Leo Laporte
The Tech Guy
2–5p ET Sat & Sun

Leo Links

Show Notes > Show 563	Edit \| Read \| Hist \| Prt

For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
TWiT Netcast Network

Saturday May 23, 2009

«Previous Show

Next Show»

Show Audio

Edited Audio
64kbps MP3	16kbps MP3

Tech News

Are GPS Satellites in danger?

There was a report released this week that stated that GPS satellites are aging to the point where the infrastructure for GPS may collapse. The Air Force says the report is premature and that even though new satellites are behind schedule, there’s redundancy built in and no danger of our GPS network collapsing any time soon.

Leo gets played with Keyboard Cat

Leo’s Stability Ball popped on the air and a fan named MauBrownCow did a mashup with Keyboard Cat!

Best part is, Leo loved it. It just goes to show the power of the Internet in distributing your own films to the world.

Following Leo on Twitter & Facebook

If you’re still using Twitter and you can’t get through to the show on the phone, you can pose a question to Leo on Twitter. Just type “@leolaporte” and then your question. Remember though, you only have 140 characters. And if you use the #techguy “hashtag,” Leo will be able to filter it much easier and see your question.

You can also follow Leo on Facebook by joining his fan page.

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine

Today, we’re talking about camcorders. What’s bests for home theaters, tape or solid state? Leo says you save no time by using a solid state or hard drive based camcorder. And it takes longer to import video from flash cards than tape. Flashcards with comparable time are very expensive. Also, tape gives you the archival copy. Additionally, you have to take the time to take the video off once filled up.

Leo’s also not a fan of the three chip camcorders. The image quality isn’t that great because the chips are really tiny.

Back to Home Theater. Scott saw some cool demos this week. From Bang and Olson is an 103″ Plasma screen (actually a Panasonic). But the stand is awesome. It lifts and turns it, there’s a center speaker. Course, it costs $112,000!

Projector TVs are great, but again, they’re costly and you really need a DARK room to get the best quality.

On the other end is Vizio’s new 55″ LED Backlit LCD TV. The advantage of LED backlit LCDs is that pixels can be locally dimmed, meaning bright areas stay light while dark areas dimm giving you much better and accurate contrast.
Cost … $2,000! It’ll be out the end of June.

Hour 1

Q Sharon, Orange, CA - connecting old video camera to PC

Sharon has an old Palmcorder that records to VHSC. Can she hook it up to her PC? Leo says it’s an analog camcorder and as such, he recommends the Canopus ADVC110 Capture device. It captures in Firewire. Other options are the Pinnacle Movie Box. But Leo also says you can get a digital camcorder with “analog pass through” and daisy chain them. Then you can import the video and then you have a new digital Camcorder to boot.

Q Inez, Temecula, CA - Satellite Internet caps

Inez is frustrated that her Satellite Internet company cuts her off for listening to internet radio. Leo says it’s a huge problem called “fair access,” where ISPs will limit access if they think you’re using too much. Total for Sat carriers - 5GB. They’ll restore her access if she raises her package to a more expensive one ($150 a month!). Leo says cutting her off is criminal.

Leo says that universal access is vital. The Internet really is a utility and thankfully, President Obama campaigned on universal access, there’s $7 Billion earmarked for Internet infrastructure upgrades and hopefully, this will “fair access” nonsense will change.

The company is Wild Blue. One to avoid.

Hour 2

Q Dan Beluga, AK - Spam and GMail

Dan is getting more and more spam and a lot of it has his own address for the spam sender. Leo says that’s a common thing. It’s called “spoofing.” Spammers can easily forge the sending and return addresses to make it harder from you to stop them from spamming you. And it also makes it very difficult to filter out because users will occasionally “cc” themselves on email. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do, which bites because Leo says stopping spammers is a simple thing by requiring authenticated return email addresses. but no one will do it. Sorry Dan!

Q Tyler, Norco, CA - Backing up Digital Photography

Tyler has 10s of GB of RAW photo files. He’s got carbonite and several hard drive back up drives. Can he sync just his picture folder? He uses Time Machine on his Mac. Leo says that Time Machine is a catch all. What Tyler needs is a Digital Asset Management utility. For the MAC, Super Duper is great. It also has the advantage of a bootable external backup. There’s also Chrono Sync.
For Windows, there’s Microsoft’s Sync Toy.

Q Andy, Brisbane, AUS - Problem with his router

Andy is having trouble with his router failing - dropping the signal on his PCs. Leo suggests updating the firmware. But it may also be a faulty router. Microsoft added a uility called “zero config” which will make your computer “promiscuous,” dropping one router for another. Turn that off. The only other issue is that if a wireless computer becomes the master PC, and the wireless system drops out, it kills the network. So make sure your main computer is a wired computer.

Q Alisa, Tustin, CA - Network Set-up issues

Alisa is another photographer and her company uses three different OSs. MAC, Vista and XP. Leo says that networking in Vista is vastly improved. The real trouble will be with XP. Leo recommends Network Attached Storage (NAS). It’s a central storage machine, running it’s own OS, that’s connected to the Network and backs up files and handles requests for data. It’ll simply show up as an external drive on all three machines. An ideal solution. The one’s Leo use are the ReadyNAS. It’ll hold four drives in RAID 5 configuration. You’ll need Carbonite Enterprise edition or JungleDisk for off-site backup. You’ll also need gigabit network setups.

Hour 3

Q Dan, Chino Hills, CA - Windows 7: 32 bit or 64 bit?

Dan says he can’t open the ISO file to install. He burned it, but after, it’s blank. Leo says that the burn failed. Could be a bad download. Try downloading it again from Microsoft (avoid the torrentz, trojans added). Also, there are some machines which won’t install the 64 bit version. Especially if they don’t have enough RAM to run it.

Also try to burn with Magic ISO. Leo, actually has been opening the ISO with Virtual Clone Drive by Slysoft.

Q Scott, Florence, SC - Network printing with MAC

Scott has Network printer on XP and wants to print from his MAC. He’s using Bonjour. But his Mac can’t find the printer on the network. Leo says to hook up the MAC directly to verify that you can print. Sometimes that gets the MAC to see the printer directly. Then you can network them. The, browse to the Bonjour. You can also add the printer directly without Bonjour if you know the printer’s IP address.

Q Shelley, Fountain Valley, CA - Windows update with Internet Explorer

Shelley is having trouble with Windows update, it always uses Internet Explorer. Leo says yes, it does. Windows can’t update without it. It also forces her to install Active X but she can’t because she doesn’t have an “information bar” to click on. Leo says it’s at the top of the window page, a yellow line. There should be a bar there. If not, Shelley may have turned up her security unknowingly. Set it back to medium (the default setting). So, while in security settings, “trust” microsoft.com by going into internet zone, clicking on it and selecting trust.

But it may also be that your security software is blocking it. Something is turning it off. Software like Avast can block an update of Active X. Also, try downloading the updates directly. Go into Windows Update and change it to direct download. Also try “reset all zones to default level.” That should help.

When you run WinUpdate. You’ll get Internet Explorer Window. In the left will be “change settings.”

Q Randy, Corona, CA - Digital SLR Recommendation

Randy came across a site from China which has amazing prices. But he’s wary. Leo says Randy may be looking at a non authorized reseller and they tend to sell “gray merchandise” which has no warranty. They also strip out all the in the box accessories in order to up sell you. It could also be counterfeit as many of these online sellers also sell counterfeits. Stick with an authorized dealer. Remember the old adage “let the buyer beware.”