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Saturday March 6, 2010

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Posted one week after broadcast…

Tech News

FBI investigating school district for violating student’s privacy

The fallout continues over the school district which has been turning on webcams on school issued laptops and snooping on kids at home. To date, over 42 kids have had their privacy violated and now the FBI is involved in an investigation of what the school district claims was an attempt to locate stolen laptops.

Leo says this is a wake-up call to all of us that when we visit sites, we may inadvertently give the sites permission to turn on our webcams. Leo also recommends a post-it note over the lens.

Apple sues HTC over 20 copyright violations

Apple has filed suit against smart phone maker HTC asserting that HTC has violated over 20 patents and requesting the International Trade Commission (ITC) ban imports of HTC phones to the US. Leo says this is shameful, the worse of all anti-competitive behavior. The only real solution is to continue to innovate and compete, not sue the competition to the annoyance or detriment of the consumer.

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Hour 1

Q Susan, San Clemente, CA - Digital Picture Frame problems

Susan has a 15″ Digital Picture Frame which simply won’t work right. It doesn’t accept images into it’s built in memory, just plays on SD card and even then it’s not all the images.

Leo suspects that there’s something about the files themselves which may not be supported by the frame. Leo suggests looking at the size or resolution of the image, and check what formats the frame actually supports and put them in that format.

Update: from the chatroom, there may be issues with unusual file names. Make sure there are no spaces and keep it similar to the names the camera originally named them. Keep it to 8 characters. Some frames also have problems if the JPEG has “exif” data in it - this is the data of what camera you used, the fstop, shutter speed, etc. Clear that with Irfanview.

Q David, Los Angeles, CA - camera upgrades

David wants to upgrade his digital camera. He’s thinking about the Fuji S1800 with 18x zoom, or the Panasonic FZ35. Panasonic has really improved their hardware and a lot of pros shoot Panasonics as back up pocket cameras. But the Fuji works as well. Leo says that at zoom, you’ll probably need a tripod to keep it stable, even with image stabilization. If you’re traveling, Leo also suggests GPS location as a feature. The new Nickel Zinc rechargables are great for long lasting rechargeable batteries. Either would be excellent choices.

Two sites to visit are dpreview.com and digitalcamerainfo.com. They will have great reviews of the cameras you’re looking at, how true to life the color is, sharpness, etc.

Q Tony, Pasadena, CA - Netbook recommendation

Tony is getting ready to go back to school next semester and wants a netbook recommendation. Leo says that Netbooks make great secondary computers, or computers for school as they are light and small, great for note taking, checking email between classes, etc. But make no mistake, they are small. And the mouse on the netbooks is pretty bad. Leo likes the HP311 with the Ion graphics chipset - great for media. The Asus ePC 1201N is great. Dual Core Atom, Ion Graphics, Windows 7 premium. 750GB “hybrid” storage (which is actually 250GB hard drive and 500GB online storage ). Full size keyboard. 1366×768 resolution screen. Wow.

Q John, Chatsworth, CA - Android Gmail sync issues

John just picked up the Samsung Moment and says it’s gorgeous. Leo says the Android operating system is an advantage because it automatically syncs to Gmail and Google Calendar and supports Google really well. John says that’s true, but the information transferred from his phone to his Google account overwrote everything that was already on his Gmail account. Leo says that what is likely is that the guy at the Sprint store that handled the initial sync wasn’t paying attention and replaced the data, rather than merging it. Synchronization is always risky and it pays to backup your data before doing any kind of sync.

For backing up “the cloud,” check out Backupify.

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Hour 2

Q Adam, Fargo, ND - Super SLOW laptop

Adam has a Dell laptop that is running Super slow. Dell never sent him an install disk. Can he use a friend’s who has a similar model? Leo says it should work, but it has to be the same version. Just make sure you have the same key number. And then you could upgrade to Windows 7. ANd reinstalling the OS once a year is a great way to keep your computer running right.

Q Gavin, California - Ear Bud issues

Gavin’s iPhone ear buds are starting to cut in and out. Leo says it’s a common issue. They ear buds have to be replaced simply because they wear around as you use them. Apple replaces them at a cost. If under a year, they’ll probably replace them for free.

Q Jeremy, North Hollywood, CA - Modding the XBox

Jeremy has an original XBox and heard you can run Linux on it. True? Leo says absolutely. The XBox was hacked practically instantly by a guy named Bunny Wong and opened the door for modifying the XBox. But you have to modify the hardware in order to put Linux on it. Check out XBox-ModChips.com. They have a “daughter board” that you can install which would open it up for that purpose.

Q Manuel, Corona, CA - Laptop recommendation

Manuel wants a 17″ laptop for gaming, multi-tasking and photo processing. Leo says you’ll want a Windows 7 64 Bit laptop with 4GB of RAM to run games and do photo processing. You’ll want a Core 2 Duo processor, or maybe even an i5 if you want to spring for the extra cost - but you don’t really need it. Leo’s favs are DELL. The Dell Studio 17 is a great model. Disadvantage, you can’t try before you buy, but they are very good and affordable. Other options - Sony, HP, Fujitsu, Acer. Leo says they’re all pretty much the same these days, even down to the hardware. Battery wise, a 17″ is considered a desktop replacement, so the battery life isn’t all that great. Dell isn’t offering a Blu-ray on the Studio 17 since they’re not 1080p. The Studio 16 has one though.

Q Daniel, Madison, AL - syncing iPhoto

Daniel wants to sync and share and iPhoto library between computers. Leo says a centralized storage issue that’s always on the network is your best option. This is called Network Attached Storage. It’s far easier and more reliable than sharing an external hard drive.

If it’s the same machine in separate logins, just move your iPhoto library to the Shared folder and you’re good to go.

Check out Apple’s technote HT1198 on sharing iPhoto between users at the same time.

Q Ron, Sherman Oaks, CA - Computer system reset

Ron says that his laptop computer’s system clock resets spontaneously. Could it be a dying CMOS battery? Leo says yes. That’s exactly what it is. And it not only is losing the time, it’s not backing up the system settings. So replace the battery and you should be good to go.

Ron also says certain keys his keyboard stops working. Leo suspects the keyboard ribbon cable is beginning to go bad. At 4 years old, they just wear out. It’s a simple replacement. Could also be the keyboard socket is coming lose. But if it’s the logic board, it’s cheaper to replace the laptop than the logic board.

Q Vlad, St. Georges, UT - Copying software to a Netbook

Vlad has an eMachine netbook and he wants to install Rosetta Stone on it. Leo says since you’re using a netbook, you will need to get an external CD drive in order to run it. Also, there may be copyright issues which wouldn’t allow you to copy the software onto the drive, so you’d have to run it from the CD drive.

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Hour 3

Q Stuart, Syracuse, NY - deleting a partition

Stuart recently upgraded his Dell Laptop to Windows 7 and wants to know if he can get rid of the partition that has the old original Vista recovery files on it. Leo says yes, you can. You won’t be able to go back to Vista after that, and if you have to restore the hard drive for tech support reasons, you wno’t be able to get help. But that’s unlikely. THe easiest way is the do this during upgrading Windows. But now, you need to use a third party non-destructive manager like Partition Magic or GParted (free), and Easeus (free) but you’ll need to backup your data. And by then, it’s just easier to reinstall Windows and do it from there.

You can also use the Windows Disk Management tool to remove the partition.

Q eyeDoc Mark, Syracuse, NY - Camera cleaning

Mark is an eye doctor has an EOS D20 camera he uses to shoot images of his patient’s eyes. He’s got dust issues inside and wants to know how he can clean it. Leo says if the dust is showing up on the image, it’s probably on the pickup CCD itself and if you try to clean it, you could ruin your camera. Leo recommends having it professionally cleaned. It cost him about $89, which is well worth it.

Q Greg, Orange, CA - upgrading RC1 Windows 7

Greg recently put the pre-lease version of Windows 7 on his computer and now he’s getting the reboot warnings. If he buys a new copy of Windows 7, how can he upgrade without reinstalling Windows as he’s got his computer just the way he wants it. And even though Microsoft claims there is no upgrade path, Leo says there is a secret way you can do this.

You need an official ULTIMATE upgrade disk and you need to modify a file on it. Copy all the files onto your hard drive and find the file “cversion.ini.” It’s a tiny text file that tells Windows to not upgrade. Look for “minclient,” and set the value from “7233″ to “7000″ or lower than what you have. Save it. Then run the upgrade from your hard drive (or you can reburn the upgrade disc and run it from there).

Q Kevin, Spokane, WA - Nexus One, iPhone killer?

Kevin would love to get an iPhone, but he’s on Verizon. Is the Nexus One a good alternative? Leo say yes! In fact, Leo - who’s been a long running iPhone user - has abandoned his iPhone and uses the Nexus One exclusively. There are some limitations. The keyboard is more sensitive (use the app SWIPE to replace it).

Q Kevin, Spokane, WA - multiboot w/ Windows 7

Kevin would like to multiboot using Windows 7 and XP. Leo says you can do it, but you need to alter the boot manager. The trouble is every install overwrites the boot manager. Start by installing XP. When you install Windows 7, it’ll ask if you’d like to dual boot. Say yes. But it’s when you add Linux into the mix that it’s problematic. Installing Linux, don’t let it write to the master boot record. Using a program called GAG boot manager, you can use all three.

Make a partition for each OS, using Easeus - about 10GB each. Install XP. Install Linux. Then run GAG. From the chatroom - defrag first in order to shrink the partition. And don’t forget, BACKUP your data FIRST!

That’s it for today, see you tomorrow!

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