Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday December 7, 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Collecting domain names as a hobby
Leo uses several unique domain extensions to broadcast TWIT. Extensions that you may not recognize. Like twit.AM (which is out of Armenia). .LY - from Lybia. .TV is an island in the south Pacific.
KOOBFACE virus strikes Facebook
If you have a Facebook page, go to Facebook right now and change your password. There’s a flaw in the Facebook architecture which allows Koobface to harvest passwords. Don’t use real dictionary words. Use punctuation, numbers, the longer and more random, the better. The idea is to make it nearly impossible to access your account using a brute force attack. Beware email from a friend on Facebook that contains links to videos to play. It’ll take you to a website which will infect you by asking you to update your flash player. But it isn’t. It’s a virus that takes over your computer and turns it into a SPAM BOT Zombie.
Obama YouTube Address pledges Jobs, Internet access
Citing the US poor high speed Internet ranking, President Elect Obama pledged to revolutionize US high speed Internet access with the goal of moving us from 15th to leading the pack. Leo hopes this will be a modern “Tennessee Valley Authority” which did something similar for rural electricifaction during the depression. “Beware of anything regarding Paris Hilton,” “Hidden Camera,” and when you get it, send an email to your friend, letting them know they’ve been hacked and need to change their Facebook password.
SPORE most pirated video game of 2008
In spite of the fact that SPORE was released with draconian DRM to prevent piracy, the DRM was cracked within the day of it’s initial release and has become the most pirated video game of 2008. Further proof that DRM doesn’t work.
Leo gets his 7th Red Ring of Death on his Xbox 360!
Leo has experienced yet another Red Ring of Death. The great irony is that it wasn’t being used. When they turned it on and the dreaded RROD occured. In spite of the BILLION dollars Microsoft has set aside to repair this issue, the bottom line is, it’s a poor console design. The Playstation 3 has no such issues and are as reliable as the day is long.
Hour 1
Q William, Tampa, FL - UPC recommendation
William lives in Tampa where lightning storms are very common. He needs a recommendation on an uninterrupted power supply (UPC). Leo says there are two different kinds, one that takes over as the power cuts off (called “fail over UPCs”, and then a more expensive model which is always on and works as a buffer between your PC and the electricity. This is better for power conditioning - which is very important for HDTVs, which are just computers with a large screen. They can be very vulnerable to power surges. So a UPC is vital to protecting it. Leo thinks it’s so important that HDTV owners should budget about 20% of the price they paid for their HDTV and buy a UPC. Leo recommends APC. For more information on power conditioning and why it’s so important, check out purepowerUPC.com.
Q Phil, Southgate, CA - Trouble with Sprint support
Phil bought a Sprint wireless Internet card because he was assured it would be used in Arizona. Course, it can’t. So he’s been trying to get his money back. Instead, Sprint offered him $25 a month service to keep it (which he did) but they’ve been charging him three times that every month! Every month he has to call Sprint and get them to change back to the $25 agreement. Leo says that is inexcusable and that Phil should write a letter to the president of Sprint and mention that you called a national radio show to complain. Fight to get satisfaction and then say goodbye Sprint.
Hour 2
Q Paul, Van Nuys, CA - Laptop Recommendation
Paul is looking for a laptop. Is the Toshiba a good one? THey’re not the very best, but certainly in the top 5. Leo prefers the Lenovo, Dell, Panasonic’s are very rugged. Acer has gotten real good. Fujitsu. One thing to consider is support. Example is Sony, who makes good hardware but lousy support. Apple laptops, though pricey, are the best out there right now. And you can run Windows on them. Get the 15″ Macbook Pro. You pay more, but the OS is practically virus free, more stable, and there’s the wow factor.
Q Randy, Diamond Bar, CA - replacing his Treo
Randy needs to replace his Palm Treo. He uses it with his Mac. Leo says that the Palm Centro is coming, but it’ll run Windows Mobile. The iPhone is nice and will take his info seemlessly. There’s also the Blackberry Bold. The Storm is out and since Randy is going to stay with Verizon, that’s probably his best bet. THere’s a lot to like about it. Plays great video and music. You can use VCast. Nice set of applications (not like the iPhone, mind you, but what is?). Clean interface. Functional. Spectacular screen. But the clickable nature of the screen makes it difficult to type. Make sure you can live with the virtual keyboard. It’ll sync with the MAC no problem.
Q Aviv, Richmond, CA - Synching issues with 1st gen iPod Touch
Aviv connects her iPod Touch to her Mac and her songs don’t appear. Not good. Turn off manual and manage and drag and drop and have it synch automatically the first time. Sometimes, if you go to a different iTunes, it’ll reset and start over. So be careful with that. If it’s the same iTunes, turn on automatic sync. iTunes should then ask you to transfer new songs. If you’ve lost them completely, you can fall on the mercy of Cupertino to ask them to restore your songs. Go to the support section of iTunes and send them an email. They will give you a one time restoration of all your songs. A ONE TIME RESTORATION.
Q Cliff, Santa Barbara, CA - LCD recommendation.
Cliff is trying to decide what large screen HDTV to get. Should he go with DLP technology? Will it stand up? Leo says “you bet!” DLP is a very good technology, but there are fewer choices since most are going “direct view” with thin designs. Get the LED lit DLP TVs. What about the Mitsubishi Laser TVs? They’re expensive, but should he wait? Leo says no, you don’t need to wait. There will be other technologies, including SED (finally) and in 5–8 years the prices on laser and other technologies will be such that you can get one then!
Q Tim, Harbour City, CA - VLC Media player problems
Tim is a Napster guy and plays his NapTunes using VLC Media player. But recently, VLC stopped playing the WMA music he bought and downloaded. Leo says that’s because Napster has changed from DRM protected music (bad) to mp3s which can be played on anything. As a result, they have turned off the DRM servers which the player needs to access in order to play the music. This is one of the problems with DRM. When the server goes off, so does the music.
Hour 3
Q James, San Diego, CA - Boosting RAM in his computer
James wants to boost his RAM and add a secondary hard drive to his new computer. Leo says that since James didn’t get Vista 64, there’s no real point in adding more RAM. Vista 32 only addresses 4 GB of RAM. James needs 5 GB RAM for the software he runs, so he’ll need to add Vista 64 Bit before he adds the RAM. And update all the drivers while he’s at it.
The Chat Room wonders if the software James is using wants over 5GB of HARD DRIVE space, not RAM. James also wants to know if driver issues will prevent his getting sound. Absolutely. YOu need to know what sound card you’re using and then download and install the drivers. But before you do that, you may want to go into the sound settings to see if the mute feature was enabled by accident.
Hard drive recommendations? Leo says that prices are dirt cheap for even terrabyte hard drives these days. But the larger a hard drive gets, the more error prone they become. Leo says it’s much better to have two 500 GB hard drives installed instead of a single terrabyte drive. Leo says go over to www.NewEgg.com. They have the most agressive prices - like a Seagate Barracuda terrabyte SATA drive for $100! Make sure you get the right hard drive that matches your system. You can also get an external SATA (eSata) drive to run a SATA drive as an external drive.
Q CHuck, St. Petersburg, FL - File sync software recommendation
Chuck wants to have mirror hard drives that sync to each other to make backup copies from one to another. Leo recommends Microsoft’s Sync Toy. It’ll keep both drives in sync with the same files and is free from Microsoft. Google is your friend. A few others include UNISON, MAKEACOPY, www.2BRIGHTSPARKS.COM. One thing you want to look for is “version control,” where it keeps multiple versions of the file as you make changes.
Also, remember that backing up to another drive isn’t really enough. You need an off-site backup option as well. Whether that’s something like Carbonite or even just dropping off CDs at your mom’s house.
Q Karen, Fresno, CA - LED screens on MACBOOK Pro
Karen is wondering why a new MacBook Pro she’s looking at is so dark at the edges. Leo says this isn’t an LED issue. IT could be that her screen is flourscent lit from behind which would call this similar issue. The new LED lit screens don’t have this issue at all. Karen is thinking of buying the display model and Leo says it could be that this display may have been on for a LONG time. Leo says these issues are in the latest models and Karen would be better served to get the more updated unibody model.
Q John, Los Angeles, CA - Battery problems in his Sony VAIO
John has a Sony Vaio and the new battery isn’t holding a charge. Leo says that every LithiumIon battery has a finite amount of charges to it before it’s capacity begins to seriously deteriorate. But Leo says that a new battery shouldn’t have this issue and that John should send it back to SONY as a defective battery. Sometimes, if a battery has been on the shelf for so long, it gets a “little funny” charge wise. Charge it, run it down to full depletion, and recharge again. Do this several times to max out the full capacity and rejeuvenate the battery. And do this once a month. And keep the battery in even if you’re plugging the laptop in as SONYs have a feature that will slow down the laptop if you’re running it without the battery in it. Wierd huh?
Q John, Canyon Country, CA - Virus issue
John got a virus but it won’t tell if he can delete it or quaranteen it. Nod32 didn’t do anything about it. He suspects he got it downloading music. Leo says sometimes, a virus file can be attached to a system file and as such, it’s impossible to remove it. But AVS software can give you a false positive. Leo recommends going to antivirus.com - Trend Micro’s online virus detection utility. Get a second opinion and if it does, then your best bet is to reinstall or restore Windows. If you have recently done a “ghosting” of your hard drive, then just restore it and move on. Otherwise, you’re looking at a full format and reinstall. Backup! DriveSnapshot is a great option for backing up.
