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Saturday 22 November 2008

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Tech News

Black Friday is coming …

The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday. The biggest shopping day of the year and the day that retailers hope to get back into the black. However, this year isn’t looking so good for that. But because of that, retailers are going to be way more aggressive to make deals to clear inventory.

Leo thinks that if you can wait until after Christmas, the post Christmas sales will be even MORE aggressive, with more amazing deals to be had.

Colleen found at Best Buy has an eeePC900 at Best Buy for $279 with Free Shipping, Thurs-Fri! Other great deals at Best Buy include Video Games for $10!

Other Black Friday sources include BFADS, BlackFridayAds.com, and BlackFriday.info.

Paul Therot from Leo’s companion podcast Windows Weekly says you have to get there EARLY. Like 4AM to line up.

The Blackberry Storm is finally here.

Is the Storm the iPhone killer? It has a virtual keyboard, tactile screen. IT World has an article 8 Reasons Why the Blackberry Storm is better than the iPhone. 8) Stereo Bluetooth headphones. 7) Removable Battery (great for a backup) 6) Expandable Memory (Leo’s not sold on this one) 5) 3.2MP camera with Video recording 4) Modem tethering. 3) Touchscreen Tactile feedback 2) Copy and Paste! 1) Multitasking capability. Is the Storm better than the iPhone? Leo says it’s not worth leaving your network for.

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine

Black Friday is coming and Scott says that after Christmas, there will be even better discount deals to be had. There are some good deals now, however.

47″ 1080p Sharp HDTV for about $900 at Sears. Panasonic 1080p at Circuit City for about the same price. The argument is that HDTV is really only great in large screen TVs. But then again, with the analog window closing, it’s still a good idea to buy smaller TVs with 1080p - you can also get artifacts scaling down. Dell has a 1080p 42″ HDTV for $799. Scott says there’s deals on bundled options. Like a Sony Big Screen HDTV bundled with a blu-ray DVD player for $1200 at Circuit City TV. Samsung has a home theater in a box for $600!

Scott is also seeing Blu-Ray discs from $10–25 for Black Friday. Now’s the time to stock up on movies if you have a blu-ray player. And Blu-Ray DVD players are around $200 for Black Friday, which is the price point for mass market acceptance.

Leo worries about warranties since Circuit City is in bankruptcy. Scott says Sony will stick with their warranty no matter where you get your TV. He also suggests keeping to bigger companies like Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, Pioneer and Toshiba for support reasons. He also like Westinghouse. He says they are surprisingly okay right now. Vizio is almost a first tier maker now. They’re plasmas are really good, but their LCDs aren’t as impressive. Olevia has excellent LCDs, but rumor is that the company itself is on the skids.

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Hour 1

Q Tom, Irvine, CA - Compatibility with old Palm

Tom has a Palm 3 but it won’t sync with his new Vista 64-bit box. Leo says that’s not surprising. Palm has really fallen behind the times and hasn’t kept up with the latest. Check out Missing Sync. But it’s not really looking good as Palm seems to have decided to not support Vista in it’s older Palm models.

Q Rob, Cincinnati, OH - Old hard drive connection problems

Rob can’t get his OS to read his old hard drive on both his PC and MAC. Leo says that MAC will only read FAT32, while Windows will read NTFS. You can buy software for Windows, called MacDrive 7 by Media Four, that will let you read MAC files. Or, you can use MacFuse (by Google) that will update the Mac system to read NTFS. Then, you can just reformat that old hard drive to NTFS and you’re good to go.

Q Paul, West Virginia - Backing up and updating his G5

Paul wants to update his OSs to Leopard but wants to backup to an external drive first. Leo recommends Super Duper. It’ll not only back up your data files to your external hard drive, but will also make it bootable and back up the OS so that if your OS upgrade fails or the primary hard drive crashes, you can boot directly from the external drive. And it’s free! Other options are Drive Snapshot for Windows.

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Hour 2

Q Roxanne, Feeling, CA - Needs a “hand held” computer recommendation

She wants to give her husband one for Christmas. They used to have a Dell Axim, but Dell doesn’t make it anymore. Leo wonders about a NetBook like the Asus eeePC. 7″ screen. Keyboard. Solid state storage. Fits in a purse. Roxanne wants one that fits in your pocket and has wifi. But she needs book reading and documents capability.

Leo thinks a smartphone is a good choice. The Verizon Blackberry Storm is a good choice. Large screen. Good for surfing. Contact management. Media player. And since she’s a Verizon customer, it’s a great option. Other smart phones by Verizon - the Palm Centro, the Palm XV800, which has a full slide out keyboard handset.

Q John, Winters, CA - Just got a Storm.

John just picked up a Storm. He thinks that the iTouch still beats it with regard to user capability. Which means the iPhone will as well. Better camera. Big chip means better media capability. But it doesn’t have WiFi! Leo thinks that’s strange but could be due to the battery issue.

Q James, Brooks County, TX - Pentagon hacked? What do you know?

News reports that the Pentagon has been cyber attacked. Nothing new. It’s been attacked practically non stop for ten years! The Chinese Army tried last year. The good news is that because it’s been going on so long, in every case the public face is what’s being hit. The Pentagon has separate access for serious military operations. We are very prepared for cyber attacks and there’s nothing to be concerned about at this point. More significant vulnerabilities include power plants, infrastructure, etc.

Q Sage, Los Angeles, CA - Bad experience with Vonage

For the last few weeks, she’s had trouble with being charged for a replacement router. She’s trying to get refunded for this obvious bad charge. Leo suggests you write a letter to the President of the country and pursue them at the US corp. HQ. You won’t talk to the president, but they will route it to a VP or someone who can give you satisfaction.

Q Frank, Los Angeles, CA - Getting a WII

Wants to get a Nintendo Wii. Leo says you have to get on the phone and call around. Find out when they’ll be there and you gotta show up on the spot. Amazon has a texting service which will text you about a half hour before they will put them back online for sale and you can then order it right away. But as for getting a deal like on Black Friday. Good luck. Ain’t gonna happen.

Q Scott, Woreland, WY - Animated picture mail on his cellphone

When he gets an animated picture, it won’t animate. Leo says that it’s a limitation of your cellphone. You need to be sure you have MMS support. It could also be a java issue. Your phone may need to support JAVA. It can also be that your provided doesn’t support animated Gifs at all. It could so be that you need to download Flash Lite from Adobe. But Leo suspects that your cellphone doesn’t play animated GIFs.

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Hour 3

Q David, Ventura, CA - Thoughts on the Insignia Brand

Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand. It’s a second tier manufacturer. Leo recommends investing in a surround sound home theater sound system to improve the audio. AIWA and ONKYO make a very good systems, as does SONY and Samsung. What you want is a home theater in a box.

Q Ron, Ontario, CAN - Blocking ads.

Wants to block ads while surfing the net. Leo suggests installing Firefox and get AdBlockPlus.

Ron also podcasts about Japan and music. It’s called The Japan Experience.

Q Paul, Australia - Router recommendation

Had decided on a router, but doesn’t know which one for a single laptop. Linksys is a commodity router. Leo prefers DLink. But which spec? B (11mbpss), A/G (50 mbps), or N (fastest, longest distance)? If it’s just internet access, any kind is fine. You can even go cheap and go G. The Linksys WRT54G is an excellent router (the L version is hackable).

The great thing about routers are is that they are very effective firewalls because they’re “dumb.” So it should be a must for anyone, including single computer families.

Q Randy, Irvine, CA - VOIP recommendation

Magic Jack? Vonage? Leo says that Vonage has been struggling and their not keeping up their software. Randy prefers the Magic Jack and Leo agrees that it’s way more reliable. Another interesting one is OOMA. But the problem with OOMA is that it’s about $300 for the box, so it’s fairly steep in up front costs.

Leo also says that most people who replace their landline with VOIP end up being unhappy. Inaccurate 911 support. No phone when the power is down. There’s many reasons to stay with MaBell.

Q Johnny, San Diego, CA - Laptop Recommendation.

What does Leo think of Lenovo Laptops? Leo says they’re excellent. Formerly IBMs ThinkPad brand. They’re still very good business laptops. Leo also says they have a great netbook called the IDEAPAD. Fantastic deal for $399.

Q Christopher, Orange Cty, CA - Computer for gaming

Should Chris get a custom game rig or can he buy one from Dell or Amazon? Leo says that you’ll need a Vista 64 bit OS. Go to Dell and start with their XPS system. It’s kinda like making your own, but leaving it to Dell to build it. Xeon Quad Core, 9GB Ram. Get the new I7 “Nehalum” chip. You’ll need to add your RAM in 3GB installments.

Q Scott, Alta Loma, CA - Vista looping problems

Updating Windows and he keeps having to update. Loop. Should he get rid of Defender (which seems to solve the problem). Sure. You can do that. As long as you have an AVS, you have protection against spyware.

Q Dan, Reedsburgh, WI - Cleaning viruses on the MAC

Wants to download video on his MAC from the Internet and watch them at work. Worried about viruses. Leo says ClamAV is free. Good for cleaning files.

See you tomorrow!

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