HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Daniel in Millbrook, Alabama listening on WLWI 1440 AM asked: “I have an old LG Verizon phone. Probably 4 years old or so. I was thinking about going to a smartphone. My plan costs me $39 for 1000 minutes right now. But if I get a smartphone, my bill will go up to at least $70 or $80. Is there any way I can get the benefits of a smartphone with a big touchscreen without increasing my bill that much?”
You can go with one of the budget cell phone companies, some of them are offering decent smartphones right now. Virgin Mobile, for example, will use the Sprint network and give you unlimited minutes, texts and data for $55 a month, and unlimited texts and data and 1200 minutes would cost you $45 a month.
Walmart’s Straight Talk will give you unlimited everything for $45 a month, with the option of paying several months in advance for a discount, if you pay a year in advance the price drops to $499 for the year which means $41 a month, barely more than you’re paying now.
Cricket will give you unlimited talk and text and 1GB of data for $55 a month. Boost Mobile will also charge $55 for unlimited everything, but they give you the benefit of shrinking your payment over time up to a $15 a month discount. All of the plans are a little more expensive than what you’re paying now, but not the much, at least your bill won’t double the way it would with the major carriers.
Here’s the problem, though. Your choice of phones will be very limited with these low-cost providers. You asked where you can get one of these “big screen smartphones” without paying the major carrier prices for them, and the answer to that part is, you can’t – not really. The major cell phone carriers work closely with the phone manufacturers and lots of money changes hands to assure that the really desirable phones are exclusively theirs, at least for a good long while.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Ray in Niagara Falls, New York listens online and asked: “I’m looking for a good, free virus program. I had CA a few years ago, but had problems with it. McAfee was good, but expensive. If there’s a good, free one I’d like to know about it.”
Avast, Avira, Panda, Comodo and Microsoft’s own security essentials have all scored well on a recent PCWorld survey, and they’re all free. The top spot went to Avast, if you don’t know which one to try first.
Your options for free antiviruses don’t end there, AVG and BitDefender have also seen good reviews, and also have free editions for personal use.
It’s hard to tell which one will be the best one for you, but all of them should do an adequate job of protecting your computer.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Josh in Nashville, Tennessee asked: “We have about 3 old computers that have data on them that need disposed of. Does any of the retailers recycle these computers? If so whom? Staples, Office Max, etc?Lastly, what is the best way to make sure your computer is free of any data? I heard that there is a software program that the government uses when they dispose their old computes. What would you say the best software is?”
Plenty of retailers offer recycling programs, Best Buy, Office Depot and Staples all offer electronics recycling programs, as do many individual manufacturers like HP, Toshiba, Dell, Intel, Samsung, Sony and others.
You can check with your computer’s maker or the store where you’re buying the replacement, but if you’d like to see a more comprehensive list, here’s a list on the EPA’s website.
If your computers have ATA drives made after 2001, they probably come with a built in tool called Secure Erase. Secure Erase is actually disabled at the BIOS level in most computers, but you can turn it on and use it with freeware tools.
It tends to be disabled for a reason, according to the National Institute for Standards and Testing and the NSA there’s pretty much no going back after using it. Your data is gone and not recoverable, so use it carefully.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Isaac – calling in via the app asked: “Do you guys have any suggestions for a memory card for a video camera? I’m looking for an SD card and I didn’t know as far as the speeds for HD video camera shooting. I don’t know if that makes a difference and if so what level should it be.”
For standard definition just a simple Class 2 card would do. But, since you plan to shoot in high definition have a look at Class 6 cards. They should give you more speed than you need, without paying the premium of a Class 10 card for no added benefit.
Classes on cards tell you what the minimum transfer speeds you can expect on them are, a Class 6 will transfer data at speeds of at least 6 mbps, and that should be enough, a Class 10 will move data at speeds of at least 10 mbps, but you shouldn’t need the extra speed, so you might as well save the money.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Josiah in Wichita, Kansas listening to our podcast asked: “My aunt recently got a Kindle Fire, do you think it is comparable to an iPad, and would you recommend someone to purchase one. I love your show, keep up the good work!!”
Seems as though this is the question on everyone’s mind, coming in to the holiday shopping season. We did a hands on with the Kindle Fire on last week’s show, including a video of it, so we recommend that you first check that out on our web site. But to give you the short answer, no, the Kindle Fire is not comparable to an iPad. The iPad is larger, with more storage, and a huge advantage in the number of apps available for it. The iPad is the best all-around tablet sold today, in our opinion, although some of the new Android models are looking awfully good and we can’t wait to get our hands on them at CES.
The Kindle Fire runs a heavily customized version of Android 2.3.4 that Amazon has turned into the “Kindle OS,” meaning that the main screen is designed like a bookshelf and plugs you in to all the content from Amazon.com, much the same as Apple does on the iPad with iTunes. It makes the Kindle Fire totally simple to use, at least for accessing Amazon’s content. However, that same customization means that not all Android apps will run on it.
However, the fact that Amazon has sold millions of them already and will likely sell millions more, means that app developers finally have a single Android device running a known version of the Android OS with a single form factor in the hands of millions of potential customers. We’re already seeing special Kindle Fire editions of apps, and this trend will only grow. So the Kindle Fire, despite being a Kindle first and an Android tablet second, may turn out to be one of the better Android choices, long term.
The Kindle Fire is smaller, at 7″ vs. 10″, lacks cameras, a microphone, or GPS support. The iPad is far more flexible, but also far more expensive. You can buy two Kindle Fires for what you’d pay for the base model iPad 2. Would we recommend that someone purchase one? If you like getting content from Amazon.com, absolutely we would. If you’re looking for a tablet, don’t really care to do lots of business with Amazon, and price isn’t a real problem, then no – we wouldn’t recommend you buy a Kindle Fire.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
There were several approaches to record movies on a disc. After the TED system by Telefunken, presented at IFA 1971, VHD, the Video High Density Disc by JVC was introduced, then LaserVision by Philips and CED by RCA. All were analog; all failed, and all were discontinued by the mid 80ies. CD Video with 74 minutes of video also didn’t succeed; another medium with higher capacity was needed, combined with data reduction which was available in the early 90ies. In the mid 90ies the industry started to develop the DVD technology, which had five times the storage capacity of a CD.
Mike in Visalia, California listens on 1450 KTIP asked: “I’m curious about the iPad 2 vs. the Asus Eee Transformer Prime. The iPad is a proven member but the Asus is coming out this month with Ice Cream Sandwich. Supposedly, it has a better camera, more RAM and more ports on it. We’d just be going with Wi-Fi, not 3G.”
The Asus’s Eee Transformer Prime is one of the best Android Tablets out there. It was the best tablet right behind the Samsung Galaxy 10.1, beating by thinnest.
The Asus Transformer Prime is the first Android Tablet that features Tegra 3 with Ice Cream Sandwich (Honeycomb for the initial launch). Tegra 3 is the first quad core ARM cortex A9 processor that has industry standard graphic processor, without being hard in battery. The battery life is not as good as the iPad, but it can give you 9 hours of continuous video playback on single charge.
The best part is when it transforms to a notebook with a default Keyboard dock accessory. Along the side, there is a micro HDMI output and a micro SD card slot.
The Tansformer has one of the best display on the market, it produces rich colors, sharp images with minimum glare from the screen. The resolution is a Honeycomb-standard 1280×800. It delivers 145 per inch compared to the 132 PPI of the iPad 2. Tegra 3 delivers 300% more graphic performance, but is still sightly lower than the A5 iPad 2 CPU. The Asus Ess Transformer Prime is available online for $499.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Titus asked: “What can you tell us about security on smartphones like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, such as tracking information?”
If you’re asking about whether or not the phones keep information about your location, we’ve know for a few months that iPhones keep a file of your movements on the phone and on computers you sync them to.
Now, whether or not you should be too concerned about that is a different story, phone companies and the police already had access your movements since before that just from checking what phone towers your phone has connected to, and when.
If you’re looking at just smartphones, you should probably know that Android does the same thing, in fact Android even sends the information to Google for analysis. If you’ve ever wondered how Google Maps knows how fast traffic is moving on a given road in real time, Android phones’ movements is one of the ways they know…
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
AT&T: A Jambox Black Diamond by Jawbone — Wireless Speaker & Speakerphone
Fanny Wang: Custom Colored Headphones by Fanny Wang — We have a promo code for you to customize your own pair.
Honestech: Film Scan&Save — Digitize your old photo negatives and slides. Supports both color and black & white photo negatives and slides. Convert them into high-resolution images.
McAfee: Download keys for “McAfee All Access” — Secure your PC, laptop, and netbook against hackers and identity theft; Protect your smart phones and tablets.
Moola Street: $25 Gift Cards. Of course, Moola is slang for money and this is a unique way to give Gift Cards that cost you only 10% until the recipient redeems it!