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Why would I pay 99 cents for a song?

That is a direct quote from a Freshman in college that I helped with her computer today. She purchased it just three days ago and already has Lime Wire installed. For those not familiar with Lime Wire, it is a service that many people use (especially college aged kids) to download free music, movies and more. In addition to be legally questionable (or downright illegal by some accounts), downloading free music is the single best way to completely screw-up a normally functioning computer.

Over the years, when we got calls from listeners with “slow computers”, our first question was “do you have any teenagers in the house?”. The reason we asked was that most unrestrained teenagers with Internet access will eventually install programs like Lime Wire and start downloading the free stuff.

Are you still using floppy disks?

I worked with three customers today who all used floppy disks as their main backup. All three users had Windows XP machines, but felt that floppy disks fit their needs the best. The picture I took here was from a consultant’s desk…there must be 20 floppies in that box. I explained to all these folks how simple, efficient and spacious a USB Flash drive could be for them. Whether they ‘bite’ or not only time will tell.

In my humble opinion, there is no good use for floppy disk any longer unless you happen to be using a DOS or Windows 95 machine. Flash drives are too inexpensive, reliable and easy to use not be using them. This weekend, I saw 2 GB (that’s nearly 2000 floppy disks worth of space) USB Flash Drives on sale for less than $20!

USB Flash Drives work best for backing up data that changes often. Data like Quicken, Quickbooks, email files, address books, bookmarks/favorites, word processing or spreadsheet documents all are perfect candidates. I don’t recommend using them to backup static data like pictuers and music. As cheap as USB Flash Drives are getting, they still aren’t anywhere near as cheap as DVD and CD media.

Another sony proprietary technology bites the dust

For every Apple device that becomes a standard there is a Sony technology that becomes obsolete. Apple and Sony both got off to a great start in the early 80s. Apple introduced the Mac and Sony gave us the Walkman.

From that point on, Apple has had only a handful of market failures and Sony has had nothing but. Sony announced their latest casualty this week by discontinuing their proprietary ATRAC audio compression file format.

While the rest of the world committed to MP3 and WMA or Apple’s music format for iTunes, Sony made up their own format only supported by their devices. Sony saw Apple succeeding with their own format and device and figured they could do the same.

Internet Outages

A major fiber optic line was cut in Colorado today knocking out Internet to a vast number of customers all around Colorado. I swear that people get more riled by an Internet outage than a TV or water outage (me included).

Please remember my number one rule when troubleshooting an Internet problem: If you haven’t changed anything on your system and the Internet was working fine a few hours ago or yesterday, assume that the problem is on the providers end of things and DO NOT messs with any settings on your computer. Simply wait it out for a few hours or a day.

Updated gimmick feature list 2007

My list of gimmick features continues to grow. Gimmick features are features that companies add to technology to sell a product but don’t do what they claim to do in the way you expect them to do it.

One of of the first gimmick features I began discussing years ago were gimmick buttons on a scanner. These are buttons that say “email” or “scan and save”, etc. All these buttons do is activate the software the same as if you clicked on the icon. It is usually more work to reach over and hit the buttons than it is to double-click on the appropriate scanner icon.

The missing iPhone disclaimer

I am throwing this into the newsletter this week. But I will post it here because I spent too much time writing it.

The Apple iPhone came out this Friday. We have taken the opportunity to write up the disclaimer that should appear on the device, but does not.

When to use a CD for backup

Our regular listeners hear us talk about this subject often, but it bears repeating as much as we can talk about it for your data's safety and your sanity. Backing up to CD's is a multi-step process and all the steps need to be followed for it to go right.

CD's work great for archiving data that won't change. This includes pictures, music, your finished novel, etc. CD's should only be burned ONE time. CD-R's have the capability of being written to many times, but this also increases the likelihood of problems with the CD. Burn them once and store them in a safe place.

Using Picasa to make a CD of your favorite pictures – Video Tip

Lately I have had several people ask me how to make a CD from only certain pictures from several folders. Here is a short video explaining how it's done.

The background music came out pretty bad, but the rest of the video should run OK. (click "read more if the video isn't already showing)

Backing up pictures to flash drives

Flash drives have become extremely popular over the past year. And why not…they are spacious, getting cheaper all the time and dare I say sexy? However, they still cost more per megabyte than any other backup medium. I did a little research tonight to illustrate why you should still use CD's or DVD's for photo and music backup rather than flash drives.

Consider this:

Type of Memory Capacity Cost Cost per megabyte
USB Flash Drive 512 mb $15.00 $.03
CDR 700 mb $15 for 50 disks $.00000000000004
DVD+R 4700 mb $30 for 50 disks $.0000000000000003

I will admit that flash drives are extremely easy to use and work well, but the economics just aren't there for long term storage…yet.

Why haven’t software companies adapted to Vista yet?

It is no secret that I am not a big fan of Vista, however I understand that Microsoft isn't going to move backwards so Windows users will gradually have to adapt to the new OS.

While consumers can take their time making the transition to the new Windows, there is no excuse for software designers who have dragged their feet in becoming Vista compatible.

Although Vista has been out on the shelf for only a couple of weeks, it has been out in beta form for several months. Software designers have had sufficient time to had sufficient time to update their programs for Vista compatibility.