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Sunday, October 31, 2004

Show #88

Happy Halloween!

Watch the live Ordsall Hall Ghost Cam in England.

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

What do you want for Christmas? How about the ultimate Star Wars Light Saber?

Creative’s Zen Portable Media Center is a video walkman - a hot category this year. Like Archo’s tiny Gmini 400 you can listen to music, look at photos, and watch video on the bright color screen, but the Zen has Microsoft copy protection built-in and works with XP Media Center.

Mike B’s Computer trivia question of the day

What was the name of the first compiler? ¹
a) Flow-matic
b) A-0
c) COM-PILE
d) CODASYL

Noon-1p

Robert in Pasadena - laptop turns on when he picks up the phone

Enter system BIOS and turn off wake on ring. On laptops sometimes the “Enter BIOS Setup” message is covered up by an ad for the manufacturer. Hit Escape to clear that ad and see the startup messages. On most Compaq’s hit F10 to enter Setup on boot.

Or, just try unplugging the phone line until you need it.

Ted in West LA - looking for somewhere that can transfer data from floppies

Any recommendations for an LA area company that can transfer 5.25″ disks to CD?

Nick from Nick’s Computer Works in Barstow writes:

 Once again, all you need to remember is NICK’S COMPUTER WORKS
 in Barstow, CA where prices are right and correct answers are 
 waiting and plentiful.

 We would have transferred his data to CD for $5 to $10 and shipped it back 
 to him within 24 hours of receiving it.  That is how us little guys 
 work.  Forget all those “big” L.A. stores, we don’t have problems, we have
 solutions.

Daniel in Reno - VCR tape head cleaner recommendations

It’s best to have a technician do it - you can’t really clean your VCR heads effectively yourself. If if you can’t find a store that still services VCRs, I’d recommed the Alsop cleaner. It’s wet and fairly gentle. But don’t overuse it.

Lee in San Diego - iPod recommendations

The first thing to think about is how your music will be digitized, that is, converted to bits so your computer and music player can store them. Unless you never plan to buy music online, you should choose a music player that supports the format of the songs you’ll be buying.

Apple’s iTunes Music Store uses Protected AAC to digitize its songs - only the iPod can play that format. (Although you can use Hymn to remove the copy protection.) If you expect to be buying songs at the ITMS, you must buy an iPod. On the other hand, if you use Napster you’ll probably want a player that supports Windows Media format files, since that’s how Napster encodes its music. The iPod cannot play Windows Media files. I’d look at Creative’s and iRiver’s music players. Dell also sells an inexpensive hard drive based player that works with WMA files.

1–2p

Lynn in San Diego - making cassettes and DVDs out of cassettes and VHS tapes

Audio is easy. Hook your cassette player up to your sound card and use Nero or MusicMatch to copy the music to the hard drive then record it to CD. If you’re planning on making audio CDs I suggest recording as WAV - i.e. uncompressed. If you’re going to store the music on your hard drive or a portable music player, use MP3 to compress the files.

Video is a little more complicated, but I’d like to recommend the $230 HP DVD movie writer dc4000. You’ll still need a computer but it automates the process and makes it very easy. No video converter is required.

Randy in Sierra Madre - Internet Explorer can’t save as JPEG

This is a common problem that can be caused by several things. Read Microsoft’s tech note on the subject. He is trying the first fix: clearing temporary Internet files, but he’s trying to do it by hand. Better to use Internet Options… and press the Delete button.

Suzanne in Fullerton - looking for notebook

She wants it to last a long time, have a DVD burner, plenty of RAM and hard drive. I talked her out of a floppy and into using a USB thumb drive instead. She indicated that she might want to consider a Mac, so I encouraged her to look at the iBooks. The polycarbonate case is more durable than the aluminum case of the Powerbooks.

Aaron in Topanga Cyn - removing spyware

How do I remove it??? Read my article on Removing Spyware and follow the instructions.

2–3p

Keith in Lomita - wants to copy one drive to another on his Mac

You could use the ditto command in Terminal (it copies all the critical data unique to Mac files) but it’s easier to use the free Carbon Copy Cloner.

Paws adds: The author of Carbon Copy Clone, Mike Bombich, also offers rules for cloning a disk or backing up your drive with ditto and psync.

Jay in Orange - Defrag crashes on Windows 98

I suggest re-installing the operating system. In 95/98 and Me you can install the OS on top on an exisiting install and it will just replace damaged or missing files - including defrag. You can also use System File Checker to replace the Defrag program.

1. Click the Start button, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then point to Select System Tools.
2. Click System Information.
3. On the menu bar, click Tools.
4. Click System File Checker.
5. Choose Extract one file from installation disk.

You’ll want the file DEFRAG.EXE in the WIN_16.CAB cab file.

Jim in Bellflower - chkdsk keeps running on his XP system

chkdsk is only called if you have FAT-32 partitions. Unless you need them for compatibility with an older version of Windows, I’d convert the drive to NTFS. It’s more reliable and will eliminate the chkdsk requests. Use the command line CONVERT command: click Start→Run enter cmd then type CONVERT C: at the command prompt.

John in Vista - wants to automate Corel Photo Paint

You need a Windows macro recorder. The best is Quickeys. You can try if free for 30 days, but it’s a bit pricey: $99. You’ll find many free or inexpensive alternatives at my favorite shareware download site www.snapfiles.com

Dan in Palmdale - Audiobooks won’t burn to CD

He can listen to them in Windows Media Player but his burning software says the one hour MP3s are only five minutes long. It could be copy protection, but since you can listen to them on the PC I suspect they’re just encoded in some weird form. I recommend upgrading to Windows Media Player 10 - the current version - then using it to burn the audio CD.

I think the problem he is having is he is trying to burn the disc as a Data CD, he needs to tell the software that he is using that he wants to make an Audio CD. {Wes H}

Annie on LA - Digital camera recommendations

For your first digital camera look for 4 or more megapixels, good optics (Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, and Kodak all are good), and the least lag between the time you press the button and the time you take the picture. I recommend a visit to www.digitalcamerainfo.com or www.dpreview.com - read their reviews and try before you buy. You should be able to get a great digital camera for around $300–400 these days.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

¹ Answer is b) A-0. A-0 (or A0) is a programming language for the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II, using three-address code instructions for solving mathematical problems. A-0 was the first language for which a compiler was developed. More information. (↑)