Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday August 22, 2009
- Show Audio
- Tech News
- Guests
- Hour 1
- Hour 2
- Dominique, Christchurch, NZ - YouTube and the iBook
- Daniel, Los Angeles, CA - reading MAC files in Windows
- Justin, ElCampo, TX - Office 2000 update
- Tony, Southern California - Charging iPod Shuffle
- Will, Sebring, FL - Windows crashes after screen saver turns off
- Bill, Pasadena, CA - Microphone recommendation
- Don, Los Lowes, CA - Dude’s getting a Dell
- Hour 3
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Sony announces the PS3 Slim, $299
Sony announces a slimmer, faster, and cheaper Playstation 3.
Steve Jobs secretly breaks the law
When Steve Jobs recently proposed to Palm a secret “no poaching” agreement, he may have violated federal law.
Dan Brown’s fight with Amazon over the Kindle
Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, is going to war with Amazon over their plans to offer his lastest book “The Lost Symbol,” for the Amazon Kindle.
CBS to advertize in magazines with video
If you’re a subscriber of Entertainment Weekly in New York and Los Angeles, CBS will be advertizing their fall season on a 320 by 240 TFT LCD screen in the magazine page. It’ll hold about 4 minutes of video and have a battery life of about an hour (and you can recharge it). Leo says it’s an amazing technology.
Guests
Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine
The new Playstation 3 Slim. According to Engadget, the new PS3 Slim will support Dolby Audio BitStreams natively without encoding. Scott says he’s rather have the player do the encoding and send the audio uncompressed in PCM so you can enjoy secondary audio content. And with an upgraded Cell processor, the PS3 will do a fantastic job as it’s currently the fastest Blu-ray player for encoding digital audio.
Speaking of digital audio, there’s an amazing lossless compression codec (DTS HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD) out now which cuts file sizes in half with no loss in audio quality. Scott says this compression is ideal for home theater.
Hour 1
Q Chris, Kettering, ENG (via Skype) - AVCHD Support
Chris wants to know what software supports AVCHD for editing. Leo says that Pinnacle 12 was the first to adopt AVCHD support without transcoding. Will Windows Movie Maker do it natively? Chris says it does.
Chris also recently won a Nokia 5800 with free music services. Leo says that’s very popular outside the US. One service Leo is very interested in is Spotify. It’s a free streaming service for your smart phone. And it makes no sense for the recording industry to block streaming sites here in the US. The real threat is from sites like Pirate Bay.
QJoe, Los Angeles, CA - Garage Band
Joe says that he’s now a nerd thanks to Leo! Joe is podcasting and wants to know if he can use two USB mics at the same time. Leo says there’s really no way to do it. If you have two people on a podcast in studio, you need a mixer to do that, Garage Band can’t handle separate audio channels like that. Leo also recommends a FireWire input device. That can use up to 8 different microphones.
Joe also has a podcast called the Sports Nerds.
Q Peter, Brooklyn, NY - iPhone App trouble
Peter is having trouble with his Navigon GPS turn by turn app he uses. During an update, it stopped and now keeps asking to update the app. Leo suggests deleting the app and reinstalling. You can delete it in iTunes by unchecking the App and iTunes should delete it. If that doesn’t work, your next call is to both Apple and Navigon.
Other options G-Map, Tom Tom, and there’s even a free one called Roadee.
Hour 2
Q Dominique, Christchurch, NZ - YouTube and the iBook
Dom has a 600 mhz iBook and is having trouble playing YouTube. Leo says of course Dom is, the iBook just isn’t powerful or fast enough to keep up the video stream. Flash is a CPU hog and as such, if you don’t have a fast enough processor, you’ll run into problems like that. Time to upgrade to an Intel Mac.
Dom also wants to know how AMD compares to Intel. Great question. The benchmarks show that AMD can compete, but isn’t as fast. AMD is great to keep Intel faster and cheaper. Go to these two sites for more info on benchmarks PC Perspectives and AnandTech.com.
Q Daniel, Los Angeles, CA - reading MAC files in Windows
Daniel just “made the switch” to the MacBook Pro and runs it dual boot with Windows 7 RC1. He can’t see his Mac files while in Windows. Leo says that’s because MAC uses FAT 32 file systems, while Windows uses NTFS Files. You could just format everything for HFS/FAT32, but you’ll have a 2GB file size limit. There are programs that allow Windows to read HFS mac files. MediaFour has a program called MacDrive which allows Windows to see Mac files. But the good news is that Snow Leopard will allow Mac Files to be read in Windows and it may just be out this Friday.
Q Justin, ElCampo, TX - Office 2000 update
Justin only uses Word and Excel from Office 2000. Should he allow updates to the rest of the suite which he hasn’t installed? Leo says go ahead, it won’t hurt it and some files are shared in the suite anyway.
Q Tony, Southern California - Charging iPod Shuffle
Tony has a Dell Inspiron 530 and an iPod Shuffle. Does the case have a USB port in front? Leo says there no. Only in back. And because the way the Shuffle charges, it needs to go into the included charger. Leo recommends a powered USB hub or an USB extender cable to be able to connect.
From the Chatroom, there is a slide down USB port in the front. So good news!
Q Will, Sebring, FL - Windows crashes after screen saver turns off
Will says when his PC comes out of screen saver mode, it crashes. Leo says the specific screen saver may be corrupted. Try another. Or, simply turn it off, you don’t really need it unless you want security when you leave your desktop. Leo also suspects the video driver is crashing. Look for an updated video driver and install it. If it’s an integrated video on the motherboard, it’s probably an Intel video card.
Will also can’t reinstall XP after being bit the the AntiVirus 2009 bug. Leo says to check for a hard drive driver which you may need in order to reinstall Windows.
Q Bill, Pasadena, CA - Microphone recommendation
Bill is building a website with audio narration. What does Leo recommend for a microphone? Leo recommends the Plantronics DSL400 or the Rode Podcaster. The AT2020 by Audio Technica is another good option.The Shure SM58-X2U is a pro mic that Leo also likes. Comes with an XLR to USB adapter dongle that turns it into a USB mic. There’s also the Heil PR40 Pro mic.
Q Don, Los Lowes, CA - Dude’s getting a Dell
Don is getting a new Dell and wants to shrink his hidden main partition down and increase the size of his data partition. Leo says that’s a good idea. They’re usually just for computer identification anyway. Leo recommends Partition Magic for this. Don’t run the risk of using a “freebie,” which has no support or recourse.
Hour 3
Q Jim, Calabasas, CA - Hates his Apple TV
His Apple TV is now suddenly missing from iTunes. Leo suggests connecting it wired to see if he can see it. But if you have a strong WiFi connection and can get the Internet, then you need to try repairing it. Jim said he did that and even did a hard reset, reinstalled iTunes, the whole works. Jim says it happened after iTunes updated. Leo says that iTunes often causes the Apple TV to disappear after updating. Leo says when it works, AppleTV is great, but he suspects Apple is abandoning it.
From our listener Sam:
‘’The problem is not with the AppleTV, it’s with the wireless network, I know this because I replaced my apple tv with a new one had the same exact issue on both units. For Mac, they should download iSniffer and analyze their houses wireless networks, if they are within one channel of another network, it causes this problem. There should be a buffer of at least 2 channels on either end of the channel you’re using. This has solved the connection to iTunes. I had the same issue of being connected to the Internet network, but disappearing from the iTunes device list. My apple tv now works great.
It has something to do with how iTunes handles the device connection over the network, it is not a good protocol. Hope it helps Leo!’‘
Q Dean, Ventura, CA - Jailbreaking the iPhone
Dean heard someone got arrested for modifying his XBox 360. So will people get popped for jailbreaking the iPhone? Leo says no, there’s two different things. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection and distribute information on how to do it. This is where this kid got in trouble. What got him arrested was he was in business doing it, not just modding his own. Although Apple would love to make jailbreaking illegal, it currently isn’t.
Q Andrew, Yorba Linda, CA - Gaming computer recommendation
Andrew needs to get a new gaming computer. Recommendations? Leo says to get the most powerful computer you can afford, while focusing on video card (NVidia GTX280) and processor (you don’t really need a multi core processor - a Core 2 is fine). If you really want to max the performance, get SLI compatible video cards which split the graphics between two cards. 4GB RAM is plenty. A fast hard drive is nice so you’re not waiting on loading so much. The truth is, though, that most high end PCs will be good gaming machines. Spend the extra coin on your monitors.
How about Alienware? Leo says it’s a souped up Dell with a higher price point and cool PC case. Look at the specs and see how similar or different they are from the high end Dell brand. Leo bets you’ll save 1/3 by avoiding Alienwaer and get the same performance. You should get an excellent gaming machine for under $2K.
Q Russ, Coronado, CA - AntiVirus 2010 virus
Russ’ son was playing with his computer and he got bit by AntiVirus 2010. He cleaned it up, but now he’s getting tons of popups. Check to see if your blocker is turned off. Plus, you may think the virus is gone, but there may be way more problems in there that you didn’t catch when cleaning it. And the last thing you want is to use a registry cleaner. That doesn’t really get rid of the virus and you could end up getting your computer in worse shape. You really need an AntiVirus. Free scans can be done online at Trendmicro.com or eset.com. But to clean them off, Leo’s favorite is our sponsor Nod32 by Eset. And AVG by Grisoft is free. A free fix for AV2010 is MalwareBytes. But in the end, it may just be better and safer to backup your data and wipe the drive, reinstalling Windows. It’s the only way to be sure.
QRandy, Oceanside, CA - can’t download music from iTunes
Randy can’t download music using iTunes or rip CDs. His computer crashes. Sounds like iTunes is having trouble with it’s database or that your hard drive has a damaged sector. Try uninstall and reinstall. Run CheckDisk to see if your hard drive is healthy. Another option is SpinRite it can not only diagnose any bad sectors but move fix the problem.
See you tomorrow!
