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Sunday, January 18, 2004

Show 6

Here are the notes from today’s show. Check back often for updates!

Rebecca in Anaheim is looking for a new computer. She says portability and price are important. After running through my favorite Windows notebook brands: Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and IBM, she said she’d be willing to buy a Mac. Macs are more expensive but a good choice for a novice user, particularly since they’re much less likely to get hacked. Security aside, though it’s important to make sure that you get the platform, Windows or Mac, that your local support experts (family, friends, geek next door, co-workers, etc.) know, since you’ll be relying on them for most of your support.

I recommended an iBook for Rebecca. The basic model starts at $1099, although if eyestrain is an issue she might want to consider the $1299 model for its 14-inch screen. As always with notebooks its important to try before you buy. All notebooks designers make compromises; you want to be sure they didn’t compromise in areas that are important to you. Try the screen in all kids of lighting to make sure you’re comfortable with it. Type on the keyboard, use the pointing device. Make sure the battery life is sufficient for your needs (the iBook gets only about two hours per charge in the real world), and that you can live with the weight. Notebooks are the most personal of personal computers. Choose one you can live with for a long time.

Mike from Newbury Park has a problem with his outgoing messages in Outlook Express. They keep getting sent! I suspect a corrupt message database. Start by deleting the index files as described at Sasknet. Failing that you might want to try software designed to fix up the Outlook databases like AOEV, free to try, $50 to buy.

Bradley in Yorba Linda wanted a recommendation for a Windows browser other than the security=challenged Internet Explorer. I highly recommend the open-source (and free) Mozilla. Version 1.6 just came out this week and it’s very stable and slick. Mozilla works on Windows, Mac, and Linux (plus a number of other operating systems). The experimental Firebird from the Mozilla Project is also excellent. Both browsers feature tabbed browsing, block pop-ups, and can eliminate ads by blocking images from other sites. Bradley also recommended AdMuncherfor blocking pop-ups and ads. Free to try, $25 to buy. Bradley is the local geek in Yorba Linda. Email him for information on his services at bradley@yorbamicro.com.

Mark in Valencia wants to use Apple’s iSight camera on Windows. I don’t recommend it even if you could find a hack to make it work. The iSight is very bad in low light. There are better choices for Windows. For USB cams, I like 3COM’s old HomeConnect - best USB camera I’ve ever used. (I still use it for the Leoville Labs cam.) 3COM discontinued it, but you can still get XP compatible drivers from Vista Imaging, the original manufacturer of the product under the ViCam name. There’s a Linux driver, too.

Logitech sells pretty good USB Windows cams, including the Quickcam Pro 4000 and the Orbit which follows you around.

No USB camera can equal the quality of a Firewire/IEEE1394 camera, though. Because the USB bandwidth is so limited, USB cameras have to squish the picture considerably before sending it down the wire. Firewire cameras can let the PC do the work - that’s the main reason the iSight works so well. Your best picture on a PC or Mac is going to come from your DV camcorder connected via Firewire. You’ll need Orange Micro’s WebcamDV software to make the camcorder work with Messenger or other Windows-based teleconferencing software. OrangeMicro also makes a Firewire webcam that comes with appropriate drivers for Windows and Mac called the iBot. Haven’t tried it, though.

Jacob in Ventura was looking for a way to record video streams as they came in. He’s using a screen capture program called Camtasia. Camtasia like Hypercam and Mr. Captor records AVI files from the screen. Jacob wants to save the actual digital stream to disk as it comes in - the quality is better that way. In some cases the video will be cached to your Internet temp files. It’s worth checking there for the .RM or .WMV files. Most of the time, though, the copyright holder makes sure that the stream is not preserved. It seems like whenever someone releases a program to do this with Real Video files, Real Networks shuts him down. I’ve done a little research and found a program that records Windows Media files directly. It’s called WM Recorder. The free trial records up to two minutes of video. It’s $29.95 for the unrestricted version. I’ve tried the trial and it works fine.

Self-confessed Geek Girl Joanne from Agua Dulce is having trouble with her Wi-Fi repeater. She has a D-Link 800AP+ and her Mac loses sync whenever it sleeps. It’s probably an issue with the Mac not the repeater, but you might try updating the D-Link firmware. There have been some issues with the repeater as noted here.

Macs can have problems rejoining the Wi-Fi network after sleeping. Make sure to update both your OS and the Airport software by running System update. You may also want to set the Mac to join a specific network when wakening. In Jaguar set it to either “Join most recently used available network” or “Join a specific network”. If you leave it on “Join network with best signal” it can sometimes fail to find the network. You’re best bet if you don’t use Wi-Fi on the road is to set it to join a specific network each time. In Panther open the Network System Preference pane and open your Airport settings. Where it says “By default, join:” select “A specific network.”

Joe from Ontario gets a mysterious error message when his system starts up. His keyboard claims to be locked, even though it isn’t!

Tracy from Aliso Viejo wants to spy on her teenager. She’s particularly interested in making sure he keeps his agreement not to go to adult web sites. She’d like a program that emails his keystrokes to her automatically. Bradley from the chat room recommended Eblaster. Andrew likes Activity Logger. Both will do what Tracy wants.

David in Covina got bit by Bugbear. Now he can’t get rid of it.

David in Arcadia wants a recommendation for recording TV on a PC.

Andy from Cutler, Maine was curious about my recommendation to put the swap file on the first partition on a hard drive.

Greg from Phoeniz, Arizona says iTunes has really slowed down his shut down.

Kurt from Long Beach has an old 350 MHz iMac. He wanted to know whether it made sense to stick with it or buy a new one.

Edward from Santa Ana is looking for laptop recommendations.