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Sunday, July 11, 2004

Show #56

Sunday, geeky Sunday. Give me a ring at 1–800–520–1KFI.

And don’t forget our poll question of the day: Have you ever downloaded a movie?

Thanks, as always, to Michael Larsen, without whom today’s show notes would not be possible.

 toc | toc 

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Noon-1p

David in Northridge

Wants to upgrade his PC, should he go for a laptop or a desktop? The laptop is more expensive and is not as upgradable, and you should keep that in mind. The notebook is portable, and you can take it everywhere but you need to be careful about theft. The desktop gives you more bang for the buck. Your lifestyle will dictate the final decisions. For PC laptops, the Pentium M is the best processor.

Dan in Temucula

Is being attacked by Spyware, specifically Wild Tangent, how is this effecting his machine? Be careful when you install Wild Tangent that you do not install bundled software with it. WT only works with Internet Explorer. You should use Firefox for your browser. Spyware programs can hide any many spots and some are “invisible”. The browser hijackers are the most extreme version of this problem.

Fernando from Norwalk

is using XP on his laptop and the error message says he is missing his operating system and he needs help finding it, the machine was hanging up on the Windows logo when booting. It might be your hard drive expiring on the machine and you need to find out if your data is still on the machine. You can do that by removing the hard drive, but laptops present a greater challenge. You should use Ghost first and then you will have a good copy of the data. You can make a boot-able CD from Spin-Right from GRC.com/, but this costs some money.

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1–2p

Dianne from Tustin

has questions about Firefox: How does she update her browser? Does she need to remove the IE shortcut from her browser? How can she get her favorites? Mozilla.org has a patch but you can reinstall the browser just as easily. There is no automatic update from Firefox. You only need to remove the shortcut to prevent you from accidentally using that browser. You will still need IE for somethings, like updating with Microsoft. You can export your favorites from Internet Explorer; open IE click on File and choose Import and Export then use the wizard and accept all the defaults. It will save the file to your documents and then you will import these files to Firefox. You can organize them before you import.

Toni in La Habra

ordered a Dell 8300 but changed her order to a 8400. The 8400 was supposed to have a free DVD burner, but it ended up costing more, how come? She ended up with the 4600 for $1500. Dell offers configurations that make them money and the prices change hourly. The system you ended up with is a good deal.

Carol from Missouri

recently purchased her own cable modem and the PC activity light was blinking constantly even when the computer is off, after configuring the modem she was able to get the light to reflect her internet activity. Is the blinking normal activity?
The blinking just indicated packets on the internet lines that you are connected to. This is probably nothing to worry about. Comcast has a release that indicates that these are signals they create under normal operations.

Jan from Yucaipa

is trying to install Shockwave on his new computer with XP, but it will only load up 1% before it fails. He is using IE, how can he get the software. Open IE tools and clear out all the temporary download installation file, then go to the Windows files and remove all the previous downloads. The issue is probably with a previous failed installation of Shockwave.

Victor in Riverside

installed a program on Windows 98 and lost the CD, now he wants to move the program to his new computer with XP. Clean Sweep by Norton might be able to transport the program bundled into one file then you can move it to the new computer.

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2–3p

Debra from Rancho Cucamonga

wants to video conference with her grandchildren, her old B&W Mac is not letting her upgrade to Panther and she also needs advice on a web cam.
You do need to have OSX for iChat, but iVisit.com also has a cross-platform capabilities and will work with OS 9. Your son will also have to use this software. The iBot is a good choice for this application.

Daniel

has lost the data on his laptop and needs help

Kris from Westminster

is trying to update from Windows 98 to 2000 and she is getting a message that says it can’t find her boot loader. You can’t upgrade to 2000 on top of 98 and it sounds like you have a failed installation. You might want to migrate to XP.

Peter in Ventura

has an office with 3 PC using XP and needs a file server for his business Buffalo makes a network addressable storage, a headless PC, that you can plug into your router. It shows up as a drive, but you could map the drive as we talked about yesterday. A backup device is another good idea.

Heidi in LA

wants move to digital cameras but doesn’t want the digital delay and likes to do macro photography, what should she get. The Canon Digital Rebel is a great camera as is the Nikon D-70. These SLR cameras have interchangeable lens and do not have the lag of less expensive digital cameras.

Gail from Pennsylvania

is trying to install Windows 98 onto a laptop with Windows 95 and it won’t work
You may not actually have a Windows 98 install disk. If the disk is an OEM it may only load on the manufacturers computers.

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