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HOUR 2:
Tech News & Commentary
Joe in Nashville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “The iPhone 4sS or the Galaxy S3? Which one’s better all around?”
Hard to say, it’s mostly a matter of personal preference more than anything else. Both phones are good, the Galaxy S3 has a much larger screen, which you might enjoy, that also makes the phone bigger, which you might not enjoy.
Both phones come with 8MP main cameras, both capable of recording 1080p video, and both have bright displays to show the results. Whether the iPhone’s retina display or the S3’s super AMOLED plus display is better seems to be a matter of personal opinion, but everyone would agree that they’re both quite bright and clear.
The operating system is also a matter of personal opinion, you may like the S3’s Ice Cream Sandwich with it’s face unlock, and more customizable nature, or you may prefer iOS with it’s iCloud integration and a more uniform look across all apps.
The S3 is a 4G LTE phone, while the iPhone is 3G (unless you’re on AT&T, of course, in which case, IT’S STILL THE SAME 3G!), we have to give the S3 the edge in that category, and odds are that any carrier that plans to roll out an LTE network will cover Nashville sooner rather than later.
The iPhone will often, typically, do better than most Android phones in terms of battery life, but the S3 is one of the few that actually has a decent battery life, so that won’t necessarily sway you one way or another either.
So to be honest, it may come down to this: Do you want a big screen? and do you have an OS preference? Your decision is likely to be more influenced by those to things than by anything else.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Laura in Troy, Michigan listens on CKLW 800 AM and asked: “I am going to be getting a Computer as a gift. My children bought me one years ago that I didn’t use. Now, I’m wondering if I can get use out of a laptop. They’re buying me a regular computer but I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m wondering if a laptop would suffice.”
Either a laptop or desktop computer will be enough for a novice user, if you don’t use a computer much, there’s really not much that you’d need the extra power of the desktop for.
In fact, if you don’t find you have much use for a computer, you may even be a good candidate for a tablet, that way you’d have access to email, a web browser, video conferencing, some light games, videos, music and you wouldn’t have to deal with a full fledged operating system or a bulkier form factor.
If you don’t want to consider a tablet and want to stick to a computer, then yes, a laptop will likely be just as useful to you as a desktop unless you suddenly want to get into some hardcore gaming or some kind of other processor intensive task.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Bryan in San Antonio, Texas listens to the podcast asked: “I’m looking for a set of hearing protection earmuffs that I would use while operating lawn equipment. However, I want them Bluetooth stereo A2DP-enabled, so I can listen to music from an Android phone or iPhone. I would appreciate your help, as the ones I found seemed to be only for phone calls and not A2DP-enabled.”
There are several protective headsets that you can use that have Bluetooth built-in, none of them are really cheap, and the only one we found that is totally geared towards music is the Sennheiser PXC 360 BT, those will cost you around $300 online, but we’d expect Sennheiser headphones to sound good.
Like you found out, there are several other headphones that are bluetooth enabled, like the 3M Peltor Bluetooth Headset line, but they seem to be geared towards communication first and foremost, so they may not provide the most flawless music quality, if they allow it at all.
If you just want the sound to be muffled and you don’t need to worry about construction site level noise, you can try regular Bluetooth noise canceling headphones, you can find those from companies from Philips to Sennheiser and they’re usually a couple of hundred dollars and up.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Chris in Columbia, Missouri listens via the iPhone App and asked: “My mom, who is 70, has an older Dell laptop that just has USB ports. She was wondering how she can connect that for video and audio to use with their television. It is not a brand new set, it doesn’t have HDMI. Just the yellow red and white cables. Could you recommend a specific cable that has those hookups on one end and a USB on the other?”
Unfortunately it won’t be that simple, those cables you may have seen with a USB port on one end and the red, white and yellow plugs on the other end are usually for capturing video onto your laptop using software that can decode the signals from that cable, transmitting video over to a TV via USB is a different story.
USB ports aren’t directly connected to the video card, so transferring video using them requires that some software translates what’s going on in the screen first and the transmit it, which create a lot of lag. There are a few external USB video cards, but for the most part they are unpopular because they produce less than stellar images with slower frame rates, so for example, typing a document may be doable, but watching a video would be unbearable.
Technically it may be possible for you to find a USB video card that will mirror her screen onto a TV, but we probably wouldn’t recommend it, you won’t necessarily have a very good experience.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Guests in this hour:
Alan Wlasuk, Managing Partner– 403 Web Security
Our smartphones hold more and more private information about our lives each day. Alan has written an article about how to keep all that information safe from prying eyes and he’s on the show to share his tips with us.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT with Rob: LiveViewGPS Live Trac EZ
Did you know that your car probably has an OBD? Don’t worry, it’s not a recall item or something that you have to race to the Mechanic for. OBD is the On Board Diagnostic Port, usually found on the driver’s side, under the dash. Your OBD could be used to help track your car, in addition to assisting mechanics diagnose and troubleshoot vehicle problems. Rob reports on a small GPS tracker we use and you might like to try.
We all want to protect and keep track of our valuables – especially investments like our vehicles. We’ve shown you several GPS trackers before, but this time we’re showing you one that anyone can install in their cars easily.
The Live Trac EZ from LiveViewGPS is very fast tracker. It gives you quick location updates. And, it installs in seconds. All you have to do is locate the OBD-2 Port in your vehicle. That’s the On Board Diagnostic Port in most vehicles since 1997.
Features:
- Plug-and-track. It will draw power from your car and will immediately start tracking your vehicle. You then use a web portal to track your car or truck.
- There’s also an iOS and Android app you can use to track your vehicle. You’ll be able to receive position updates every 10 seconds.
- We recently tried this while driving up to Orlando and tracked our trip. What’s cool is that you can play it back online and check out your route. You can also adjust the speed of the playback – so especially on a long trip – you can fast-forward as needed, making it a lot easier to watch.
- The Live Trac EZ can also be programmed to give you speed, ignition and geofencing alerts. With geofencing, it lets you know when the car enters and exits a designated area.
- We think the Live Trac EZ is simply that – an easy to install and use GPS tracker. It’s moderately priced and serves it’s purpose nicely.
- This unit currently sells for $169. And requires a monthly service for the alerts and tracking. However, no contract is required.
- LiveViewGPS just launched a new location service that uses your cell phone. It’s called “MobileLocate” and uses your cell phone’s network service and built-GPS. No extra hardware or software is needed. It works with your existing cell phone across multiple networks. There is a monthly service plan that goes along with this.
Will in Bernardsville, New Jersey listening on 103.1 WRSC asked: “What do you think of the Raspberry Pi credit card size computer?”
The Raspberry Pi is very cool, but it’s not by any means a full fledged computer. It’s more of a teaching project that evolved into something a little more commercial.
Obviously something as tiny and underpowered won’t give you the kind of computing power you’re accustomed to, but it’s been a very cool tool for people that want to build small electronics for specific uses, for example, to control small robots, or stream audio or video.
People with some solid understanding of electronics can buy a brain for their projects for $25 or $30 and make something cool happen, and that’s great, but it is mostly a tool for people who know how to use it and not for the average consumer.
Raspberry Pis are interesting for people who want to build things themselves, and for people who are involved in low costs products, but it won’t make too much of a difference for consumers because big time manufacturers already have small computers to operate their electronics.
Whatever product you buy, be it an iPad or an internet radio will have a tiny computer inside of them to process whatever data needs to be processed, so you’re not likely to find a Samsung streaming box powered by a Raspberry Pi, but you may find an indie streaming box, trying to compete with bigger names being powered by one.
For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
C.Crane: Senta Forty Premium Wooden Headphones
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software
NQ Mobile: Activation codes for NQ Mobile Vault (Premium Version) – An Android app that keeps your text messages, pictures, and videos safely hidden from prying eyes.