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Sunday, November 21, 2004

Show #94

In the 1p hour: Cap’n Neil Bauman, creator of the Geek Cruises. He’s hosting my next Geek Cruise: Baltic Blast combining MacMania 3.5 and the Northern Light digital photography workshop!

Join Steve Wozniak, David Pogue, Chris Breen, and me June 30-July 10, 2005 as we cruise the Baltic with Geek Cruises aboard Holland America’s beautiful brand new Westerdam. We’ll be visiting Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Estonia, Berlin, and more while we learn about the Mac and digital photography. I’ll be teaching classes for beginners, a seminar on Mac security, and offering my popular Top 40 for OS X session (with all new software). European cruises book up fast so sign up now at GeekCruises.com!

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Mike B’s computer trivia question of the day

How much memory did the Apple I have? ¹
a) 4k
b) 64k
c) 8k
d) 640k

Noon-1p

Jim in North LA - laptop buying advice

He’s looking at the Windows XP Media Center but I’m not sure that’s the right way to go. First Media Center laptops tend to be big and clunky. Second, Media Center is designed mostly for display on TV in the living room. It’s a Tivo clone. Unless you plan to record TV, a normal XP laptop is probably a better choice.

David in Woodland Hills - can he run Office 2003 on two machines?

Yes. The End User License Agreement specifically states that you may:

 install an additional copy of the Software on a second, portable 
 device for the exclusive use of the primary user of the first 
 copy of the Software  

1–2p

Cap’n Neil Bauman

creator of the Geek Cruises

Kevin in Malibu - backing up his Mac hard drive

I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner a free program from Mike Bombich. He lost his hard drive using it so he’s reluctant to try again - I’m sure they were unrelated. Backing up an entire hard drive really exercises the heads and could push a flakey drive over the edge.

You can use rsync to backup files but use an HFS+ aware version called RsyncX not the one that comes with OS X. You should use ditto instead of cp to copy Mac files - ditto when used with the -RSRC option correctly copies Mac resource forks and metadata, cp does not.

2–3p

James from Santa Clarita - cracking the Windows 2000 password

The easiest way to clear the Admin password in W2K or XP is with the Emergency Boot CD. In fact, download it now and burn a copy - it’s very handy in a variety of Windows crises.

Listeners write:

• There’s a great article that explains on how to login without Administrator Password at http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm
• Passprop Lets you lock down, and enforce password policies.

To recover the WindowsXP Administrator password you have to have the Linux Boot Disk and look for the SAM File, and then rename or delete that SAM file. The SAM file is located in c:/Windows/System32/Config/SAM

Patrick in San Clemente - can’t send mail via POP on Yahoo mail!

Check with your ISP to make sure they’re not blocking port 25

Chris in Mission Viejo - controlling a Linux machine from Windows

He has a network with Windows machines and a Linux box - he’d like to manage the Linux box from Windows. You can do this using PuTTY on Windows. PuTTY supports command line logins using Telnet or SSH and works with X as well for a GUI interface. You might also want to take a look at Synergy a very cool program that implements a software KVM over the IP network. It’s my favorite way to control a Linux box from wWindows.

Chris in Orange - what kind of memory is best for a digital camera

There’s a tower of babel in memory these days:

• Compact Flash
• Magic Stick
• Smart Media
• XD
• SD
• MMC

They all work, but the pros use Compact Flash because you can buy 40x and 80x cards that can keep up with high end cameras. Consumer cameras are usually too small to use CF. I recommend SD or MMC - it’s small and economical. SD is the faster of the two.

A camera’s memory form factor is not the most important criterion for choosing a camera, but it’s certainly something to consider.

Mike in Santa Paula - Is Wi-Fi fast enough for streaming video

He has a Tivo with the Home Media Option and is wondering if he can use a wireless network to share the video. It’s not ideal - even 802.11g can suffer from stuttering and dropout if you’re sending a video signal. 802.11a works better, mostly because it is on a less trafficked frequency, but wired is best.

Theresa in San Clemente - Operating system not found

She got an old Windows 98 machine from a friend but when she turns it on she gets that error message. It means the system can’t read the hard drive - either because it can’t see it or because there is no OS visible. Check the cables to make sure the drive is still connected. If you can see an entry for it when the system first turns on and checks the drives then at least the drive is connected. That probably means your friend wiped the drive before giving it to you - a good idea since he probably has all sorts of private info on there. You need to install Windows to get it working again.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

¹ Answer is c) 8k. Read more about it at Apple History. (↑)