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Weekend of September 2nd, 2011

 

Traveling... "Into Tomorrow"

Dave and the team are on the road in Berlin this week. For the latest updates, check our Facebook page and this site. Meantime, this week enjoy interviews and some of our favorite calls you may not have heard before.

 

Our Latest ITTV Video Update (Watch in HD)

With games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a lot of people are motivated to learn how to play the guitar. Why not let technology teach you? Rob shows you a guitar and software program that can help you master the guitar. Chris reminds us of some of the most popular inventions by Thomas Edison 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

 

 

Facebook friend Trevor in Alaska asked: When you guys are traveling around the world, how do you charge your phones and computers? Is all of Europe on the same electrical system? Or is each country different?"

 

Great question. Almost every country or continent uses different power and plugs. In Europe, for example, power output is 240 volts. Computer and phone chargers generally can take up to 240 volts. (Just take a peek at the writing on the plug itself). But, you'll need to use a plug adapter to plug-in to the wall outlet. They have different plugs.

There are some things you can't charge or plug-in without a power converter or voltage converter. You have to downgrade 240 volts to 110, which of course, is the standard in America. We usually carry a converter called "Terminator" that we picked up in Dubai, but you can find some in electronics stores like Radio Shack. Prices may vary from $20-$80 or more.

 

Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details.

 

Jim in Idaho listening on KBLI 1260 AM asked: "Looking to buy a new HDTV. I have one now, but want a newer one. One time I saw the speed at 60Hz and then 120Hz. I'm pretty sure I saw a 240Hz. Now, I'm looking at televisions and wondering what happened to it and why it's not there anymore."

 

For those who don't know the 60, 120 and 240hz refers to the refresh rate of the High Def television sets. In physics, a hertz is just a unit that is used to measure cycles per second, and that's all it really is, what 60 hertz actually means is that the TV screen is refreshed ... 60 times every second, 120hz means it's refreshed 120 times every second, 240hz means 240 refreshes a second, and so on.

Most TV viewers don't really notice a huge difference between the 60hz sets and the 120 and 240s, but the higher the refresh rate the crisper the picture should be. Some people will swear by their 120hz sets, specially sports fans and action movie lovers, and people generally notice more of a difference between 60hz and 120 than they do between 120 and 240.

Now, as for not finding the hertz on new TVs, it's probably up to the store, but in our experience that information is still posted by most vendors, online.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.

 

Norman in Jacksonville, Florida asked : "I was looking online for a Blu-ray player for my Wife. I saw that it was Wi-Fi capable. Why does a Blu-ray player have to get online?"

 

It doesn't really have to get online, but there are two reasons for allowing it to get online:

1) Some Blu-ray discs may come with extra features that require internet access,

... and most importantly ...

2) Giving your player internet access allows it to look for firmware updates and download them.

The reason this is important is because the updates aren't always minor fixes that you won't notice, sometimes they actually fix major functionality problems. For example, recently, Samsung had to scramble to fix two of it's Blu-ray players because, even though they played older movies, they would refuse to play some newer ones... unfortunately one of the "newer ones" it wouldn't play was Avatar, pretty much the most anticipated Blu-ray release to that date.

Now, if you don't have Wi-Fi or would prefer spending less money for a Blu-ray player with no WiFi capabilities the manufacturer will probably include other means of updating it's firmware, so don't rule out a player because it doesn't do WiFi.

 

Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details.

 

Rickey in Columbus, Ohio listening via the podcast asked two questions: "I have a netbook from work and I need to reload WinXP on the Netbook. Obviously, the netbooks don't have an optical drive. I'm using an external CD drive, but it fails during the installation process. What can I do to fix that? Second Question: I have 2 iMac G5s that I'm trying to restore the OS on. Where can I get my hands on a copy of Mac OSX that would be supported by them?"

 

You didn't really say how it wasn't working for you. Is it failing to read the disc? That might be a bad drive. More likely, I think, it's not able to boot from the external drive (many computers can't boot from a USB CD drive and Windows XP requires a reboot as part of the installation process). You might be able to use a USB flash drive, though.

Before you can install Windows XP from a flash drive, you have to prep the flash drive from a computer that has a working installation of Windows XP on it. If you don't have such a computer, then you can't use the flash drive, and you're back to an external optical drive (but many of those won't work because the computer will refuse to boot from them).

You can find instructions on prepping the flash drive at this two links: OCIA and TechRepublic, but in the meantime we also want to ask whether you've checked for a reinstallation partition on the hard drive? On a Dell netbook, for instance, you can press F8 while it's booting, select the Repair option, then the Reload Factory Software, and you're all set. Other manufacturers are different, of course.

About the second question: iMac G5s will run any Mac OS X that supports PowerPC processors. That means that you should be fine running anything up to Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), but you won't be able to run the latest Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) on them. You can still find Leopard online. We found it on Amazon for you, click here to go to it.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.

 

 

The "Into Tomorrow" team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.

• For Android:
  • Dave recommends: The Delta Airlines App
  
  • Mark recommends: PowerAmp
  
  
• For iPhone/iPad:
  Rob is in love with PhotoBooth on his iPad 2 and recommends the following apps as an alternative, if you don't have an iPad 2: PocketBooth ... IncrediBooth ... or Photo 1-2-3
  
  Chris recommends: Vevo

Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details.

 

What are your favorite apps? Let us know!

 

 

 

George in Lexington, Kentucky listening on WLRT 1250 AM asked: "There's a link that keeps popping up on my Facebook News Feed that says 'I can see who's been viewing my profile.' I've been afraid to click it because I've heard of a lot of viruses on Facebook. Can you really see who is viewing your profile on Facebook?"

It's probably a good thing that you didn't click on it. It probably IS a virus. Facebook doesn't allow people to track who views their profiles or content. Third party applications are also unable to track anybody. Basically, it cannot be done because Facebook doesn’t allow it. Applications that claim to be able to do this don’t work because Facebook makes it technically impossible for them to do it. Of course, with tech, nothing is impossible, so one day . . .

Facebook has a statement about this issue on its Help Center page. It says: "Facebook does not provide a functionality that enables you to track who is viewing your profile, or parts of your profile, such as your photos. Third party applications also cannot provide this functionality. Applications that claim to give you this ability will be removed from Facebook for violating policy. You can report applications that provide untrustworthy experiences by clicking the "Report Application" at the bottom of the application’s About page, or by clicking "Report" at the bottom of any canvas page within the application."

If you have been affected by a scam of this type, you should remove the app from your profile by going through "Privacy Settings" and clicking "Edit your settings" in the App and Website section. From there, you can scroll to the app in question and delete from your profile.

You should also delete any posts the rogue app has made on your Wall or your friends' wall.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.

 

Harry in Port Huron, Michigan listening on CKLW 800 AM: "I know that Windows Phone 7 devices, iPhones and Android phones are here. But, I need instead, a cell phone/computer that will work with regular Windows 7. I want to be able to run everything I use on my laptop, but I also want to use it as a cell phone. Does something like that exist? All I know is, when I call all the companies that make computers or cell phones, all the people tell me, 'Harry, I want one of those too.' Someone has got to make something like this!"

"We want one of those, too!"

Unfortunately, such a thing does not exist. When you see people walking around with modern day smartphones, what you're seeing are our baby steps toward what you're looking for. However, it's a long way off.

Think of the battery that powers your laptop. Next to your phone, that battery is almost certainly larger than your phone, your laptop's processor is probably about a quarter the size of your phone, its RAM modules are probably almost half the size of your phone ... we could go on for a while. But, the power needed to run those types of programs is not yet available on a device the size and price of a phone. In fact, look at netbooks. You can find some for little more than the price of a smartphone. They still can't run everything you run on a regular laptop, let alone desktop. And, their battery life under normal use is usually under 10 hours (that's with a big battery).

And then, there's the user interface. The Motorola Atrix likes to pretend it's a laptop and will let you run Firefox and a few other apps on a laptop sized screen. And, even it, in all of it's dual-core glory, won't be able to run Windows 7 efficiently. Motorola had to compromise and give users an expensive laptop-like dock so that users could take advantage of the phone's functionality via a user interface that made sense. Imagine having 3 Firefox windows and an email client open, all on a screen that's not much bigger than a credit card.

What modern day smartphones try to do is not to put a full featured PC in your pocket, nor could they do that. They put some select, very useful PC applications (such as email, web browsing, maps, basic games, simple note taking) in your pocket and customize them to be easy and pleasant to use on a small screen. You can do amazing things with today's smartphones: you can do your taxes, do very simple video editing, read and edit documents, but they are not full featured computers. Give smartphones a chance though, you'll be amazed at how much they can do.

By the way, Harry, if size is not a concern you can use your laptop as a phone. Just sign up for a service like Skype (where you'll get unlimited calls to all of the US for under $10 a month), sign up to a mobile broadband service and you're set! You just made a Windows 7 cell phone, albeit it one with a pretty lousy battery life and a size that makes it less than convenient to carry around in your pocket...

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.

 

 

 

Bob in Venice, FL listens online and asked: "Anyone heard of and/or had any experience with a program called "Pareto Logic Driver Cure"?? Stumbled into it while running some security clean-ups, when a screen from Microsoft popped up which induced me to continue with a free program to scan for driver problems, etc. I did continue, and the scan revealed a host of problems with the recommendation to continue with a partner of Microsoft, Pareto Logic..etc, etc....leading finally into the requirement to buy their program at about $49 "

 

Mark has had personal experience with the program listed in this email. It was loaded on to one of the computers at work, and like most of its kind -- did more harm than good. Web browsers have become secure enough that web sites can't sneak software on to your computer any more. Now the emphasis has shifted to tricking you into inviting software on to your computer. It's human engineering.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.

 

HOUR 2:

 

Tech News & Commentary

 

Aziz in Algeria listening online asked: "Hi, I listen to your wonderful radio from a program called RadioSure. But, the problem is that everyday the show is repeated. All the talks are the same everyday :( Please guide me how to listen to more shows on the radio. I'm so sad, please help me. Another link or PC App to listen to your radio will be great."

 

For those wondering, Radio Sure is a free Internet Radio Player.

Our online stream plays the last 5 most current shows. If you're listening online everyday, we can see how you would get tired of listening to the same stuff. However, we air a new show every Sunday at 2pm Eastern Time (UTC -5).

You are welcome to listen to our show on our website. We have a show player on the main page -- on the bottom right. And, if you want to download or listen to our podcast anytime, we'll have a link to our RSS Feed on this week's show notes. Look for the show page for the Weekend of April 22 under "Past Shows" or just click here.

 

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

 

 

David in Scottsdale, Arizona asked: "Wondering about surge protectors. I've never used one and never had a problem. I don't know if we're just lucky. We live in Arizona and don't have a lot of thunderstorms. I bought one that is 490 Joules and was planning to use it for my computer area and my home entertainment area. Didn't know if it was enough"

 

Surge Protectors are a great first line of defense for your electronics. It's not just lightning from thunderstorms that can cause problems. Many surges can even come from the power company.

There are a few things you want to look at when choosing a surge protector. You should find a couple of ratings on them. You want to first look for the Clamping voltage. This tells you what voltage will cause the MOVs to conduct electricity to the ground line. (The MOVs are what take the extra current during a surge and redirect it, keeping your equipment safe.) A lower clamping voltage indicates better protection. There are three levels of protection in the UL rating -- 330 V, 400 V and 500 V. Generally, a clamping voltage more than 400 V is too high.

The next thing you want to look at is the Energy absorption/dissipation - This rating, which is the "joules" number you mentioned, tells you how much energy the surge protector can absorb before it fails. A higher number indicates greater protection. Look for a protector that is at least rated at 200 to 400 joules. For better protection, look for a rating of 600 joules or more.

Then you want to look at the response time - Surge protectors don't kick-in immediately; there is a very slight delay as they respond to the power surge. A longer response time tells you that your computer (or other equipment) will be exposed to the surge for a greater amount of time. Look for a surge protector that responds in less than one nanosecond.

You should also look for a protector with an indicator light that tells you if the protection components are functioning. All MOVs will burn out after repeated power surges, but the protector will still function as a power strip. Without an indicator light, you have no way of knowing if your protector is still functioning properly.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

 

Jim in Wilmington, Delaware listening on WDEL: "If you wanted to drop your cable TV service, what would you be able to receive on a high-quality old-style antenna -- like on your chimney or in your attic?"

 

With a good HD antenna, you would be able to receive high-quality, actually the highest quality digital television. And that's why we always recommend an antenna -- even rabbit ears can work. Every cable and satellite provider compresses the HD TV signal, resulting in a loss of quality. For the most part this isn't really noticeable, but it is most definitely there. Over the air broadcasts direct from the TV affiliate to your antenna, are uncompressed and will give you a perfect picture, assuming you have signal at all.

And, of course, that's the rub. Signal at all. Jim is calling from Wilmington, Delaware, which is not "way out in the country," so you'd be fine. But others who live far outside of a populated area may find that they can't get a signal. For them, satellite may be the only option. Also don't forget, you'd be dropping back to network programming only, and foregoing all the cable and satellite network choices. You can make up a lot of that over the Internet, these days, but it's something you should be prepared to do.

For recommendations on HD antennas, our friends at the CEA run a great site: AntennaWeb.org. Check it out for some great tips on how to best set up your antenna.

 

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

 

Joan in Miami, FL asked: "Dave, which is better: the iPhone 4 with AT&T or with Verizon? I know that all you guys are well versed in electronics."

 

Dave responded: I've heard that Verizon iPhone users are quite happy with their service. They experience far less "dropped calls" than AT&T iPhone users. As a matter of fact, 2-3 times more, according to a recent study. If call quality is your top priority, Verizon is still the better choice. As a non-iPhone user, I will leave that question to our AT&T iPhonies in the studio ...

Rob's opinion: "I've had an iPhone since 6 months after it was first available on AT&T back in 2007. For years, we read and heard rumors about the iPhone going to Verizon, but I didn't get excited or started making plans to switch. I visited two Verizon Stores here in South Florida when their iPhone version finally came out and wasn't tempted to switch. I could've, but chose not to. 1) I travel and need a GSM phone -- only AT&T can handle that right now. Verizon has a CDMA iPhone version. 2) I can surf the Web and talk at the same time. Verizon iPhone users can't. 3) I don't make that many calls on my phone. I text, check email and social network. I'm usually around a WiFi network and can do all of those things. That's how and why I've put up with AT&T's iPhone service for almost 4 years now."

Our other AT&T iPhone user, Chris, hasn't switched to Verizon only because his contract isn't up yet!

So, ask yourself the following: What will you be doing with an iPhone? Do you travel? What matters most, making calls and not dropping them as often? or, surf and talk when possible?

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

 

 

 

Jimmy from Indonesia in North Sumatra watches the ITTV Updates on YouTube and asked : "Hallo Dave, I wanna ask some questions:

1. Can we use Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Xoom, HTC Flyer and BlackBerry book for phone calls?

2. Is it true that Samsung Galaxy Tab will not get the Android Honeycomb?

3. When is HTC Flyer release and sell in Asia, including my home country Indonesia?

Thx for your answer."

 

It's hard to tell if you'll be able to use any of those tablets to make phone calls because sometimes that feature is blocked by some providers and allowed by others, but we can tell you that none of those are being marketed for phone calls in the US.

Unfortunately, it does look like the original Galaxy tab will probably not be getting Honeycomb (though in some countries it does make phone calls). It seems that Google (at least for now) is keeping Honeycomb from being used on smaller tablets. That may change, but as it is now, 7-inch tablets don't look like they'll be getting Honeycomb anytime soon.

Just this last week we learned that here in the US the HTC Flyer has been made available for pre-order on Best Buy, but we haven't heard anything about worldwide releases yet. In fact, before the Best Buy news, all we had heard was that it would be available "in the Spring" (northern hemisphere spring, that is), so it looks like we're going to have to wait to find out.

 

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

 

Into Tomorrow Product Spotlight with Rob Almanza

Computer Mice - Swiftpoint Mouse & Smartfish Whirl Mini

Are you ready to upgrade your mouse? There are some neat innovations in the computer mice world and our correspondent Rob Almanza has two that you might want to try. Products mentioned: Swiftpoint Mouse & Smartfish Whirl Mini.

– By Rob Almanza, “Into Tomorrow” Correspondent

 

John in Durham, NC asked: "I bought a Verizon Octane from Costco since Verizon has more towers. I have 30 days to return it. I want to know if there is a better phone for the money since I only need it for calls and emails. I have my mother on my plan also. Two years is a long time for me since I am retired. I like your show a lot. I hope you can help me."

 

The LG Octane is what Verizon calls a "Feature phone," meaning that it's not a smartphone running an operating system like Android, but rather it's a phone where the software is supplied in the phone's ROM. It can do whatever it can do out of the box, and you can't do anything more with it unless Verizon and LG update the firmware.

For people who don't require a lot from their phones, these can often represent an excellent value. To answer your question about the Octane, many users have complained of an echo on voice calls. Some say you can turn off the "voice clarity" feature to eliminate it, others say a firmware update cleared it up, and the rest of the owners are divided into the "nothing fixed it" and "it never happened to me" groups.

The only similar Feature phone is another LG model, the Cosmos. It's less expensive, with a lower resolution camera, but aside from that it is a very similar phone.

While we're all big fans of our app-monster smartphones here, if you're going to roll with Verizon and stick with Feature phones, the LG Octane is pretty much their top of the line model in that category.

 

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

 

Mike in Tennessee listens on WTN 99.7 FM and asked: "I heard y'all talking about a small radio that cost in the neighborhood of $156. I copied the website as ccradio.com, but that is not right. Could you give me the info?"

 

That is the correct web site. CCRadio.com forwards to CCrane.com, the company that makes that radio. We had Bob Crane of C.Crane on the show at CES - the Consumer Electronics Show and they make & carry many good radios, including: AM/FM, Shortwave, WiFi Internet, HD Radios and a ton of accessories too. He brought a brand new one in particular to our Broadcast Booth called CC Gozo but it's not out yet. It's small radio with powerful sound.

 

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

 

HOUR 3:

Tech News & Commentary

 

Shelley in Jefferson City, Missouri listening on KLIV 1240 AM asked: "I was trying to download a couple of pictures that a family member emailed to me and when I couldn't open them, I accidentally deleted my photo program (iPhoto) on my iMac. It had thousands of my pictures from my vacations, adventures and milestones that I'd love to try and recover. I have a Mac OS X version 10.1.5 with a Power PC G3 Processor and 256 MB of memory. Is there any way to get my iPhoto back? I may have the original installation discs if I need to reinstall the program, but I'm really hoping you smarty-pants guys can help save my pictures."

You seem to have a very old iMac running OS X 10.1.5 and it won't have "Time Machine Backup" on it. That was feature that was added with Leopard (OS X 10.5). If you did have it, it would make your photo recovery a lot easier. So, unless you had a separate backup of files on your computer, you may not be able to restore or find your old pictures. Once you restore iPhoto from the original installation discs, your iPhoto Library will be replaced.

We wonder if iPhoto was completely removed. Have you searched for it everywhere? We ask because you didn't specify how it got deleted. It could've been the icon that was deleted, but not the entire application and library. You can search your computer for "iPhoto".

Since you have a very old version of Mac OS 10, you don't have "Spotlight", a search utility that would make finding iPhoto a lot easier, but you should still have Sherlock. To search for iPhoto using Sherlock open a Finder window, click on "File" at the top of the screen, and then on "Find", and that should open a search window, make sure to search both for "iPhoto" and for "jpg" since your pictures may still be there even if you did delete iPhoto.

If a similar problem happens to a Mac running OS X 10.3 or higher, there may be a software program you can try. It's called "iPhoto Recovery". It analyzes any affected media and will restore the lost, missing and deleted digital photos in a secure location. iPhoto Recovery is available online for less than $100.

Unfortunately, Shelley we can't give you an exact answer. We'd have to in front of your computer to help you. If you have an Apple Store nearby, try seeing their Genius Bar Specialists.

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

 

Joe from Raleigh, North Carolina listening on WPTF 680 AM: "Is there a way to recover a USB memory stick drive when the contact that is inserted into the PC USB port is broken?"

Well... yes, it can be done, but it's not that simple, you can damage delicate components while trying to fix the drive. So... before doing anything you have to ask yourself, how important is this data? how much is it worth to you?

Paying a recovery company to rescue the data off your drive can cost you somewhere around a couple of hundred dollars, if that's too much you can try to fix the drive yourself, but you should keep a few things in mind:

a) You're not fixing it, you're rigging it to try to get the data off, but it can fail permanently at any second.
b) There is a pretty good chance you'll finishing breaking it and this time it will be for good.
c) You have just realized that backups are great!

If you still want to attempt to fix it will link you to a few online guides from our show page, but try to think of it less as "fixing it" and more as a fun project that may or may not work out...

 

Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.

 

Paul in Wilmington, Delaware listening on WDEL 1150 AM asked: "I was wondering when is it that you will update your show -- your 24/7 feed. It's still replaying the first week of the month (April). And I would like to get the other shows to be able to listen to them in their entirety. Since during the day, when I hear it on the radio, I can't catch everything."

The stream is updated weekly with that week's show playing for the first time on Sundays at 2pm Eastern Time, you may have caught the same show a few times because our stream plays the last 5 weeks worth of shows (15 hours of Into Tomorrow) on a loop 24/7.

The other thing you can try if you want to be able to hand pick what show you want to listen to, is to go to our podcast instead, you can find it on iTunes by searching for "Into Tomorrow", or on our main page, look for the RSS symbol on the right, that will show you a long list of shows that you can download and listen to at your leisure.

Since you have an Android phone, if you want to make it even easier you can add our RSS feed to Google Reader or Google Listen (both free downloads from the Android market) and load our feed there or you can download TuneIn Radio and search for Into Tomorrow, both our stream and our podcast are preloaded on to the app.

We're gonna add a 6th week, just so there is less of a chance that you'll be hearing the same thing. It's all about pleasing you, our audience!

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

 

 

 

Victor in Smyrna, GA listens to the podcast and asked: "Can you recommend an external hard drive and which one might be the fastest and the most reliable and convenient?"

 

When it comes to external hard drives, the best names are generally the same as the best names for internal hard drives. Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, BuffaloTech & so forth. There are a few exceptions, like LaCie, who make external drives exclusively, but any of the big name models should be fine.

There are really a couple different types of external drives. The first is a standard, full speed, desktop computer type hard drive mounted in an external enclosure with a separate interface to the computer and external power source. They're bigger and often have cooling fans. If you're using one that has an eSATA interface (remember you need that port on your computer too, if you want to connect that way), the performance will be virtually identical to an internal hard drive. Reliability will be very similar to an internal hard drive as well. Which is to say, very reliable. Hard drive failures still happen, of course, and we always recommend you make backups of your data, but hard drives in general are extremely reliable.

The other type of external drive is the ultra portable, highly compact drives that are the very small hard drives designed for notebook or netbook use, in a small enclosure that typically gets its power from the USB interface. They will almost always be USB, which isn't going to be anywhere near as fast as eSATA, but every computer made these days has a USB port. These drives, because they're designed for portable computers, typically have better shock resistance and protection against being banged around and carried places. That makes them extremely reliable, but again -- hard drives can and do fail, so make backups. For convenience, it's hard to beat one of these ultra portable drives.

One final option, if you're looking for the ultimate in speed, is to roll your own. You can buy an external eSATA enclosure, with cooling fan and power supply, all ready for you to install your own hard drive. Then grab something like a Western Digital Velociraptor drive, and you'll have put together one awesomely fast external drive. Again, remember that you'll need an eSATA port on your computer, so check to see if you have one first, before you suffer from "plugis interruptus."

For those who have Mac products, Hitachi's G-Technology Series of drives are Mac-friendly. They also work with PCs, but you have to reformat them first.

 

Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.

 

 

Group Discussion: New Dating Website with a lot of controversy: WhatsYourPrice.com, it's motto: "Everyone has a price"

They offer:

• For the Generous: Date beautiful people guaranteed.
• For the Beautiful: Get paid for dating guaranteed.

Tune in to Hour 3 for more details.

 

 

 

 

Jim in State College, PA listening on WRSC 103.1 FM asked: "I would like to watch Netflix on my laptop. I have a cable that runs from a 1/8" stereo jack (from my laptop) to 2 RCA jacks on the back of my amplifier, but I get a buzz. Like a 60-cycle hum. I want to know how to eliminate that hum."

 

There are a couple things you can try. First, if your laptop power supply has three prongs, use a ground lifter (That adapter that will turn it into a two-prong plug) Many times, the noise you get comes from a grounding issue. Lifting that ground may clear that up. Chris always carries several on all our Remote broadcasts.

You can also try different cables. sometimes when it comes to audio and video cables, you get what you pay for. Try some higher-end cables. (but keep your receipt. If it doesn't solve your problem you could always return them to the store.)

 

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

 

Arty emailed us and asked: "Other than the price, what are the draw-backs and advantages of an SSD on a PCI Express card?"

The advantages of SSDs are clear, super fast read access, no moving parts for improved reliability, low power consumption. The disadvantages are usually less known, the one everyone knows about is the one that you mention: price, SSDs are much more expensive than hard disk drives, another well known disadvantage is capacity, SSDs are usually not nearly as roomy as HDDs and the larger drivers bring us right back to price: large capacity SSDs are expensive...

There are lesser known disadvantages though, and some of them are important.
The first one we should mention is the slow write speed, while SSDs are much faster when it comes to reading but some of them are actually slower when it comes to writing data. The other big, important problem is that, unlike HDDs, SSDs have a limited number of write cycles.
What this means is that after you write on your hard drive an X amount of time it's sectors start to become unusable and it dies.

It sounds pretty bad, huh? Let's try to put it into perspective... even under relatively heavy use your solid state drive will almost certainly outlive the usefulness of your computer by years, so it's the limited write cycles are not as big an issue as they seem to be, and if you look at portable computers in particular a solid state drive has the added advantage of not having moving parts that can get jammed when dropped or moved roughly.

Overall SSDs present a huge performance gain and we're going to see them more and more.

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

 

If you have any questions about any of this week's show info, please email us here.

 

 

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