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Tech News & Commentary
Greg in Dacatur, Illinois listening on News Talk WSOY 1340 AM asked: “Does HP make good computers for college applications?”
Unless you’re buying a Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, Apple or Asus, you can’t beat HP for reliability!
HP scored slightly below the halfway point on the latest reliability surveys we’ve seen, so you’re not looking at a super reliable brand, but you’re also not looking at an “oh my god! don’t buy that!” brand.
If the price is reasonable enough, they’re probably a safe enough brand to consider. The truth is that for the most part, expensive computers outlive cheap computers, so if you buy a relatively expensive HP it may outlive a cheap Lenovo, the reliability rankings give you a general idea that if you buy a Lenovo, it’s more likely to last you longer or break down less than a comparatively priced Dell, but if the specs and the price are good enough, you can probably still look at an HP, halfway down the list and consider it a safe enough purchase…
Just keep in mind that, for a similar price, surveys say that Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung, Apple and Asus machines will probably encounter fewer issues.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Eddie in Akron, Ohio listens to the Podcast asked: “I know there’s a scanner called Neat that does receipts and documents. But it doesn’t do it directly to an SD card. I’m looking for something that will scan directly to an SD card.”
You can try ION Docuscan. It’s a portable scanner with an SD Card reader built-in that can scan with or without a computer present. You can find Docuscan online for $70, which makes it the cheapest option we’ve found.
You can also look at the Doxie Go. It’s small and portable, but you’ll be paying at least twice as much as you’d pay for the ION Docuscan.
The SkyPix Portable Handheld Scanner, unlike the other two, is handheld and you will have to move it over what you want to scan. It’s about as expensive as the Docuscan, between $150 and $200 depending on where you buy it.
The Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner comes with a 1GB SD Card, like the others it will work without a computer, and it costs around $150, much like the others.
Now…why MUST it be an SD card? There are scanners and multifunction printers that will scan and store the image on a USB flash drive. And why must it be directly to the SD card? Any scanner attached to a computer can give you images, which you can then copy to an SD card using an extremely inexpensive USB-to-SD card adapter. What we’re suggesting is that you examine what is truly impossible to do without, and what might be good for a workaround, to increase your options and save you some money.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Luis in Miami Lakes, Florida listening online asked: “I am a huge fan of music, and over the years I have amassed a huge collection (over 3000 CD’s). My wife and I started the painstaking task of uploading all of our music onto our hard drive, and archiving the collection. Do you know of any hardware/software interface that could help us in speeding this process up with out manually having to archive it ourselves. Not a big iTunes fan either, and was really looking for a way to do the transfer “in bulk”, with the ability to arrange it later.”
There are options available to automate the process, but you won’t want to use them. Ripstation, for example has a “cheap” consumer version that will automatically grab your CDs from a pile, put them in the drive, and rip them, but they’re version of “cheap” is $1400.
The rest of the automated options are about as expensive, and they even go higher than that, they’re clearly meant for professional operations. There are also services that will take your CDs and rip them for you, but the cost of shipping 3000 CDs alone will make that extremely expensive for you, and the services are not cheap either, you’re talking about more than a dollar per CD.
To be honest, your best bet might be either to pay a couple of high school kids to start putting a dent on your collection, or to just do the ones you listen to the most, and the rip the other ones as needed, at least you’ll slowly go through them and it won’t be a horribly repetitive task that will never seem to end.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Nick Huzar, Founder and CEO – OfferUp
Whether it’s to get rid of a stroller, toys, sporting equipment, or clothing, sellers can use OfferUp’s iPhone mobile app to snap a picture and post a gently-used item for sale in under one minute.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
When the DVD was introduced mid 90s it was first used for data storage, as its capacity was five times higher than that of a CD. In 1997 the first DVD burners for PCs came to the market, followed by the first consumer DVD players which had their world premiere at the International Funkausstellung in 1997, known worldwide as IFA. Movie content was protected by regional codes and copy protection and the quality was perfect even in multiple copies.
Jason in Niles, Michigan listening on 94.9 WSJM asked: “I was thinking of upgrading to a rugged smartphone. Wondering what was out there. I currently have AT&T but am willing to switch.”
On AT&T you can look at the Rugby Smart. It’s an Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) smart phone with a super AMOLED screen, and AT&T’s “4G” speeds (of course NOT much LTE), and a 5 megapixel camera. And, it’s built to military specifications to make it resistant to shocks, dust, vibration and water up to 1m for 30 minutes.
T-Mobile has the Motorola Defy. The Defy is very similar to the Rugby Smart in general — waterproof, shockproof, 5MP camera, Android OS. We haven’t tried it ourselves, but we have read that it’s a little sluggish.
You might also want to look into rugged cases for your current smart phone. For instance,LIFEPROOF makes a case for the iPhone, which is water, snow, dirt, and shock proof. These types of cases might also be a good option if the phone you like isn’t rugged.
If you are a Verizon Wireless user, the rugged smartphone of choice would be the Casio G’zOne. It is “military certified” for hard environments, which means it’s wrapped in a hard rubber case and is impervious to things like sand and water, although I wouldn’t want to immerse it too deeply. It has a $199 list price, Verizon sells it for $99 with a contract, but if you shop online you can find it for some great prices. Especially since you would be switching to Verizon to get it, you could buy it from the Amazon wireless store, assuming you signed up for the contract through them, for just one penny.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Gladys in Rochester, New York listens and calling via the iPhone App asked: “I was wondering if you had any recommendations for speaker docks for the iPhone.”
Depending on your price range you have lots of options. On the high end, Bose, for example, has some very nice sounding docks, but they cost as much as $600, and even their cheapest models don’t drop below $250. Bang & Olufsen has models for as much as $1000.
If you’re looking for less-expensive prices, for $150 you can buy portable Logitech speakers with a rechargeable 10-hour battery, or you can even go down to about $45 for stationary Altec Lansing speakers.
You can also look at Philips Fidelio for iPhone, we’ve only tested the Android version, but it sounds good and we would expect the iPhone version to sound good too. Mark bought the Logitech S715i for his wife’s iPhone 4S and tells us it sounds brilliant. It was under $100, but we’ll give you two warnings. First, you can’t dock an iPhone with a case or bumper IF that case or bumper is too thick. He had to order a special “ultra thin” case for her iPhone 4S and then it worked fine. Second, the Logitech S715i has rechargeable batteries, but as soon as you unplug it and run on portable power, the sound quality decreases. It doesn’t seem to run as much bass, perhaps to save power drain. But it does charge the iPhone while it’s docked, it does sound great–at least plugged in, and it has a useful remote control. It’s also well supported by the iPhone, just dock and go, no separate apps to download.
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:
Magix: Copies of Music Maker 2013 – Create your own tunes! Even beginners can easily create music.
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software
Steve Nicholls: Copies of his book “Social Media in Business – Succeeding in the New Internet Revolution” – A guide to the understanding of social media’s business value.