GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 44, 12-3-09

[Kevin-PC Gurus]

Welcome to GuruNews



Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.

 

You can interact with the PC Guru team via our Web site, located at http://www.thepcgurus.com.  On our site you can post your computer questions, comments and rants on the forums, e-mail the PC Guru

team members and chat one on one in our nightly IRC chat beginning around 8:00 PM EDT.  You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds so you can get the latest news and forum updates from the PC Guru Web site directly on your computer.

 

If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin's website at http://www.jpdurbin.net.  There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.

 

The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region.  Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.

 

USS Rover’s list of streaming computer shows is now available for download in Excel, Open Office and Linux ready formats from http://sheet.zoho.com/public/ussrover/shows. 

 

To subscribe to this newsletter just drop by www.thepcgurus.com and sign up!

 

Vol. 9, No. 44                           

12-3-09

 

1 Week 1 of gadget tips: The expensive stuff  

2 We need all this?!?

3 Blue Hippo rolls over, Google hides, AOL still being sued, cooking miracle

4 Desktop decorations

5 Lost pictures

 

It’s December and the hunt is on.  22 days and counting to have everything purchased, wrapped and delivered before St. Nick slides down the old chimney and decimates the cookies and milk.

 

This year we’ll start off with the larger items that you’ll likely pick up first, followed by the more mid-range items and last the stocking stuffers.  That lineup seems to make the most sense.

 

EBook readers are huge this year for some obscure reason.  The most popular ones are made by Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble and are handy for carrying around multiple books in very little space.  Personally I would never use one of them but I can see the utility in some instances, especially for college students if their textbooks are available in electronic format.

 

Cameras are always big, and the “bridge” models are coming down a bit in price and offer some great features.  They’re called bridge models because they mix features from both the entry-level point-and-shoot types and the true digital SLRs.  When it comes to SLR bodies I leave that up to the photographer.

 

Canon, Nikon and Kodak, to name a few, make the mid-range units with features like 10MP or higher, monstrous zoom capabilities, multiple macro modes and more.  If you know someone who takes good pictures with a point-and-shoot then a bridge model would make a great gift.

 

Netbooks are still quite popular.  The small, lightweight “Internet appliances” are great for people who move around a lot and just need access to email and web browsing.  They can do more of course, but don’t expect them to stack up to a full-blown laptop in the raw power rating.

 

They lack optical drives but you can always load software by downloading it from the web or copying the installation CD to a folder on a flash drive.

 

Aside from Internet access they’re fine for light office work, like typing up Word documents.  I think these are great for students that like to take notes electronically.  Charge the unit, close to hibernate between classes and the battery should last all day.

 

Full-blown PCs and laptops are always an option, as well.  With Windows 7 now the standard (full review coming in January) it’s a better time to buy than we’ve seen for three years.

 

Some words of caution, however.  You get what you pay for, meaning a $399 PC is going to be worth about $399 when you take it out of the box.  Many ultra cheap units are just that, cheap.  If one PC were the same as any other then a Yugo would ride like a Cadillac.

 

Higher end PCs or custom units will get you better hardware, and customs from small local companies feature brand name hardware and offer much better tech support and warranty options.  I undoubtedly will be accused of bias here but I felt this way long before I got into the computer field as a career.

 

Speaking of PCs, I mentioned maintenance tips a couple of weeks ago.  To have the excuse requires a new hardware gift for Christmas (not really, but it’s a good segue ;)).  It’s hard to beat the latest, greatest video card can be a great gift for the gamer on your list.

 

This is going to be a much tougher gift to figure out, though.  To do it successfully you’ll need to know what they have now, what slot(s) they have available for video cards and any special options they’re using.  If they use SLI or Cross Fire then you would need to purchase two cards rather than one, and they would have to match the system specs more closely.

 

There are, of course, scads of other higher-end gifts you can come up with but these tips may get you thinking.  Hopefully they’ll be of some help.

 

Now go out and save the economy!

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

microdome at thepcgurus.com

 

 



Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

 

 

Tech News of the Week
 

Long time readers will probably get the most pleasure out of the first headline but all should enjoy the fact that Blue Hippo, the computer "distributor" that we battled long ago for their less than clean business practices and the fact that they weren't cutting anyone a deal on owning their own computer, has finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy:

http://tinyurl.com/ydvfhgv

Google has redesigned it's iconic search page by fading out everything but the Google logo, the search box, and the buttons.  Moving your mouse around makes all the other links and things that were showing up on the homepage originally fade in and become accessible.  Check it out:

http://www.google.com
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont.html (news release on the feature)

Even though AOL is in the process of being spun off from Time-Warner, there are still lawsuits pending contesting the 2001 merger of the two companies and the business practices of the companies at the time.  A judge this week dismissed the last of these that were outstanding:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/02/aol-time-warner-lawsuit-dismissed/

T-Fal has introduced a "fryer" that takes a spoon full of oil which then proceeds to fry 2 lbs. of french fries.  Oh what technology can do these days:

http://tinyurl.com/yhmdhou 

Keep us in the loop on the best you find on the web!

Daniel A. Williams

daniel at thepcgurus.com

 

 

Download of the Week


Does your PC need some holiday decorating?  Softpedia has screensavers and holiday decorations available as free downloads.  We can recommend these because Softpedia certifies the downloads to be free of unwanted adware and malware.  Check out the offerings here: 

 

http://tinyurl.com/yf3qvk2

 

and here: 

 

http://tinyurl.com/THEGURUS 

 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com 

 

 

Email Question of the Week
 

Q:  I have lost my entire "My pictures" folder, except the very first file -- it contains 2 pics out of about 25 that were originally in it.. Is there any way that I can get them back. I have a few of them backed up on CD's, but not all of them. Do you have any suggestions?

 

A:  You can try.  You'll need a flash drive or external hard drive to write the files to and a program to "undelete" the files.  Something like PC Inspector File Recover from http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1.  Just choose your My Pictures folder (or whatever it is) as the source and the external drive as the target.  Probably best to make a folder on the external drive just to keep things neat.

 

Hope that helps and keep us posted...

 

Kevin Mefford

microdome at thepcgurus.com

 

 

Contact info and legal stuff
 

If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the “Email the Team” icon. 

  

Copyright 2001-2009 The PC Gurus, all rights reserved.  Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.

 

Information provided in this publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.  Although the information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL systems.  Make use of any information supplied at your own risk.

 

The PC Gurus are a group of volunteers who provide support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the Kentuckiana region.

 

To unsubscribe from this newsletter visit http://thepcgurus.com/mailman/listinfo/newsletter_thepcgurus.com or send an email to microdome at seidata.com with the words “unsubscribe newsletter” (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message.

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.thepcgurus.com/pipermail/newsletter_thepcgurus.com/attachments/20091203/8c66503d/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 32422 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.thepcgurus.com/pipermail/newsletter_thepcgurus.com/attachments/20091203/8c66503d/attachment.jpe>