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Weekend of September 28th, 2012
Dave and his tech panel answer more of your questions via the Ask Dave Hotline. Call us ... toll-free 1-800-899-INTO (4686) ... with any consumer electronics question, opinion, help another listener or tell us what your favorite app is and why. You can also participate via our FREE "Into Tomorrow" App (iOS/Android/Intel AppUp). Thank you for your participation!
ITTV Video Update
While Apple may be facing some embarrassment with their maps app, their latest mobile software update -- iOS 6 -- has some neat upgrades. Our in-house iDork Rob shares if we think you should wait or go ahead and update now. Also, Chris Graveline takes us back to the introduction of a popular Nintendo game console on "This Week In Tech History.
Listeners & Guests on the show this week:
For ALL the details ... be sure to listen to the show by downloading the MP3 or clicking the RED & WHITE "Play" button on the media player, both on the right-hand side of this page.
HOUR 1:
Tech News & Commentary
Rita in Miami, Florida listening Online asked: "I have an old fashioned flip phone. It's beat up. I'm sure my next phone will be some type of an iPhone kind of thing. What's the difference between an iPhone and an Android? I think I would prefer an Android, but I'm not sure why."
First is availability! Several styles of Android phones and a ton of options and screen sizes from various manufacturers & carriers are available almost everywhere -- carriers, stores, online. Price is another good point because there are so many different devices available. iPhone is whatever price-fixing high price Apple decides. How about the ability to expand your memory with SD cards? Try doing that with any iDevice! Another feature of Android that a lot of people like over iPhones are Widgets.
Unlike iPhone screens that are littered with a gazillion icons, Android phones have multiple desktops with widgets that actually have a purpose, giving you info with the flick of a finger. You don’t have to install any software on a computer in order for an Android phone to work, like iTunes for your iPhone -- the only place where you can buy music -- with Android, you have a bunch of choices.
Android has an open app market. So 3rd party developers can create whatever they want and get it on the marketplace. This means there are more choices in what your phone can do. Most Android phones also let you swap batteries. There are a bunch of other good reasons to like Android over iPhone -- like NFC and others -- but one of the latest is … they still have Google Maps!
Android is a great example of what’s good and bad about too many cooks and the soup. Google makes Android available to anyone, they can take the code and do what they want with it. What that means is, unless you get your Android directly from Google on a Nexus phone or tablet, what you’re really getting is the manufacturer’s individual flavor of Android. So you’ll find a fair bit of difference between Android devices in terms of what features they offer and how they work. What great about that is, you can usually find an Android device that looks and acts the way you want it to. What’s bad is that it sometimes takes some looking. Apple’s iPhone only works one way--Apple’s way. If you like it, great, your life just got simpler. If you don’t, you’re in trouble because it’s Apple’s ball and bat and they get to make the rules of the game. Independence vs. uniformity, with all the benefits and drawbacks of each.
The main difference in my opinion comes to the mobile operating system and a little bit on the hardware side -- Android vs. iOS -- It’s kinda like Windows vs. Mac. It may be affected by personal preference after you try each one. Both are quite simple to use. However, iOS is more unified. There’s only one new phone to design for at a time (for the most part), whereas Android has more handsets and screen sizes to deal with. With the iPhone 5, this is the first time app developers had to update apps to take advantage of more real estate on the iPhone, aside from the bigger screen on the iPad. IOS is also unified by iTunes. You only have one app store to deal with when it comes to downloading apps, movies, music and other entertainment. Android has the Google Play Store, Amazon Store and other limited Android markets.
On the hardware side, some might argue the iPhone is a bit primitive or behind the times. Apple has said many times they are “not always first, but make existing technology better.” For example, the iPhone 5 is the first iPhone to sport a 4-inch screen. Android phones are already at 4.8-inches with the Galaxy S3 and at 5.5-inches with the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 phone/tablet combo. But, not everyone is a fan of a bigger screen. Apple decided to make iPhone 5 taller, but kept the same width so users can still hold and operate with one hand.
If you’re ok with a more unified system, then iPhone is for you. If you want a more open source phone, then Android is the one to go with. You’ll have more handset options. Just be careful. Not all handsets are the same or offer the same features. As we always like to say, try before you buy. Go to an Apple Store or your local phone store to play with different phones before you make your decision.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Consumer Reports with Mike Gikas
The iPhone 5 reviews have been mostly positive thus far and certainly have been no hindrance to sales of the device – which have reached a staggering 5 million units and counting. But how is it faring in Consumer Reports lab tests? Senior Editor Mike Gikas is here to tell us some of their initial findings.
The "Into Tomorrow" team discussed the latest apps that they
have been playing with recently.
For iOS:
• Listener Jake recommends: Skyfire Web Browser
"Looking to watch flash on your iPhone. Skyfire Web Browser, will let you do exactly that. This browser is fast and easy to use, and is a great replacement for safari, and for those who wish to view flash content on their iOS device."
Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details.
Guests in this hour:
Kraig Lane, iolo Labs Director – iolo technologies
What causes your PC to slow down overtime? And what can you do to tune it up? Iolo Technologies has a simple solution for us.
Glenn in Mississippi listens on Supertalk FM and asked: "I travel a great deal. I have depended on Google Cloud/Drive a good bit. I have just discovered that Western Digital had a hard drive that connected on Ethernet can be used as a cloud. Not know anything about them I turn to you. Any word on them? Worth the 200 cost?"
It depends on what you’re using Google Drive for. If you use Google Drive to edit documents then having your own private cloud with Western Digital won’t help you much. If you use it for storage though, it could give you much more storage for less money on the long run.
The cloud enabled hard drive that Western Digital makes is called the My Book Live and it comes in 1, 2 and 3 TB models. Paying for 1TB of storage on Google Drive will cost you $49.99 a month. If you really need access to all of that data all the time, then one of these might work for you.
Then again, do you need access to all of that data at all times? Because a lot of it may not be usable to you over the Internet anyway. You may have access to a high definition movie from anywhere, but can you really sit down and wait for it to download or stream on your home connection? You may be better off just continuing to upload what makes sense to Google Drive and accessing it from there for free.
Now, if for some reason you want to have access to a huge number of files from anywhere, then yes, this hard drive might be of use to you. Just think about whether paying a premium is worth the extra connectivity or not.
You also have the option of using a computer to share a regular hard drive (internal or external) using FTP server software, but the set up will be far more involved than just turning on your new cloud enabled hard drive.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
HOUR 2:
Tech News & Commentary
Geoff in Jersey, in the British Channel Islands, calling in via the app asked: "I lost my laptop in lightning strike and I was wondering if I can recover my Outlook data by either removing the hard drive from the broke machine and putting my hard drive in an external USB drive but I don't know how to recover the data off of that or I did make a backup using Windows 7, the built-in back up in Windows 7. I wonder if I can recover it that way."
If the laptop was damaged by lightning, the hard drive may be gone, hard drives are magnetic devices, and lightning packs a lot of energy, so don’t hold out too much hope for the external USB option.
On the bright side, if you do want to try it, you can get a hard drive enclosure online for as a little as $5 or $10, and while you do have to assemble it, that barely means doing anything more than sliding it inside the enclosure and plugging it in, there really isn’t a lot you have to do. If they drive is still alive, after plugging it in, it should just show up as any regular external USB drive would, then you just have to find your documents, and under the folder “Outlook files” you should find the .pst file that contains all of your emails.
Restoring from a Windows 7 backup might help, but it depends on what you chose to back up, Windows 7 doesn’t just back everything up it lets you choose what you want to back up, so depending on what you chose you may or may not be able to get your emails back.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
"This Week in Tech History" Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Eric in Bridgewater, Virginia listens to the Podcasts and asked: "I got a smartphone - a Samsung SG2. The apps are asking about "auto Updating." What are the advantages or disadvantages of having the apps auto update?"
The obvious advantage is that you don’t have to bother manually updating every app or having to even worry about apps having updates available. Theoretically, this means that every time there is a bug fix your app gets automatically updated and you don’t have to suffer through it anymore. In reality, it sometimes means that you get stuck with weird functionality or a supposedly improved UI that is painful to use.
Most of the time allowing auto-updates gets ride of the hassle of having to manually update every app, and just replaces what 90% of people really do: look at a long list of apps that can be updated and just say “yes, just update all of them” without checking what changed on each one.
The few cases where you get stuck with changes you don’t want are probably not common enough to keep you from taking advantage of the convenience of auto-updating.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Ricky asked: "Christmas is around the corner and I'm wanting to buy a few tablets for friends. Looking to spend around $250 a piece or less. With the Google Nexus 7 being sold out everywhere, what would be y'alls choice for a great tablet? Is the Samsung Galaxy 2 7-inch tab that Best Buy has a great deal on, worth the price or just wait for the nexus 7? P.S. love the show."
You can actually buy a Nexus 7 tablet today from Google and it will ship in 3 to 5 business days, if you want these tablets as christmas gifts, you have plenty of time to order them and get them before then.
About the Galaxy 2 that’s on sale for $250, it’s not really as good as the Nexus 7. An 8GB Galaxy 2 costs as much as a 16GB Nexus 7 and it comes with a dual core instead of a quad core processor. It also has a customized version of Ice Cream Sandwich as opposed to the Nexus 7’s stock Jelly Bean.
If you want to compare, you can have a look at the new Kindle Fire HD. The 7-inch one costs $200 and it has access to Amazon’s library of games, movies, TV shows, books, magazines and streaming and cloud services.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Steve Nicholls, Author of "Social Media in Business"
Businesses are turning to social media, but it doesn’t always go well. Steve shares the Top 10 mistakes businesses make and what to do about it.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT with Rob: iOS 6 - The Good and The Bad
The Not So Great:
1) Maps by Apple
It’s causing a lot of trouble for drivers, public transportation and pedestrians. It’s still premature, so there are a lot of errors being discovered.
While the “flyover” is a neat feature, they should’ve spent more time being more accurate. We’ll have to wait for future updates.
Meantime, if you miss Google Maps, you can still use the mobile browser version at maps.google.com on your iDevice.
But there is a plus side for Apple Maps. If you have an iPhone 4S or the new 5, you FINALLY get audible turn-by-turn directions from Siri. Very similar to your stand-alone GPS unit.
2) Passbook
Instead of a digital wallet using NFC tech, Apple created Passbook. They describe Passbook as “Your boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, loyalty cards, and more, now all in one place.” Basically, with Passbook, you can scan your iPhone or iPod Touch screen to check-in for a flight, get into a movie, and redeem a coupon. You can also see when your coupons expire, where your concert seats are, and the balance left on a gift card. Passes are supposed to appear on the Lock screen at the appropriate time and place. For example, when you reach the airport or walk into the store to redeem your gift card or coupon. But, at the moment, it has a very limited amount of participants.
3) FaceTime Over Cellular Data Network
You can now make video calls from anywhere you have a mobile signal. This is kind of a good AND bad thing for some. Good because you don’t have to depend on a WiFi connection. Bad because some people can’t do it without upgrading their data plans. So make sure your data plan allows you to do it, before you try it. For example, AT&T only allows FaceTime over their cellular data network if you pay for a Mobile Share plan.
The Good:
1) Facebook Integration
You can directly post pictures from your photo album to Facebook, update your status from Notification Center, and sync your contact list with each person’s corresponding Facebook account.
2) Smarter Siri
Siri’s been tuned up! New features include: Facebook and Twitter integration (now you can have Siri update your status), give you directions, find movie show times and give you sports results – when she decides to work.
3) Panorama
Rob's favorite addition to the camera tools with iOS 6 is panorama. You can easily create some amazing panoramas with the iSight camera. Just follow the guide on your screen.
4) Message Reply
iOS 6 lets you screen your calls more efficiently. You can reject a call with a reminder to call them back later, or you can send a pre-programmed “hey sorry I’m busy” excuse text while rejecting the call. All it takes is a quick swipe up on an incoming call, and choose your method of rejection. Yeah, I know … Android has been doing that too.
iOS 6 Panorama feature slicing Dave's hand
HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Victor in Buffalo, Missouri listens via TuneIn Radio and asked: "My question pertains to Caitlyn's review of a USB microscope. I'd like to get one for the grandkids. Do any of those work on an iPad? Or am I gonna have to get a more versatile Android tablet to use a plug and play microscope?"
If you want a similar microscope that will work with an iPad, you can try the ProScope Mobile, it will even connect to several devices at once using WiFi. We should point out that USB microscopes that won’t work with iPad most likely won’t work with Android tablets either, even if they have USB ports.
The problem is not that there’s no place to plug them in, the problem is that you won’t find any driver to teach the tablet how to communicate to the microscope, so you’re going to have to go for a tablet-specific microscope (that most likely won’t work with computers).
Some people have been taking a less elegant approach, they’re just putting their tablet’s cameras up to a regular microscope so they image is display on the tablet’s screen... this does seem to work, but it may not be as interesting for your grandkids.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
"Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Karen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana listening on “Talk” 107.3 FM WBRP asked: "What is the best, very basic laptop computer? I don't need anything fancy and I don't know anything about Gigabytes or whatever."
If you need a very basic laptop, you might as well look for a cheap one, since you probably won’t be taking advantage of the more expensive features anyway.
A Lenovo G575 will cost you just $350 on Newegg.com, and since you don’t care about the technical details, here’s what you may want to know: the screen is comfortable at 15.6" and the battery lasts up to 5 hours.
Asus has a very similar laptop, same screen, good battery life and even a keyboard with a numerical pad on the right side, and it will also cost you $350.
If you don’t mind paying more, for $540 you can buy a Dell Inspiron N5050, you can have a computer with a Core I5 processor, which is considerably faster and a hard drive with a capacity of 1 Terabyte, which means 3 times as large as the other two laptops.
If you don’t know about the technical terms, and you’re just looking for something basic, you probably won’t be filling up a large hard drive, or needing a very powerful processor to run very complex software, so if you’re looking for a computer that will just do the basics and last you a couple of years, the first two will probably serve you well enough.
Just keep in mind that computer are like everything else, you typically get what you pay for, cheaper ones don’t always last as long or have as many features or as much power, but then again, if you were only gonna watch TV once a week, would you buy a 65 inch high def screen?
Or, if you were only going to watch local channels, would you buy an internet enabled TV? Spend whatever makes more sense for the use you plan to give your laptop.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Binoy from Wellington, Florida listens on the FREE "Into Tomorrow" App and asked: "I have 2 desktop PCs and I would like to use both with a single keyboard and a mouse. I use a LED monitor for both pc one with VGA and the other HDMI. Thank you."
What you’ll need is a KVM switch. The “KVM” is for Keyboard-Video-Mouse.
The only thing you’ll have to be careful about is making sure you get one with the proper connectors for your mouse and keyboard. If they are USB, then you want to be sure and get a switch that handles USB. If they are the older, PS2 connectors, you’ll need one that takes PS2.
There are quite a few of them out there. We found some at places like Newegg.com starting at less than ten bucks, so they’re very affordable.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Anthony in Canada sent us this picture and said: "Meet Bob from Lethbridge, Alberta. I work at the same company as Bob and when I spotted him in the lunchroom at our corp HQ in Calgary yesterday, I complimented him on his new Android and asked him if he was reading up on all the features. His response: “Trying to find out how to answer a call!! Lmao! When the dust settled, I showed him my IT app and he said he'd download that as soon as he got to that chapter!"
Meet Bob and his manual!
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Seth Bostock, Executive VP of Business Development – independenceIT
Seth is with a company that is all for cloud computing and joins us to share some of the benefits of taking your information to the cloud.
"IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1975 during the 3rd International Funkausstellung, better known as IFA, the first self converging picture tube was demonstrated as a prototype by several manufacturers. The cordless ultrasound remote control was introduced and Telefunken demonstrated another breakthrough technology, the first completely modular television chassis. Siemens introduced the automatic program search for television sets – until then, channels had to be found by carefully adjusting a rotary knob.
If you have any questions about any of this week's show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Corrosion Technologies: Several bottles of CorrosionX -- A few squirts of CorrosionX clean contacts & connections & keep them protected for months (in salt spray environments) to years.
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle -- This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
iolo Technologies: Copies of System Mechanic 11 - PC Tune-up Software
SMS Audio: "Street By 50" Wired headphones in black or white. We brought 'em back from 50 Cent and our interview in Berlin.
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