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Tech News & Commentary
Victor in Aurora, Colorado listens to the podcast asked: “My TV is about ready to go out in my truck. I drive over the road. I have this idea instead of buying a TV, replacing it with about a 15-inch laptop. What would be a good tuner for it? I’d also like to play games. Not high tech games, just “regular games. And whatever else I could find to do with it. What will be a good laptop and a good tuner? And does it matter if I go Windows 7 or Windows 8?”
With Hulu and Netflix, you’re gonna have a hard time finding TV tuning cards for laptops anymore. Hauppauge still makes their WinTV Aero-m, but at $80 it’s not very cheap.
You can always just use those streaming services, Hulu will cover a lot of the content you would get over the air and it’s not too delayed, but you will need an internet connection for that.
As for playing basic games, if you’re not talking about high end shooters most laptops will be able to handle the basic ones.
For $730, Acer offers Aspire models with Core i7 processors and 6GB of RAM, they have integrated graphics cards, but it should still be enough to play quite a lot of games.
You can find ASUS models for about $700 that also have Core i7 processors, but come with a little less RAM, around 4GBs, those should serve you well enough too, if you’re not going to be playing super high tech games.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Irene in Madison, Wisconsin listens to 1670 WTDY asked: “We travel quite a bit and need a radio that is good for AM reception that has digital tuning, a clock and a CD player. I know I’m being picky but if you could think of any products that fit that category, that would be great. We have C Crane radio that hasn’t met our needs.”
Depending on what you mean by “traveling quite a bit” you might benefit from something super portable, like a Sony D-FJ041 portable CD player, it’s an old style discman with an AM tuner.
Otherwise, there are thousands of boomboxes that still feature CD players and digital tuners, starting at as little as $20.
If your problem with your current radio is the reception itself, you may want to look into buying something a little more expensive, odds are that a more expensive, better built on might fix your problems.
You can also look into radios that come with an external AM antenna, not the pull up silvery straight antenna, but the one that’s shaped like a square. That may improve your reception too.
You said you were looking for something with “digital tuning.” You might want to look into HD Radio. There are many different models to choose from. These will not only get you the digital tuning, which will make AM sound like FM and FM sound like CD, but you’ll also have access to the HD side channels. Many stations that broadcast in HD also offer two or more channels of programming. You can’t receive these channels on a “traditional” radio.
You can have a look at the HD Radio site so you can take a look at what they have available. There are HD radios starting from portable mp3 player-size radios for about $50, all the way up to high end home receivers for over $7,000.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Joe asked: “You fellows know tech stuff inside out, so how about biometric deadbolt locks? I have had ‘professional’ thieves looting my place for years so I installed a biometric lock. But, they can disarm the alarm and open the lock too. If I un-install the fingerprints so that there are no prints installed (they are numbered so I would know there gone) and just use number codes (change it again), can they spoof that too? Or is that what they are doing and I’d be better of just using the fingerprint function?”
If they can disarm the alarm and open the lock, they probably know more than we do!
We can tell you that some cheap electronic deadbolts don’t actually check the order in which you enter the combination as long as the right numbers are entered. So 1234 is the same to them as 4132. That’s pretty horrible in terms of security! Suddenly your lock goes from having 10,000 possible combinations to having 715 possible codes.
On top of that, shining a black light on the lock will show traces of sweat on a lot of keypads, which means that you can see the keys that are normally pressed. If you have one of those bad locks that don’t care about the order in which you enter the numbers and if the keys shine under a blacklight, they don’t need anything else. In that case, using the fingerprint scanner might be safer, but those things can be fooled too.
Assuming you have a better lock, we don’t know how they’d do it. But, if they can turn off your alarm, there’s a decent chance that they know a few tricks about good locks too, we just haven’t really found a way to consistently fool all locks.
Sorry Joe, but you may have to contact some security experts instead of technology experts for this one. But please let us know.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
John Miewald, Marketing Manager – Pathway Innovations & Technologies
Pathway develops innovative products that enhance learning and communication.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
The content industry is always hungry for space for movies and for games. So it was no wonder that already at the beginning of the DVD success story, the industry was thinking of the next great format. Philips, Panasonic and Hitachi developed a new disc with much higher capacity, read by a blue laser. IFA was the meeting point for the industry bosses. To avoid another system war they asked all other companies to join and in early 2002 Blu-ray Disc was announced. The war clouds were gathering, though, as Toshiba and NEC promoted a competing technology, HD DVD.
Tess in San Francisco, California listening online asked: “All these wonderful little SD memory chips – Is it smarter to format them on your home computer, or format them directly on whichever gadget – cell phone, camera, etc. that you are using it on?”
It doesn’t matter, both a computer or a different device will read and write to the card in the same way.
Computers are bigger and they have more power, but the way they interact with the card is the same. SD Cards require a specific amount of power to write to, and all devices that use them adhere to the same standard. So, whether it’s a computer or a smaller mobile device formatting the card, the end result will be the same.
There is one difference, a computer will let you format the card in ways other devices won’t, some of those formats will let the card handle bigger files, but they won’t be compatible with devices other than computers.
So what device you use doesn’t matter, just either use a computer set to FAT32 or format from the device you plan to use the card with.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Brian in Baton Rouge, Louisiana listens on 107.3 WBRP asked: “I have a question about the Pro versions of things and the regular version of things. Why don’t these companies just make the best version they can and make that available for everyone at the same price?”
Frankly, if companies only made one version of their software, they wouldn’t make any money. For one, having different versions of certain programs allows them to open up to a wider customer base.
Another reason, is… Maybe you wouldn’t spend, let’s say $500 on a piece of software that you won’t use all the features of, but maybe you’d spend $100 for a scaled back version of that same piece of software that didn’t have those features that you wouldn’t be using anyway.
It’s also not just software companies that put out “pro” and “lite” versions, have you ever bought a car without leather seats, or buy a TV that doesn’t stream Netflix these days, or get the vacuum cleaner that doesn’t have the most power of all of the ones the brand makes, or if you buy a memory card with less storage than the biggest one available for your camera or phone, or if you buy the type of paint that requires more coats as opposed to the thicker kind that requires fewer, those are all “lite” versions of products even if the manufacturers don’t stick that label to their products.
Some people are fine with paying a little less for a product that is a little more basic, especially if it still fits their needs.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners:
Audiofly: Several AF33M in-ear headphones with microphone
Magix: Copies of Music Maker 2013 – Create your own tunes! Even beginners can easily create music.
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software
PNY Technologies: ThinkSafe Portable MacBook Locking System & Security Clamp Combo — The ThinkSafe Portable MacBook Locking System by PNY secures your MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or iMac via your device’s hinge or built-in slot. The Portable Security Clamp provides a secure anchor point for your Laptop, Ultrabook, or MacBook – keeping your device secured.