HOUR 2:
Tech News & Commentary
Steven in Nashville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “How do you setup wireless printing when you don’t have high-speed Internet?”
You don’t need Internet access at all for wireless printing. It uses your internal network, so all you’d need is a Wi-Fi router. Of course, you’d also need a printer that supports wireless printing. There are many of them available and some manufacturers have wireless adapters you can connect to an existing printer. You’d then configure your Wi-Fi router to create a wireless LAN between your computer and your printer. What this essentially does is create an Intranet, which is sort of like a “closed circuit” network that doesn’t connect you to the outside world via the Internet.
You want to make sure that even though your Wi-Fi network isn’t going online, that you still have a password to protect it. Otherwise, any passers-by with a Wi-Fi device could essentially access your computer and all the information on it.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Gene sent us the following email: “I recently was going through some old boxes and ran across a couple of old floppies. They were recorded on an old Mac probably using MacOs 7.0 or maybe 8.0 about 12 years ago. They contain a couple of short books written by an uncle who died at age 99 shortly after this. What is the best and/or easiest way to download the info on them to my PC running Vista Premium Home Edition?”
First, you need to have a drive to read those disks on. If you don’t already have a floppy drive, you can find external USB floppy drives online and in many electronics and office supply stores. They start at less than $20.
Once you’ve secured a drive, you’ll then need to be able to read and copy that data. If they were saved on a Mac and you’re trying to read them on a PC, you’ll have to convert the files. One thing you can look at is a program called “TransMac” — a Windows program that can open and copy files to and from Mac format disk drives, high-density diskettes, CD Rom, DVDs. You can try the 30 days trial or buy it online for $48. TransMac is compatible with Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Wes in Wilmington, North Carolina listening to our podcast and on WPTF 680 AM asked: “I have an older computer with a Standard Celeron Processor in it and a Standard 250 watt power supply. I upgraded my RAM to 2GB. I also upgraded my internal hard drive, and have an external powered hard drive. I just added a new video card with a 512MB memory requirement. How necessary is it for me to add a new larger power supply and will I be a drain on the processor.”
To know for sure you might need a larger power supply is if your computer will start shutting down at random and for no apparent reason. Needless to say, this is never a pleasant experience and it may not be the best way to go about it because there is always the chance that it will randomly shut down when you’re in the last line of that document that took you 3 hours to write, or when you’re fighting the last boss on that game that has consume several days of your life, or in the middle of burning a DVD.
As a healthier alternative, you can go to ASUS’ Power Wattage Calculator. There, you can select all the relevant information about your PC (processor, video card, memory, hard drives, CD/DVD drives, etc.), and it will tell you the minimum recommended wattage that your power supply should have to feed your computer’s various components.
Peter in Pawleys Island, South Carolina listening via Satellite Radio asked: “Jupiter Jack, does it really work? Is it any value? Does it work with all phones?”
Jupiter Jack works, sure, but not quite as automatically as the ads want you to believe. For example, the ads says: “works with any phone.” That’s not true. It works with any phone that offers a headphone jack. Jupiter Jack includes adapter kits to fit a number of different phones and smartphones, but you should really make sure it will work with your phone, first.
The big problem with it is the FM transmitter. It’s not very powerful, and it can easily be trampled by FM stations in your area. The latest version of the Jupiter Jack can be tuned for FM frequencies between 88.3 and 89.3, and 99.3 and 101.3. If those are busy areas of your FM dial, you can expect the Jupiter Jack to have a lot of static and low volume problems.
Building quality is also a common complaint, with some customers saying that the Jupiter Jack “simply fell apart.” Pricing is dicey, with $6.99, with shipping and handling being charged on a $10 product. Also, replacement batteries are expensive, when ordered through them. Their current web deal is buy one, get one free, but many customers have complained that as soon as the word “two” was mentioned. They were shipped, four of them (two orders with two each).
So if you want to order the Jupiter Jack, we recommend that you verify your phone will work with it, check the FM frequencies in your area, and be very careful to get the order clearly placed when you call them. Click here for more information.
Guest in this hour – Interview recorded at CEA Industry Forum in San Francisco, CA
Terry Jones, Founder of Travelocity.com & Chairman of Kayak.com
KAYAK is a travel search site that finds some of the best deals online.
Jim in Des Moines, Iowa listening on KMA 99.1 AM asked: “I’m new to computers. Just bought my first one. Wondering if you had any advice. I’ve been playing around with it and it’s already gotten really slow. Wondering what I really need and don’t need on my desktop.”
Your desktop is really just your own personalized space. Some people prefer shortcuts to everything, while others are minimalists and want nothing on their desktop. Generally, most people have a shortcut to “My Computer,” the “Recycle Bin,” and an Internet browser. As far as what else you need on your desktop its really up to you.
As far as why your machine is running slow, without knowing a little more information such as what operating system you are using, and what other programs you have installed onto you machine, and who much memory, RAM, it’s hard to say why your machine’s performance has slowed.
Two things we would recommend you look into are a good disk defragmenter, like Diskeeper 2010. Yeah, we know. Windows has a built-in defragmenting tool. But Diskeeper takes care of things that the basic Windows tool does not, like the Master File Table. Mark has found that it can help more than you’d expect it to. Next, we like a free program called CCleaner. It’s from Piriform, who also makes Defraggler by the way, which is a free defragmenter that’s not as comprehensive as Diskeeper, but it is free. Anyway, CCleaner removes junk files like browser temporary files, log files, and other things that are just taking up space. And it includes a very good registry cleaning tool. It also has a startup manager that lets you control exactly what programs are loading automatically with Windows, because that can also slow you down.
Jabster sent us the following email and asked: “Hi, I want to know if there is a thing where you can get Wi-Fi wherever you go on a iPod Touch.”
There is no device that will get you Wi-Fi everywhere you go, but you could look into devices like the MiFi. That will give you Wi-Fi access wherever you have cellular coverage. In the US, they are available from Sprint and Verizon. The MiFi is about half the thickness of a deck of cards and can give you Wi-Fi access fro up to 5 devices at a time using 3G.
You could throw a MiFi in your pocket and surf the web on your iPod Touch, or any other Wi-Fi enabled device. We’ve found the MiFi very handy when we’ve been traveling, especially at hotels that want to charge you a small fortune to access the Internet for just a few minutes. We’ve fired up the MiFi and been able to check our email, and do whatever else we needed to online.
In fact, when we have had rooms close together, we have been able to use it from other hotel rooms, although the signal wasn’t necessarily the best through walls.
Click here to view the MiFi on Verizon
Click here to view the MiFi on Sprint
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
AT&T: A Pantech Ease Phone – Interactive touch screen with a convenient slide-out full QWERTY keypad and built-in pedometer.
Honestech: Copies of Claymation Studio 3.0 Deluxe with PC Camera included – stop motion video creation software
Serif: Copies of PhotoPlus X3 Digital Studio – Professional digital image editing software
TuneUp: Copies of TuneUp Utilities – Optimization software for PCs.