Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
J in Livonia, Michigan asked us: “Hi, In regards to printers, it used to be that lasers were more efficient because you often had to sit there and clear those that were inkjets. Is that still the case, so that you end up wasting a lot of ink? I don’t use my printer that much, and second of all, I am looking for one that will be able to use the old Mac 10.4/10.5– I am looking for one that does scan, fax, copy and print. Looking for your assistance on that.”
The inkjet printers we’ve used recently don’t have to constantly clean their cartridges like the old ones used to, and they tend to still be cheaper than their laser counterparts. Wasted ink and wasted time waiting for them to clear whatever blockage had gotten into their printing heads doesn’t seem to be an issue these days.
Your second question is much harder to answer though, in particular because you want a printer that will play nice with Mac OS 10.4, that’s Tiger, Tiger came out in 2005. To give you an idea of how old that is in computer terms, 2005 was long enough ago, that Steve Jobs may have been carrying a Motorola RAZR V3 back then. Tiger predates the iPhone.
Given that 10.4 isn’t even supported by Apple anymore, and that any computer from Apple’s Intel era could upgrade past 10.4, no manufacturers are advertising compatibility with that OS as a feature, and whatever newer printer you buy may or may not work with your OS.
10.4 was Tiger, after that came Leopard, then Snow Leopard, then Lion, then Mavericks and THEN the current version which is Yosemite, 10.4 is going pretty far back, especially when taking into consideration that lately the upgrades to newer versions have been free or close to free.
You can still find refurbished printers from 10 years ago that claimed compatibility, you may be better off looking at those in particular, otherwise most new printers probably won’t work properly with your computers, you may be able to print, but you probably won’t be able to access the rest of the features.
You can also look for printer/scanner combos without fax support and move to online faxing, that may make it easier to find a printer that still has drivers for your machines, but even that won’t be easy. An HP Deskjet 3050, for example, has support for drivers as far back as 10.5, but if you also need 10.4 support it won’t work for you, and that’s a 2010 printer, 5 years have passed since even that model was released.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
John in Columbia, Missouri listens on TuneIn asked us: “I’m looking for a program that can run multiple streams of Twitter, maybe a video and some other things on a large monitor for a school.”
John, If you have a computer available to dedicate to the task, then pretty much any web browser will do. You can use websites like VisibleTweets.com or TwitterFall.com to show fullscreen Twitter feeds for free. TweetBeam.com may appeal to you too, as it’s also free and it allows you to block tweets containing words that you don’t want to see displayed at your school.
You asked for a program, though, so if you prefer something that won’t live in a web browser, TweetDeck should do the job for you. It can do more than just displaying timelines, it also let’s you manage multiple accounts. TweetDeck will also let you mute tweets containing words you don’t want students to see.
That same computer, running in mirrored mode, should make very easy to play movies on the screen, just play them as you normally would and they will play on the screen as well.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Damian from Washington, DC listens via TuneIn asked us: why Google limited SD card support and whether there’s a larger conspiracy at work and whether it’s a way to push people to cloud services.
If it makes you feel any better, Google changed the way SD cards work under Android yet again with the release of Lollipop to give users more access. If your phone happens to get an update to Lollipop, you may get to enjoy better SD card access again.
In Google’s defense, their stance on SD cards goes beyond them trying to push cloud services, they’re not having an awful lot of trouble pushing people to cloud services, SD cards or no SD cards. Google’s main issue with SD cards is the same as the reason Apple doesn’t use them on their devices: they’re vastly inferior to internal memory, they’re slower, less predictable, less reliable, and less secure.
Internal memory is obviously quite a bit faster, and the quality is determined by the phone’s manufacturer while with an SD cards most people will buy the cheapest option and complain about how “their phone” is slow, or “their phone” lost all it’s data, not the card they themselves picked while paying attention to the price and ignoring the speed rating and the brand’s reliability..
SD cards are typically FAT formatted which doesn’t allow for journaling and has very, very poor support for file ownership and permissions, internal memory is ext formatted, journaled, less prone to errors, can read larger files, and can support ownership permissions that can be used to secure data.
Google has been trying to move away from SD cards for a while, and will probably continue to push to get away from them, but it goes beyond just their cloud services and into the realm of also having to make competitive, reliable products that can stand up against the competition. The Nexus line, for example, is highly regarded in the Android world and it shuns SD cards, but as a result those devices are responsive for all it’s users, not just the ones that paid for class 10 cards, rather than class 2.
If you want to work with what you have, there is software available for rooted Android users called SDFix that will give KitKat the ability to write to external memory such as SD cards. However, it does require that your devices are rooted, and as we’ve noted here many times, being the root user on your device increases your security risk when it comes to malware, not to mention cutting you off from any official support by the hardware or software vendors. So while it is completely legal, it might not be wise.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Manish Patel, Co-Founder – NOIZY Brands
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
There were several approaches to record movies on a disc. After the TED system by Telefunken, presented at IFA 1971, VHD, the Video High Density Disc by JVC was introduced, then LaserVision by Philips and CED by RCA. All were analog; all failed, and all were discontinued by the mid 80s. CD Video with 74 minutes of video also didn’t succeed; another medium with higher capacity was needed, combined with data reduction which was available in the early 90s. In the mid 90s the industry started to develop the DVD technology, which had five times the storage capacity of a CD.
Moses in Stockbridge, Georgia listens to the podcast and is calling in via the App asked: “I hear you talking about cloud storage all the time. I ran across an article about something called an unRAID server stating that you could use your old computer as your cloud storage device. What’s the difference between me using this unRAID server and a normal cloud service?”
unRAID is a lot like FreeNAS if you’ve heard of that, there are some differences, but they’re both Network Attached Storage systems.
And, by the way, if you’re using an old computer and looking for NAS software you should probably also have a look at SnapRAID and FlexRAID, since those run on top of Windows and may allow you to use your old computer as more than just a file server.
The difference between those systems and cloud storage is that, first of all, you have to manage them, meaning that you have to give them internet access, you have to set up port forwarding so you can access them remotely, you have to acquire either a static IP address, or a dynamic DNS service for your variable IP and set it up, you have to choose whatever file system you think will best fit your needs, and you have to back up the drives once you start using them.
With cloud storage it is assumed that you will always be able to access your files, the server should be up all the time, and your files should be accessible all the time. For you to have the same functionality at home, you’d probably need redundant internet connections and some plan to deal with power outages. Cloud services are expected to keep your data backed up, and if you managed your own internet-connected NAS, you’d have to do that. Cloud services are expected to be secure, you’d have to make sure you’re updating and installing security patches to keep your own server secure. If you want to share data with other users, you’re going to have to handle authentication yourself as well.
On the plus side, buying more storage wouldn’t come with a monthly fee attached, you’d just have to add a drive (which may be easier or harder depending on your setup at home) and it would be a one time cost.
It all depends on the way you’re planning to use your storage. If you want to store a lot of files cheaply, you might as well use what you have (but back up, old computers tend to have old hard drives and hard drives don’t age well), but if you need your files to always be accessible, or you plan to share files regularly, or you have a data cap, or you just don’t feel like dealing with the setup, cloud services may be a good choice.
The big deal about unRAID is that you can combine drives of differing capacities into your “RAID array.” RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives) has always required that the drives making up the RAID volume be the same capacity. You could use a bigger drive as part of the array, but the capacity of any individual drive would be no greater than the smallest individual drive.
In other words, if your RAID array consisted of two 1TB drives and a 2TB drive, the RAID controller would regard it as three 1TB drives, letting half of the space go to waste on the larger drive. The unRAID OS allows you to use drives of any capacity.
Your unRAID server could indeed be connected to the Internet. If you were in a remote location accessing your files back at home, YOU would then be the cloud storage provider, as opposed to paying someone else. It would not, however, provide the same offsite backup as a cloud storage provider would. If your house burned down and your unRAID server went with it, your data would be lost.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Mark in Erie, Pennsylvania asked us: “Do they have a 3D projector, something like the little robot had on Star Wars?”
The “little robot” on Star Wars? We presume you mean R2D2. If that’s the case, that was a pretty simple holographic projector. Sure, holographic projectors exist! And they’re 3D also. But they don’t project realistic “solid” images that appear real, no matter what you see on Star Trek or Star Wars or Star Anything. Holographic projectors are clearly projected images. The 3D is useful for getting a depth perspective on the projected image, but it’s not capable of fooling anyone into thinking the projection is anything but what it is.
Holographic projectors come in various sizes and sophistication levels, depending on what you want to do. Any of them capable of projecting large images, multicolored images, or images of multiple objects at once will be quite expensive. The ones you see advertised cheaply on the Internet are fairly simple devices.
Although oddly enough, almost all of them can project the same image of Princess Leia that the little robot did.
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.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Breathometer: Several of their Breeze – Smartphone breathalyzers
NewPotato Technologies:Classic Match Fooseball Turns your iPad into a fooseball table
Firefold:Ultra High Performance HDMI Switcher
NewerTech:Voyager Q – SATA Hard Drive docking solution