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A SuperTalk listener asked us if we are the morons that supported a merger:
“I heard y’all complaining about the service you get from Comcast. Aren’t y’all the morons that supported the merger with Comcast taking over the other cable services? “
Now that you mention it, no…we are not those morons.
But to be clear, we don’t have as much trouble with Comcast’s cable TV service as we do with their high speed Internet. Comcast has a virtual monopoly with that, whereas we can get around their cable TV service with a simple satellite dish.
And that has nothing whatsoever to do with Comcast merging with other cable companies. That monopoly exists because Comcast has the utility easements to run cables to your house and they have nearly every home in their service areas wired up.
We say that Google Fiber, Verizon FIOS, and AT&T GigaPower can’t come soon enough. Healthy competition is good for all consumers, all of the time.
Mark in Nashville, Tennessee listens on SuperTalk 99.7 WTN and wants to know if there’s a way to wipe his computer but keeping his Operating System
“Is there a disc I can buy to erase my hard drive on old computers that won’t delete the operating system?”
You’re probably looking for something like a recovery disk or a recovery partition. If the old machines came with one you can use them to put everything back to what it was like when you bought the computer.
You’re talking about buying a disc, so odds are you don’t have any that the computers may have come with, but do check to see if there is a recovery partition you can use.
Failing that, you’d probably need to buy a copy of your operating system and do a clean installation that way. You may run into some driver issues that you’ll have to work through, but a Windows installer would give you the option to delete everything else and just reinstall the operating system.
A Windows installer would give you the option to delete everything else and just reinstall the operating system.
Whatever you do, make sure you back up, you will probably find yourself missing some files you hadn’t thought about before wiping the drive.
I’m guessing also that you’re not using a Mac. If you were, we could tell you to hold down the Command and R keys when starting up your computer to enter Recovery Mode. From the OS X Utilities menu, you’d select Reinstall OS X, and that’s all you’d need to do.
Apple allows OS X installations over the Internet, which is one thing they really get right. Microsoft doesn’t, at this point.
Leslie in Decatur, Illinois listening on News/Talk 1340 WSOY asked us about playing content on a TV:
“I have a smartphone and tablet, (Samsung Note 3) but a dumb TV. I plan to replace my TV soon. What kind of TV do I get so I can watch content from my phone on the TV. Do I need any special cords or adapters.”
You can use special special adapters and cords, but if you’re going to replace your TV anyway, you might as well get one that let’s you view your content without needing them.
Any TV (smart or not) that is DLNA compatible should be able to play content straight from your other DLNA devices.
Any TV (smart or not) that is DLNA compatible should be able to play content straight from your other DLNA devices. Your Samsung devices will call DLNA “AllShare” it’s the same thing, they just gave it a different name, you’ll need to set up AllShare on your phone, but any DLNA device will be able to talk to it.
If you want to go even cheaper than a TV that supports DLNA, you can always just get a cheap device like a Chromecast to watch your content that way, at $35 it won’t make a huge difference in the prize of a TV and it will give you plenty of streaming sources beyond what’s already saved to your phone.
The Chromecast might even be the best option, because it will work with ANY device running an up-to-date version of Android, and not just your phone. So if you buy a tablet, or a friend comes over and wants to play something off THEIR phone, Chromecast will get it done without requiring that it be DLNA compatible.
Apple users, you have the same option using Apple TV. Being Apple, of course, it’s $69 for the Third Generation unit and $149 for the current Fourth Generation, compared to the Chromecast’s $35, but we should all be used to that by now.