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Tech News & Commentary
Bill in Garlin, Texas listening on Shortwave asked: “I don’t know a lot about computers. I like listening to shortwave radio and Pandora. What is the best way for me to receive these things, a laptop or a tablet?”
Well… either one will do. Basically it will come down to how easily you want to move your music source around… in fact you don’t even need a tablet, a smartphone or even an iPod Touch will work just fine for you too.
Shortwave is the trickiest part of what you’re looking for, laptops, tablets, smartphones and MP3 players will only be able to play shortwave through an app or website, you won’t just be able to tune into a shortwave station using the device as a receiver.
You could try to find an Internet radio that also does shortwave, but to be honest, we couldn’t find any to recommend to you.
Since you want to use Pandora, getting shortwave over the internet instead of just over the air shouldn’t make a huge different for you, you will need internet access for Pandora anyway, so you might as well use it for shortwave as well, the problem is that you may not find every single shortwave station online.
Now, as for tablet, laptop, smartphone or iPod Touch, any of those will be able to fit your needs. If that is all you want to do with your device, any of them will work just fine for you, just get to the website or open the app and you’ll be streaming in no time on any of them. If you need to do more, laptops are always more flexible, any of the other devices are more portable, so it all depends on what your other needs are.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1979 at the International Funkausstellung, known worldwide as IFA Sony and Philips showed two competing technologies to record music digitally on silvery discs. Both prototypes, a 12 inch disc at the Philips booth and a 5 inch disc at the Sony stand, suddenly disappeared during the show – secret talks had begun behind the curtain. The format both companies later agreed to was the CD, the compact disc, which revolutionized the record industry, the hardware industry and audio listening.
Ray in Niagara Falls, New York listens online asked: “I have an iPhone 4 with Verizon and I’m thinking of switching to Sprint. If I do, can I sync my Sprint iPhone to the same place I did my Verizon phone?”
yes, you can sync your new iPhone to the same user on iCloud, and to the same computer. When you first get your new iPhone, during the setup process, it will ask you if you want to set it up as a brand new iPhone or from a previous backup.
As long as your old iPhone had been backed up recently, be it to iCloud or iTunes, you should be able to have your new phone automatically configured to have your old email accounts, apps, notes, and everything else, and it can continue to be backed up to the same place as your old phone.
The network really doesn’t matter, your choices for syncing your phone are: your own computer, or Apple’s computers, which company is giving you a phone line doesn’t really matter at all.
Also, make certain that you do synchronize your old iPhone 4 just before going to buy the new one. You wouldn’t want to miss something in your data just because you were using an older backup of the phone.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Barry in Las Vegas, Nevada calling in via the App asked: “I have a question about Ultrabooks. I hear a lot about Ultrabooks lately and I don’t know how the different from a regular laptop computer, could you please explain the difference?”
Ultrabooks are high-end, very thin and very light laptops with long battery lives. They’re kinda like the Windows version of Macbook Air.
They’re not like netbooks, which have long battery lives, small screens and low prices. Ultrabooks will typically cost around $1000, as low as maybe $800 and high as over $1000. They have larger screens, usually 13-inches and up.
Since they’re very slim, they don’t always have many ports. So you may have a couple of USB ports and not much else. They’re meant to be fairly high-end laptops, so it’s very common to find solid state drives, a good amount for RAM and respectable processing power on them. You will usually be able to find a regular laptop with better processing power than an Ultrabook for the same price, but considering the extreme portability Ultrabooks offer, you get a pretty good deal when you get one anyway. Just don’t get one to use it as a gaming machine or a video editing workstation.
If you’re in the market for a Windows based Ultrabook, make sure you look for one with the “Ivy Bridge” chipset. That’ll get you the third-generation Intel Core i3/i5/or i7 processor, the improved HD 4000 integrated graphics processor, and USB 3.0 in addition to Thunderbolt (introduced with Sandy Bridge, the previous generation).
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Seth in Murfreesboro, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “How would one know which video card would work best or their computer and for their desires?”
What video card you need, depends mostly on what you want to do with it. If you don’t need to do heavy video editing, and if you’re not going to be playing highly graphic intensive games, odds are any card will work fine for you. If you do plan on doing those things, you’ll probably benefit from looking at higher end models.
A very high end video card can be more expensive than a low end laptop, so don’t just go for the most expensive card around, odds are if you don’t know that you need it, you don’t need it. To determine which specific card might be best for you, there are some excellent review sites on the Internet.
We recommend TweakTown.com for their reviews, also GPUReview.com is worth reading for their extensive benchmarking.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
| HOUR 3 GUESTS | ||
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| Dr. Alfred Poor, Writer & Technology Expert – HDTV Almanac | Jay McLellan, President – HAI by Leviton | |
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Dane-Elec: Several 8GB USB Flash Drives from Marvel’s The Avengers Collection
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.
iolo Technologies: Copies of System Mechanic 11 – PC Tune-up Software