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Tech News & Commentary
Nancy in Watertown, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “I’m interested in getting a laptop for my house. I’m trying to find the best place to buy it and what I need. I don’t do gaming. I have some games that I play but it’s more like Backgammon and that. I don’t want to spend more money than I have to but I want to get something that’s good.
The other question is: I live out in the country and have Dish TV but I need to find the best Internet access. I didn’t know if it would be Verizon or AT&T Wireless or if you would recommend something else.”
Well, Nancy… if backgammon is your most hardware intensive requirement, pretty much any laptop will do, or phone for that matter…
You probably don’t need a very advanced or powerful computer, if you want to keep the one you buy for a few years longer, you can spend more, but a very basic machine should cover your needs.
Even for as little as $350, you can find ASUS models with nice big screens, a webcam, enough power to run your games, and Windows 8 (whether that’s a good or bad feature goes on what you think of Microsoft’s latest OS).
From there on up, pretty much everything will work for you, if you want extra features, you can look at computers like the roughly $1000 Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga series, which turn into Windows 8 touchscreen tablets, or a $900 Sony Vaio with a very long battery life, multitouch trackpad, rapid wake boot, and a lot of other high end features.
Your requirements are fairly basics, if you want to pay more it can be for quality or extra features, but you can pretty much choose any laptop you want and your needs will be met.
As for broadband access, you have more options that AT&T and Verizon, in fact your neighbors rate Comcast the best for service in your area.
You may live out in the country, but it looks like you even have Fiber access around you (we’re not jealous… at all…), but unfortunately people around you report slow speeds on TDS Fiber during nights and weekends. AT&T also offers DSL access in your area, not just wireless.
Our advice would be, if you don’t need the mobility of a wireless service, go with Comcast, since it seems to be what people around you are reporting does the best job in your area, if you do want wireless service, Verizon seems to have the best coverage around you, so they’re likely to be your most reliable choice.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Consumer Reports Feature
with Matt Ferretti
LG made a splash at CES this year with their enormous new 84-inch Ultra HD LED TV? Though it’s priced in the ballpark of $20,000, our friends at Consumer Reports managed to borrow one recently to give it a look in their lab. Their Senior Lab Technician Matt Ferretti is here to tell us what they thought of the mammoth LG set.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
• Mark recommends: Weathercube. , FREE
“In honor of Chris Graveline, I’ve got a BIT of a time waster for you this week. There are approximately ten bazillion apps for your smartphones and tablets to display the current weather and future forecasts. But none of them have as many cute noises and gratuitous animations as Weathercube. Spread your fingers vertically and horizontally, and the cube opens and flips to perform various tasks. Swipe up for one thing, down for another, double tap here and longpress there. If you’re getting the idea that Weathercube is really a WeatherGAME, you’re not far from the truth. It was Apple’s App of the Day earlier this week, so I’m not really sure if they charge for the app normally, but if you want to look like you’re working a console on the Starship Enterprise just to find out if it’s going to rain tomorrow, this is your app. Weathercube makes a boring topic…kinda fun.” — Mark
• James recommends: Flipboard, FREE
“My app of the week is Flipboard. Now this is one of those apps that after you download it, you completely forget what life was like without it. Upon downloading it, Flipboard will ask you to select various categories of interest to you like music, politics, film, what have you. It will then coalesce all of your selected content from various newspapers and magazines online into a single sleek news magazine layout. You can even link your Facebook or Twitter feeds to Flipboard, which will then take that content and make it another section of your own personalized social magazine. Flipboard is available on Google Play or the iTunes app store for free.
” — James
• Dave recommends: Swiftkey, $3.99
“Here is an app that will make you wish you had an Android phone! It’s a productivity app called Swiftkey that connects to a number of your web accounts like Gmail and Facebook, and modifies your keyboard to predict words that you will type next based on your typing history. Swiftkey replaces the touchscreen keyboard on your Android phone with one that understands how words work together, the you a really accurate autocorrect – and predicting your next word, even before you press a key! It also turns your keyboard into a virtual heat map, so regardless of how sloppily you type, Swiftkey will know what you’re trying to type and it supports just about all languages. It’s FREE to try for 30 days and then — when you KNOW you like it — it’s $3.99.
” — Dave
What are your favorite Apps? Let us know at 800-899-INTO and we’ll feature them in this segment!
Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details
Guests in this hour:
John Swatton – Asus
Stephen in Melbourne, Australia listens to the Podcast – calling in via the App asked: “I want to do some voice recording. I was thinking of doing Live365 to do a radio show, or perhaps do a talk podcast. I have a mixer, but I was wondering if I should plug the mixer into a smaller laptop or maybe use a tablet, I know a tablet’s more mobile. Just wondering what the best way to go is. Also, can you play my music on Live365, I just looked at the website and I’m a bit confused.”
Stephen, a tablet may just not be an option for you… you may not have a way to connect that mixer to the tablet at all. Even if you do, your choice of software will be much more limited, both for recording and for editing whatever you record.
You mention portability, a tablet would be a little more portable, but laptops are still mobile and, how much portability do you really need in your recording studio?
For the sake of flexibility, you should probably go with the laptop, you’ll have more options for record, more options for editing, more options for streaming live (if that’s what you want), more space to store your episodes, and a much higher likelihood of it working with your mixer.
You asked about Live365 and if you can play music on it, you can, there’s nothing to it, you just play the music and that’s it, they pay for the licensing from your monthly membership fee. Just make sure you’re choosing a service tier that offers decent sound quality if you’re going to focus on music, Live365 offers up to 128kbps which should be around CD quality.
The issue with using a tablet to record is that, depending on the tablet, you might have to buy some additional adapters. The iPad, for example, will take a microphone in the headphone jack, but it’s a mic level input and records mono only. Your mixing board will usually give line level output. Your best bet for the iPad is to buy a recording adapter like the MIKEY from our friends at Blue Microphone. It connects to the iPad 30 pin connector (nothing for Lightning, yet) and offers stereo recording of line level input and offers a USB pass-through connector at the same time. MIKEY isn’t cheap though, it’ll cost you around $100.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Eddie in Louisiana send the following email: “What’s best way to remove a virus from online?”
Eddie, we don’t know what you mean by “from online,” do you mean a virus that you got “from online”? as in from a file you downloaded?
If that’s what you mean, you’d remove it the same way you’d remove any virus from any source: get an antivirus program, run a scan, and when it’s found, click on the option to remove.
As for the program itself, you can choose anything from Microsoft’s Security Essentials, to Avast, to AVG, to Norton, to TrendNet, you have plenty of options.
Other than that, we don’t know what you could mean, you can’t really wipe a virus from the internet, and to wipe on from your website, simply remove the offending file, but we suspect you mean one you got online and not one that just resides there.
If for whatever reason you are unable to remove the file manually because it’s too embedded into your hard drive, then you might have to go to a professional and have the hard drive wiped out completely. In order to not lose any crucial data, save all the important files onto a thumb drive. And when you’re using your computer from now on, try to avoid clicking on questionable emails or sketchy websites. That’s the most common way viruses are inadvertently downloaded.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Genevieve in Greenwich, Connecticut listening on WGCH called in and asked: “I have a cell phone that is so old from Radio shack. I plug it in. It’s very heavy. Is there any chance I could use it?”
Genevieve, it depends on how old it is, but the odds aren’t great. Different cell phones run on different systems and the systems change fairly quickly, so a phone from five years ago may not be compatible with the network that’s currently in place.
There’s even the chance that, if your phone had been in service all along, it would still work, but that the company providing that service will just refuse to activate new phones to the old system. It seems silly, but it’s actually a big deal, no company wants to have to maintain an expensive, obsolete network for a handful of users, so instead they force them to transition to newer technologies.
So, Genevieve, we can’t tell you whether or not your phone will work, because we don’t even really know what “type” of cell phone you’re referring to, it could be a very old phone from the time your phone came tethered to a briefcase, and those would not work, or you could be talking about a large phone from 5 years ago that doesn’t do 3G, but works very nicely on EDGE, which is still around.
If you can give us more specific information, we’ll look into it for you.
We suppose the REAL question we have to ask here is why would you want to use it? New, modern, lightweight cell phones are almost free in many cases. Amazon Wireless, for example, frequently offers phones for one cent if you activate new service with them.
Other than just the nostalgia value, we can’t really see any reason at all to use an old phone. Here’s one reason you might NOT want to use it: Transmit power. Older cell phones used stronger radios because there weren’t towers on every street corner. Especially if this is a unit you’re holding up to your head, you sure don’t want a powerful radio.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yo — A simple solution to tangled earbuds.
Iolo: System Mechanic – Fix and speed up your PC… Automatically.
Magellan: eXplorist 610 – Premium, rugged, handheld GPS with camera, microphone and speaker to record all your actions in the outdoors.
Yamaha: PDX-11 Portable Speaker — Free your iPod and iPhone music for your active Lifestyle.