The Tech Guy Episode 1935 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my Tech Guy podcast. This show originally aired on the Premier Network, 200 500, I don't know, a whole bunch of stations, coast to coast. I hear different numbers all the time, but also on the internet all around the world every weekend. This show originally aired on the Premier Networks on Saturday, October 15th, 2022. This is episode 1935. Enjoy the Tech Guy Podcast is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. There's so many podcasts out right now and it takes a team of people to bring them together. Whether you're hiring for a podcast or for your growing business, one place makes it easy. Zip Recruiter. And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/techguy. Well, hey, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LePort here, The tech guy. Well, it's time to talk tech, isn't it?

Leo Laporte (00:01:10):
Isn't it <laugh>? 88. 88? Ask Leo the phone number. What is Talking Tech? Talking Tech is talking about anything with a chip in it. Anything digital. So I guess that's a better way of putting it. Anything that's composed of ones and zeros at the very bottom of it. Cuz the internet has no chips in it. <laugh>, there are, well there are chips in it, but there aren't anyway computers. Smartphone smart watches, virtual reality glasses. I don't know, I think I do this for you. You understand I do this for you purchased meta's new virtual Reality Glasses. What is it called? The Quest Pro. Quest Pro at a whopping 1700. Smackers, an advanced VR device. I feel like every few me, I'm not, I'm a bearish thumbs down on vr. Not a big fan of the virtual reality, but every few years I feel like, well, I could be wrong.

Leo Laporte (00:02:21):
I know hard to believe I could be wrong, but I should check. So I should check. I should see, I should say, hmm has have things changed. So in 10 days I will receive this absurdly expensive, it's $1,500 plus tax. That's why it seven $1,700 expensive headset, including Touch Pro controllers me. But it's got all these cameras. So you don't even need the controllers. You could just go with this, go like with your fingers and they would see it. It's got cameras on the outside and full color view of the world around you. So even though you're sealed into this headset on the screens, you can see the outside world. So I guess it's maybe more what they call mix reality.

Leo Laporte (00:03:18):
And what's interesting at Microsoft at this event this week, Microsoft, Well Microsoft was there meta at this event focused not on gaming, which is up to now been the only real reason anybody wanted to do this. But on productivity. In fact, that's Microsoft CEO mis Satia. Nadela shows up in the screen and says, Yeah, we're very excited about putting Microsoft Office and Windows on your headset. I just can't imagine a worst way to use Office and Windows. But okay. And then Mark said, Hey, good news, we're working on legs. So I don't know if you know this, but the virtual reality world, that meta is proposing Horizon world. It's out now and you can play with, it's kind of goofy looking. And nobody has legs. They just stop at the waist. And I think that that's because it's hard. Legs are hard to do. And anyway, Mark said, Oh no, we're gonna have legs and then dance to jig with his virtual legs. Except we now know that was fake <laugh>. It was done, it was rendered. It was in motion capture, it was fake. So I guess they're not really that close to having legs.

Leo Laporte (00:04:37):
Anyway, I'll tell you the truth. There's a 30 day return policy. So <laugh> try it. I'll let you know. I'll get back to you. Let me get back to you on this virtual reality thing. The other thing this week was a Microsoft Surface event the next day at which the CEO of Microsoft Satel did not show up. What does that tell you? Shows up for somebody else's event. Not his own but nothing to report here except new surface tablets and so forth. It's hard to get too excited about them. They're not the Windows products I would generally recommend at Dell, hp, Lenovo all make better products for less money.

Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
Wow, me. They're pushing Windows on arm, which is kind of interesting. I think there's a little Apple jealousy here cuz Apple's got our new architecture, not Intel its owns Apple silicon, they call it the M one and M two chips. And they're based on the arm architecture. This sounds very confusing. Arm doesn't make chips, Arm designs, chips. And funny cuz Arm was founded in the early days by Apple and a couple other companies. The Acorn computer Apple sold off at stake many, many moons ago, but they come back to Arm, which is interesting. Anyway, so they're making arm computers, but Apple controls the whole thing. Hardware and operating systems so they can make it all work. Microsoft, not so much. In fact, apparently Microsoft has a deal with Qualcomm, so they can't go to anybody else to make better chips. The chips that they're putting in these, they call Microsoft chips.

Leo Laporte (00:06:16):
They're not. They're just Qualcomm chips with Microsoft Label stamped on them. And it's just not a good experience yet. Just not a good experience yet. So a couple of things, it's hard to get excited about. Now I did get my Pixel seven phone that came in and I've been playing with it. Man, this camera is good. Very, very good. Is it better than Samsung or Apple? That's hard to say. In some cases it is. In some cases it isn't. But if I'm standing there as I sometimes am with a iPhone 14 Promax and a Pixel seven Pro, I might use the Pixel to take a picture. I might really, It's amazing how good all of these high end cameras are these days. But the Pixel makes some very nice images. Very nice. I'll show you. I see my slideshow. Oh, it's radio you <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:07:20):
I could show you my slideshow, but it's radio. I was very pleased. The color rendering is good. The white balance is good. The detail is really excellent. And one of the things camera phones have lacked in the past is really good. Zoom that Samsung's fixed that Apple a little bit, but Google now has a optical 10 x zoom, which is good. It's very crisp. Works quite well, I think. So I, that's what people, and they have macro photography and that's what people talk about. I think mostly with these phones, although Google has, and I haven't had a chance to try it, but they have said that they have improved greatly. The <laugh>, the phone quality, the sound quality on the phone. So I'll have to make some phone calls and see, but I'm, it's not, It's good. It's nice. I don't recommend it <laugh>. I recommend it. If your Android, this is probably the Android phone to get, which is too bad because Samsung way outsells Google. But I think Google has last year's Pixel six had some issues. People complained about the fingerprint being slow. This one, they've clearly solved that. Plus it's added a face recognition. So, and I noticed by the way it's, I do both. They're both there. Which I wish Apple would do both. But a lot of times I'll just raise the phone and it sees me and it goes, okay, you don't have to press your fingerprint today.

Leo Laporte (00:08:55):
So they're all good. Samsung, Google Apple, Google phone starts the pixel seven at 6 99 and then the Pixel seven pro at 8 99, which is actually a really good price for a phone that I think is as good as the thousand dollars. Samsung and Apple phones. If you want a folding phone, you're gonna have to go to Samsung. But if you can live without a folding phone, I think folding phones are maybe a little over promoted, shall we say? Shall we? Shall we say that? Yes. Let's say that. You may have noticed I'm alone the tech guy all alone. It's just the tech guy. No guys. Micah has the week off, but he's gonna make up for it next week. Cuz I'm going to Vegas to see Katie Perry, my wife and I. So I won't be here next week. But Micah will be doing the show for me. So it works out. It works out beautifully. I am here today though. If you have questions, comments, suggestions. If you want to talk tech 88. 88. Ask Leo. 8, 8 88. 2 7 5 5, 3 6. Kim standing by for your calls. Couple of lines still open. Website tech guy labs.com will talk tech right after this.

Leo Laporte (00:10:23):
Her he jump bum bum bum, bum de. Okay, so this is the flag of whale green flag. Here's the flag of whale. Actually get cash back every time you, There's the whales attached. Yep. It's awesome. Is that it green and white with a red dragon Instead of just watching your dollars.

Laura (00:10:52):
No, I figured The Iranian flag.

Leo Laporte (00:10:55):
Oh, the Iranian flag. Iranian. Iranian. You say tomato, PayPal or gift card upside users. And they're waving this flag across the street.

Laura (00:11:09):
Yes, it's a mall.

Leo Laporte (00:11:13):
That's not a dragon. That's a lion. I said it was a little, Oh you said it was a lion. You didn't mention the curve sword and the sun burst.

Laura (00:11:22):
I didn't get that

Leo Laporte (00:11:23):
Part. Oh yeah, yeah. It was quick. It was quick. And what were they protesting? Oh, I know what they're protesting. The war of the Haji.

Laura (00:11:32):
Yeah. I wouldn't say they're protest is more of

Leo Laporte (00:11:36):
This says solidarity. Solidarity with the women of Iran. Your personal who are tired of being suppressed can make it dangerously easy to steal. And I don't blame him. One cotton pick and bit to help protect yourself

... (00:11:52):
By monitoring your identity.

Leo Laporte (00:11:54):
Nope. Alerting

... (00:11:55):
You to threats you could miss on your own. I like that vibe though. A US based LifeLock restoration

Leo Laporte (00:12:01):
Specialist. It is cool. Dedicated

... (00:12:03):
To your case and work

Leo Laporte (00:12:04):
To, It isn't their normal flag, it's their variant. Or

... (00:12:08):
Monitor all

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
Trans. This is the normal. We have a vari. I want a variance. We have a variant. It's got a thin blue line across it. First

... (00:12:14):
Year call.

Leo Laporte (00:12:18):
Now here is a long letter from Gary. Hi Gary. Thank you. US usa automobile racing history. The Ford Chevy Challenge. Oh this must be the galley of his book. Auto Library of auto racing memorabilia. Ed is Scandar. Hot rod industry Pioneer year. The cam father, He's the father of the cam I guess. Oh, look at that. That's cool. A personal car of distinction. The Thunderbird. It's got a horse. Many horses. One horsepower, A new Nons. No what? High spirited personal car. That's home on the Boulevard or open road. <laugh> door. Top to tread is only 34 inches. Yet there is a full 5.9 inch road clearance. No matter where you go, you'll find every trip presents a new kind of driving. Fun designed for road hugging, stability, see and high performance. Well thank you Gary. Thank you. He also does, did we talk to him? He does a boat management services. I think we talked to him. Costa Mesa there. I feel like we talked to him on the radio. He also sent me a cd. 1956 to 1974 at the races. Oh cool. And a screensaver. Nice. Nice. Hey it's a miracle. Females are strong as heck. It's back <laugh>. The original Kim Shaffer theme. The unbreakable Kimmy Shaffer

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
Kimmy dot Take No Shaffer. Hello Kim. Hi. How you doing? I am well just wanted, was looking at this nice package about Ford versus Chevy racing sent to me by Gary and Costa Mesa, who I think, correct me if I'm wrong, has called us.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:01):
There have been thousands, many Gary

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
Years cost Mesa. He says I'm the one who called a few months ago. Oh okay. And said that I would send my photos of Southeast Asia taken when in the Navy. I remember that. Okay. He says I will as soon as I can see them. One more time. <laugh>. Well don't send me your only copies, Gary.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:18):
Yeah, I'll digitize those.

Leo Laporte (00:15:19):
Don't send me your, That would be sad. But this is a collection of auto memorabilia and you know who else would be interested in this? The

Kim Schaffer (00:15:28):
Car guy.

Leo Laporte (00:15:28):
Yeah, Sam will. Thank you Gary. I just wanna thank him. I don't wanna solicit people sending me things <laugh> because I, I'm running out of room.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:39):
Yes you are.

Leo Laporte (00:15:40):
<laugh>. I am really running out of room.

Kim Schaffer (00:15:43):
You don't have that 10,000 square feet underneath anymore. Used

Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
To have that big studio. Remember that? Yeah

Leo Laporte (00:15:50):
Not anymore. And space is at a premium cuz we only have, what, 8,000 feet now? I don't know. It's not as, we don't have a basement that's missing. And also now I am getting, so many years ago, in 1995 and six, I did a show called, The Site was solid at O'Brien on msnbc. It was with the launch of msnbc. We did this show and the producer of that show. Hello? Mr. Producer <laugh>. I don't know if he wants his name announced or not. Anyway hi David. I could say David, there's not that many Davids in the world. Hi David. He has the old sign from the set, which is like 12 feet by eight feet and weighs 180 pounds. And we're gonna go up on Wednesday and get it. And then now I have to figure out where to put that. Oh,

Kim Schaffer (00:16:41):
Okay. <laugh>. No more wall space

Leo Laporte (00:16:43):
I'm running out of, I don't know why I'm so, don't send me anything anymore. No more stuff. I always think about this, we talk all the time about getting our photos online and saving them. And you're the first generation that will have your entire life history available to your progeny, your descendants online. Do you think they're gonna be an interest in that or is there just gonna go? Yeah,

Kim Schaffer (00:17:12):
I hope so. But <laugh>, it doesn't matter for me cuz I got nobody. You

Leo Laporte (00:17:16):
Got no progeny. You got nieces and nephews.

Kim Schaffer (00:17:19):
Yes. Plenty of those. Well, no cousins, but not nieces, cousins,

Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
Nephews. Well one of these days somebody will have a kid. So

Kim Schaffer (00:17:26):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:17:26):
I have kids and I know they don't want any of this stuff. Hey Henry, I'm gonna send you my big sign from a show. Daddy did before you were born. No, I guess he was about three when I did. I'm gonna send you this sign. Gonna, I don't want this. This doesn't work with my TikTok career. <laugh>. Who should I I

Kim Schaffer (00:17:44):
Do you even have any time?

Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
Me?

Kim Schaffer (00:17:48):
Oh yes. Okay well full. Yeah, we got tons of time. Full disclosure. This

Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
You think I'm just so garous that I used up all the time, but no,

Kim Schaffer (00:17:56):
It was a chatty segment. Was a chatter. This is my friend Marissa in Petaluma. Who friend of your, I can't fix her problem. So I told her to call you

Leo Laporte (00:18:04):
<laugh>. Wow. That's moving him right to the front of the line in it. Yeah. Thank you Kim. Hi Marissa.

Caller 1 (00:18:11):
Hi there.

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
I hope I can help you. I'll feel terrible if I can't. <laugh>. What's the, what's, what's going on?

Caller 1 (00:18:20):
Well, I have a MacBook Air. It's about a year and a half old. And I had a very helpful text friend of mine set it up for me. That's what he actually does for living is tact as well. And now I have completely locked myself out of the MacBook Air and I can't use it.

Leo Laporte (00:18:39):
<laugh>, I'm sorry,

Kim Schaffer (00:18:40):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:18:43):
I shouldn't laugh. So

Caller 1 (00:18:47):
It's funny

Leo Laporte (00:18:47):
In the, it's not funny. It's a very nice brand new laptop before your friend came along. And I'm gonna put this in. Air quotes helped you. Did you have to log in with a password or you just open it up? Turn it on in there? You'd be

Caller 1 (00:19:04):
I honestly don't remember. Yeah, because I haven't actually able to use this thing in months. Okay. I just kind of, yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:10):
So

Caller 1 (00:19:10):
I'm one of those people that I can't do tech at all.

Leo Laporte (00:19:13):
Yeah, that's fine. If I get, I think so normally on most computers these days you have to log in to use it. But it's possible when you set it up to set it up so that no, no, no. I don't have a password. So you just hit return. But I think either heat is decided you needed one or change the setting or something. Or maybe in just after every once in a while, Apple, even if you don't have a password, I'll really want you to verify. So I think this is the login to get into your MacBook so that you can use it. Otherwise it's just sitting there with a picture of you or an owl or a bit beach ball or whatever you've got. And it's saying no, that's, no, you're locked out. So keep,

Caller 1 (00:19:52):
I'm pretty sure last pass was involved somehow.

Leo Laporte (00:19:56):
No, no, no, no. You can't get into the computer at all. Right?

Caller 1 (00:20:01):
Yeah, no I can't. I can open it up and I see my photo and it says your account is locked.

Leo Laporte (00:20:06):
So that has nothing to do with last pass. It's not even running yet. Nothing's running just Mac os. So what you have to do is keep trying and eventually Apple will say, Oh, now here's the question. This is gonna be important. You have an Apple id. Do you remember that? It's gonna be something like marissa@icloud.com. Do you remember that at all? Does that ring a bell? No. Do you have a

Caller 1 (00:20:32):
I know that I have it, I just don't.

Leo Laporte (00:20:34):
So you can recover, can reset your MacBook password as long as you have an Apple id.

Caller 1 (00:20:44):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:20:44):
Cause what it'll then say is if you forgot your password, you can reset it using your Apple id. And that's the, So keep <laugh>. What you can do is keep trying to log in. Supposedly after three times it'll say this. But if it doesn't, keep trying until you see, hey, I think you forgot your password. It doesn't to me all the time. Pass

Caller 1 (00:21:07):
That point. We're way past that point. It asked me for my password several times and now it doesn't even ask me for my password. It just says your account is locked and I can't double click anything. I can't click

Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
Anything. Well force it off. You know how to do that. You press and hold the fingerprint reader until it goes off and turn it on again and see if you can get it to that point where it's saying, if you forgot then

Caller 1 (00:21:29):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:21:31):
Huh? What don't,

Caller 1 (00:21:33):
Okay, I'm, I'm like fingerprint reader. I don't know what that is.

Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
Up in the upper hand, right hand corner of the computer, there's a blank button. Yeah. Press and hold it until the screen goes dark and the keyboard turns off and everything. Now press it again and it'll go boom. And it'll wake up and I'm hoping <laugh> it, it will not give you this annoying message that you can't do anything. It will give you a chance to, if you forgot your password you can reset it.

Caller 1 (00:22:03):
Okay, well I hope that is the case cuz I feel like I've turned this computer off multiple times.

Leo Laporte (00:22:07):
Okay. Trying to do that. So if that doesn't work then you can go to forgot.apple.com on another computer or on your iPhone or whatever else you got.

Caller 1 (00:22:18):
So it is asking for a password is password is required but I don't know the password. I

Leo Laporte (00:22:24):
Understand. Enter the enter whoop. Do three times. Doesn't matter what you enter. Just something and then it's gonna say, Hey, I think you forgot your password. Duh. And then it says you can reset it using your Apple ID and then click the okay button. Either that and if that doesn't happen, go to just go on the web and some other computer to forgot that. Get Kim to go to this for you. Forgot that apple.com. But I gotta tell you, you have to find your Apple id. You gotta log in with your Apple id, which is gonna be an email address usually ending it. Outlook, not Outlook. Sorry. Do they say outlook icloud.com or sometimes it's me.com Depends on old it is. But anyway, I

Caller 1 (00:23:07):
Think I'm definitely gonna have to do that because I tried to put in a password and it just says your account is locked.

Leo Laporte (00:23:12):
Yeah. So you're gonna go to forgot do apple.com. But you have to remember your Apple id. That's the only catch on that Leo LePort the tech guy. So hold on cause I will continue to help you. So that's interesting. So it is possible. I mean you can't set up, can set up a Mac without an Apple id unusual to do so. But if you have, then you got another issue entirely. That's why I was asking if you had a password, you can't erase the computer and start over again.

Caller 1 (00:23:59):
Yeah, that's what Kim had said. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:24:01):
I don't try this. Okay so there is a recovery utility that will come up. You turn off the computer again, like I told you, just hold the fingerprint reader down until it goes completely dark. Then hold command R and turn it on. This is gonna go into recovery mode.

Caller 1 (00:24:29):
Okay, let's see. All right, so the screen is black.

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
Now hold the command R wall. Just keep holding it till you see the apple.

Caller 1 (00:24:37):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:24:38):
And now you can release it and you're gonna go into a recovery window and there should be a forgot all passwords link. <laugh>,

Caller 1 (00:24:48):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:24:49):
I forgot all my passwords.

Caller 1 (00:24:52):
When I open it up, it just says Marissa Patrick enter passwords. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
That's normal. But you don't know that password is the problem.

Caller 1 (00:25:02):
Correct.

Leo Laporte (00:25:05):
So that's normal from now on <laugh>. And don't put it in last pass cuz last pass doesn't run until you get booted up. Put it on, write it on a piece of paper somewhere. Sticking a drawer. You need a password.

Caller 1 (00:25:19):
Okay, well

Leo Laporte (00:25:20):
So when you set it up, and this is gonna, when you forget all passwords, you're gonna go through all this stuff and I don't think it's gonna erase the drive. Is there stuff on the drive you do not wanna lose?

Caller 1 (00:25:35):
I honestly don't even know anymore <laugh>. Okay. And it

Leo Laporte (00:25:40):
Just, So that's probably not, Yeah. Have I forgot You have a more modern max. So just press and hold the power button until it goes off and then press and hold it until loading. Startup options appear. You have, it's a different method for the silicon. I forgot.

Caller 1 (00:25:55):
Okay, so I hit command R again or no?

Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
No. So you turn it all the way off. Turn it, turn it on and keep, Don't let go of the on off button, the fingerprint, just keep holding it.

Caller 1 (00:26:07):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:26:09):
And it will just keep holding it until you get recovery options.

Caller 1 (00:26:14):
Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:26:14):
So the guy who set it up for you may not have done this. Apple could have just for some reason decided we gotta make her log in at some point. You probably had this and you set it up with a password, but you've forgotten that. I would try, by the way, I would try, you know, probably use the same password over and over again. Right?

Caller 1 (00:26:37):
I do. Okay, so it says Macintosh, HC or options.

Leo Laporte (00:26:45):
I can't remember what it's gonna look like now. Let me see. I guess options. Yeah. And then it should say select a user the password for

Caller 1 (00:27:02):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:27:03):
But you don't know any of them. So there should be underneath that a button that says

Caller 1 (00:27:07):
Macs recovery examining volume. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, there it is. Select an admin user. The password for, or it says forgot all passwords. Bingo. Okay. Select a wifi network from the menu. Or

Leo Laporte (00:27:23):
I have to run cuz I gotta do another segment. But I think you're there.

Caller 1 (00:27:29):
Okay, thank you.

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
Have a good time, <laugh>. I appreciate it. And if it doesn't work Marissa, just tell Kim and I'll help you with it. We'll get it working.

Caller 1 (00:27:38):
Okay, sounds good. You

Leo Laporte (00:27:40):
Take care how. Hello Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:45):
Leo. Oh here we go.

Leo Laporte (00:27:48):
We're gonna get him out of the hip bag right now and open up his trick bag. It's time for Mr. Hipster himself. Scott's book Iton a home theater geek. Hello Scotty.

Scott Wilkinson (00:27:59):
Hello Leo. How you doing?

Leo Laporte (00:28:01):
Well, how are you?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:02):
I'm doing great, thanks.

Leo Laporte (00:28:04):
What's up in the world of home theater?

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:08):
Oh, I got an email from Thomas, a loyal listener who had heard me, oh I don't know, a month or two ago talking about TVs in terms of the first tier and the second tier. Huh?

Leo Laporte (00:28:24):
Is there, Oh, he's talking about manufacturers.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:27):
Manufacturers,

Leo Laporte (00:28:28):
Yeah. This is an artificial distinction, the manufacturers.

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:30):
It is an artificial, it is absolutely an artificial distinction. But he wrote me and he said, I heard you talking about this. And what are examples of the second tier? Now this is my own distinction. It

Leo Laporte (00:28:43):
Used to be Visio was second tier. I don't know though they get,

Scott Wilkinson (00:28:46):
I would still call them second tier. Okay. I would say the first tier is Samsung, Sony and lg.

Leo Laporte (00:28:55):
Those are the flagship brands. The top of the lines, top of the lines, The Apple, Google and Samsung of the

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:02):
Exactly. Yes. Yes. And you're gonna pay a premium.

Leo Laporte (00:29:06):
Oh yes. You are

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:07):
<laugh> for buying those TVs now, you know get that is the best you can get. But if you wanna save some money, you go to the second tier. And the point I really wanted to make here is that the difference is not really great. It's not big.

Leo Laporte (00:29:26):
You better say that because I always buy my mom. Exactly. And I bought my wife of Visio. Yeah. And you better say they're almost as good <laugh>.

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:36):
Oh they are. I absolutely believe that. Without question God, my goodness. So he asked me what are the second tier brands? And I would say they are vio, tcl and high sense. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:29:47):
And this changes though because brands become better and worse and so forth and so on for It's true. It's true. You wouldn't have put high sense in TCL in that second tier five years ago,

Scott Wilkinson (00:29:56):
Maybe five years ago. That may be true. Yeah. That may very well be true. Yeah. But they have come up big time.

Leo Laporte (00:30:01):
They certainly have.

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:03):
And in fact one reason I wanted to talk about this today is that TCL just announced an 85 inch mini l e d backlight TV for under $2,000.

Leo Laporte (00:30:20):
Under $2,000. Is that a good price?

Scott Wilkinson (00:30:23):
Well for the six series, this is their hot top of, almost top of the line series. All TV manufacturers have series, they have the flagship series and then the step down and the step down from that and so on. And the six series is the TCL flagship. I think they have an eight series, but mostly I recommend the six series. And so this is in the six series. They've had an 8 85 inch TV before, but it's in been in the lower series. So this is the first time it's been in their premier or near the top of their line. And under $2,000 for an 85

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
Inch, 85 is huge. And is many l e d good? Is that a good

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:06):
Thing? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's really good because

Leo Laporte (00:31:09):
Is that's full array, local dimming watch me using big words.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:12):
Yes, absolutely. So you've got thousands of LEDs behind the screen of the l cd tv and I believe this one has 448 local dimming zones. So each of these zones can brighten or dim independently. And so if you have an image with some dark parts and some bright parts, then the dark parts can be really dark and the bright parts can be really bright.

Leo Laporte (00:31:39):
So when so on is walking into Mount Doom's fire. Exactly,

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:44):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:31:45):
He's very dark but Mount Doom is very bright and you will see the contrast.

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:50):
Right? Right. It improves the contrast. Is

Leo Laporte (00:31:53):
It hdr? Can it do hdr?

Scott Wilkinson (00:31:54):
Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, it can do all the HDR formats. HDR 10, HDR 10 plus Doby vision and hlg. So you have no problem with any of the formats, no matter what the content is that you're watching. They

Leo Laporte (00:32:10):
Call that high dynamic range when you have

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:12):
High dynamic range.

Leo Laporte (00:32:13):
So on and Mount Doom on the same screen. There's a very big range between the darkest in the breaks.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:18):
Correct? Yeah, correct. Exactly right. And as long as you have content that was encoded in that high dynamic range, which a lot of streaming content has

Leo Laporte (00:32:27):
Been. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:27):
Nowadays a lot has been you will see it and it looks great. It's by far more impressive to see a high dynamic range content than it is to see more

Leo Laporte (00:32:39):
Pixels. And these are Q L E D, quantum nanocrystals.

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:44):
They correct. They have. They have quantum. Yeah. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:32:47):
Yeah, yeah. Most. Is that a good thing?

Scott Wilkinson (00:32:51):
Yeah, it's a very good thing. Okay. It's a very good thing. It means you've got a wide color gamut. You have a wide range of colors.

Leo Laporte (00:32:58):
It sounds like we got a tier one TV coming from a tier two manufacturer.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:03):
I think so. I think so. It could very well be. I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, it was only announced on Monday. I haven't seen any reviews of it yet either. So I'm

Leo Laporte (00:33:12):
Very tempted cause I have a hundred inch projector. But this is close to that size. And it's not projector's direct view.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:22):
Exactly. Exactly. Which

Leo Laporte (00:33:24):
Means it'll be brighter and much brighter, more vivid. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:28):
Yep, yep, yep. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:33:29):
But it's not all led. It's Q led.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:31):
It's Q led, which

Leo Laporte (00:33:33):
Is not quite led.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:34):
No, correct. It's still an L C D tv. All this alphabet soup is very confusing.

Leo Laporte (00:33:40):
Well yeah because there's the quantum dot O led too, right?

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:43):
Right. The QD OD <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:33:48):
QD O LED is better than quantum dot. It's the best L E d.

Scott Wilkinson (00:33:52):
Yes, correct. It's the best there is so far. In fact, my next TV will probably be a QD O. Now there those top out size wise at 65

Leo Laporte (00:34:02):
Inches and they're much more expensive.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:04):
And they're much more expensive cause it's a brand new technology. New technology is always expensive. At first

Leo Laporte (00:34:09):
You want an old projector

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:11):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:34:13):
Oh wait a minute. I didn't ask one important thing. Oh I knew you said it's under 2000. It's

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:18):
Under 2000. That's not,

Leo Laporte (00:34:20):
I mean that sounds like a lot. I understand kids, but it's 50. That's not

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:23):
Inches. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:34:24):
It's a really big screen.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:27):
Yeah, really big TCL says if you sit six feet away from it, it'll be the same 60 degree field of view that you get at the TCL IMAX Theater in Hollywood. Now 60 degree field of view is too much in my opinion. I think that's too wide.

Leo Laporte (00:34:45):
Will there be hand prints in the cement of your house? <laugh> an in joke I think.

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:52):
Yeah. Well anybody who's been to the tc,

Leo Laporte (00:34:55):
It used to be the groin Chinese theater where they could Chinese

Scott Wilkinson (00:34:58):
Fingerprints in the cement. Yeah. And there still are. I mean if you go to Hollywood and you go to

Leo Laporte (00:35:03):
The Chinese, Oh they're not gonna tear up the sidewalk just cuz it's now the tcl.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:06):
No, no. That's an iconic place, right? I mean people are drawn there. You have to walk past all the actors playing Captain Jack Sparrow and Spiderman.

Leo Laporte (00:35:17):
I don't call those people actors. <laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:22):
Wannabe

Leo Laporte (00:35:22):
At wannabes.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:23):
Okay. All right. And

Leo Laporte (00:35:24):
You like a big show is me lady.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:29):
It's hilarious. If anybody ever gets to Hollywood and walks down Hollywood Boulevard. Oh yeah. Really funny causes where all 10 feet, there's one of these people playing a Wonder Woman or a Captain Jack Sparrow or something. It's hilarious.

Leo Laporte (00:35:40):
It's like Times Square. That's where all the former radio hosts go. So <laugh>, look for me, I'm trying to decide should I be Elmo or Captain Jack? I can't decide.

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:50):
There was a story, I saw a story once where SpongeBob Squarepants got in a fight with Superman. Well

Leo Laporte (00:35:57):
Who would win in that fight? I ask you

Scott Wilkinson (00:35:59):
<laugh> course.

Leo Laporte (00:36:00):
If you punch a sponge, it doesn't, it

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:03):
Kind. Nothing

Leo Laporte (00:36:03):
Happened. Nothing happens.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:04):
That's right.

Leo Laporte (00:36:05):
Anyway, TCL six series 85 inches, 1999 at Best Buy. And I presume elsewhere it has all the dollies,

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:15):
All the HDR formats. It's, it's got a Roku smart TV platform if you care about that.

Leo Laporte (00:36:22):
So there's two parts of a TV that make it good or bad. I think you tell me if I'm wrong, but this is what I glean from listening to you. One is the panel itself and there only a few manufacturers. So correct the panel. And then the other thing is the software, the chips that are doing the upscaling and the rendering and the processing.

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:43):
Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
Do you think this is a good panel and good chips? We don't know yet

Scott Wilkinson (00:36:47):
It is. Or we don't know yet. We haven't. We haven't. But the other six series, the smaller six series that I have seen are remarkable.

Leo Laporte (00:36:55):
TCL is really good, is a second tier manufacturer on its way

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:00):
To first tier, I think first year.

Leo Laporte (00:37:01):
Scott Wilkinson watches videos youtube.com/avs forum and hear 'em right here every week. I'm really tempted cuz Well 85,

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:13):
It's not quite a hundred.

Leo Laporte (00:37:15):
It's more than a you think? I mean it's not, It's smaller than you. I'll have to get a measuring tape or something and see cuz it's not like it's, Oh, it's only 15% smaller. That's not

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:26):
Well I'd have to do the math on that. Yeah, I don't have calculator here.

Leo Laporte (00:37:29):
It's a lot smaller I think. Well

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:32):
I wouldn't say a lot. I would say somewhat. I mean you'd have to just do the area and see what the difference is. And I don't have a calculator handy, so, And that's not something I like

Leo Laporte (00:37:46):
To do. I could do that in my head, but I won't go for it man. I don't wanna show off

Scott Wilkinson (00:37:50):
<laugh>. So I mean 85 inches is a pretty damn big TV

Leo Laporte (00:37:59):
<laugh>. So the hypothe news of the triangle is 85?

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:04):
Correct.

Leo Laporte (00:38:05):
Cause it's a But it's not equilateral. It's a right triangle.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:07):
No, it's a 16 by nine. Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (00:38:10):
16 by nine by, So the four by, it's a square of the <laugh>. Okay, I'll let you do your segment right now.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:20):
All right, no

Leo Laporte (00:38:20):
Problem. A squared plus B squared equals C

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:23):
Squared plus C squared. Correct. Thank you sir. So 85 squared equals width squared plus height

Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Squared

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:33):
And the ratio of width to height is 1.78. Right. So that's enough information to calculate it.

Leo Laporte (00:38:41):
And I'll leave it to the chat room because they love math problems.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:45):
Let us leave it to the reader. The listener.

Leo Laporte (00:38:49):
They love math problems. But I bet you it's, it's not 15% smaller, more like 25% fewer.

Scott Wilkinson (00:38:58):
But don't know curious I, I'm gonna have to do the dation. I might do that in the next segment while you're on the radio and come back at the top of the hour and have that information for you. Cause now I'm curious. Yeah, now I wanna know how much smaller is it in area. That's the important. That's

Leo Laporte (00:39:13):
What's important. Yeah. You don't look at the diagonal and say, well the diagonal's 15% smaller. That's not the issue.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:20):
Right?

Leo Laporte (00:39:21):
Or is it? I don't know. That'll be interesting. We make some

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:24):
But we'll find out. We'll find out. Actually find out. Yeah. Meanwhile I'll say hi to the chat room. Beat Master said my last podcast was very informative and fun at which it was. We talked all about CIA and we had some good people on Mike heis is always a hoot.

Leo Laporte (00:39:42):
Love Mike. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:43):
Mike is great. I will have him on the show anytime cuz he's really fun and very knowledgeable. Is he in the chat room today?

Leo Laporte (00:39:51):
He doesn't seem to be today. He usually is.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:53):
Yeah, he usually is. Yeah. But I don't

Leo Laporte (00:39:56):
See him. He's taking a day off.

Scott Wilkinson (00:39:59):
Oh, like Micah.

Leo Laporte (00:40:01):
Yeah. Maybe he and Micah are up to something.

Scott Wilkinson (00:40:04):
<laugh> yes. Beat master Mike took your jokes in. Good fun. Absolutely no question about it. East Coast says TCL versus high Sensee. Which would you buy? Oh man, that's a tough one. They're both very, very good. I'm more familiar with tcl, which is why I'd probably buy TCL over high Sensee. But High Sense is making some great TVs. They make a TV that TCL does not, which is what's called dual modulation. So they have two layers of LCD panel and the SEC one layer makes the picture and the second layer modulates the light going through the first layer. So that allows for deeper blacks, greater contrast. In fact, when I wrote to Thomas about this first tier, second tier business I said with tcl, stick with the six series or higher, which means the six or eight series the five series also has full array local dimming. So I would consider that if money were super tight but the number of zones is very low in the high sense lineup, I would stick with the U six G or higher.

Leo Laporte (00:41:25):
Stick around for the top.

Scott Wilkinson (00:41:26):
You betcha.

Leo Laporte (00:41:26):
Thank you sir. It's time to talk about the great Zip Recruiter. My fine sponsor for this particular portion of the tech guy program. When we do hiring I would say for the last five, six years, always use ZipRecruiter because ZipRecruiter works best. <laugh>, you can go to ZipRecruiter, post your job for free, post it to everywhere. I mean that's one of the nice things about ZipRecruiter. One post on ZipRecruiter goes to a hundred plus job boards and social networks. It casts a very broad net. And then ZipRecruiter does something really cool. It looks through all of its million plus current resumes. That's how many people use ZipRecruiter and looks for people whose qualifications match your job listing. Now it doesn't go to them and say, Come on and we got a job for you. It goes to you and says, Hey look what I found.

Leo Laporte (00:42:20):
I found some good candidates. You look at them and you decide who you wanna invite. But I have to tell you, and this has been our experience, when you invite somebody to apply for a job, they are so flattered. They are so excited that they follow through. There's been a big problem lately. If you've tried, been trying to do hiring, it's hard to hire nowadays. People don't show up for the interview, they blow you off. Not if you invite them. It really works. ZipRecruiter is great too because even though you're casting this wide net, you don't get a million calls to your voicemail. You don't get a bunch of emails in your inbox. It all goes into the ZipRecruiter interface where it's formatted, it's processed, all the resumes look the same. So it's very easy to scan through them. You can have screening questions so you can eliminate people that just don't match your needs right away.

Leo Laporte (00:43:05):
It's so effective. That's what we use to hire engineers, to hire editors, producers, continuity department people. We've hired a number of great people from Zip Recruiter. It's important to hire the right people for your business because those people are what makes your business. So whether you're hiring for a podcast network or a growing business, zip recruiter can help four outta five people who employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. I have to tell you, our experience is usually within the first hour. It's pretty cool. So if you like this show, you're a tech guy fan and you wanna do some hiring, please do me a favor, try zip Recruiter free right now. Use our special address though so they know you saw it here. Zip recruiter.com/tech guy. Zip recruiter.com/t E C H G U Y. It's the smartest way to hire.

Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
We know cuz that's what we use. ziprecruiter.com/tech guy. Thank you ZipRecruiter for supporting the tech guy show. Leo LaPorte de Tech guy, episode 1935. Can you believe that 1,935 episodes and all of them are there at the website, Tech ilab.com. Almost all of them have, I think all of them have audio. We didn't start doing video for the first couple of years, so there'll be video starting I think in year three or four. And the show notes will include links to everything we talk about that fine TV that Scott was talking about and eventually transcripts, audio and video from the show. So that's all there for free. No sign up Tech guy labs.com. Dan on the line from Spotswood, New Jersey. Hello Dan.

Caller 2 (00:45:00):
Hello Leo. How are you? Doing

Leo Laporte (00:45:02):
Well, how are you?

Caller 2 (00:45:03):
Good. I have a question. I just got bought a new laptop and I'm debating whether I should put Windows Microsoft Office or Lebri office on it. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:45:12):
Better. So Libre, the nice thing about Libre office, which does run on Windows as well as Linux and Mac is it's free. It will read and write most Microsoft office formats but not as well as when Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. And I think that it really kind of depends. I would what start with the free one and see if it does the job for you. It they're really attempting to make it look as close as possible to Microsoft's office, by the way, which is now called unaccountably, Microsoft 365. So don't worry, I'm gonna continue to call it office cuz that's just confusing.

Leo Laporte (00:45:59):
That's a personal choice. The good news is if you get office nowadays, you're buying the subscription, you're not gonna, I remember going to the store and seeing this how much a box set of office discs cost and was hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I was like, I kind of stunned, but I pay $8 a month for the personal edition and that's everything I need. It's the full office and so forth. So it's just a lot. I would say try libray office. It's the formerly open office. Open office is still around, that's open source, which means anybody can take it and make a new version, which they did and made Libre office. And I think lere office has frankly probably the best at this point. It's pretty good. Now the one thing you won't get that you get with Microsoft 365 is the terabyte of OneDrive storage. So if you use OneDrive, that might make it a decent deal at eight bucks a month for the personal,

Caller 2 (00:47:01):
I don't use that.

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
The other thing that makes it a good deal is you can all install it on multiple PCs. Again, most normal humans don't care about that. I would say Libre should be fine. Use it for a while, see if any show stoppers crop up. And if they don't keep dosing it, it's really, it's kind of a perfect example of how open source is pretty amazing. Microsoft does not make the office file formats public. So in order to make Libre office and before an open office, they had to figure it out. They had to back kind of backwards engineer it, reverse engineer it, some of the things Microsoft tells you. But they do weird things in the office format. For instance, you would think that the text in your file is stored as text abc, the E fg. But no, Microsoft didn't want to do that because each letter takes up 16 bits of, or is it 32?

Leo Laporte (00:48:01):
Now with Unicode it takes up a lot of bits of data. So they use a weird data and coding format, which is why if you've ever tried it, you've opened up your office files to see if you can read them. Unlike many other word processors, there's no text. It's just gobbled eku. So the other option is not necessarily Libre office is just using the web-based versions. Remember Microsoft makes a web-based version of office available for free@office.com. Google has Google's not office isn't pretty Google Docs, Google Sheets. It's not pretty if you're an Excel wizard, it doesn't have all the fancy features of Excel pivot tables and things like that. Most people never use that stuff. If you're a financial analyst, you're gonna use Excel. I mean that's just, you're gonna use it but your company's gonna pay for it so you don't care. But if you're a home user or in our office we use Google Docs, we pay for the Google Workspace, but you can use it as a home user for free and that's pretty good.

Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
There's also other online office solutions like Zoho office. They have a free tier, but you end up probably paying for that. So I would look at these other ones as well. I think this is a very competitive area. Google announced this week that they're going to really add to the features of Google Workspace and Google Docs, including some interesting features that Microsoft is just starting to add in office. So it's a battle, it's an interesting battle. Google would love to take away your Microsoft dollars. I think you've got some good choices. I guess that's the bottom line, Julian Is this Julian Vargas in Los Angeles?

Caller 3 (00:49:49):
It sure

Leo Laporte (00:49:50):
Is. Hey tech jv.com

Caller 3 (00:49:53):
<laugh>. Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:49:54):
Finally learned your URL

Caller 3 (00:49:57):
<laugh>. Thank you. I really appreciate that and I appreciate all the wonderful people that you've sent to me. I talked dot caller from recently Lion.

Leo Laporte (00:50:04):
Yeah, yeah,

Caller 3 (00:50:05):
Yeah. And I think I gave 'em some good information. I appreciate you looking up.

Leo Laporte (00:50:11):
Julian's a blind user and he helps blind users. His website, tech jv.com is emailing a and phone number are also there. He's very generous with his time. I think I'm waiting for the day you call me and say, Can you not send any more people my way? <laugh>

Caller 3 (00:50:25):
Done. Well you know what, cuz so often one of those people turns into a client. So there you go. That's a bad thing. And you know what? It's all about helping the community. We are all brothers and sisters in this and we all need to help each other out.

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
I completely agree and you do a much better job than I ever could. I often say this that you can ask me about accessibility products, but unless I use them and I have to use them, I'm not gonna really know what it's like to use them as somebody who needs them. I could put on a blindfold and try to use them, but that's not the same experience.

Caller 3 (00:50:57):
But to your credit credit, you don't shy away from it and you welcome input from people who know about it. So that's what makes you stand out. Well

Leo Laporte (00:51:05):
One of the things about being on the radio, we have a lot of blind, blind listeners, right? Because we're radio, there's no pictures. Absolutely. Yeah. Well what can I do for you to do to today? So

Caller 3 (00:51:13):
I'm doing something a little out of character for me. I, I'm normally sort of a go along to get along kind of person. But occasionally when something happens that needs to be called out, I do it. And I'm trying to call attention to something that's going on here in Los Angeles County. What I feel is discrimination against disabled writers of a form of public transit known as paratransit, which is

Leo Laporte (00:51:34):
My mother-in-law is gonna use our local paratransit now because she's got rheumatoid arthritis, can barely walk. And so it's a great three bucks. Take her to her doctors, take her to friends, take her to church. I think it's a great thing. So what's going on with paratransit in la?

Caller 3 (00:51:51):
So basically, even though they are a form of public transit they are refusing to follow the directive of the county health director in making it an optional but strongly recommend mask ing.

Leo Laporte (00:52:07):
Ah,

Caller 3 (00:52:08):
That we do this.

Leo Laporte (00:52:09):
It's become so politicized. It's really a shame. It's really a

Caller 3 (00:52:14):
It is. And I try to steer away from that cuz everybody who I talk to right away goes into the merits or anti, oh

Leo Laporte (00:52:21):
Believe me, I will get now a hundred emails from people who say I have proof that masks don't work. There are people who think it gives you, they give you covid. Yeah, I know. Save your ink kids. But

Caller 3 (00:52:35):
The point is this, this is about equal treatment of people with disabilities. Everybody else who writes public transit in Los Angeles County is trusted to make that best decision for their health and safety. And it's only strongly recommended instead of required writers of access services in Los Angeles County are not given that. And in fact, if we declined, we are threatened to not be transported, thus potentially leaving us stranded and denying us of our ADA civil rights. So I'm trying to call attention to this. I've gone on Facebook, I've taken a few videos to document instances of this. I've tried to get people, especially the blindness and other disabled organizations motivated to condemn. This is what we call in the National Federation of the Blind Equality Achievement Month. And clearly there's inequality going on yet nobody wants to speak out against the,

Leo Laporte (00:53:25):
Is there a email or a website people could go to or just step up and

Caller 3 (00:53:33):
Just contact me or look for my videos on Facebook? I mean tech

Leo Laporte (00:53:37):
Jv.com. He'll talk all about it. Leo Laporte the tech guy. So I'm unclear Julian, are you saying you don't want people to have to wear masks?

Caller 3 (00:53:51):
I want people to have the ability to make the choice just like abled budget rider.

Leo Laporte (00:53:56):
So they do that LA County ends Mask order on public transit. Oh, but they haven't done it on paratransit. I see what you're saying.

Caller 3 (00:54:03):
But services is choosing to ignore our pleas and still enforce this on us. I see. And if we don't, they threaten to not transport us. So I'm trying

Leo Laporte (00:54:13):
What's the problem with wearing the mask, Julian?

Caller 3 (00:54:16):
Well, a few things. Number one is a blind person. It changes the way everything sounds and it causes disorientation and causes unsafe travel. Also, sometimes they take you on these long circuitous routes. You're in that vehicle sometimes two or three hours and it's uncomfortable when it's hot to have to wear this on my face. But the point is, I don't want people to not be allowed to wear masks. I just wanna be able to make

Leo Laporte (00:54:37):
You want the choice. Yeah. Decision.

Caller 3 (00:54:39):
Yeah. That everybody else gets to make on public transit. That's really what this is about for me.

Leo Laporte (00:54:43):
I think people are gonna actually regret the lifting of mask mandates very soon because there is a new immunity evading, unfortunately variant, two of them coming just around the corner about they say about 10% of all the US covid cases are now, what is this new variant, Dr. Mom? Is it? I try to remember the designation, but I think we are gonna actually in about a month, in fact go out and get your booster because in about a month it's gonna sweep America and apparently it evades immunity, which is not a good thing. Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:24):
Hello Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:55:26):
Your turn. I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:28):
Go get a cup of coffee.

Leo Laporte (00:55:30):
Yes sir.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:31):
By the way, I did do the math.

Leo Laporte (00:55:33):
Thank you. And

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:35):
The difference in area between an 85 inch and a hundred inch Yeah. Is 38%.

Leo Laporte (00:55:41):
See I told you, I told you <laugh>, that's

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:46):
A lot percent. That's a lot.

Leo Laporte (00:55:48):
That's a big difference.

Scott Wilkinson (00:55:49):
And the difference in diagonal is only 18%, 10

Leo Laporte (00:55:54):
Is nine. And it continues on the other side. So there you go. John has actually given me a extensive explanation of how all of this <laugh> works. But you figured it out, right? I did. When I see stuff like this, I just glaze over. I go, Yeah, okay. But it's not that complicated.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:15):
Well my first college degree is in physics.

Leo Laporte (00:56:19):
Oh, well there you go.

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:20):
I have some

Leo Laporte (00:56:21):
You're used to Greek letters in your

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:23):
I'm used to Greek letters in soups. Indeed. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
Okay, see But that is a lot. 38% is a huge amount. That's a significant amount. Yeah. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:31):
It's a significant amount.

Leo Laporte (00:56:33):
Right. Of course you would see it. I just don't wanna buy it and get it home and then go, oh this is 38%. I wish

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:38):
Small, I worked bigger. Yeah, well and as I always say, no, no matter what size TV you have, you can get it to fill your field of

Leo Laporte (00:56:46):
View. Sit closer, Sit pretty far away in the living room. That's the real mm-hmm. <affirmative> issue. We're maybe like 12 or 13 feet away. So

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:52):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
All right, all

Scott Wilkinson (00:56:54):
Yours anyway. Thank you. Hello everybody. So nice to see you all. Dr. Mom, Grandma, good to see you. Would you still go with a separate streaming box, Roku or whatever or rely on the built in ones in the tv? I would go for a separate streaming box. Now the TV ones you can download apps and so on these days that that's not so much of a problem. But the interface is often different between the TV app and the separate box app. And the separate box app. Well for one thing, if you use the internal TV one, then you have to connect it to the internet and if it has a camera on it, then it might very well be monitoring you. And that's kind of paranoid. But maybe it's true. I don't really know.

Scott Wilkinson (00:57:55):
Separate streaming boxes are cheap. They're a hundred bucks, less than a hundred bucks, maybe 50 bucks. So it just feels better. To me that's all uja. What's the peak brightness of the 85 inch? I don't know. The article I read about it that had the best information was in HD Guru and they had some good information about it. 48 zones and so on and so on. But I don't think they mentioned what the peak brightness was. I suppose I could go to TCL themselves and see what they say. But I will stay with you guys instead. For now Phoenix Warp one. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that he, Phoenix Warp one was in our audience for the podcast and was so glad to see him there. Yeah, we had a great time. We had a great time on that show. Joe says, my TCL eight series has a flashing white l e d that will not turn off and let you connect it to the internet. Oh no, we were just talking about this. I had to cover it with electrical tape. That's how much they want to spy on you. See, there you go. Exactly. So now I've never heard of this before that if you don't connect a TV to the internet, it does something annoying. That's pretty bad. That's a negative in my book.

Scott Wilkinson (00:59:35):
So that's a bummer. I wonder if the six series does that too. Let's see here. J me says follow up i e, Can you trust delivery when buying modern large panels? That's a very good question. It's one reason why I tend not to buy large TVs from Amazon or delivery services. I, I'd rather go local and pick it up myself. Now that means in the case of an 85 er, you better have a Mercedes what do they call 'em? The sprinter or those really tall vans you sometimes see on the road or a truck or something like that. Or borrow one from a friend. That can be a problem too. And then hoisting it around. I'd rather have a delivery company do that for sure. But boy, there's so much potential for, that's such a big piece of glass and it could so easily get damaged. And of course if it does <laugh> deliver Amazon or whoever will deliver it, they'll drop it off, they'll leave. You'll open it up and take it out somehow. And if it's damaged then you have to call 'em to come back and you have to pack it back up. It's a, buying a big TV is not trivial. I would say.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:11):
Aaron. Aaron clap. K Kla. I don't know how you would say that white flashing light is probably a warning that something's not connected. Yeah, that could be. And I would go into the menu system and see if there's a way to turn it off. There might be if there's not, there's the old electrical tape solution but it is annoying. That's for damn sure. I would be really annoyed at that. Boy. Yikes.

Leo Laporte (01:01:44):
I guess it depends on the tv. My high sense, every once in a while thing will pop up saying you're not connected. Look, and it goes away. It's got

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:56):
This guy saying,

Leo Laporte (01:01:57):
But I'll little white light. That's annoying.

Scott Wilkinson (01:01:59):
The blinking constantly. Yeah, that

Leo Laporte (01:02:01):
Put a piece of tape over

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:02):
It. That's what he did. That's exactly what he

Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
Did. Yeah. But it's, It's probably depends very much on the tv. Some don't, don't care. Yeah, they make Dr. Mom says use color form dots, but they even make dots for l e D I carry them when we travel because Really? Yeah. Cuz Lisa hates any light in the room. And so I've Oh. Put dots over LEDs on various things. So I carry this little package of dots intended for covering LEDs. Wow. And they have different, typically for that burn. Yeah, they have different opacities. So you can have a darker L e D or no l e D or light dims. That's it. There you go. Scooter X light dims. Light

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:45):
Dims. Oh, I'll have to check that out. I also prefer as dark room as possible.

Leo Laporte (01:02:50):
Yeah. Me, I like it lit up like a Christmas tree and my side of the bed. You should, It's everything's blinking. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson (01:02:58):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:02:58):
Thank you Scott.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:00):
My pleasure.

Leo Laporte (01:03:01):
Have a lovely week. And beautiful Santa Cruz. Ah, it's look gray here. I bet it's gray there today. It's gray

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:10):
Here too. Yeah, which is fine.

Leo Laporte (01:03:12):
Marine layer.

Scott Wilkinson (01:03:13):
Yeah. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:03:16):
Take care Leo. Bye. Well hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo Laporte, The tech I 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You could still call Don't call collect. We won't accept it. It's toll free. So does anybody, Actually that's an interesting question, Kim, does anybody call collect

Kim Schaffer (01:03:44):
<laugh>? I do not believe I've received

Leo Laporte (01:03:47):
One. Do we ever get sometimes from prisons they

Kim Schaffer (01:03:49):
Go, they've got mail from prison, but I don't think I've got

Leo Laporte (01:03:51):
Any phone calls. Yeah, a prisoner wants to call you. Will you accept? I don't. I think on a Tollfree number they probably can't. I would guess probably not, but I don't know cuz there's no charge to reverse <laugh>, so I don't know. I don't know. Take nobody.

Kim Schaffer (01:04:07):
Nobody's ever admitted to calling from prison. <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:04:10):
Well as you say, we get a lot of mail from prison. Yeah. So <laugh>, I don't know what that means. <laugh>, thank you for the expert update. 88. 88. Ask Leo. You can use Skype out or some sort of voice over the internet to call from anywhere in the world. And it should be free cuz it's a toll free number. Website. Techy Tech Tech <laugh> tech labs.com, Tech guy labs.com. That's the name of our YouTube page two. And soon we'll be right now it's youtube.com/tech. But soon it will be youtube.com/tech. Now finally adopting the at nomenclature, the Twitter and everybody else Instagram. Does Facebook use at, I don't know if they do. Could you be at Leo at in Facebook? I don't have a Facebook account so I don't know. But certainly you can on Instagram and Twitter and soon on a YouTube at Tech Guy Labs. I like it. I Aaron's on the line from Flagstaff. Aon. Hello Erin.

Caller 4 (01:05:19):
Hi Leo. How are you today?

Leo Laporte (01:05:20):
I'm great, how are you?

Caller 4 (01:05:22):
Good. So funny. You actually have another blind collar today, <laugh>?

Leo Laporte (01:05:27):
Not the first time I've had two in a row.

Caller 4 (01:05:31):
Aw,

Leo Laporte (01:05:31):
Aw.

Caller 4 (01:05:34):
Anyway, so I'm calling, I bought a really nice MacBook Pro back in August and my girlfriend who is not blind has been listening to me talk about how happy I am within how awesome it is. And meanwhile she's been dealing with a crappy surface Pro seven. So

Leo Laporte (01:05:55):
Although Microsoft on Thursday when they talked about the Surface Pro nine, their new the arm and the surface laptops in the arm, they made this big deal about all these accessibility features. But honestly, Android, iOS, Macintosh, Windows, all these companies really work hard I think and for the most part do a good job. Yeah,

Caller 4 (01:06:14):
They do. Yeah. They sometimes have Slipups but they do.

Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
Apple had a big slip up with Siri last year where they took out some features like reading email back that a lot of my blindness I heard about that they were very upset about. I,

Caller 4 (01:06:27):
I've never actually used those features, but I do know people that were affected. I don't like using Siri cause and misunderstand you. 80% of she,

Leo Laporte (01:06:35):
She's a nitwit. <laugh>. Let's face it. Thank you. My wife swears at her and she says that's not very serious as it's not very nice. And my wife says, You're a robot, you don't have feelings. Stop pretending. <laugh>

Caller 4 (01:06:49):
<laugh>. It's true. So yeah, finally my girlfriend is finally I, I'm making a cave and I think she wants to try a new Mac. The problem is because I'm blind and not, I don't know how to teach her how to use

Leo Laporte (01:07:03):
New Mac. Oh, so you wanna know where.

Caller 4 (01:07:07):
Yeah. Do you know resources or what? Cause she's pretty geeky. She's a technology teacher. So this isn't her first rodeo, but

Leo Laporte (01:07:15):
Is there an Apple store near you?

Caller 4 (01:07:18):
Yes, there's an Apple store two miles away from her. I was thinking of

Leo Laporte (01:07:22):
That. Apple has the best classes. They have free product workshops. So if you own a laptop you can go in there and there's skills classes, there's labs. I would say Apple's the best because it's very Apple specific. You could go to your local community college, they have computer courses as well, but for the most part they're gonna be about Windows. Unless you find one that's specifically Apple. Yeah,

Caller 4 (01:07:47):
Yeah. And the thing is, like I said, she's a geek. She knows how to use technology. I just want her transition to the Mac to be as sweet as possible so she doesn't return.

Leo Laporte (01:07:55):
I think the lessons that the retail stores are a phenomenal, they call 'em today at Apple. So if you go to the Flagstaff store, they'll have a schedule for the, today at Apple they'll have a website page that'll tell you all the things they're doing. They do everything from photography to basic skills. They know how to do it. They're really well trained in making it engaging. They're not very long. They've closed it down of course during Covid, but they've reopened now. So now that the stores are

Caller 4 (01:08:26):
Yeah, yeah, they're all open

Leo Laporte (01:08:27):
Again. Yeah. There's also and this was created during Covid and I don't know if it's still around, but I think they had an online version of, this was today at Apple at Home which is a double app. Look at that. <laugh>, look at that. So Apple, So today at Apple at home. So she could also do it via FaceTime, if I presume they use FaceTime would be funny if they didn't. But they have classes. What's nice, in fact this is the thing I would suggest to her is instead of saying I'm gonna learn the whole ecosystem, pick a program that she uses a lot that she likes and focus on that if they have a class on that Photoshop or Microsoft Word or pages, something that she uses. Cuz honestly my experience has been if you can get some real facility at one program, instead of having this giant universe just pick a narrower slot, like a single program. And by getting skill in that program, actually all of that translates. You'll get more comfortable, more confident. And I think it, it's the best way rather than saying I'm gonna learn the whole thing. But they do have skills classes. A good idea. Yeah. What does she do with her computer?

Caller 4 (01:09:43):
So she's a tech, she teaches technology at elementary.

Leo Laporte (01:09:46):
Oh she's very sophisticated. Okay.

Caller 4 (01:09:48):
Yeah, no, she knows her way around computer.

Leo Laporte (01:09:51):
She'll pick up some great tips actually. Yeah. Cause I think these are really well trained instructors and I bet you some of the skills they use will be things that she might wanna bring to the school.

Caller 4 (01:10:05):
Yeah, exactly. Okay. I have one really, really quick question. Yes. So I called the show, geez, maybe like 10, 11 years ago and I was like 14. I don't know what episode it's on. Is there any way to search the tech? Cause I know you used to be able to search the Tech iLabs website that

Leo Laporte (01:10:23):
Yeah, I would use Google. But you could do it with Google for sure. So search for, But the problem is we only use your first name in town as you know Aaron from Flagstaff. Yeah. So you'd have to search. You were 14.

Caller 4 (01:10:37):
Yeah, it was

Leo Laporte (01:10:38):
And was on the radio show or the TV show. Yep. Yeah. Radio show.

Caller 4 (01:10:42):
I'm 24. It was,

Leo Laporte (01:10:43):
Yeah. Yeah. I've been doing this 10 years. This dang radio show since 19. It's in 2004. What is that? 18 years? It'll be 19 years in January. So yeah, yeah sure. There's probably 10 olds who are now in their thirties. So

Caller 4 (01:11:00):
<laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
It makes me feel old, but that's great. I'm glad. I'm thrilled. In fact, what did you ask? Do you remember

Caller 4 (01:11:08):
I asked? Yeah, I was calling to get a new router and I had a really crappy old router that sucked. And I think you guys made some jokes about it and you had a song playing <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:11:21):
I hope this wasn't a fever Dream music. Right? We made fun of you with a song.

Caller 4 (01:11:26):
No, but not you

Leo Laporte (01:11:28):
Route us sucks and you need a new one. Time to get one wasn't

Caller 4 (01:11:33):
Bad. It was really funny. It was. You didn't like make fun of No. You guys used to have more like music right after calls, didn't you? With

Leo Laporte (01:11:40):
I don't know. I don't remember

Caller 4 (01:11:42):
Little jingles and stuff. I don't know.

Leo Laporte (01:11:44):
Maybe

Caller 4 (01:11:44):
I'll try to

Leo Laporte (01:11:45):
Find it. Maybe some of the other it might have been in the other tech shows. Some of the other tech shows. They do a lot of sound effects. It was

Caller 4 (01:11:53):
Definitely your show.

Leo Laporte (01:11:54):
I try not to do sound effects. Correct. Because it's just really annoying. I find throughout the, that little, I dunno, that's throughout the whole show to drop in these sound effects. I have them, but I never remember. I never use them. Oh, watch out, watch out, watch out. Oh well

Caller 4 (01:12:15):
<laugh>, a couple weekends ago you were playing with a sound effect generator with Micah, right?

Leo Laporte (01:12:22):
Yeah, yeah. He was helping me get new sounds for my sound effects that I never use. It's something you do when you first start in radio cuz you listen to famous people on the radio and Dr. Don and San Francisco and K frc used to play a lot of sound effects. I missed in the morning. Every time he said the time he'd press a duck button and go ra ra and you'd grow up with that. But that was a long time ago, I think. I hope we've grown, We've grown past that. <laugh> I will send me, if you could send me the information, I can do a search. So Leo leo@techilab.com. Let me see if I can search for it for you. But Google's your friend go. Even when we had a search on the website, I would always tell you I don't use that go to Google type site. I'll

Caller 4 (01:13:10):
Try Googling

Leo Laporte (01:13:11):
First. Yes, you do. What you do is use site tech ilab.com and then in quotes, do Aaron and Flagstaff or whatever and see what that comes up with. Google is your friend most of the time on this stuff. Much better than our site search.

Caller 4 (01:13:27):
Yeah, okay. I I'll try that. Thank you so much.

Leo Laporte (01:13:30):
Hey, it's pleasure talking to Aaron. Watch out though, because here comes the segment on the tech eye show. No, no, I'm just kidding. 88. 88. Leo LePort, the tech eye. My rides here. I gotta take a break. We'll be back later someday. Couple of minutes. How about yeah, all rights here. It's a great line. I'll be right out. What hasn't he found? Oh, Aaron and Flagstaff. <laugh> scooter direct. You're the Google master

... (01:14:21):
To

Leo Laporte (01:14:21):
Dance now. Are those levels pretty good? I should add some more. I did I did do this one.

... (01:15:16):
Should

Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
We have more

... (01:15:17):
<laugh>? Should we have more sound?

Leo Laporte (01:15:26):
I have so many sound effects. So many sound effects. But I haven't attached them to buttons yet. This thing, the big stream deck I got has how many buttons and I didn't

... (01:15:39):
Even, I stopped using

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
The security now thing. I should do that John. Or maybe not. I'm so used to how to switching it. Yeah. Then we could Well what I'd love is with if, I don't know if Zoom ISO would allow us to have buttons. Yeah. I could bring the stream deck out to the living room. Yeah. Oh that's a great, Yeah. So I will use that. That would actually be great. Yeah. Yeah. And we can do, well that this, that's the stack, right? Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure that out. I do. I do. I know I do and I do, but I use the IRC screen a lot too. So Yeah. I love the idea of having a stream deck on that little side table. Yeah, well that's, do some rehearsals I think is gonna be,

Leo Laporte (01:17:13):
What do you think Dr. Mom, about this whole idea of this BQ one? Actually it's not just BQ one. There's another one too. I'm starting to, I didn't get the booster cause my doctor said, Well I want you to wait six months after you had the last booster for maximum immunity. Which makes sense. Spread it out a little bit. Also, I had Covid of course in August, No, July, which was, I'm almost certainly BA one. So Someran variant. So that, I think what I saw about BQ one is that it's, It's seems to be a escaping immunity except possibly the, possibly the Yeah, we're gonna have to deal with it. I think we're gonna be back in masks and Oh yeah. I'm gonna address this one, Mike. That's good. That's a good question. Yeah. I'm gonna get the shot before we go to, well, it's too late for Vegas, but Leo Laporte, the tech guy. You're playing a little country music, aren't you there at Professor Laura? Yeah, she's a little bit country. She's a little bit rock and roll. 88. 88. Ask Leo, is the phone number nothing wrong with a little Kenny Cheney on a Saturday afternoon, right? Right. Might be in our chat room and I have a little bit, I'm gonna send him a case of lobsters and he's gonna send me the Statue of Liberty if he's wrong.

Leo Laporte (01:18:44):
He says, there's no way Apple's having an event this month. We know Apple prob all likelihood, like 90% is gonna announce new M two based MacBook Pros, perhaps a Mac Mini, perhaps an iMac, maybe a preview of a Mac Pro, all based on the M two chip. We know they have a new iPad waiting in the wings and a new iPad Pro rating in the wings, plus perhaps other stuff. Now, if my math is right, seven or eight new products. But the current betting line is that Apple is not gonna do an event. They're just gonna put out a press release, make a video, put it on YouTube send the hardware to a few tame members of the YouTube gaggle for review quote. I put that in quotes for review and just leave it at that. Mike B. May be getting that case a lobster. I don't think I have anywhere to put the Statue of Liberty anyway.

Leo Laporte (01:19:48):
So I've been saying they should do an event because what a great way to get people's attention. One of the counter arguments is, well if they do that and the stuff isn't redesigned, it's just kind of a improvement on existing stuff, the press is gonna crucify them. Well, can I tell you, that's what Microsoft did on Thursday. <laugh>. I don't think the press crucified them. I think you get, it's a free ad free 62nd ad. Oh wait a minute. I'm sorry Mike be sending me. I thought, Oh he's, I'm gonna send him a case of lobster. He's gonna send me a case of crabs. It should go the other way around. We have crab out here. He's got lobster out there. I don't, Well anyway, I'm gonna lose this bed. I think. Well, if they were gonna have an event, we felt like they would be having it this Tuesday.

Leo Laporte (01:20:38):
And they haven't sent it on any invitation. So this Tuesday's out still a possibility that they will have an event on the 25th, the following Tuesday, a week from Tuesday. Because we do know they've already announced their quarterly results will be announced on the 27th. And it seems likely that they will release Mac Os Ventura, their new Mac S Oh, that's another thing. That's another thing they need to talk about. And iOS, or I'm sorry, iPad OS 16 for the iPad. That's another new thing. I think it's more than a, It deserves it. It deserves more than a press release. Anyway, we're watching with interest and I'll let you know the minute we know the, really the only moral of this story, the only thing you need to worry about is if you were in the market for any of those products and new MacBook Pro, a New Mac mini, a new iMac, or a New Mac Pro. I would wait at least till the end of the month to see what Apple announces for Two reasons. One, you may want the new thing. Two, the old thing might be reduced in price as a result.

Leo Laporte (01:21:41):
So I'm be disappointed. What does it cost him to make a little video? Maybe it's just that they, This is what Microsoft did. They didn't invite anybody to an event. They just said, Thursday 10:00 AM Eastern, we're gonna release a video. And they released it and we all watched it. Well, you probably didn't. I had to <laugh> get up early in the morning to watch it. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Those videos are expensive. Says Mike be, I think Apple can afford it. I'm just saying I think they got some money. I do. Bob on the line from Honolulu. Hello Bob.

Caller 5 (01:22:23):
Hi Neil. Can you hear me okay?

Leo Laporte (01:22:24):
I hear you. Great. Welcome.

Caller 5 (01:22:26):
Great. Thank you. Hey, I have a hard drive problem. I got an external hub with an internal ssd. I hooked up an external hard drive that I wanted to back up and it failed. And I'm not sure if it failed because of low voltage.

Leo Laporte (01:22:41):
Yeah. So a lot of times these powered USB hubs don't have enough power to drive the hard drive the, So the hard drive is what we call bus powered. It doesn't have a separate connection to the wall. It has. Correct. Yeah. So it's all powered by usb. Usb isn't very powerful. It's five volts. I think it's 10 watts total on most USB adapters. So that hard drive, Who makes it?

Caller 5 (01:23:09):
Seagate?

Leo Laporte (01:23:09):
Seagate. So it's designed to operate on 10 watts but it could very well be Have you tried plugging into the computer directly just to see?

Caller 5 (01:23:18):
Yes, I subsequently did and it still didn't work. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:23:23):
It

Caller 5 (01:23:23):
Makes it sort of a click and hum. Sort of

Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
A humming. Oh yeah. It's broken intermittently, but you just got it. You can return it. So hard drives sometimes. No,

Caller 5 (01:23:32):
No. I've cut it a while.

Leo Laporte (01:23:33):
I data. Oh, it's an old hard drive. Oh

Caller 5 (01:23:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:38):
It's got the click of death.

Caller 5 (01:23:40):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:41):
So there's one thing you should try. It's in the Army manual. They call it percussive maintenance. Take, you know what I'm, you know where I'm going with this. Take a screwdriver. Sure. And just w it briskly <laugh>. Don't hammer on it. Just one brisk. W because what does sometimes happen with VA hard drive, but sitting around unused is called stick. It's a spinning driver. And S You said SSD though? Pardon me? No, mom, it's spinning. Spinning. Oh good. Yeah, yeah.

Caller 5 (01:24:07):
Back up to an ssp.

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
Oh, I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Spinning drives. Sometimes the head gets stuck to the platter. It's not even supposed to touch the platter. It's supposed to retract and speed outta the way. But this has happened and I don't know if it happens with modern drives, but if it's an older drive whack it just once, boom. This a sharp brisk just to loosen, to shake the head loose and try it again. If it doesn't

Caller 5 (01:24:29):
Any particular direction, No

Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
<laugh>. I don't know what direction I would do it on the side. Cuz the head is the parallel to the platter, which is on the side. So do this side maybe jar the head, but I don't know. Try it once on the side. If it doesn't work, spank it on the bottom. See what happens.

Caller 5 (01:24:48):
Leo, in addition last week you had a gentleman with the same problem and you mentioned getting a s d ata a doctor.

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Yeah. I mean, so what's also possible is that the container has failed. But the fact that you hear a click means a drive is struggling. It's trying to work. The actuators broken. The, maybe if you dropped it, the arm got bent. If you hear that, I think it's most likely the drive and not the container. You could try it, but it's probably the drive and the container won't help. Leo Laporte, the tech guy, Johnny Jet travel guru coming up

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:25:28):
Side is better. Side is better. They say do twisted. Mister says do not W it on the top cuz that could crash the head. It's a good point. You don't want the head to jam into the disc. And it could be, we don't know where the head is. It could be adhered to the disc upside down as well as right side up depending on how many platters in that thing. So that's a good point. Twist to Mr. Hit it on the side. I think probably Stiction is not a thing anymore, but I just like to say W it. Hello there Johnny. Jonathan. Hey Leo, how are you? Well, how are you? Good, thank you. I don't know if you saw my tweet last week, I tagged you, but that's one of the subjects I was gonna talk about. Let me just me pull it up.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:26:13):
I didn't see it. No, I just, you No, I just put the tweet in the chat room. Okay, I see it. So I did it when it happened. I tagged you San Francisco 49ers, Carolina Panthers, Greenbrier Resort, Atlanta Falcons. I don't get it. What? This is them flying from Charlotte to Atlanta? Yes. No, the 49ers were flying from, Oh, they're in San, They were at Levi Stadium for the Panthers, right? Or maybe not. I don't remember. See, so this is their flight. They should have been private. Do they fly private? Yeah, they all fly your kid. I mean they fly, they charter. Well the United, this is a United Airlines plane. They But they charter it, correct? Yeah. Although I think some the Boston New England Patriots has their own plane. By the way, you did not put me in this tweet. So did I not You put Yeah, I did look at the very first one.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:27:13):
Oh, I'm looking at the sports and aviation tweet. Not your tweet. Let's go back to your No, but if you scroll down to it, you'll see them. Oh, you replied, There's not a lot of college. I just tagged you. Ah, I get what you're saying. You said I'll mention this next week. So, because I know you like the 40, I know you like the 49ers anyway, you can just click the very top of this and just see this handle their handle. Cuz what they do is they do every major sports team, not just football, they do baseball. They do jet, jet tip.net. That one. Well that's, that's one of the Oh, you're saying each guys sports plus aviation? Yes. Oh. Oh, I should follow them. I get it. So I know we talked about it last, not last week. We talked about last year. Maybe that guy Jack who does Elon Musk, jet and all these guys.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:28:01):
Yeah. Yeah. So now these guys are copycat, I believe. But this is not a bot. This is actually people Nice. Who are handling it. Nice. Anyway. If it's interesting, if you love aviation, if you like sports. It's interesting to see when these guys take off. I have when they land, I have gone to SFO to welcome the Giants back. Didn't you really? When they won the Penit or something? I can't remember. Were the Giants fan as fan as a fan or were you working? Well, a little both. I was when I worked at K N B, which is the Giants radio station, I was the president of the Giants fan club. So we would organize Isabelle Le brilliant pro promotions director would organize little things like this. And we went on trips, We did all sorts of stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. So we I've been to sfo, I remember the gate.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:28:52):
They were over at the United, Distant United Gate and they would get off and we'd go, Yay. Yeah, go team. Woo. I can't remember if I ever did it for the Niners. I don't think so. Lisa is the Niners fan. I used to be the Giants fan, but I didn't, didn't even know the playoffs were going on. I I've kidding. I've so lost touch with baseball. Actually that's one of the flights I just saw on their feed was the Seattle Mariners. And they actually landed at the Boeing field, not Sea Tac. Oh, that's cool. Cool. Boeing Field is cool. That's awesome. That's like a, Is that an executive jet you think? Oh, here we that and also that's, that's where they launched the planes. They're brand new flights. Oh. Or brand new. Ooh, big island. I worked at K S F O K N B, kgo all in San Francisco and Clock fm, which is long gone.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:29:45):
Hey, into the cabin. And I settled down inside. I asked him if I'd ever seen so much Dustin Sand and he said, What'd he say? What'd he what? I, He doesn't go on by road. He goes by plane. It's Johnny Jet, not Johnny. 18 Wheels. Hello Johnny. Our travel crew on the tech guy show. Johnny joins us every week to talk about better travel through tech. How many years have you been doing this? On the radio with me. Do you know? On the radio since, Well he's used to do your tech Guy show in 2003. So not the Forever Show The call. The call for Call for help. So you've been doing this show as long as I have. 18 years. No, no, no, no, no. Cuz you're not that old. But we lost contact so Oh, thank God. I've only been doing it eight or nine years.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:30:40):
<laugh>, you couldn't be, you must have been a child when you were on the TV show. <laugh>. I was just a baby. Were you Just my becoming my mom had to sign off on me. Were you just becoming Johnny Jet? Was that your early initiation? No, I started, I started my newsletter right outta college. 1995. Oh, that's cool. That was brilliant of you that you saw this as being the future film. Listen, I did it all for fun. I used to be afraid to fly. Not only afraid to fly, I was afraid to leave the house at one point in high. Were you were a agoraphobic? Yes, I was. A lot of phobics. Oh <laugh>. A lot of phobics. How do you feel about spiders? I'm okay with them. Okay. Actually, I have a picture of me and believes with a huge tarantula on me when we were filming the travel channel.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:31:23):
So you have overcome your phobias clearly. I mean I have, but there's times where I have little setbacks and things like that. And actually one of them right is right now actually, I don't really have a desire to get on the plane. And that is exactly cause of Covid. Not cuz Covid. Well Covid was the big reason in the beginning, but now it's my kids. I have two little kids, three and six. And my priorities to be with them. And I just show Jennifer and I used to fly separately so that if the plane, This is crazy so that the plane went down, the kids wouldn't be orphaned. Yeah, I understand that. I'm not worried about the plane going down. Yeah, no. You're worried about your kids. Yeah. Other things happen while you're on the ground. Other car accidents or whatever. That's much more dangerous, isn't it?

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:32:07):
Yeah, definitely. In fact, I used to be scared to fly. I used to fly a lot. I remember flying when I was, we'd have, I went to college back east, so I'd have to fly to college and I was always a little lump in my stomach. But after you do it a lot, you kind of get used to it. But you're right, every once in a while it comes and goes and then you go, Oh, I'm a little scared to get. Yeah. And unfortunately I'm in one of those lulls right now. I'm, I'm not afraid to admit it. Should you change your name to Johnny Train? Well, no, it's not that. I just don't wanna leave my kids. To give you an example, a couple weeks ago my son threw up, my daughter's hairband up into the light and all of a sudden it started smoking.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:32:44):
And if I wasn't here, who the heck knows what would happen. I know. I can think of, my wife didn't know she was in the other room. I was like, yeah, I can think of a dozen near misses. It's amazing. Kids survive <laugh>. It is, Listen, I'm I'm gonna get over it and I have to. Yeah and I will. But the business travel has not really come back yet. That's an interesting thing. And business travelers really subsidized. We tourists. Yes. That was the big money maker for the airlines. It was. And now I was just watching an interview just now with the American Airlines one of the executives saying how a lot of these trips are blended. Most of their trips are blended now where they're combining work with leisure. And this is all new to them. They keep thinking it's gonna end but it hasn't ended.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:33:31):
And they don't know if it will ever end. It just, I think businesses learned it was an expense they didn't need to spend. Now with the recession, businesses are looking for places to cut. So maybe after the, what does it matter where people work as long as they get their work done. And that was always my attitude when I hired people to work for me. I don't care where you are or when you work, just as long as the work gets done. And so I think other employee employers or learning that, does it mean airfares will go up as a result because they don't have that big subsidy? Or will we have fewer flights? How are the airlines gonna respond to this? Well the airlines are making money right now. Really? And they don't have as many planes in the air as they did cuz they don't have enough staff.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:34:17):
So this podcast I was just listening to, the American airline said only 90% of their planes are back. But their revenue is 110% of what it was. So they're making money. And Delta said the same thing. I think they have 87% of their planes back. They just don't have enough staff members. And they're all trying to train. So if you thought the airports were crowded this summer, wait till next summer. And United Airlines this week announced that they're gonna fly I 30 something flights to Europe to different destinations. These airports are going be packed. I would start looking at secondary airports, what we're going to. Cause he we're gonna libo in April. Well your Libo, you're okay. Yeah. That's a secondary airport all by itself. But I think we have to But you're stop somewhere. Somewhere. They're gonna start putting passenger limits and Netherlands the same thing.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:35:06):
And they're gonna do it again. Probably during Christmas. I think our flight, we have a non-stop to Lisbon. No. Yeah, nonstop to Lisbon. But there are no non-stops from Rome to San Francisco about things. No, that's not true. United Airlines just announced this week. They're flying on May 25th. Oh, that's actually just my notes. That's a cause. But that's a weird thing that there'd be no nonstop from one of the biggest capitals of the world. Well that's why United Airlines is jumping on this. Yeah. So they May 25th. Yeah. On a triple seven, 200, they're gonna start flying. Doesn't help us. Well I guess you could stay in Italy may. Why not? Hey <laugh>. And you know what? You might get a good deal because this is another way to get good deals is when airlines launched new flights, they usually offer really cheap flights like Breeze Airways.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:35:54):
I mentioned them before. They're, they're gonna start flying white planes to lax, nonstop. White planes is right outside New York City. Oh, I thought you <laugh> per a minute. I thought I grew up. You mean the planes will be painted white. I understand. White planes. New York. Okay. Always say White Plains, New York if you say they're gonna be flying White Plains. That sounds weird. That's funny. Well, or Westchester. Where you can say Westchester, that's where you grew up. That's your, your I'm right outside there. I grew up in Connecticut and those flights are $99. But you can fly nonstop to LAX starting November 2nd. Should you always look for alternate airports when you are searching flights? I mean, if you wanna save money, definitely. Yeah. That's what I mean. I wanna say definitely. No, I wanna spend more money, John. I'm trying to find out how I can spend.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:36:37):
Well, but not always. Secondary airports could cost you more money. Burbank is usually more expensive then that's the secondary airport for LA lax. Would big travel agent do that or are they I mean, no, definitely they'll tell you. Yeah. But you gotta let them know that you're willing to I'm travel also. And also when you're searching online, there's usually a box. Didn't you wanna check? Didn't United Airports or was it American announced that Newark is no longer in new Metro? It wasn't. It wasn't either of them. It was I think the I A T A did it. But Oh it that really meant nothing. It's meaningless. It still is. Okay. Definitely. Because the fairs were different because if you were flying to New York City, which was LaGuardia, JFK and used to be Newark, but now it's still gonna show up if you put in nyc.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:37:21):
Okay, good. So when I search for flights to go to New York, Yeah I do NYC just to see if LaGuardia or JFK or Newark, Newark will show up. I mean none of them are in the city. LaGuardia is the closest. But LaGuardia is literally 15 minutes from Manhattan. If there's no traffic, JFK is 30 minutes. And if you can go to Newark without traffic, it's maybe 25 minutes depending on where you are in the city. So look for this alternate. Close by sometimes, I mean I think maybe I should, I'm here up, but we fly out at San Francisco or Oakland. But sometimes they're thinking I should look at San Jose, look at it. But I would think San Jose is usually more expensive, but not always. <affirmative>, <affirmative> and Oakland's better because I think the weather's better in Oakland. So you don't have as many delays.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:38:07):
What's the prettiest airport in the country? Which airport do you like the best? The prettiest the one you wanna spend time in. Cuz I normally, I wanna spend the least amount of time in the airport. Well the best terminal, it's not by airport, it's by terminal. Terminal. Best terminal in the country in my opinion is lax. Is Tom Bradley, the brand new Tom International terminal. But Detroit has a beautiful terminal. I like terminal too at sfo. That's a nice one. That's a beautiful terminal as well. And I like about these airports that they have local food. That's when you've traveled too much. When you go terminal two at s easily beats <laugh> terminal LaGuardia. Believe it or not, LaGuardia has some new terminals and oh my god, they did amazing jobs. Yeah. Johnny Jet. Now if you wanna know more about travel, you gotta go to his website.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:38:55):
Johnny jet.com. He's got a free news, actually several free newsletters. A must subscribe. He's got Twitter lists. Follow him on Twitter, then look at his lists. Some really great stuff including flight attendant tweets and so forth. And on Instagram too. He's afraid of flying again folks. So we're gonna call him Johnny Locomotive from now on. Leo Enforcement. I'm not afraid. Not afraid. More. Not afraid to slide <laugh>. Afraid to travel. Afraid. Papa. Papa Johnny. He's afraid of leaving. I'm afraid to leave my kids kids behind and I don't blame you. In fact, I'm gonna say this right now, John. They are at an age. I look back, I have lots of pictures, of course cuz right about this age, Your kid's age. We started taking digital. So I have all these old pictures of the kids and I look at 'em and I go, I wish they were that age again.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:39:46):
I wanna be with those people. Cuz you know what happens as kids get older? It's like new people every couple of years as a new person. You know that by now Jack is not the same as he was a year ago or two years ago. Correct. But he's still so adorable. Cuddly. Yeah, but they're not gonna stay that way. So you know what? Stay home, John. Pretend you're traveling. No, listen, if there was a reason where I was getting paid well to travel, I would do it. But it's just not worth it. Yeah. To me it's money. Money. And listen, I travel with them and I have a bunch of trips booked with them and I love to travel with them. And they love to travel fortunately. So I'm still traveling. I'm just not doing it. I used to, I would be on a plane every three days up until best thing I ever did was take, Jennifer didn't wanna go on cruises.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:40:31):
Abby didn't want to go on cruises. Well and now she says I would've gone. I said no. I asked you and you said, But Henry, my son always wanted was my cruise buddy. And he's been on more than a dozen cruises with me. Because we would do these educational, I would go on these geek cruises and he would always go with me. He's been all over the world and I really cherish that. And he's a lucky man now starting to realize it. He said, Dad, we went to China, right? I said, Yes. He said, Did I see the terracotta warriors? I said, Do you want me to send you the picture of you sitting next to the Terracotta Warriors? Just jog your memory. He does remember that all these young country girls from China wanted to get their picture taken with him in Beijing. I have all these pictures of them posing with Henry.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:41:19):
But hey <laugh>, my son went on 70 flights in less than chance what? Jack went on 70 flights, which is too many. But no, that's too many. Just to give you an idea, his gene pool has been destroyed by now. So we stopped and now he's only been on a handful. Does he remember? He probably doesn't remember the old ones. Not really. Not really. No. No. I'm telling you, my 28 year old doesn't remember trips we took when he was 14. So did we go to China? Yes. We spent weeks in China. <laugh>. So what I do, by the way, is I have flight journals for each of my kids. Every time we get on the plane, they hand it to the pilots also with a bag of chocolates to the flight at attendants, they sign it. So each, we have every single one of their flights recorded.

Leo Laporte / Johnny Jet (01:42:05):
I wish. And then I take a picture of it to make sure that just in case there's ever a fire, that we don't lose it. I have realized now at my advanced age that I, even the Doy pictures I took just of things we were doing are great. Cuz you go, Oh, I remember that. So even the I, I'm always try to take these art, art photos, but even just the snapshots are great. And I have 50 or 60,000 in Google photos. I'm a mad documenter, I believe. Yeah. And I mean, I take a picture of every meal. Oh, the, yeah, there you go. You're worse than me. Yeah. The kids though, got mad. Would I have a lot of pictures of going, Dad, my kids are now hamming it up. I just don't to show their face on the internet. Yeah. Yeah. I usually put, usually put fake sunglasses on em. Yeah. That's cute. All right Johnny, All take care guys. Always love talking to you. All right, you too. All right, we'll talk next week. See ya. Bye. Woo. Let's go to Memphis. Leo LaPorte tech guy. Don't have any calls from Memphis. I'm sorry, I got Malibu cost. Mesa and Warsaw, Indiana. What should I <laugh>? Where should we go next? Let's go. I'll tell you what, let's go to Costa Mesa and then we'll get all the other ones into Hello to Jerry in Costa Mesa

Caller 6 (01:43:23):
And coach to Mesa. Yes. I'm your photo lady.

Leo Laporte (01:43:26):
Hi Jerry

Caller 6 (01:43:27):
<laugh>. Yeah, well I'm still writing that book. I haven't got it done yet, but I've got a trouble problem with my Epson printer. Got one of the e T 2 7 50.

Leo Laporte (01:43:42):
Yeah, I have that one. I think the 27 50. Yeah, that was those nice eco tanks. It was a good printer. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:43:48):
And I've replaced the, in the eco tanks once. I've had just a little over a year.

Leo Laporte (01:43:53):
Yeah. Yeah. Well you must print a lot cuz you know they're supposed to go but roughly two years. So you print a lot.

Caller 6 (01:44:00):
Yeah. Photos. Pardon?

Leo Laporte (01:44:03):
Printing photos or just documents?

Caller 6 (01:44:05):
No, just diamond. Well, I don't print photos on it. It doesn't print photos worth

Leo Laporte (01:44:09):
It. No, it's not a good photo printer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a business printer. Yeah. So what's not working?

Caller 6 (01:44:15):
Well, the printing, the type printing is now got little, Every once in a while I'll have spaces in a letter.

Leo Laporte (01:44:23):
Yeah, Yeah. You have your ink jet is clogged. So

Caller 6 (01:44:29):
That's

Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
What I'm thinking. Yeah, this happens. So on the printer they have a number of routines. There's a diagnostic, which you might run first, which will show, it'll print all the letters and then it'll print blocks and it'll show you. And you'll actually see that's what's happening when it prints blocks of color, that there's holes where there should be a dot. And that's because that jet and there's millions of them, that jet or jets are clogged. So then they have, and the good news is, on an eco tank, this isn't as expensive as it would be on a cartridge printer. They have routines to clear the nozzles. They use a significant amount of ink. That's why it's better to do this on an eco tank. I think all, in my opinion, all ink jets clog if you don't use 'em all the time because the ink dries. And I Epson used to, when they were an advertiser used to tell me, Leo, don't say that. I said, Well, they do. And they said, No, ours don't because we've got special coatings. I said, Well, I begged to differ. They do <laugh>. And it's just the way it is with a inkjet. Yeah. If you don't print a lot, it would be better to get a laser printer. This is why Epson doesn't want me, didn't to say this because they don't make laser. I

Caller 6 (01:45:46):
Love this Eagle printer. I can, I put out

Leo Laporte (01:45:50):
The reason. Reason. I think on some and it's more expensive on some printers, cartridge printers. You replace the print head when you replace the ink. And on the absence you do not. But they say, But no Leo, we coat them so they don't clog well, okay. They do. I would do the things that are built into the menu on your eco tank. First

Leo Laporte (01:46:17):
They have a whole, and they'll even say, Do it again and again until you get it clear and you do print the test page and then you go still not, and you do it. You may have to do it several times if it's really clogged up, but it should eventually unclog it if it doesn't. Okay. I don't normally recommend this, but you can go to YouTube and say Unclog Inc. Inc. Jet Printer and people, they have different remedies involving alcohol and cotton qtip and things like that. I, Okay. I don't think you should do that. I think just do the stuff that's built in. Okay.

Caller 6 (01:46:46):
Well the last time I had this lovely conversation with you, we got talking about my book and my failing and flying.

Leo Laporte (01:46:51):
Yes, I know, I know. So is the book out?

Caller 6 (01:46:56):
Oh no, it's not out. I've been on, I've got an editor who is just bugging me, bugging me too. So I just, to get my acting gear, I get reliving these stories and my mind and then I start going over a picture. All the stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:47:12):
Jerry, you, you're talking to a sympathetic year. Because I wrote a number of books in the nineties and it's like pulling teeth. I stopped finally and said, this is too hard and I don't wanna do this anymore. But you've got, everybody they say has one good book in them. Yeah, you've got this great book about your life and we're all waiting for it, Jerry. So

Caller 6 (01:47:30):
Yeah. Well I know I

Leo Laporte (01:47:32):
<laugh>, Are you gonna put pictures in the book

Caller 6 (01:47:36):
<laugh>? Oh yeah. That's the whole story of it. That's going to be done in little three or four page stories and then pictures that go with the stories.

Leo Laporte (01:47:47):
Oh man, I can't wait to see this.

Caller 6 (01:47:49):
So to be

Leo Laporte (01:47:51):
Fred, for people who didn't hear you previous tell us how in short brief, what this is about.

Caller 6 (01:47:58):
Yeah. Was an aerial photographer for 35 years. And so I was into all kinds of adventures in planes and helicopters and flew all those. And my husband was a boat builder, and so he was doing transatlantic transpacific. Oh, fillings all over the place. So every month or every couple years or so, we'd have some big grand adventure. And a friend of mine who was a writer for one of the local magazines, wrote an article on us in the early nineties about Crashing Splash, because we had <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:48:32):
Who was crashing, who was Splash <laugh>.

Caller 6 (01:48:34):
Well see. Just in fact, I called the magazine to see if I could use that as the title of my book. So I'm writing.

Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
I think you can, They can't trademarked that you're Crash. He's Splash. Tell the story. I love it. <laugh>. I love it. I wanna hear, I wanna read it. I can't wait. Just keep working on it. Keep working on it. Please. We beg of you Jerry and yes, I'm glad we get that printer working. They call it Nozzle Check. Run the nozzle check and then they, they'll tell you they'll recommend what to do. All right. Take care. It's great to talk to you. Jerry. Crash and Splash. That's gonna be a book. That's gonna be a great book. Kevin on the line from Malibu. Hi Kevin.

Caller 7 (01:49:18):
Hello Petaluma.

Leo Laporte (01:49:19):
Hello Malibu. I saw a very nice house just got sold for 85 or is about to be sold for 85 million Cher's house change

Caller 7 (01:49:30):
In Malibu

Leo Laporte (01:49:32):
Cher's house. I want Cher's house <laugh>. So what's what's up in Malibu besides Cher's house going for 85 million?

Caller 7 (01:49:39):
Well, I'll tell you, Leo, I was listening to your Windows Weekly podcast the other day. Yes. And you and Paul inspired me to try Virtual box seven. Oh on my iMac. Yes. Which I did last night. About 2:00 AM

Leo Laporte (01:49:53):
Let's you run Windows. There are other operating systems on your M one Mac.

Caller 7 (01:49:57):
Right? Well it's not an M one Mac.

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Well Intel even better. Yeah. Right.

Caller 7 (01:50:01):
So I tried installing Windows 11 ISO and I ran into this error over and over. Oh, maybe it's 11. So I tried Linux Mint, the new 1 21. Yeah. And I'm getting the same problem. So this is a real geeky call for everybody listening. So either you'll know in a minute or you won't. The error says nem and m. Yep. Caps failed to map pages into the VM ver nem map pages failed.

Leo Laporte (01:50:34):
That's interesting. And that's Virtual Box, which is a virtualization program that lets you run on the Mac but run other people's operating systems, which is great. Yeah. So

Caller 7 (01:50:49):
Neither new, neither Google nor I nor Oracle's page could help me out. So you're my you're the man Leo.

Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
Yeah. So this is the problem that I know of with Windows. I don't know about Lennox Mint, but in fact we even talked about this. So Windows has its own virtualization system called Hyper V. You're probably aware of it. <affirmative>. It is incompatible with virtual box. So you need to turn, go to the turn Windows features on or off the optional features settings. You could do win r I think we'll get you there. And uncheck two things. Windows Sandbox and Hyper V.

Caller 7 (01:51:36):
Hold on one sec. Where is that located? I'm looking at the screen.

Leo Laporte (01:51:38):
Oh, but wait a minute. You're not running Windows. You're running Mac Os, right?

Caller 7 (01:51:43):
Mac O s

Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
Kevin. Yeah. This is a known problem running virtual box on Windows. Let me think. I wonder if this is related. I saw that. That's cuz Windows has its own. Yeah, it has its own virtualization, which is different. We actually talked about that.

Caller 7 (01:51:57):
The same error from both Lenox, Mint and Windows. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:05):
And there's nothing on the Oracle website about this.

Caller 7 (01:52:09):
No. I typed in any failed map. I got Na.

Leo Laporte (01:52:16):
All right, I have a page. Hold on. We've gotta take a break. I have a page I will give you in just a sec. Off the air. Thank Secret <laugh>. No, it's not Leo Laporte, the tech guy. More calls still to come. Failed to map a memory object. Ver map failed. This is an old problem with virtual

Caller 7 (01:52:44):
Box. Ver underscore nem underscore map.

Leo Laporte (01:52:47):
Me. Ver me map. Oh

Caller 7 (01:52:50):
Me and M like Nancy.

Leo Laporte (01:52:53):
Yeah. Paul was using it, I'm pretty sure on his Windows 11 box.

Caller 7 (01:53:05):
Well, it sounded like it.

Leo Laporte (01:53:06):
Yeah. So I know it works. Yeah. And I've seen other people talk about it. Make sure is set to OS 10 and the 64 bit version is selected.

Caller 7 (01:53:17):
Got it. But again, it's happening with both Linux and Windows.

Leo Laporte (01:53:22):
But it would make sense that the Mac needs. Yeah. I'm guessing that this is a setting in virtual box to make it work on the Mac period. Right? Cause it's not a Windows or a Mint problem. It's a Mac problem. Right. Do you see anything about unsupported hardware?

Caller 7 (01:53:45):
No. This is newly reformatted and there's hardly anything on here. I'm looking in the windows. I'm sorry, the virtual box settings. And I don't see

Leo Laporte (01:53:56):
Anything. I think it might be a max. Let me look at this here. Hold on a sec. Hold on. Check. Is there a setting in virtual box to say Mac os? Yes. Right? No, no,

Caller 7 (01:54:09):
No. Cause it's the, I assume cause it's the Mac app. The Mac program for Mac that I downloaded and am running uploaded from a dmg.

Leo Laporte (01:54:23):
I would try downloading it. Maybe it's just corrupt. Okay. Cause you're right. Cause I don't see, don't looking on Google and I don't see a lot of this issue. So I'm thinking this is local.

Caller 7 (01:54:42):
Well, let me share one other thing I see here on the virtual box manager window. The main window. Yeah. On the left side there's a column where you can have your different machines. And so I see the Mint 21 and I it's just powered on, powered off. There's a little button. And when I click to powered on or I click start, it changes from powered off to, it opens a window quickly and then it says aborted. And if this is too geeky, we can move on. I can say have a,

Leo Laporte (01:55:23):
It's not too geeky. I just don't know. I don't have an answer for you. I think what I would do for is probably read downloads. Remember this is a beta, so they may have problems. Tell me about your Mac. What kind of is it? You said it's M one. It's a

Caller 7 (01:55:40):
IMac running. No, Lina. It is. It's a 21 inch. It's got eight gigs of memory. And

Leo Laporte (01:55:47):
It's an M one.

Caller 7 (01:55:49):
No, it's

Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
A, It's Intel.

Caller 7 (01:55:51):
Intel.

Leo Laporte (01:55:52):
Make sure you get the I bet you have the wrong virtual box. Make sure you get the one for Intel. They have now that they have one for Mac o s Arm.

Caller 7 (01:56:04):
Yeah. No, I looked pretty good on there before.

Leo Laporte (01:56:06):
Did could just be a bad

Caller 7 (01:56:08):
Leo. This is one of those things. I started two in the morning and it was up till five. You know

Leo Laporte (01:56:11):
How you Oh, I'm so sorry. I know that feeling baby.

Caller 7 (01:56:14):
You do.

Leo Laporte (01:56:15):
Yeah. So what the news was that they have now an M one version of Virtual box, but you're running the old version. So just make sure you got the Intel, not the arm version of that. And then I would just try downloading it might be also, you have a problem with it. So that one's not a beta. This one's been out for a while.

Caller 7 (01:56:34):
So go back to six maybe, maybe

Leo Laporte (01:56:37):
Seven, maybe.

Caller 7 (01:56:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I have a compliment for you. Oh, I'm watching you on my Amazon show. Yes. When you're on with Johnny Jet. Yes. You can't find two bigger smiles.

Leo Laporte (01:56:50):
<laugh>, Johnny and I are, See the smiles guys. I love Johnny. I, He's a great guy. So he always makes smile.

Caller 7 (01:56:58):
Synergy between you is just so thank you. It sounds great, but watching it is even. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:57:01):
You. It's very kind.

Caller 7 (01:57:03):
I wish you the best. I thank you for your time, Leo. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:57:06):
You friend. Take care.

Caller 7 (01:57:07):
Have a good day. Bye-bye. You

Leo Laporte (01:57:08):
Too. Bye. I'm wondering if eight gigs is not enough. That's pretty light for a virtual machine, right? Am I back or about to leave? I am here. Shy town. Dea, were you a DEA or is that your name? Dea. I had a couple of college roommates were DEA Delta Kappa Epsilon. Not b A five. Roberto. There's a new one. B Q one Chi Town Geek. Yeah, Baby. Yeah, Baby Dub Bears Doubles. I am here now. Yeah. Michael be here next week. It is my back. <laugh>. That's my friend.

... (01:58:06):
<laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:58:13):
Oh, your ta. Cap Epsilon. So dea which my trainer was a member of, was founded at Yale. My college roommates were, DEA was kind of a athletic, trendy, so to speak. Brett Kavanaugh is dea. And who else is dea? Somebody in the news today. The Clayton is a different dea. Oh, I love Go Go's a good language. I'm an all, I'm a Lisp guy. I'm a Lisp guy. But Go is a very, very good choice. I think modern, nice modern language camera buying guide. I always go to read the reviews at DP review, which I think is quite good. Even though it's owned by Amazon. I think those guys are very good. I know them and trust them. So DP review.com, as in digital photography, that's a wide area at a camera guide. I mean, depends what you want and learn I guess. Brett and Que <laugh>. Yeah. Remember those days? Val <laugh>. Who else is dea? I just was talking with my trainer who's a DEA from Cal and I was talking with him and he said, Oh, you know, else is a dea. I just found out, Oh, what was it? Somebody annoying.

Leo Laporte (01:59:49):
I like beer too. I'm sorry Kevin. I'm sorry if the IRC can't help you. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, Google's big big go house. They better go. Go Lang. Go Lang. Go Lang. I I for a while was playing with Julia. I really like Julia. It would be my favorite modern language, but I think Lisp is my I'm gonna be a Lier for life cuz I'm old. IRC is 34. Seems like it's older than that. 34 doesn't seem that old. I feel like IRC predates the web. I know it does.

Leo Laporte (02:00:51):
1988. So just barely updates the web. Well, hey, hey, hey. How are you today? Leo LePort here, The tech guy. Time to talk. Computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography. Smart cars. Smart watches, smart phones, junky gadgets with the Giw coming up. Phone number is 88. 88. Ask Leo if you have a question, a comment, a suggestion. 8, 8, 8, 8. 2 7, 5. 5, 3, 6 to three from anywhere in the US or Canada outside that area. You can still reach us but you'd have to use Skype out or something like that. Some VoIP solution. The website where all the show notes. Live Tech guy labs.com. And we have a chat room going actually a couple of chats. One on the modern Discord platform for our club TWI members. Yes, they're all TWIs and they admit to it. Isn't that amazing? But there's also a public chat going on a platform called irc, Internet Relay Chat and IRC is celebrating its 34th birthday today.

Leo Laporte (02:02:02):
So happy birthday. Not our chat, but our chat. So IRC was invented in 1988. There were chats before that. I used Bitnet Relay. There were other chats that predated that, but it was invented in Finland, the University of Ulu in Finland in 1988. This chat room, this IRC chat room of ours@irc.twi.tv has been going on almost as long. We started having an IRC chat. I started having an IRC chat back in 1992. So I didn't realize this <laugh> almost as old as IRC itself. When I started doing a syndicated radio show with John c Devork called Devork on computers. We had an irc. I've kept it going ever since. Not the same server, not the same name, not the same people. But from my point of view, there's always been a little IRC channel scrolling in the background of all my shows. It's very handy.

Leo Laporte (02:03:08):
We call 'em team tech guy. I call 'em that. They don't call themselves that, but I call 'em team tech guy cuz they're like my brain externalized. So many of them have been around for 10 or more years. They remember stuff that I've long forgotten. So happy birthday irc. And celebrate with us@irc.twi.tv. That's cool. That's really cool. Had a lot of fun over the years with irc. It's a fast, simple protocol to use. You can actually do it in the web if you want, at irc.tv. That's a webpage. But the real pros will run what they call an IRC client, which is a bit of software that will run IRC on the Mac. I use a textual hex chat on Windows and Linux. These are free programs you can run. And then it's the text scrolls up the old days off white text on the black screen. <laugh>, it's all text baby <laugh>. 88. 88. Ask Leah back the phones we go. Daniel, very patient from Warsaw, Indiana. Hi Daniel.

Caller 8 (02:04:22):
Hi Leo. I remember you from watching you on tv.

Leo Laporte (02:04:26):
<laugh>. Yeah, we had on tech tv. We actually had chat back in the late nineties, but it was a weird avatar chat. Looked a lot like this. Metaverse stuff people are talking about. <laugh>. That was 20 years ago. We did that. Well good. Well thank you. Welcome back. What can I do for you?

Caller 8 (02:04:43):
I got an unrecognizable hard drive. The computer will recognize it as a drive. Yeah, It won't recognize any of the files.

Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
So at one point it used to recognize it, but now it doesn't.

Caller 8 (02:05:00):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:05:00):
Okay. So usually what that means is that there is an area of the hard drive that's been damaged or monged. Sometimes a soft damage. Sometimes hard damage. And that area of the hard drive is the catalog, the table of contents for the drive. So if it could see the drive, it means the drive's mounting up and the hardware can see it. But then it looks at it. Does it think the drive's empty? Does it say you need to format this drive? What does it say?

Caller 8 (02:05:28):
It says files unrecognizable.

Leo Laporte (02:05:30):
Oh, interesting.

Caller 8 (02:05:33):
So I was wondering what software can I use to bring it back?

Leo Laporte (02:05:40):
Yeah, this is a great question because there are different levels of damage and depending, and it's kind of hard to tell from your description what the level of damage is. If the files are unreadable, it actually may be a hardware problem that they're interface to. The drive is damaged in some way, so that's not seen that error. That's an unusual error. Usually it'll either say this drive is not formatted. Or sometimes, which means the table of contents is damaged and it doesn't see the partition table. Or it'll say there's nothing on this drive. <laugh>, which sometimes happens, but I cannot read. The drive is interesting. So it says

Caller 8 (02:06:24):
They're unrecognized. The format is unrecognizable.

Leo Laporte (02:06:27):
The question is, okay, the question is how much you wanna spend to get this drive back that you can get a new drive for 50 bucks and almost any solution is gonna be at least that much from what you're describing. I think the first thing I'd try is my friend Steve Gibson's program called Spin, right? You can get this from grc.com, but it's 90 bucks. So it is the kind of thing people who repair hard drives for a living might have. If you just had one drive and you don't really care all that much, what's on it? 90 bucks is a lot to pay. If there's something on there you gotta don't have a backup of, then maybe this is worth spending a little money on. Start with spin, right? There is no free version, no trial version. You have to buy it. What it does, just so you understand, it's very low level. It doesn't care about the contents of the file. It doesn't care about how the drive is formatted, what operating system, none of that. What it does is it goes through, as you may know, a hard drive. Is this a, It's a spinning hard drive, right? Oh, what happened Kim? What line is that? Two, three. Okay, sorry. Daniel Kim picked it up and then, okay, <laugh>. Yeah. So I don't know if you heard what I was saying. Is it a spinning hard drive?

Caller 8 (02:07:50):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:07:51):
Yes. So spin, right? What it does, it goes sector by sector through the drive. Drive data is divided up into sectors. If you've been watching since the screen savers days, you probably know this is divided up into sectors. It goes through each sector. What happens is your operating system looks at a sector and says, I can't read that. I can't read that. Eventually says I can't read this drive. But spin rate doesn't give up. It keeps reading until it can get the data off the drive, relocates it to a known good sector and then marks that sector bad. Every hard drive has bad sectors. It's not right. So what, what's what's possibly happening? Don't, I'm not sure, but one of the possible things that could be going wrong is that the hard drive has part of it is become unreadable it. But sometimes unreadable by windows doesn't mean unreadable entirely. Spin, right. Can often read it with a by din of labor. And it may be a lot of time, it could take sometimes days, but if it can read it, it can relocate it, it can rebuild the table of contents or whatever's damaged and you're good to go. Now I'd still get a new drive. I'd get the stuff off and get a new drive because once the drive starts to fail it, how old's the drive?

Caller 8 (02:08:59):
Probably about four years old.

Leo Laporte (02:09:01):
They start to fail around this time. I mean, not a lot, but about 7% a year every year from now on. So you're in the lucky.

Caller 8 (02:09:08):
I don't been using it. It's just been stored. So I went to get some of the photos off and now it won't. I can't get the photos off. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:09:18):
So there's a couple of things that can happen. If drive is stored you have used that drive on this particular computer before

Caller 8 (02:09:28):
Not for a year or so,

Leo Laporte (02:09:30):
But at some point you were able to read the drive on that. Yes. Cause I wanna make sure the drive is formatted in a way that computer can read it and so forth. If you had a Mac, yes, If you wrote it in a Mac, you wouldn't be able to read it on your Windows machine, that kind of thing. Right? So, okay, you were able to read it in the past. So we know the data's put there in a way that it can be read. It just can't read it right now. Maybe it's that old thing I was talking about where you whack it with a screwdriver. It could be, I think it's more likely that the drive over time has deteriorated. The magnetic signals on the drive platter is deteriorated. That's what spin right's good for. So spin right is probably the one tool I'd recommend cuz it's low level. The next level up is to say, Oh no, I can see stuff on here, but it's damaged, it's scrambled. And the trying to recover it, that's a different thing. That's like file on erasers. That's a higher level thing. But I would start spin right's not for every drive problem, but this particular problem. It's certainly the one I would try if you're willing to spend 90 bucks.

Caller 8 (02:10:26):
Right. How about programs like Azos or Drill Doctor or Stellar?

Leo Laporte (02:10:32):
Yeah, those are a little different. They operate at what I would call the higher level at the file system level. So if spin right

Caller 8 (02:10:41):
You any recommendations as far as those?

Leo Laporte (02:10:46):
No, not really. Okay. Cause I'll be honest with you, if a drive fails on me, I throw it out cuz I always have a backup. I throw it out. I don't, Don't try and try again. I'm guessing you don't have a backup of something that's on that drive.

Caller 8 (02:11:00):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:11:01):
Yeah try the free one. Scooter X is reminding me called Recover bad name. I

Caller 8 (02:11:08):
Tried that didn't work. That mainly is for SD cards and the like of that.

Leo Laporte (02:11:17):
Well, it's the same thing. Any fat format right? Yeah.

Caller 8 (02:11:22):
It found a bunch, but it didn't move over to a different drive.

Leo Laporte (02:11:29):
Okay. Yeah,

Caller 8 (02:11:32):
There was a photos there.

Leo Laporte (02:11:35):
By the way, as soon as you start running these things, unfortunately you may make it impossible for other recovery software to work because recover what Recovers supposed to do is you say a different drive and say move that stuff over if it wasn't able to move it. I'm thinking this sounds more and more like my original hypothesis, which is this hard drive's just hard to read and it's in the operating system's not doing it. I can't promise you that spin, try, spin, right, Will get it back. I understand that's 90 bucks with a big question mark. But if you really care about it I think spin right's the right choice. What's happening in my opinion, and I think the recover result tells me this is accurate is the drive. Because it's old, it's starting to lose its grip. It, some of the sectors are getting hard, too hard to read.

Leo Laporte (02:12:28):
Nothing will try harder than spin. Right? If spin right. Can't read it, you can't get it back. It may not get all of it back. It may only get some of it back but some is better than nothing. Right. I think that's probably your best bet. 88. 88. Ask Leo. That's the phone number. (888) 827-5536. Yeah. No trial period for spin. Right? I wish there were, And don't be thrown by the fact that it came out in 2004 <laugh>. It is an old program, but some are hard drives. It still works. Leo LePort, the tech guy. Leo LePort, the tech guy. Thank you Professor Laura for giving me Happy Feet. John is on the line from Portugal. Our favorite fan from the Algarve. Hello John.

Caller 9 (02:13:23):
Hi Leo. How's it

Leo Laporte (02:13:24):
Going? It's going great. How are things in Portugal right now?

Caller 9 (02:13:28):
It's wonderful. Oh gosh.

Caller 9 (02:13:32):
It was about 75 degrees in balmy. That's

Leo Laporte (02:13:34):
Beautiful. Does it get to be wintry? You're in southern Portugal, so I guess you're on the Mediterranean.

Caller 9 (02:13:40):
It does. I've been here about a year and a half and it gets where it's only highs in like the sixties. Kind of like, oh, it's so cold.

Leo Laporte (02:13:50):
<laugh>, what can I do for you today? John <laugh>.

Caller 9 (02:13:54):
I have a weird thing where I am able to cast from my laptop on Bluetooth to my LG Smart tv, but I can't do it from my Android phone. Okay. Yeah. So it shows up. I go to in Windows, I go to add Bluetooth device and everything and the TV shows up.

Leo Laporte (02:14:16):
It's not using, I should say it's not using Bluetooth to send video, it's just using Bluetooth to signal. So do your TV says it is Cat.

Caller 9 (02:14:25):
I'm on the same network. On

Leo Laporte (02:14:27):
The same network using wifi At some point is it, does TV say it's cast ready? Is that, what is a TV say?

Caller 9 (02:14:35):
Well, that's the thing. I don't know if the It's got the latest OS of Yeah, yeah. The greatest. Obviously I have a Roku, but there's other issues. I can't bridge my Vodafone rather. So what are, Let do that,

Leo Laporte (02:14:47):
You use the phrase use the term cast, which normally is short for Chromecast and I'm trying to figure out what the capability Windows has its own, When you

Caller 9 (02:14:57):
Say screen share, it's like screen share I think.

Leo Laporte (02:14:59):
Yeah. Okay. That's different. Yeah. So Windows has its own way of casting using DL A which LG model is it?

Caller 9 (02:15:12):
Well, it's this wonderful O led that we've got

Leo Laporte (02:15:15):
In the body. So lgs do I believe have Chromecast

Caller 9 (02:15:18):
I've ever had,

Leo Laporte (02:15:19):
I think they do have Chromecast built in Scooter X says they do. Let me look at this year

Caller 9 (02:15:25):
Though. It's European. Oh

Leo Laporte (02:15:27):
Well I don't know. That shouldn't make any sense. It's

Caller 9 (02:15:32):
An six.

Leo Laporte (02:15:36):
Okay. Okay. So Android uses Chrome casting to cast. I am thinking the smart share is Windows only. So that's DL N a Windows has a variety of names for this. So I don't think it's, let's see, share from Android. Let me see here. Share a screen from Android using wifi or share using Bluetooth. So sharing screen and Bluetooth may not result in the desired screen resolution and sound because Split doesn't have a lot of bandwidth. But you can do file sharing. It's not recommended for screen sharing. You wanna watch a show on

Caller 9 (02:16:25):
There? Yeah, I wanna watch HBO and all that. Yeah. On express vpn.

Leo Laporte (02:16:30):
So it is DL a. It is not. It's miracast slash d a. It is not. That's why they call it Screencast. Another name. This is Microsoft's completely Microsoft's fault. They've never decided on how to what name to use for this. It is not Chromecast. So here's what I would do. You at cat, you can probably get, in fact I know you can the LG screen share app on the Android store and then use wifi to connect. But what I would recommend really honestly, is to get 35 bucks, the new Google Chromecast with Android TV is really a great deal. And then you don't need any special software in your Android device. I'm sorry, with Google tv. Not Android tv. That's the new one. You want the new one then You don't need any special Android stuff. Almost all the apps like Netflix, just have a little cast button that you use. It's a little dongle plugs into your H D M I port. It's $50. Sorry it was $35, but

Caller 9 (02:17:39):
I have, Oh, I had some old ones, but that doesn't support that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:17:43):
Yeah. I think well try the old ones. Yeah, plug you. You haven't plugged them into the tv. They should work.

Caller 9 (02:17:48):
No, I haven't tried. I just thought they were too old. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:17:51):
So this is the problem is there's different kinds of casting. The screen casting, which is what LG calls it, they mean DL A or mirror cast, which is a Windows only technology. You but again LG and you could search for this in the Google Play store has a Screencast app that'll do it. So that's the first thing to try. I think your Chromecast should work even the old ones. But I really like the new Chromecast with Google tv. 4K will look sports hdr, which your old ones will not. So to look great on your lg I don't know what it costs in the Algar, but here in the US of a, it's 50 bucks.

Caller 9 (02:18:34):
I don't think they don't sell 'em here. <laugh>. It's only fire sticks.

Leo Laporte (02:18:38):
Store. Store. Yeah. Everybody has fires. Sticks i store.google.com. I bet you they'll ship it to you. That will solve all your woes and give you a great result too. It's better than a Roku. I think Leo Laporte, the tech guy there is an HD version, but you want the 4K version

Caller 9 (02:18:55):
And that was why I didn't really even try the old one.

Leo Laporte (02:18:57):
Yeah, cuz those won't give you hd. They won't even over here. Yeah, I mean they'll give you hd. They won't give you 4k.

Caller 9 (02:19:03):
And so all of those premium maps, they have that little Chromecast logo in the upper.

Leo Laporte (02:19:09):
Yeah, that's Chromecast.

Caller 9 (02:19:11):
They're on there. It'll support Chromecast, right? Yes.

Leo Laporte (02:19:15):
Yeah, that's technology. Yeah, but

Caller 9 (02:19:18):
They all have to have it if they're in the play store.

Leo Laporte (02:19:20):
No some don't. Which app do you want to use?

Caller 9 (02:19:26):
Well, all of them. The problem I'm having is my Vodafone router. I can't bridge. I have a flash neck year router that's for express vpn, but it's having a Nat conflict double net because I can't bridge the

Leo Laporte (02:19:45):
Provided router. Router.

Caller 9 (02:19:46):
They won't. Yeah, they won't let me do it. The provided router, they won't already do it.

Leo Laporte (02:19:49):
Well you

Caller 9 (02:19:51):
Worked for a while then somehow there was a

Leo Laporte (02:19:53):
Conflict. Yeah, it's double that. Yeah. So you can't double

Caller 9 (02:19:55):
That. And I have to bridge and they won't let me do it. I have to get

Leo Laporte (02:19:59):
Commercial. So I like the Chromecast with Google tv. Any Chromecast will give you that cast icon. That cast icon does not work with the LGS is cuz it's using D lna, which is its own Ah, it's a Windows technology.

Caller 9 (02:20:13):
Thank,

Leo Laporte (02:20:15):
Sorry,

Caller 9 (02:20:16):
My head

Leo Laporte (02:20:17):
I'll a link to the lg. LG as a lovely long document on how to screen share and it, it'll give you the same answer.

Caller 9 (02:20:30):
So that would be in the LG app store, the

Leo Laporte (02:20:36):
Yes. Now Scooter X says his tv, his LG has Chromecast built in. So check you're looking for not screencast, but Chromecast cast.

Caller 9 (02:20:48):
Right.

Leo Laporte (02:20:48):
But I don't, I'm looking at this LG document doesn't mention Chromecast, but which TV do you have? Scooter X I have, don't think my LG C series does my C series. OED does but I bought the Google. No,

Caller 9 (02:21:04):
No, it's this European model would somehow, if I wasn't on the vpn, but I don't know how

Leo Laporte (02:21:09):
To Yeah, it might be the European model also. The

Caller 9 (02:21:13):
European model won't let me do it. Yes, With the content, the geofencing or whatever.

Leo Laporte (02:21:17):
Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Europe.

Caller 9 (02:21:19):
I did try to use a media streamer new DNS setting from Express vpn. But that doesn't give you a vpn. It gives you this media streaming and it,

Leo Laporte (02:21:29):
Yeah. Yeah. So this is, it's, I blame Windows cuz they came up with 14 different names for this kind of thing. It's, But none of it is Chromecast. <laugh> try. You know what the solution might be the LG app that might just solve your problem.

Caller 9 (02:21:43):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:21:44):
And then I guess what it does is screen shares. See that's what Chromecast doesn't screen share. It actually sends the content from that app like Netflix over.

Caller 9 (02:21:57):
Yeah, I remember when they first came out with that. I was trying to wrap my head around that. I was just like, what's going on? It's like, oh no, it's not. Not screen sharing. It's actually just, Huh? Doing it

Leo Laporte (02:22:07):
Right. In fact, it does a handoff from the phone. So that's actually a nice thing. It doesn't, Yeah, it uses the bandwidth on the TV on the Chrome dongle. But they're all saying that the LG supports Chromecast. So look for that in your settings. Make sure that's turned on.

Caller 9 (02:22:22):
So it should be the LG store

Leo Laporte (02:22:24):
There. There is an app on the play store and the iOS store for LG called Screencast. So that's one thing to look at. But you can also look in the settings of your lgtv for Chromecast. And if you turn that on then you could just, from your Android phone, hit that Chromecast button. It should see your tv. Unless it's blocked by that router. Which it could be.

Caller 9 (02:22:52):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:22:53):
Yeah. Because Europe,

Caller 9 (02:22:54):
And my only thing if I wanna use the Roku so bad is to use a surf shark virtual router

Leo Laporte (02:23:01):
Or something like that. Or go down to the beach and have some chicken period. Forget the whole thing.

Caller 9 (02:23:06):
Yeah, yeah. Just forget about all this nonsense.

Leo Laporte (02:23:09):
Just enjoy your life.

Caller 9 (02:23:11):
I know.

Leo Laporte (02:23:12):
I'm so jealous as you know. I'm so jealous. Have a great day, John. Wait.

Caller 9 (02:23:18):
Oh, see you here soon. Sometimes

Leo Laporte (02:23:19):
I hope so. If I convinced Lisa. Oh, but God though,

Caller 9 (02:23:25):
Over again. Audio

Leo Laporte (02:23:27):
Audios. This is for Art Lebo. I don't know who that is. <laugh>. You young people. Are you talking about something young person thing he invent. Oh, he passed away. He invented, I know who you're talking about, the oldies. But I should know who he is. In fact, I'm amazed. You do art. The great art Lebo invented the, or created the term oldies, but goodies and probably played this song way too much. Passed away October 7th American, well known American dish jockey. Before my time. Before everyone stopped. Before, Pretty much before everyone's time. Is that what you're saying? <laugh>. He was actually up here in San Francisco in the forties in <laugh> and then went down to Southern Cal and worked in Palm Springs. He acquired the nickname as long as he Lasts, which is a terrible nickname. <laugh>. I don't know where he got that was at K X L A, which is now Kla and was there for many years. So the great art Lebo, now that you say it, I remember it. David is on the line from Ontario, Canada. Hello David.

Caller 10 (02:24:52):
Hello.

Leo Laporte (02:24:53):
Hello. Welcome. What can I do for you, my friend?

Caller 10 (02:25:01):
I'm looking for the name requirements for Microsoft Teams.

Leo Laporte (02:25:06):
Oh, why would you wanna run Microsoft Teams?

Caller 10 (02:25:10):
It's not for me. My roommate is going college roughly.

Leo Laporte (02:25:17):
Ah. And

Caller 10 (02:25:18):
Be using

Leo Laporte (02:25:19):
It. Okay. So the good news about teams from Microsoft is it'll run on, It's of course runs best on Windows, but it runs just fine on a Mac, a pc, a Chromebook. It runs almost everywhere. So what kind of computer does does he have?

Caller 10 (02:25:35):
It's not that I need to know the minimum

Leo Laporte (02:25:43):
Internet speeds. So what have you got?

Caller 10 (02:25:47):
I got 50 mill bit down. That's

Leo Laporte (02:25:53):
Plenty. That's plenty. You're gonna be great. You're gonna be just fine. In theory people

Caller 10 (02:26:01):
Though,

Leo Laporte (02:26:01):
In theory, it'll work with, it'll give you HD video with as little as one and a half megabits. So you're 30 times better than that. And a 10 megabits up is plenty, Plenty, plenty. But remember it is more than just speed when you're talking about this kind of video.

Caller 10 (02:26:24):
Yes. That our issues that we're doing over wifi.

Leo Laporte (02:26:29):
Yeah. So it will be better if you connect via ethernet, but you have in theory, plenty of wifi speed latency may be a larger issue. And that, So is his problem that it's a second between the time they call on him and the time he talks is

Caller 10 (02:26:48):
No, his problem is he got disconnected off the wifi.

Leo Laporte (02:26:54):
He gets disconnected. Yeah. Wifi. Okay. So that is a wifi problem. When we do our shows, most of our hosts on the radio show and on our podcasts are calling in via Zoom. But we could use Teams or we could use Skype. Yes. And we always tell them, you might have heard us tell them, David no wifi allowed. And the reason is Reason wifi is a collision based network. And it's weird. But this is what that means. If there's another wifi signal, Do you live in an apartment or can you see other people's? I

Caller 10 (02:27:33):
Live in a house with room rent rooms for rent.

Leo Laporte (02:27:36):
Okay, so there's other people on the wifi.

Caller 10 (02:27:39):
Yeah, there are three people on the wifi. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:27:43):
And so that's part of the problem is that 50 megabits is shared. But also if there's another wifi signal from neighbors or so forth, and there's on the same wifi band, wifi is try band. It's five gigahertz and it's 2.4 gigahertz. But there's, within there there's channels. And if you're somebody, if somebody's on the same channel, on the same band as you, your wifi will pause and say, after you alfas and wait a random amount of time and then check again. And so what that sometimes does creates is hesitation. So there's a couple of reasons there could be that blurp that hesitation. One is that the roommates, that's a big one. And frankly getting off wifi wouldn't fix that. And the other is interference from other wifi signals. Changing the channel sometimes will help that. But honestly, there's nothing better than Wired. We always tell all our callers, all our

Caller 10 (02:28:45):
Yes, I totally understand that. Yeah. And my landlord won't reconnect. No. Cause mold. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:28:55):
That's very common. My

Caller 10 (02:28:56):
Wire.

Leo Laporte (02:28:56):
Yeah, he doesn't wanna wire. Yeah,

Caller 10 (02:28:58):
No, that's a big issue.

Leo Laporte (02:29:02):
So in theory you have sufficient speed, but I'm sorry. Yeah. This is a problem

Caller 10 (02:29:10):
From modem internet

Leo Laporte (02:29:15):
Could also be that. Who's your internet provider? Is it Rogers?

Caller 10 (02:29:19):
No, Virtue.

Leo Laporte (02:29:22):
Oh, well, Which

Caller 10 (02:29:24):
Is a third party. Yeah. Bell.

Leo Laporte (02:29:27):
Yeah, it's from Bell. Oh great. Yeah.

Caller 10 (02:29:31):
And I know it's a very crappy router because I have to it all the time. The time I'm running a net gear extender that cost me three bucks just to connect to it. And I'm like three feet away from the modem.

Leo Laporte (02:29:54):
By the way, that extender is cutting your speed in half. Take it out. Cause if he's on the extender, you're not getting 50 megabits, you're getting at best, you're getting 25. Do a speed. You know what you should do on his system? On the system he's gonna use with teams, do a speed test. And I want you to do it@dslreports.com. Okay. The DSL reports. Reports speed test because it will tell you not just the download and the upload speed, that's only part of the whole thing. It will also tell you your latency and high latency is death to video phone calls. And it will also tell you something called buffer bloat, which is also a problematic. So it is a better diagnostic and it will tell you your real time stats on that machine, which is all that matters. Doesn't matter what virtue tells you. It matters what you're getting on that machine. And I suspect that the other people in the house are making it a bad for your roommate, you might <laugh> say go to class at night or no, I guess better be the day. Go to class when everybody's out of the house.

Leo Laporte (02:31:15):
<laugh> another one to try the, I always use DSL reports, but CloudFlare speed.cloudflare.com. What you want though is a test that will give you information about these extra things. Not just speed, but ping and jitter. Actually this, you know what? This a CloudFlare one is good. I'm looking at it right now. Ping is your latency. So you want your latency to be, I would say below 40 milliseconds. If it's more than a thousand milliseconds, that's gonna be problematic. Jitter is a big deal though when it comes to telecom. You want low jitter in the single digit milliseconds if possible. And then I think what you're gonna find is it's gonna go up and down because of your neighbors. You've got really the worst of all possible worlds. You've gotta an internet router, a wifi router that is not controlled by use, provided by the Is P that your landlord won't let you get access into. You've got neighbors sharing it. <laugh> basically outta control. And I think it's not, the numbers they're telling you are not the numbers you're getting Leo Laporte the tech guy. Yeah, DSL Reports is down. What happened? Did they go out of business?

Leo Laporte (02:33:02):
That's too bad. Yeah, I guess we're gonna have to recommend speed. The CloudFlare one is great. I'm really liking it. Of course. Thank you CloudFlare. Really nice. Oh, it's working there. Okay. Yeah, it's It's not coming up to me for some reason.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:22):
Hello, Dicky day Lil, How are you doing?

Leo Laporte (02:33:29):
I am am. Very well. How are you?

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:32):
I'm good. Is next week the week you're going away?

Leo Laporte (02:33:35):
Yes. It'll be Micah only next week.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:38):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:33:38):
Okay. We're going to see Katie Perry.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:41):
Oh, that should be fun. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:33:43):
In Vegas, we're going to a couple of our favorite restaurants and we haven't been to Vegas since the plague, so.

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:50):
Oh, <laugh>. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:33:52):
And we want to go before it returns this fall. So it's all,

Dick DeBartolo (02:33:57):
Are they planning on a return? Yeah, I held over,

Leo Laporte (02:34:00):
I think it's being held over. It's plagues coming out of retirement for one last tour.

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:07):
So it's gonna be interesting to see what CES is like.

Leo Laporte (02:34:12):
Oh geez. <laugh>. Oh jeez. Yeah. I wouldn't be going if I were you, but

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:22):
I'm actually I spoke to Chad, I said, Chad, how about I read all the press releases and make up the thing <laugh> and you, I produce it Go. He said, Oh yeah, I'm up for that.

Leo Laporte (02:34:36):
Nice. Well that's

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:38):
Cool. I think 30, Isn't that enough? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:34:40):
30 cess. Yeah. Did you do Anys too, or just

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:45):
No.

Leo Laporte (02:34:46):
You were always a ces. Yeah, cuz was more PCs. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:34:49):
Exactly. And just vanished, right?

Leo Laporte (02:35:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Shelly sold it <laugh> right at the right time and boom, it disappeared several a couple years later. Oh,

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:16):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:35:17):
Yep.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:21):
I found out was fun. I was searching for the man 70 and I had no idea it's on Kindle. So my brother said, Oh, I didn't wanna go to Barnes and Noble. I said, Stay there. I can buy for you online and send you. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:35:42):
I didn't know you had a brother.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:44):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:35:45):
Where is he

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:47):
In Connecticut?

Leo Laporte (02:35:49):
Do you go see? Yeah, you go see him once in a while, don't you? I guess

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:51):
I didn't know. Oh yeah, once in a while. Yeah. Yeah. Well we don't talk for three months, but when we talk it's like we were talking home

Leo Laporte (02:35:58):
Week.

Dick DeBartolo (02:35:59):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mainly because they're all that we say the same thing, so

Leo Laporte (02:36:03):
Oh, it's via Comicology.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:05):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:07):
Comedy. Yeah.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:08):
Yeah. But it's sold by DC comic. So it's the thing. Right.

Leo Laporte (02:36:13):
It's the thing. Mad Magazine 2018. That's bizarre. What does that mean?

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:21):
You know what it, it's something to do with the numbering of the original Mads mixed in. Oh, I don't understand. Cause I asked somebody, I bought it for someone and sent it to them and said, Just tell me does this look like mad 70? And they said it is the mad 70. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:36:39):
That's interesting.

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:40):
So someone else said the 2018, So

Leo Laporte (02:36:42):
It's the 2018 number. 28 as of 20. That's when they went moved to LA I'm guessing, right?

Dick DeBartolo (02:36:48):
I think it is. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:50):
Everybody dance, get out on the floor. Here he comes, Disco Dick de Bartolo, Matt, Mad writer and our gizmo wizard. Hello, Dickie D

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:03):
Leo. How are you pal? I

Leo Laporte (02:37:05):
Am very well. How are you?

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:07):
I am super well, thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:37:12):
Dick joins us every week, Tolog Mad Magazine, <laugh>, and to tell us about a gizmo or a gadget. And of course I always say, go to his website, giz whiz.biz, and you can find out all about it. What is our gadget

Dick DeBartolo (02:37:27):
Of the week? Yeah. Well you know what? We talked off air a little bit about ces and fortunately Pep had a New York event with gadgets, which is way easier because I can just take a Lyft car. So

Leo Laporte (02:37:44):
Ces, which is the trade show formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, takes place in Las Vegas every January. So a few months from now. But there are a couple of companies show Stoppers and Pep come that Yes, exactly. That have side, what they call side shows usually held in a hotel ballroom the same time as ces. But I guess pep com's figuring for people who aren't going to ces, we can have a little event in New York, which is great.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:13):
Exactly, exactly. And I found the man who excited to me called it a smart watch, but it's very clever. It's more a smartphone on a watch. Oh, okay. This is for kids four to 11. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:38:28):
I have people asking for this all the time. So it's a phone. Okay.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:32):
It is, yes. You can make the lower model, you can text and just send photos. The higher model, which is only $20 more has a camera in it. So you can do video phoning. The thing is, I guess you don't tell the kid, everything goes through the parent smartphone. So only the phone numbers that you let them call can call the watch.

Leo Laporte (02:38:56):
Makes perfect sense.

Dick DeBartolo (02:38:58):
And the watch

Leo Laporte (02:38:59):
Has, So you don't let them make calls to any random, you just put in Grandma and Pops and

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:04):
Mom. Exactly. And then they can call them and their picture can come up and then it has gps. So you can see where they are all time.

Leo Laporte (02:39:12):
Very, this is a good idea.

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:14):
And then it has zone areas where when they go to school, if they vary too far out of where they Geo

Leo Laporte (02:39:22):
Fencing. Yeah,

Dick DeBartolo (02:39:23):
Geofencing. It'll let you know about that. Nice. Yeah. Water resistant holds a thousand photos. It also has an alarm and a speedometer and there's some games in it. And when you play games, you win coins and then you can buy more games. And the games are active games, not video games things so that there is some built in exercise. But the thing is, I said to the guy, I assume I have to get your text and video planning. He said, Yes. I said, How much is it? He said, Well, you have to buy it by the year, but it's $8 a month. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:40:02):
That's not bad. That's a lot better than the $10 I pay for my Apple Watch. That's

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:07):
Good. Yeah, exactly. And then it's a higher plan. That's $12. Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:40:13):
What do I guess for the extra four? Anything?

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:16):
I'm not sure. I'm wondering if the cheaper watch has the $8 plan and the one with the video when it is $12.

Leo Laporte (02:40:25):
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. You'd need more bandwidths

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:28):
And they don't look big and bulky. You like a kid's watch. I think they look rather hand. So I think kids be very impressed with this and available in three colors. I

Leo Laporte (02:40:38):
Don't know if a four year old would be happy wearing a wrist watch, but

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:43):
They're older. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:40:47):
And unlike the Apple Watch, it's a hundred bucks less than the cheapest Apple Watch. And you don't need an iPhone particularly. Does it work with any smartphone or

Dick DeBartolo (02:40:58):
What? I assume it will only because the guy seemed to be really on the ball about this. Evidently this is very big overseas and they're now selling it here and they've already lined up Target and Amazon and it's kind

Leo Laporte (02:41:15):
Of, It's like a Dick Tracy watch. It has a camera. My Apple watch doesn't even have a camera in it.

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:20):
<laugh>. No, that's interesting. I just thought of it's, it turns out that I'm still wearing an old Galaxy watch that does have a camera

Leo Laporte (02:41:30):
<laugh>

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:31):
Wells. Really? It does. It can do one minute of video and

Leo Laporte (02:41:38):
Oh, this also has some exercise components to encourage Exactly.

Dick DeBartolo (02:41:42):
Kids to get moving. Yeah, exactly. The guy said, And we wanted to make it so that get kids away from the TV or the other screen and they, they've teamed up with UNICEF and some other,

Leo Laporte (02:41:57):
I am impressed. Impressed. I'd love to talk to some parents who are using this. Yeah. But that's X P L O R A and you just go to gwiz.biz that Sticks website and you can read all about it. And he has a link to the Explorer website, G I Z W iz dot b iz. Click the button that says the Giw. Visit the tech guy. And while you're there we're, we're almost halfway through October, this would be a good time to attempt to win what is perhaps the best mad magazine in years. The seventies.

Dick DeBartolo (02:42:33):
I would say that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:42:35):
Yeah, you definitely want this. Dick has autographed copies, 18 autographed copies of this magazine up to six for the best. For well best. There's only one correct answer. It's a closeup of a gizmo or gadget. I have no idea what it is. 12 mad magazines for the best. Cute, wrong answer. So you can be wrong. You don't have to know what it is. And you'll be playing for this, which is the Mad Magazine Notice I have it covered in plastic like,

Dick DeBartolo (02:43:04):
Oh my goodness.

Leo Laporte (02:43:05):
Like my sofa. I know. This is collector's, collector's item. Actually this morning I spilled coffee into my MacBook. So <laugh>.

Dick DeBartolo (02:43:15):
Well, as long as you didn't ruin the Mad. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:43:17):
The MAD's okay though. That's the good news. Splashed right off the plastic cover. Yeah. Well worth playing for. Go to giw.biz. You could take a look at the Explorer. I'd love to hear from some parents who are using this or how your kids like it, whether it's working for you. That'd

Dick DeBartolo (02:43:34):
Be great. That

Leo Laporte (02:43:35):
Would be great. Yeah. Yeah. And then play the what the heck is a contest while you're at those site. There's also other stuff like the Gadget Stick shows on ABC's World News now every month. And Mad Magazine collectibles and Match Game collectables and all sorts of stuff. Fun, Fun site for everybody to visit. GIZ we.biz Dickie D.

Dick DeBartolo (02:43:59):
Yes

Leo Laporte (02:43:59):
Sir. If you're watching the Podcast Network, our twit podcast network, Dick's gonna stick around and do what we Lovely call the Gizz. Fizz is his afternoon show coming up in just a few minutes on twi.tv. Thank you. Dickie

Dick DeBartolo (02:44:16):
D Thank you. So have fun in Vegas.

Leo Laporte (02:44:20):
Yes. I won't be here next week. Mike Sergeant will be filling in. You and Mike get along okay though, right?

Dick DeBartolo (02:44:24):
Oh, Mike is great. That

Leo Laporte (02:44:26):
Fus over is great.

Dick DeBartolo (02:44:28):
Oh, it is? Yeah. All in the

Leo Laporte (02:44:29):
Rear view mirror now.

Dick DeBartolo (02:44:31):
And he's starting to like you a little better. I straightened him out on you. A quirks <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:44:37):
So is that what you call him? Quirks? <laugh> Quirks. <laugh>. He didn't believe Dick was bald. He pulled on his head and he, He didn't believe I was I wasn't bald, so he pulled on my hair and I am. And that's just been a mess ever since. But we're working out the course.

Dick DeBartolo (02:44:55):
No, you guys are great together, by the way. I think you know

Leo Laporte (02:44:58):
That. Yeah. I love Micah. All right. Dicky d, have

Dick DeBartolo (02:45:00):
A great way. Okay buddy,

Leo Laporte (02:45:02):
You too, everybody. Hi tu gwiz.biz and play the, what the heck is it? Contester. I'm very curious about this. Explorer. I get calls, you probably heard on the radio show, we get calls all the time from parents who say, I wanna keep a track of my kids. I don't wanna buy 'em an iPhone. Is there an watch is very expensive. This might be a good solution. The Explorer, thank you Professor Laura, musical director for Spining the Tunes. Thank you to Kim Schaffer, our phone Angel. She's the one who answers the calls and gets you on the air. And thanks of course, most of all to all you for joining us each and every week for the Tech Guy program. I'll be back tomorrow again next week. I won't be here, but just for Saturday. Mic A Sergeant will be, I'll be back on Sunday. In the meanwhile, everything we talked about goes up on the website. Tech Guy labs.com, Tech ilab.com, including audio, video and a transcript plus all the links. That's free. No sign up tech guy labs.com. While you're there, you can see all the other shows I do for the Geek at heart all week long on our TWI podcast network. Leo LePort, the tech guy, have a great geek queen.

Leo Laporte (02:46:13):
Well, that's it for the Tech Guy Show for today. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget twit, T W I T. It stands for this week at Tech and you find it@twit.tv, including the podcasts for this show. We talk about Windows and Windows Weekly, Macintosh, a MacBreak Weekly iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches on iOS. Today's security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on. And of course, the big show every Sunday afternoon this week in tech. You'll find it all at twit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech guys show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.