Youngstown Computer Show notes for August 15, 2009

Segment 1

Joe D talks about the number of lawsuits this week. They talk about the lawsuit against Microsoft that stopped sales of Word 2007. I4I wants $94 per copy. They claim a patent on XML editing. Joe D says a lot of other products use XML technology. Joe D hates patent trolls.

The Psystar case is moving very slowly. They are still in the disposition phase. Adam worries that Apple can break OSX for the people who bought psystars.

AT&T class action suit that says that they claim the phone has MMS, but AT&T has it turned off. Joe D wonders if Apple will move to another provider. Even cheap phones have MMS, but not iPhones don't. Joe D claims that AT&T's network is getting hammered by the iPhone users.

This week has been big on performance issues due to recent service packs and updates like SP3 if you only have 512MB of RAM. This is for XP users. Vista users already should have 1-2GB of RAM.

Lots of power supplies were failing this month. They sort of degrade over time, they put out less power over time.


Segment 2

Caller 1
Q: when I use the mouse to adjust the up down selections on dialogs, the numbers jump around too much, they go up in too big of steps
A: seems that the mouse is set too sensitive

Caller 2
Q: looking for interfaces from computers to automobile diagnostics, any suggestions?
A: you should maybe talk to the car care guys.

Caller 3
Q: ran a full scan on norton and it took 6 hours to run, is that normal
A: depending on your hard drive, this is normal, try to clear out temporary files to speed it up

Caller 4
Q: got a blue screen of death. got a mini acer, got like 96GB of data, stop code 00007E. I got it into safe mode, but the stop code will not go away
A: so it seems that there is a driver problem, like display or network, that is messing up. You will have to uninstall them one by one, until it goes away. try swapping out memory, hard drives, video cards. it could take a lot of work to find out what is going wrong. so check out the drivers, disable all extra devices

ways to maximize your memory:
--reduce some startup applications, download startup inspector to assist you
--defrag the hard drive, multiple times


Segment 3

Adam complains about Vista's defrag. XP needs to have multiple defrags. {joe m: ???? That's like saying alphabetizing my files multiple time makes them more alphabetized.}

Adam is amazed that we still have spinning disks in hard drives. Joe D talks about the solid-state drives, they are still too expensive and too small, but they perform very well. They also have a limited number of writes. Ian is worried about this.

Caller 5
Q: need a backup system, got a usb backup system, but it did not have drivers, went to the delmar site, but everytime I install them they crash. I have windows 98.
A: the problem is that new hardware might not support windows 98 anymore. it would be easier to get an internal drive that works

Caller 6
Q: what is your recommendation, should I get a computer with vista and get a free upgrade to windows 7?
A: yes, better if you wait until October and then win 7 pre-installed

more performance things to look at:
if you double-click something and it does not open immediately, the system might be making space for the program to open, if you don't have enough memory


Segment 4

new item: when Google gets threatened, they are developing a new search engine. Joe D sees this as caused by Bing. It is called now Google Caffeine.

Caller 7
Q: I can't burn video to DVD in XP?
A: do you have a dvd burner?
Q: don't think so
A: DVD burners come with software.
Q: I have never updated to the latest service packs
A: check with the DVD burner and see if it came with software

Caller 8
Q: when I ran chkdsk, it found invalid security IDs, it set them all to default
A: Joe D thinks the physical drive is failing
Q: I had everything backed up, so I reformatted
A: so keep an eye on it
Q: I'm afraid to run chkdsk, because it messed up all the security

more news items: some guy is using Limewire to steal identities. Limewire allows you to download and share files. Some people share folders on their pcs that they are not aware of, like accounting information, so he was searching for account numbers. so make sure if you use Limewire, be sure to watch what folders you share so that you aren't sharing sensitive information. Better yet, DON'T USE LIMEWIRE!!