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Saturday, December 4, 2004

Show #97

Broadcasting live from the studios of Newstalk 1010 CFRB in Toronto this weekend.

My book signing is tomorrow at the Indigo store on Queensway in Etobicoke, Canada from 11–2p. Please come by if you’re in the Toronto area.

I will appear on Live with Regis and Kelly Monday at around 9:40a. You can see a list of all the things I showed with prices and links right here?!

My Regis and Kelly slide show is on my blog.

Looks like I’ll be doing the radio show live from Los Angeles December 18–19. Stay tuned for details!

Today’s news items

IBM is getting out of the PC business. China’s largest PC maker, Lenovo, is the rumored buyer.

Electronic Arts says it will treat its workers better.

Geekboy writes: The Nintendo DS is sold out, but if you’re in desperate need of one, try going overseas. The japanese version of the DS is compatible with US software, and the other way around, so if you’ve got the extra money to pay for overseas shipping, you can try to find a vendor who has a DS in stock.

Mike B’s trivia question of the day

The well known website and search engine Yahoo! is really an acronym. What does Yahoo mean? ¹
a) Yttrium Asynchronous Hard Organized Object
b) Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle
c) Yum Adventurous Hilarious Orderly Old
d) Absolutely nothing

Noon-1p

Kevin in Calabasas - copying the old hard drive to the new

He has purchased a new drive and wants to get the contents of the old drive to the new one. Install the new drive as the secondary drive, then use the drive tools offered by the manufacturer to make a bit-for-bit copy of the drive.You’ll probably have to download the tools from the manufacturer’s site.

• Western Digital
• Maxtor
• Seagate
• Hitahci (IBM)
• Samsung

I’ve use Western Digital’s tools to do this and it works great. Anyone have any experience with Maxtor or Seagate?

Rich in St. Louis - has clicks in his burned CDs

My favorite plastic surgeon (yes we signed his implants) wants to know why he gets clicks in his burned audio CDs. He rips them and they sound fine on the PC, but there are clicks every second or so when he burns them out to disc no matter what softweare he uses. Try turning BURNProof off. You often get clicks when the CD is pausing during the burn - this is BURNproof preventing buffer underruns.

Carlos in Hawthorne - XP Security center is warning him

He has installed XP SP-2 and the security center is warning him that his antivirus is not up to date. He’s running McAfee, but the update subscription has run out. Don’t re-subscribe, Carlos, download and install the free AVG from Grisoft. And read up on all my recommended free security programs in the Tips Section.

MechMan adds: Don’t forget about the online virus scanners. They are a useful service to doublecheck your computer before running the install of the new Anti-virus, because some viruses actually will interrupt an AV program’s install. [Yes indeed. See my answer to Paul below - Leo]

1–2p

Ian in Iowa - 12 yr old wants to build computer, resources?

I recommend Scott Mueller’s Upgrading and Repairing PCs. It’s great for building and repairing PCs. I use www.pricewatch.com to find the best prices on components, but make sure to check the vendors at www.resellerratings.com before you buy. And don’t forget to factor in shipping costs when you compare prices. It might be more economical to buy all your parts from one vendor even if he’s not the cheapest.

Mp3mooch also points out that there’s a copy of the Build Your Own Computer video that Patrick Norton and I taped a couple of years ago on the DVD included with Leo Laporte’s 2003 Technology Alamanac. Oh yeah!

Another listener writes: I built a computer from Morris Rosenthal’s book Build Your Own Computer & it works very well and was fun to build.

Dean in Oceanside - CAD program trying to find folders

He’s been using drive mapping to trick his Bentley Microstation CAD program into using a folder in place of a non-existant network drive. Try using Windows environment variables instead. Check the program documentation to see which environment varibles (if any) it uses then map them using the System Properties→Advanced→Environment Variables control panel.

Paul in Long Beach - Trojan horse infection

All his Outlook icons went black and he saw 666 at the top of the screen. Sounds like a virus to me! Norton Antivirus wouldn’t work but when he rebooted he was able to scan and found ACTSKIN4.OCX - a possible spyware program. According the SARC databnase that’s Realspy, a trojan horse keylogger. I would change passwords as soon as possible. Then use one of the online antivirus scanners in addition to your local antivirus to make sure you don’t have any more infections. Two good ones:

• Housecall from Trend Micro, makers of PC-Cillin
• Panda Active Scan from Panda Software

There’s a more complete list on onlive virus and spyware scanners in the tip section.

2–3p

Gary in Tustin Ranch - PDA/GPS recommendations

I think you’re always going to get a better GPS standalone but if you want both I like the Garmin iQue - it’s less clunky than the GPS devices that hang off existing PDAs.

Kirk in Gardena - setting up a wireless mobile office

He’s a construction project manager who uses the iPaq 4155 and a Motorola v400 phone on site. He’d like to connect them to his laptop and get Internet access to email data back and forth. I recommend the new Verizon Wireless Broadband. It’s $80/month but in most of SoCal it’s as fast as DSL.

Mike in Asuza - can’t delete file on OS X

This happens frequently on both Mac and Windows - the OS thinks the file is in use when it actually isn’t. Use a program called TrashIt! to delete the file.

John in Tustin - AVG can’t update

He uses the free AVG antivirus but can’t update it. AVG says AVG32.EXE is busy. First restart in Safe Mode and see if you can update. If not, exit to DOS (it’s Windows 98 so DOS is still available) then delete the file. I’d recommending uninstalling AVG 6 and installing the new AVG 7 anyway.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

¹ Answer is b) Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The Web site started out as “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.” Sources: Jerry & Dave’s Excellent Adventure (video) and Yahoo! Media Relations. (↑)