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HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Cathy in Columbia, Missouri listening on KFRU 1400- News Talk asked: “What computer would you suggest for a ‘dummy with computers?’ Never used one before.”
Since you’ve never used computer and you don’t know how much use you’re going to get out of one, you can look into some cheap models to learn with. If you find that you’re advancing so fast that you want to use very heavy software, these may turn out not to be the models for you. But odds are that you won’t run into that problem any time soon.
You can look at something like an ASUS A-Series. You can find some models on Newegg.com for as little as $350 and they come with a nice big 15.6” screen.
You can also look at a Toshiba Satellite C855 for about $400. It also has a big screen, a pretty large hard drive and it should be comfortable to learn on.
A Lenovo G575 will cost you just $329 and it comes with a dual core processor, and the features you can expect from the other two. They’re not super powerful computers, they won’t last forever, but you can use them to learn on without investing a lot of money.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Christopher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana listening on 107.3 WBRP- Talk 107.3 asked: “I have an Android Tablet and I run into the problem with opening too many programs when I’m doing searches and it says I can’t open any more because I’ve opened too many. I don’t know how to clear them out. If you could tell me so that I can watch videos and do other searches it would be appreciated.”
What’s probably happening is not that you’re opening too many programs, but too many browser windows. Every time you do a search your tablet will try to open that search in a new window, eventually the browser will use up all the windows it’s allowed to use at once (which is typically not much more than 5).
All you have to do to solve the problem and keep searching is open your browser and you should see a button that will show you all open pages. We can’t tell you exactly what the button will look like because it varies depending on the browser and the version of Android that you’re running, but it most likely will look like a small stack of 3 or 4 squares with a number in front of them indicating how many pages are open.
When you find that button, press it and you should see a list of all the open pages, just close the ones you don’t need…that’s it! You should be able to open new ones now until you reach your limit.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Joe in Miami, Florida asked: “Answer me this Tech Heads: You can send a video Tweet right from the Twitter app on the iPhone and iPad. So why hasn’t video-Tweeting caught on? Why don’t people do it? Am I the first? Something tells me I’m not.”
We’re guessing that it’s because it’s kind of annoying? Tweets are short and to the point and you see a whole long list of them by different people. With videos, you just see a link and have to click on it and sit through it. It’s also a little uncomfortable for the person recording it, compared to coming up with 140 characters to type quickly..
TwitVids are probably more to show something cool than to send out a tweet, kind of the same way TwitPics work.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Guests in this hour:
Scott Cleland, President of Precursor & Author of “Search & Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc.”
Do you have a Google account? Do you trust them with your information? Scott thinks that maybe you shouldn’t.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1971 the Funkausstellung was officially renamed international Funkausstellung, IFA in short, with exhibitors from all over the world. Philips and Grundig showed the prototype of the world’s first video cassette recorder, based on the VCR standard. The tape was housed in a cassette with two loops of tape on top of one other. As a timer an alarm clock was built in, recording time was up to one hour.
Peter in Olympia, Washington listening to the Podcast asked: “I am trying to figure out how to backup my phone, from the address book to notes to whatever. I have a Samsung SCHU900 (the no longer supported Flipshot). I do not have access to the Verizon Wireless get it now feature, even though I still have Verizon Wireless Access.”
There is hope, even if you don’t have the original software. There is backup software that you could purchase that will allow you to back up all your personal information to your PC.
One company that has this software is DataPilot. You could backup your contacts, calendar, text messages, photos, videos and ringtones. Once there on your computer, you could either save them, just so their backed up. or transfer them to a new phone.
The software is called (cleverly enough) “Cell Phone Data Transfer” from DataPilot and it sells for about $35.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Jim in Idaho Falls, Idaho listening on 690 KBLY -East Idaho’s Talk Station asked: “I have a Windows Vista machine. I have installed Windows 8 on it. I had some trouble and I had to rebuild my hard drive. This time I installed Vista again and partitioned the hard drive. What I want to do is put Windows 8 on the partition. I was wondering how to do that. I was thinking I could move the hard drive information off of the C drive onto the H drive.”
When you install Windows 8 you should be asked which partition you want to install Windows on. The installer will literally ask “Where do you want to install Windows?” and show a list of partitions below, there’s no mistaking what it’s asking you. In your case, one of the partitions should be of the same size you gave your new partition.
Doing this will install Windows 8 on the new partition, but it won’t move your files. The thing is, this shouldn’t really matter.
When you’re using Windows 8, you should see your other partition, the one that has Windows Vista on it, and you should be able to access your files from that partition, as if you were opening a folder on your new partition, you can move any files you want manually, but if you don’t want the hassle of dealing with two sets of files, you can just open them straight from where they are now.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
James in Erie, Pennsylvania listens on 1450 WPSE -Your Money Station asked: “I play the tumpet and I played the National Anthem at a minor league baseball game. They sent me a copy of it, but it’s in a VOB format. I cannot get that into any of my systems. I cannot translate that into an MP4 format, for example, so I can edit it in Audacity. I have Windows 7. There’s so many so called “Free downloads” online, but as soon as you start to do something, you have to pay something to get a program to do this.”
If you want to convert VOB to MP4 using an actually free tool, you can try WinFF.
WinFF is free and it’ll let you convert the video in a very simple way, you basically just select it and choose MP4 as your format and either “widescreen” or “fullscreen” and it will take care of the rest.
You can also try Any Video Converter, it has several paid versions, but you should be able to use the free version to convert VOB to MP4 as well.
If you’re not interested in converting the video, but you’d be happy with just being able to watch it, VLC Player will play VOB files and you can download it for free.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Corrosion Technologies: Several bottles of CorrosionX — A few squirts of CorrosionX clean contacts & connections & keep them protected for months (in salt spray environments) to years.
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle — This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software