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Tech News & Commentary
Andy in Murfreesboro, Tennessee listens on WTN 99.7 – Calling in via the App asked us: “I have two hard drives from old PCs and I have music on there that I would like to get off of there. How would I go about accessing these hard drives that I pulled out of my old PCs?”
Andy, The easiest way is probably to buy a USB hard drive enclosure, you can find them online for like $5, sometimes they’re even sold in pairs.
You’d have to put your hard drive inside the enclosure, which involves little more than plugging in a connector, and connect the enclosure’s USB plug to your current computer.
Windows should load that drive as it would any other USB external hard drive and you should have access to all your files again.
From there you can copy the files to the new computer or just decide to keep using the external drive as extra storage.
Do bear in mind that not all enclosures are created equal. Depending on exactly HOW old that PC was, you might have SATA drives, which are the more modern standard, or you might have IDE drives (also called PATA). If you buy the wrong enclosure, your drives will not work in them, so verify the type of drive interface you have, first.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Facebook Participation:
Brand Loyalty? If a company that you like comes out with a new product, will you just buy it? (For Example: When Apple has a new iPhone, will you get it, no questions asked?) Share your opinions!
Here are some of the answers that we got:
Don said brand loyalty only to certain brands… Here they are… (and their contrasting negative counterparts, when useful to list are also included): Mercedes, Apple, Teac-Tascam, Honda (interestingly enough, not Toyota), PBS (but not Clear Channel), BBC (but not Fox), Costco, Intel, Holland-America, Southwest (but not American), Canon AND Nikon, Sony
Dorothea from Farmington, Michigan shared If a BRAND actually lives up to expectations..sure…but…so far Apple has not shown that they got the “memo” and the only reason I still have an iphone is because I don’t have the time to figure out how to transfer all the data.
Rose stated Well, heck yes but I do research. If I don’t like the particular version Apple Product, I just wait for one I do. NEVER go to the dark side. YOU KNEW THAT ABOUT ME UNCLE DAVE!
Dale said I tend to like certain brands. However I still do my research before buying it.
Tom shared I will get a new iPhone but not out of brand loyalty. Just too lazy to relearn another phone OS and too much media from iTunes.
Frank in Hauppauge, New York said I won’t just buy it no questions asked, but I’ll be predisposed to like it if it’s from a company I’ve had a good track record with.
Roberta in San Jose, California listens on KLIV 1590 asked us: “I am a user, not a techie or gadget person. My current PC is a Gateway running Windows 7. I bought it from TigerDirect last year and they sold me Total Defense software with it. It is up for renewal for $80.00 and I would like to switch, as it constantly blocks things without telling me what or why or giving me the option to allow it. I want a simple program that will always give me the option of what to view (don’t particularly like Norton or McAfee, however-I used to run ZoneAlarm on my old PC). What would be the best cheap and easy anti-virus software for me to run? Using this computer mostly for email, web searching, games (on POGO), and some business applications using Open Office and music-notation software.”
Microsoft’s own Security Essentials might be a good choice, it’s free so you can save those $80, rated highly on benchmarks and it doesn’t seem to have a bad effect on the computer’s overall performance.
Depending on your security settings, you can set it to pretty much block anything that it feels should be blocked, or to give you the power to decide what needs and does not need to run.
You mentioned ZoneAlarm, and that’s still an option. They provide free antivirus and firewalls software so, if you like them, by all means you can still go ahead and use them. The same is true for others like AVG, which will also save you the $80 fee and should give you adequate protection.
Both AVG and ZoneAlarm do offer paid versions, so be ready to either be bugged to buy them at some point, or to be made to sift through their websites to try to find the hidden link to the free version.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Joanne Black, Founder – No More Cold Calling
approach to sales forged from the hard-earned experiences of actually doing the job .
CEA Update with Allison Fried
The Consumer Electronics Association hosts its annual CES Innovation Awards to honor outstanding design and engineering across the tech scene. Allison Fried is here with what’s new for this year’s program in this week’s CEA Update.
Product Spotlight:
This week, the team discussed smart thermostats to keep your home at the right temperature while saving money.
Greg in Raleigh, North Carolina listens on 680 WPTF asked us: “I like to use my tablet Samsung Galaxy tab 2 as an ereader. I also use my IPhone 4S for the same purpose. I hate having to constantly touch the screen to change pages. At one time the Nook app had a setting to scroll text. Do any current apps have that feature? On my laptop I can change pages using a presentation clicker. It tried this in my tablet using an USB adaptor. Would this method work with a windows tablet?”
For your iPhone you can try uBooks, readerLite and Quickreader. They will all help you with touchless reading in different ways. uBooks and readerLite feature actual auto-scrolling, so they may be closer to what you’re looking for, you can set the speed, seat back and read. uBooks does feature a little popup that will ask you after a while if you’re still reading and whether it should continue scrolling.
That may be a very helpful way to make sure your text doesn’t scroll to the end if you put the phone down and forget about it, or it may be a very annoying feature, depending on how often it happens.
Quickreader is different in that it doesn’t scroll, but it does turn the page for you after a set time so you don’t have to touch your screen.
For Android, you can try Cool Reader, it features both regular page turning, scrolling, auto-turn and auto-scroll, so you should be able to find the functionality you need, no matter what you prefer.
Moon+ Reader also offers autoscrolling, and it comes with a variety of autoscrolling modes and offers realtime speed control.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Delroy asked us: “How do I connect my Dell 968w AIO to a Macbook air, running OS (10) version 10.8.5?”
Delroy, The Dell 968w doesn’t really play nice with anyone, it may be time to consider a replacement. Mac OS X was never a supported OS from the start, but the printer also does not support Windows 8, and had issues with Windows 7 64-bit for a while.
Some people seem to have tricked it into working by making it use Lexmark drivers, and you can always try and see how it reacts to generics as well, but the truth is, the printer wasn’t designed to play nice with Mac OS X, so you won’t ever find standard drivers for it.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, there’s never been a better time to purchase an all-in-one printer, scanner, and copier. Most models cost under $100, and even a high end one with separate ink tanks will cost less than $200. They have stellar print quality, they’re excellent scanners and copiers, they’re quite fast, and most of them are supported on a Mac.
We’ve had personal experience with the Canon Pixma series of all-in-ones and can affirm that any recent model in those lines support not only Mac computers but also offer AirPrint support for your iPhone and iPad to be able to print directly to them.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Hydreon:Fake TV – Burglary Deterrent Device
iolo: Copies of System Mechanic – Tune-up your PC to increase performance and reliability.
Tylt: ALIN Screen Protectors for the iPad Air
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!