Weekend of April 5th, 2013 – Hour 2

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 Tech News & Commentary

Joe in Hazleton, Pennsylvania listening online asked: “Hi Dave, I got a question about a computer i just got, a used one, however the previous owner took out the hard drive. now i have another harddrive from a computer thats about the same age. Now i want to take the drive and put it into the one i just got. the computer i just got is a dell from about 2007, 2008. I want to know can i keep my programs without doing a full install and instead do a repair from my windows xp boot disc?
I play guitar and sing and i wanted to record using my new PC. I have windows xp thinking about getting 7. my PC has 2GB RAM, 1.5GHz Processing speed. If i got a new computer, what would it need to do multi­track recording using programs like n­Track Studio ?”

If the drive was set as a bootable drive on your old computer, it’s likely that you won’t even need to run anything from the Windows boot disk.
Your operating system, as well as your programs, would all just be ther and work. You may run into a few problems though.

Your new computer will almost certainly be made up of different components than your old one, so you may need new drivers for everything to work. We found out recently that getting all the drivers you need can be a very time consuming process.

There’s also a chance that Windows may look at it’s surroundings and say “well.. I don’t know that motherboard, or video car or CPU… I’ve been pirated!.” If that happens, a call to Microsoft shoul be enough to get them to transfer your old license to your new compute so don’t worry, you don’t necessarily have to buy a new license, or search the darker corners of the web for a borrowed one.

Well Joe, n­Track doesn’t give out specific requirements on the hardware that you need, but some are a must for a computer today, especially for a recording machine. Having at least a dual core 64 bit processor is something you should think about getting because if you want to monitor live what you are recording, and if you are adding effect and other instruments, you need that processing power.

An intel core i5 is what most starter systems use for recording, then when it comes to ram, that really depends on what you plan on recording as well, if you are just doing three or four tracks per song, the 4GB should do the trick, but you might want to think about what you will be doing before purchasing. As for the hard drive, you might want to get at least a 500GB one for storing all of your recordings, sound effects an so on. n­Track says that their software works on windows xp, vista (but we don’t recommend that) or seven.

Bare in mind that if you want to put more than 4GB of ram, you need to get the 64bit version of windows and the 64bit version of n­Track.

For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Dan in Fort Lauderdale, Florida listens via the App sent us the following comment: “I love Windows XP and I’m not changing. Microsoft should go back to the roots of XP.”

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

Bob in Palo Alto, California listens Online sends the following email:”I live in 5­story building. All of the public WiFi signals are weak (one bar out of 5). There is a large hospital across the alley from me that is much taller than 5 stories. It has a public WiFi and its signal is weak.
Is there some USB plug­in that will allow me t increase the WiFi signal strength?”

There are products you can use to boost your WiFi reception. The one we’ve used the most is the C.Crane Super USB WiFi Antenna 3. Like you said, it plugs into your USB port and acts as a network card an boosts your reception.

There are other antennas, ranging in price from below $20 to over $100. We haven’t tried any of those, so we can’t tell you first hand whether they’re good or not. But if you want a cheaper option, you can give one of the cheaper ones a shot. Obviously, the other option would be to pay for Internet access.

Tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast for more details.

“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline

This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners

Eton: FRX3 – Hand Turbine AM/FM/Weather Alert Radio

Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yo — Now with Dave’s face on them! — A clever solution to tangled earbuds.

Magix: Music Maker 2013 Premium — Easy to use software for getting started in the world of music production.

Improv Electronics: Boogie Board rip — Paperless, LCD writing tablet that will let you save your notes and transfer them to your PC.