Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday June 28, 2009
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Twitter/YouTube in Iran blocked, but still get out
Twitter is working almost as hard to keep the lanes of Iran open for Twitter as the government of Iran is to shut it down. Although Iran claims to have blocked Twitter feeds, proxy servers and redirects are still helping to get the word out.
Leo says the only way to shut off Twitter for Iran is to cut off ALL Internet access, and that’s not only unlikely, the government probably can’t even do it.
Meanwhile, Twitter has been getting up to 5,000 messages a minute due to current events.
Billy Mays passes away
Famous as seen on TV pitchman Billy Mays was found dead in his Tampa home yesterday, apparently dying of natural causes. And tech angle on this, according to Leo, that he’s getting as much Internet traffic right now as the King of Pop did on Friday.
Rapid Chain of computer failures may have doomed Air France Flight
Leo has read an article that speculates that the Airbus A330 may have suffered from a rapid chain of computer failures that automate the planes functions. And even though the
Guests
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor
Leo’s calling out to Chris for help of what to pack for his trip to China. Leo’s bringing along his Canon 5D Mk. II for this once in a lifetime trip. Will he be with photographers? Only amateurs. How much can he comfortably carry all day? Leo has a backpack and the LowePro Slingshot. But he’s limited to 10 pounds on carry on. Chris suggests a good walk around lens like Leo’s F1.2 50mm as it will force Leo to be creative in photo composition. Leo’s kit lens 24-105 is also going. Chris used the same lens going up Mount Everest. If you want to go real wide, a 17-35mm is good. But the wider you get, the more distorted the image will look. And most landscape photographers still use 24mm wide. You can also bring a 2x extender/teleconverter, but that will dim down and hit sharpness a bit. What about a tripod? Chris says you’ll regret that if you’re walking alot. Monopod? Maybe? But if you treat the world as your tripod and just use what’s around you, you can still get great steady shots.
But does Leo have the ability to charge batteries? The ability to charge his batteries may determine everything. You should always bring extra batteries just in case you can’t charge - Chris brought 5 batteries to Everest.
Memory cards? How many? Chris brought 20 4GB cards and 2 hard drives to offload them on, which isn’t much considering one pic on the MkII is 25MB. He opted against 16GB cards because you lose a lot if the card fails.
Alex Lindsay advised a Neutral Density Filter to make the video less crisp and more film like. And make sure you have the latest firmware update for video manual features.
Hour 1
Q Kona, Washington State - Computer not working
Kona says that his mother’s computer isn’t working. When Windows begins to load, the BIOS gets stuck. Leo says for some reason, the computer is looking for a floppy disk that it doesn’t have. Go into the BIOS Setup, and look to see what the boot order is. Disable the diskette drive setting. Also, reset configuration data (ESCD). The time is probably not staying set either. This means that there’s a lithium “watch” battery on the motherboard which has died and needs to be replaced.
Q Colin, Huntington Beach, CA - Portable Digital TVs
Colin wants to know if there’s a digital TV converter which can run on 12volts. Leo says that there a few makers of portable digital TV converters for analog TVs, but now there are also portable digital TVs that are making their way into the market.
Colin also says that people interested in learning computers can go to ACM.ORG or Computer.Org for annual training subscriptions at a very reasonable price.
Q William, Camarillo, CA - Buying a new MAC
William wants to buy a new Mac and wants to know if it’s a better idea to wait until fall to buy a new Mac with Snow Leopard or buy now and upgrade later. Leo says that Apple will be offering Snow Leopard upgrades for $29. Snow Leopard won’t be so much of a change that you will have trouble upgrading. In fact, Apple is a fairly easy upgrade. So there’s really no reason to wait.
From the Chatroom, there’s a $10 coupon for Snow Leopard upgrade if you buy now. $10. What a deal!
William also wants to know if he can make a virtual drive using Sun’s Virtual Box and store it on an external drive. Leo says you can install it on just about anything including a thumb drive. No problem. Leo likes Virtual Box and thinks he contains most of what’s in Parallels and other virtual utilities, and it’s FREE!
Leo says, though, that Windows 7, 32 Bit works on the MAC, but the 64 bit doesn’t so much.
Q Jared, Pennsylvania - Open source questions
Jared would like to know if there’s an open source version of Front Page. Leo says indeed! Mozilla Editor (Formerly called “Composer”) and Seamonkey are great open source options that use standard HTML. Another, is NVU, which works on all three major OS platforms.
Hour 2
Q Kevin, Ontario, CA - Laptop recommendation
Kevin is considering the Dell XPS Studio 17 and wants to know if it’ll be powerful enough for HDTV movies. Leo says it’ll look spectacular. Don’t worry about the amount of VRAM, that’s mostly for gaming. But for movies, it matters more if the video card supports H.264 decoding - which it does. Would he see a difference in the next lower resolution screen? Leo says it would down size it and create a letterbox look, but it’ll look nice and crisp. Laptop screens are often much better than TV screens, only smaller, when you get right down to it.
Understand though, that the XPS line is more a desktop replacement, rather than a notebook style portable.
GJ recently got the Sprint MiFi, which is a wifi access point that works on the 3G network. He says it’s really handy for when you need to find information. Leo says it’s hit or miss while moving around in a car, but it does make the Internet available anywhere. And at 2MBps. Wow. But then again, it’s $60 a month with a cap of 5GB! Oh. Come. On!
GJ can be found on Twitter at Twitter.com/AComputerPro
Q Steve, Santa Clarita, CA - Virus trouble
Steve had some virus issues and decided to just start over. He backed up data, reinstalled the OS and updated Windows. He ran his AVG AVS and found a virus! Leo says the likelihood is that it’s a false positive.
But it’s Worm Auto IT.B. As long as you had immediately ran Windows updates, Leo suspects it’s a false positive since Steve doesn’t use Yahoo Messenger - which is how that worm starts. Just ignore it. Leo says that you can use Avast as an AVG alternative. Microsoft’s Morrow will be free here soon. There’s also online scanners you can use to verify if you have something or not.
Here’s the list of legitimate online scanners you can use to scan your computer. Some may require active X installed, BTW, as well as running as an administrator:
House Call, Trend Micro
Eset Nod 32
Norton Security Scan
Kaspersky Online Scanner
McAfee Online Scanner
But Leo also recommends Nod32 by Eset for $30 a year and Symantec has finally heard Leo and is now offering a stripped down version of Norton AntiVirus for $15 a year!
Q Jan, Alta Loma, CA - RAW DSL
Jan wants to get RAW DSL so she can dump her land line. Leo says that it’s also called Naked DSL. The Phone company has to offer Raw DSL. But Leo says talk to DSL Extreme. They can work on your behalf to make sure you get it.
Leo doesn’t recommend replacing your landline with a bundled cable phone service. The service just isn’t as good.
Patrick runs two blogs. One for Blogger and Wordpress. Is that enough? Leo says both are very good, although you don’t get much in the way of Ad control. But a good, free option both.
Hour 3
Q Chris, Los Angeles, CA - Updating to Leopard
He wants to update to Leopard, but keep Tiger in dual boot because of it’s OS 9 support for some of his utilities like Quicken 98 and games. Does he have to have them on the same partition or hard drive? Leo says you can’t have them on the same partition, but you can on the hard drive. You can use the Startup Manager, hold down the option key and choose Tiger. But you should get Leopard now, as Snow Leopard won’t work with PowerPC Macs, so you’d have to upgrade to the Intel platform.
What about aliasing the user accounts and sharing them between OS? Leo doesn’t think the same user folder for both Tiger and Leopard would be courting disaster. You can alias to data folders, sure, but not user library folders.
Q Gene, San Francisco, CA - Winfax
What happened to WinFax? Can he reset his system to use WinFax? Leo says that Microsoft Windows Professional has it built in. Part of the problem is that more and more people are using virtual fax technology like eFax which arrive via eMail. It’s about $15 a month. From the chatroom - My Fax is $10 a month and GotFax is $7.95 for up to 100 faxes a month. MagicJack works as a fax service.
If you just want to send a fax, you can always try TPCInt, which allows you to send a free fax to limited calling areas.
Q Matt, Harrisburg, IL - Computer problems
Matt’s friend has a computer that automatically turns on and there’s no display. It isn’t the video card. Leo says it may be a power supply issue, a shorted switch on the motherboard as well. In the Chatroom - there may be a configuration issue where it’s looking for an AGP monitor and it’s a PCI card. Check your BIOS setup.
Q John, San Jose, CA - USB power problems
John has the FX6000 computer, but he’s having USB issues. Leo says that he has more trouble with powered USB devices and USB hubs. He recommends a Belkin Powered USB Hub which will provide power to the devices instead. This takes the load off the computer and give you better results.
Q Don, Cerritos, CA - Safari issues
Safari and Tiger. He’s got problems with formatting. Leo says that there may be a bug in the version of Safari you’re using and since you can’t upgrade unless you upgrade the OS, Leo suggests going with Firefox.
Verizon drops him when he tries to call in. Leo says that the FCC has ringing/calling limits. Also, the show has thousands calling at once. It’s a challenge.
Have a great geek week!
