Leo Laporte
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Saturday 10 January 2009
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
MacWorld/CES the week that was
MacWorld - the Schiller Keynote was a yawner. Nothing earth shattering to announce other than DRM free iTunes and a 17″ MacBook. Nice set by Tony Bennett though.
CES - not much there as well. Microsoft begins the Ballmer era of keynotes. Windows 7 Public Beta goes online yesterday … sort of. The servers were slammed and most couldn’t get it. It’s back up now though. Though Redmond says they’ll be limiting downloads to about 2.5 million and the Win 7 beta will expire on August 1st.
From what Leo hears - Win 7 is very functional. C’Net calls it “done!” But you’ll also have to download Windows essentials package in order to get email and other extras that don’t come with it.
The other big announcement - Palm is back?! Palm announces a new smart phone called the Palm Pre. Leo thinks it’s a terrible name but Wall Street likes it. Palm stock up 38%! Slim, elegant, slide out keyboard. Could this be the dreaded iPod killer?
The Whopper Sacrifice
Burger King has a strange promotion called Whopper Sacrifice. If you drop 10 of your friends on Facebook, Burger King will give you a coupon for a free Whopper! Strange? Mean? It’s certainly getting a ton of interest.
Guests
Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine
Scott reports from CES in Vegas this week. Scott says most of what he’s seen won’t be available until later in the year. But the economy has caused many companies to have their displays in their suites, rather than create impressive show booths on the floor. The economy looks to take it’s toll this year as attendance looks down.
In Home Theater, Scott was mostly covering video. Flat Panels … THIN IS IN! LCDs and Plasma’s 1″ thick or less. All the electronics are taken out of the panel and placed in a separate box. So the panels are purely screens. You can put the box in the equipment rack where it belongs. One cable going from the box to the TV display. But there’s also the latest craze at CES - wireless connectivity. That leads to no cables! Very cool. Scott also talks about the possibility of wireless electrical connections in the coming years. Powermat is a technology which charges gadgets wirelessly. Could that be translated to TVs in the future? Not for awhile.
Back to thin. Panasonic showed a Plasma TV that was 1/3″ thick! It’s a pure concept piece. Leo says that may be something that won’t ever reach the market.
Another new home video breakthrough is 3D HDTV. The demo he saw was very impressive. Samsung had a demo of a 3D shutter system which he thinks looks better than the polarized option that uses the red/blue glasses.
Internet TV is huge as well. Companies promoting streaming from the net into your TV. But the resolution is very low. Leo says that YouTube is now doing HiDef online, as is Hulu. So the market is coming for that. And companies like Hitachi are working on upconverting technologies to address quality issues. Widgets. Yahoo has a widget that could motivate people to select it to watch content online.
Tons of Blu-ray players for around $300–400 dollars. “BD Live” for online content. Leo finds that annoying. He just wants to watch a movie and after Sony’s webkit fiasco, he doesn’t want anything downloaded onto his tech. Scott also saw TV/Blu-ray combos for the first time from Sharp, Magnavox, and LG. Panasonic introduced first portable Blu-ray player for $600. There was also something very interesting … a combo Blu-ray/VHS deck?!
Who’s ahead in the Plasma/LCD war? Scott says that LCD is doing all sorts of things like boosting Hz to even above 240 in order to cut down motion blur, but Plasma still does all that, plus richer colors, naturally. It’s just not getting the market share it used to enjoy.
Patrick Norton, Host of Tekzilla
Patrick is in Vegas for CES and has a few thoughts. One of the coolest thing he saw was a “personal fuel cell” which uses hydrogen cartridges to create electricity. Also, PowerMatt is catching his eye. It’s a wireless charging gadget which uses magnetic induction to charge devices.
Patrick is also checking out a new technology which will deliver electrical charging through the air (wireless HDMI). It’s practically the holy grail of battery powered devices and if magnetic induction catches on, is wireless electrical transmission any further behind? Tesla would be proud.
Great headphones costing $1000! Mahogany cups that make you look like Princess Leia. Wow. Patrick was also rather stunned by the Palm Pre and the new OS. It’s what everyone is talking about. And will the New OS be for other devices? Check the phone first.
Hour 1
Q Adam, Bronx, NY - Lost partition
Adam was reinstalling Windows XP and removed his partition that stored all his data. Can he get them back? Leo says that the good news is that if nothing was written on the drive, Adam can get the partition back. The data hasn’t been wiped, but earmarked for deletion. Try http://www.partition-recovery.org. Partition Magic is also a great way to recover a deleted Partition (thanks Marty in the Chat room). Leo suggests working from a CD so you don’t overwrite the data.
UPDATE: Happy ending, Adam emailed Leo to say that he was able to get it back before the show was over thanks to what he learned here. W00t!
Hour 2
Q Jose, Floria - New SLR camera recommendation
Jose wants to make the jump into serious photography and wants an entry level SLR recommendation. Leo recommends the Nikon D40 or D90. The Canon Digital Rebel XSi or XTi is another good entry level option. The think about choosing an SLR is that you’re buying a system more than a camera. As such, you’ll be buying lenses that you can move from body to body. You won’t want to start all over again with another system. So you’re “all in” from the beginning.
Q Roger, Irvine, CA - Upgrading MS Office
Roger is finally giving in to upgrading MS Office 07. But he can’t find the “save my settings” wizard. Did Microsoft get rid of that? Leo says that was a great feature. According to Redmond, you use the “Vista Easy Transfer Wizard” or the “System Migration tool.” Leo says there is an Office 2007 backup program for about $15. Leo also suspects
Leo also recommends FoxIt PDF Creator for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat. There’s also Cute PDF. Most use these two and you can “try before you buy.”
Q Jim, Laguna Beach, CA - Deciding on an LCD TV
Jim’s trying to decide on what size LCD to get. Leo says there is a formula for deciding what’s the best size you want for how far away you are from the set.
| TV Size | Min Vwg Dist. | Max Vwg Dist. |
|---|---|---|
| 42″ | 5.3′ | 10.5′ |
| 47″ | 5.9′ | 11.8′ |
| 50″ | 6.3′ | 12.5′ |
| 55″ | 6.9′ | 12.8′ |
| 60″ | 7.5′ | 15′ |
| 65″ | 8.1′ | 16.2′ |
(courtesy of C’Net)
10 feet away is considered fairly distant. Leo says you should probably get larger than you think with 50″ being the minimum from that distance. It’s always better to fill your field of vision, but it can get expensive to do so.
There’s also contrast ratio and Hz issues. The larger the Hz, the more flicker free the image will be in action scenes. So getting at least a 120 hz TV is a great idea if you like action movies and sports. Contrast ratio is important because it’ll affect the colors and shades. The higher the number, the richer the blacks and shades which is important.
Q Joe, Canloops, CAN - Podcasting and iTunes
Joe and his wife want to do a podcast and creating tags and url code is stymieing him. Where to get all that? Leo recommends starting with a Blog. This is a hub where your fans will go to listen and read about what you’re doing. WordPress is a great place to start and it’s very easy. Set it up and it’ll automatically create the magical “rss feed” for you. And your blog entries with a link to the MP3 file. Leo also recommends LibSyn to store your podcast. Then, go over to Feedburner to create an account and will then create a podcast feed that you can submit to iTunes for people to subscribe to.
If you’re doing your own, then you can get an extension for Wordpress called PodPress.
Hour 3
Q Grant, New Brunswick, CAN - Motherboard died
Grant says his motherboard died and he needs a new one. But being a youngling, he’s a tad skizzy about jumpers, etc. The computer was built for him, so the good news is that it’s a generic setup. You could just duplicate the motherboard. That’s the easiest way. If you get a different motherboard you may need to replace RAM, the processor, even the power supply.
But Grant is going for it and upgrading everything, so basically, he’s building a whole new box. Leo thinks building your own box won’t really save you money, but that it’s a great project for a kid to do. He’ll learn a lot. But just remember, if it doesn’t work, you’re the support for it. You’ll have to figure it out. Don’t worry about jumpers and settings, just follow the manual for each part and they’ll show you the way.
One thing. Be VERY careful not to have any metal touching the motherboard as you screw it it into the case itself. You could short circuit the motherboard and “brick it.”
Grant’s going to use an Athlon X2 processor. Good for Vista? Leo thinks it’ll work just fine.
Q Cornel, North Carolina - Using Skype
Cornel has been using Yahoo Instant Messenger to chat with his son in Iraq. But wants to move to audio and video conferencing. Leo suggests Skype. It’s free. But he may run into bandwidth issues being he’s going to a military base in the middle east.
Cornel also is interested in Virtual Private Networking (VPN). Leo says it’s a great way to keep secure when connecting to “hot spots” and arbitrary computers dealing with sensitive data. But you’ll need a VPN Client. And connecting to client VPN servers is a dark art.
Leo also recommends a book called “Outlyers” by Malcolm Gladwell. It talks about the impact of people born in the mid 50s on the tech world.
Q Anna, Los Angeles, CA - help with her “Wonky” Mac
Anna has a 1st generation Intel iMac. Ever since upgrading to Safari, he has display problems. Leo says it’s rendering issue and he suspects her video card is dying. He had a similar problem on a MacBook. To test, boot from your OSX install disc, and see if it happens. If it does, you’ve confirmed a hardware issue. If not, then it’s a driver issue. Backup your data and reinstall the OS. And replacing hardware is pretty much replacing the entire computer since it’ll cost almost as much.
Q Janet, Rancho Cucamonga, CA - Ovoo and video recording
Janet wants to record a live video call using OVOO and burn it to DVD. Ovoo is like Skype, and Leo doesn’t think that the MAC version has as much capability as Windows and you can’t do it because of that. Leo suggests recording it on her Windows machine and then transfer it to her MAC and burn it.
Q Mike, Rancho Cucamonga, CA - MacBook Pro stolen!
Mike had his MacBook Pro stolen after meeting someone on Craiglist. Can he track it if he knows the Mac address? There are programs like LoJack for the MAC which will call home. But if you don’t have that, there’s not really any way to use the MAC address to track it online. :(
He can contact Apple, however. Mike has a year of Apple Care left and perhaps they can help you to find it. Talk to a Mac Genius at the Apple Store.
