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gave a great speech on why copy protection doesn’t work, is bad for business and bad for society. Wish I could get everyone to read this.

 toc | toc 

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Noon-1p

Bob in Canoga Park

is buying a desktop for his daughter. He’s found a sub $300 PC from Frys. It includes an Athlon XP+ 2400+, CD-RW, 128 RAM, and 40 GB hard drive. It all sounds fine, although I’d bump the RAM to at least 256MB. Watch the onboard video, though. It’s adequate unless you play 3D computer games. If you think you might ever want to upgrade the video I’d make sure the motherboard has an AGP slot. On the other hand, if she’ll never want to play Quake III or Doom 2 - don’t sweat it.

Linda in El Segundo

is planning to buy a scanner. She’s particularly interested in scanning in text from articles. Make sure the software bundle comes with OCR software - that’s what turns the picture of text into actual editable text. I use an Epson Perfection 1670 and love it.

Jeff in Beverley Hills

is looking for a digital recording device for a security camera he has pointing out his window. He wants to catch graffiti artists in the act. I recommend the Wi-Fi enabled D-Link Securicam. They broadcast back to your Wi-Fi enabled computer and can do all sorts of smart things, like notify you when there’s movement, send you an e-mail, and so on.

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1–2p

John in Tustin

is having trouble burning data in Windows 98. Worked fine in Windows XP. He’s using Nero - an excellent burning program. I’m pretty sure the problem is the ASPI driver - which is not required in XP. I recommend Nero’s ASPI driver. Get the one for Windows 98.

David in Pasadena

is backing up old photos using the Nikon Coolscan V. It can scan in either 8-bit color which creates 70 MB files, or 14-bit which creates 137 MB files. David wants to know if he needs to scan as 14-bit? Save the space. Understand that 8-bit means 8-bits per channel: red, green, and blue. That’s 24-bit color. More than enough unless you’re a super pro. In most cases it’s a good idea to save as much information as you can, but drive space isn’t free. Unless you know you’ll need 14-bit color, I’d say 8-bit is just fine.

Sue in Los Angeles

is going to Europe. She has an Olympus camera that uses XD memory. She wants to off-load the card so she can take more pictures. Of course you could use a laptop, but if you don’t have one I recommend a photo wallet: a portable hard drive with an adapter for your flash memory. That’s one problem with XD: it’s a new format and I don’t know of any photo wallets with XD adapters built-in. Get an XD to Compact Flash adapter first. Then try something like the Archos Gmini or Belkin’s iPod Media Reader.

Rick in North Hollywood

also has trouble reading CDs on his Windows 98 system. Make sure you have the latest motherboard drivers and BIOS updates for your system. Then try removing the CD-ROM entries from the Device Manager and rebooting.

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2–3p

Hallie in San Bernadino

wants to know how to backup his Favorites and Outlook files. If you’re using XP it’s probably best to back up the entire Document and Settings folder. That will contain EVERYTHING you want. You can also export Internet Explorer’s Favorites by using the File→Import and Export… command.

Josh in Ventura

(parrotbeak in the chat room) is a professional videographer who specializes in tropical fish. He’d like to edit his video shipboard but isn’t sure which powerbook to buy. The 12″ is a good size but is it powerful enough? You bet. I use it with Final Cut Express and it works fine. The screen size is small - you’d be happier using Final Cut with the 15″ - but it’s plenty powerful enough for Final Cut. Check out his web site at parrotfishproductions.com.

Cherie in Orange

can’t defrag. When she tries the program restarts again and again. The fix is simple: start in Safe Mode then defrag. Press F8 when you first boot-up then select Safe Mode from the menu.

Norm in Riverside

says his browser was hijacked: he can’t change the homepage and gets weird popup ads even when he’s not online. This is a big problem these days. Read up on brower hijacking at Spywareinfo. Then download the spyware fighters.

For DSL users I recommend using a broadband router to do the dialing. It’s much more reliable and you’ll get a built-in firewall. Select PPPoE from your WAN setting menu and enter your DSL login and password. Here’s what the Linksys router menu looks like:

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Chat Logs and Show Audio

Show Archives
Hour 1 audio (MP3)	Hour 1 chat log (ZIP)
Hour 2 audio (MP3)	Hour 2 chat log (ZIP)
Hour 3 audio (MP3)	Hour 3 chat log (ZIP)

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