Speaker 1: The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. Hi,
Speaker 1: this is Adrian Barbo. You're listening to tech Talk Radio
Speaker 1: and you're gonna learn a lot. Welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 2: I'm a D. Taylor.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Sean de Weird and I'm justin Lemme lot
Speaker 1: going on in the world of tech. We're one week
Speaker 1: away from Windows ten support ending, and it seems to
Speaker 1: you like every everywhere you look, every broadcast, news channel,
Speaker 1: every feed on tech blogs is all talking about this.
Speaker 1: How Windows eleven if you haven't upgraded yet, you got
Speaker 1: to upgrade. And you know, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: fear or whatnot, but Microsoft keeps making some changes too
Speaker 1: along the way, fighting these people who are trying to
Speaker 1: hold on to Windows ten.
Speaker 3: The frustration I've seen is that they've just kind of
Speaker 3: blanket statement said we're done, and they've made it seem
Speaker 3: like nobody's gonna support Windows ten forever again. Or you
Speaker 3: could pay the thirty dollars for the non proversion or
Speaker 3: the sixty dollars for the pro version to get in
Speaker 3: their year, and then I'm sure you're able to pay
Speaker 3: as the years go on, pay some more money. To
Speaker 3: keep support. But what I've seen is corporations that security
Speaker 3: is a big deal, that's just important. But you've seen
Speaker 3: it from large corporations just go every Windows ten machine's gone.
Speaker 3: I've seen pictures on Reddit and stuff of paletts of
Speaker 3: Windows ten machines just being shipped out and surplussed, and
Speaker 3: some of them are running I nines with sixty four
Speaker 3: gigs of ramp. I've been seeing people salvaging these from
Speaker 3: corporations that are getting rid of all these Windows te
Speaker 3: machines that are really good machines. One piece of it
Speaker 3: can't support Windows ten or Windows eleven, or they just
Speaker 3: are wholesalling all these computers to get new machines that
Speaker 3: support Windows eleven. I just don't understand the mass, fleeting,
Speaker 3: panic and leaving of Windows.
Speaker 1: Ten justin you're in it, Like, how does an organization
Speaker 1: look at this to try and to deal with this?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I've just I've just been slowly but
Speaker 4: surely just removing Windows ten from any computer that I
Speaker 4: possibly can. You know, when it comes up to it.
Speaker 4: We do have some point of sale machines that running
Speaker 4: Windows ten, but we actually paid Microsoft for extended support
Speaker 4: so we can have those machines supported with all the
Speaker 4: updates for I want to say it's probably twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty eight, maybe, I think so, we've got a
Speaker 4: couple more years of support on those. But yeah, if
Speaker 4: it's like an end user computer, I'm just nope, sorry,
Speaker 4: you're running Windows eleven. But how far away are we
Speaker 4: from Windows eleven be an end of support. I mean,
Speaker 4: they haven't even announced Windows twelve yet. Usually they've got
Speaker 4: before they end support on one, they've got one out,
Speaker 4: another one out, and then one announced and on the way.
Speaker 4: They haven't even said anything about Windows twelve.
Speaker 1: We've heard little bits like Windows twelve will do this,
Speaker 1: we'll do that, it will.
Speaker 2: Be cool, it will be good.
Speaker 1: And in the timeline of Microsoft, how you look at
Speaker 1: how they distribute their versions of software, it should be
Speaker 1: the one that is really good. That's got to get
Speaker 1: people concerned too, is you know, Microsoft suddenly going to say, well, sorry,
Speaker 1: you can't use it anymore, We're not going to do
Speaker 1: the updates. And that's the frustration for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I can pay thirty dollars and then I
Speaker 1: get the updates for another year, or I can back
Speaker 1: up my one drive and then people go, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, why don't you just give me the security
Speaker 1: updates so I.
Speaker 2: Can run ten anyways? You know why not?
Speaker 1: Even the Federal Trade Commission is saying, well, wait a minute, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? They've started to question some of
Speaker 1: the madness behind all of this. People are kind of upset.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I can see, I can understand why
Speaker 4: people are upset, and you know, we might touch upon
Speaker 4: them up later on the show. But Microsoft is making
Speaker 4: all kinds of mistakes right now. I mean with Xbox
Speaker 4: Game Pass and everything else. I mean, they're just they're
Speaker 4: really screwing the pooch here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: One of the things though, okay, for security sake, two
Speaker 1: PPM two point zero Secure boot. They say it will
Speaker 1: bring a more secure environment for somebody. You know, we
Speaker 1: were able to install rufous on this machine, which is
Speaker 1: just one generation short of making the Windows eleven I
Speaker 1: have a TPM two point zero, the whole bit, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't it wouldn't allow it. So we went ahead
Speaker 1: and went the rufous route and got Windows eleven installed.
Speaker 1: But for the sake of security, wouldn't it make sense?
Speaker 1: Though most people should have that kind of security enabled
Speaker 1: to be able to really benefit from from that. I'm
Speaker 1: not really sold on TPM, the TBM architecture, no matter
Speaker 1: one point oh, two point oh whatever, three point zero tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sold on it.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the pressure for TPM two
Speaker 3: point zero is coming from it's a hardware module that exists, right,
Speaker 3: and you're seeing a lot of the anti cheats having
Speaker 3: to be installed at the bios or the root level
Speaker 3: of your machine.
Speaker 2: We were talking anti cheat, you're talking about video games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, video game anti cheat, right, It's a big problem
Speaker 3: in the gaming industry, and that's been the big push
Speaker 3: for it is game are requiring you to have TPM
Speaker 3: two point zero installed to run their games.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Activisions Activision apparently has said, which is owned by Microsoft.
Speaker 1: Activision claims ninety seven percent of cheaters it catches and
Speaker 1: called it duty Black Ops seven are banned within thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: and they say it's all because of secure boot and ricochet.
Speaker 1: They say that they actually check if you want to
Speaker 1: play the game. To be able to play the game,
Speaker 1: you have to have TPM two point zero and you
Speaker 1: have to have secure boot. If you at hont have
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna be able to play. Battlefield six
Speaker 1: apparently also requires secure boot as well, so that that
Speaker 1: actually means that a lot of people who want to
Speaker 1: play that maybe aren't even on that platform, are not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to play.
Speaker 3: My problem.
Speaker 4: My problem right with the whole TPM or you know,
Speaker 4: the easy NCHET or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 4: You're you're allowing a kernel level access to your machine.
Speaker 4: If and that that is a massive mass a security flaw.
Speaker 4: If anybody ever finds a way to get into and
Speaker 4: exploit TPM or exploit secure boot or anything like that,
Speaker 4: it is going to destroy millions of computers instantly. Don't
Speaker 4: ever allow kernel level access to anything. If they're saying, oh,
Speaker 4: this is for video games, there are so many people
Speaker 4: out there that don't play video games.
Speaker 1: Why do I need TPM? I don't play video games
Speaker 1: if I mean personally I do. But I'm saying, as
Speaker 1: a person who doesn't play video games, why would they
Speaker 1: need TPM. It just doesn't make any sense. I just
Speaker 1: don't agree with it. Like they say, Oh, it's going
Speaker 1: to protect you, it's secure, it's secure.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sean, you were mentioning something earlier though that Microsoft
Speaker 1: is continuing kind of it's push you know. Of course
Speaker 1: they'll give you the access to be able to continue
Speaker 1: to run Windows ten and get the security updates if
Speaker 1: you allow it to back up to one drive. The
Speaker 1: downside to that, to ask me, is is that you know, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with that? The problem is one drive only
Speaker 1: has a certain a limit when it comes to capacity
Speaker 1: for the for the free one drive, if you signed
Speaker 1: up five gig five gig, So if you go be
Speaker 1: on five gig, which you've experienced before, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to pay for that storage.
Speaker 2: So either way you may end up paying paying out money.
Speaker 3: It's just it's confusing to use and end users, right.
Speaker 3: I helped my father in law build his Windows eleven machine,
Speaker 3: and I tried to do it without without what. I
Speaker 3: tried to do it with the no pass command line
Speaker 3: piece that that you know that's been floating around. Didn't work.
Speaker 3: I had to create account. It created an account. Then
Speaker 3: he started to move his deveover from flash drives and
Speaker 3: then he called me and said says, I'm out of storage.
Speaker 3: I was like, bro, you just got a two gig
Speaker 3: tear two terriby driving there. How are you out of space?
Speaker 3: Well says I only have five gigs And as soon
Speaker 3: as you said that I do, it was one drive.
Speaker 3: So I'm just I'm frustrated about that, just like a
Speaker 3: lot of other people are that it's forcing you to
Speaker 3: create these these Microsoft accounts, like why, oh, it just
Speaker 3: serves me ads, it's.
Speaker 2: To get my data their AI.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's just I don't have the disceassity like
Speaker 3: the platforms in place that go Linux everything. I would
Speaker 3: love to. It's just there are certain things that I
Speaker 3: need Windows for. I have a couple of macs that
Speaker 3: I use and I would love to go Linux, and
Speaker 3: but I just you know, would have to get Caitlin
Speaker 3: on board with that. I'd have to. But this, I
Speaker 3: just don't want the bloat that comes with it, and
Speaker 3: tying it to a Microsoft account, it just it ties
Speaker 3: you it. I don't know, it's just frustrating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, people have to understand there are
Speaker 1: options and that's the thing to And I've noticed I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's just me, but it seems like
Speaker 1: Apple has been kind of I don't say slashing the prices,
Speaker 1: but it noticed that some of the pricing on their
Speaker 1: you know, MacBooks and and that type of thing seems
Speaker 1: to be a little more affordable.
Speaker 3: And their prices have come down right for their entry
Speaker 3: level right. And the big part of one of their
Speaker 3: releases I think earlier this year was upping the base
Speaker 3: level of RAM and their MacBooks to sixteen gig because
Speaker 3: they had been at eight for a long time, and
Speaker 3: they finally bumped up to sixteen for their minimum state.
Speaker 3: Like there, you can't get anything with less than sixteen.
Speaker 3: But with their M chips right and their development of
Speaker 3: their own M chips, they've been able to significantly drop
Speaker 3: the prices on their Mac Mini models, their iMac models,
Speaker 3: their MacBook models, things like that. So you can build
Speaker 3: a decent PC for five six hundred bucks that can
Speaker 3: do a lot of things. You'd be hard pressed to
Speaker 3: find a computer that can compete with, say like an
Speaker 3: M four Macmini for five ninety nine. If you were
Speaker 3: into the types of things you would use a Mac
Speaker 3: Mini for video editing, video processing, photo processing, photo editing,
Speaker 3: those types of things. You'd be better off building a
Speaker 3: PC if you want to do gaming that type of stuff.
Speaker 3: Because the Steam libraries are more, there's more Steam stuff.
Speaker 3: The more Steam sport or build a Linux machine. Windows
Speaker 3: or Linux is going to be better for gaming than
Speaker 3: a Mac. But gaming on Mac is coming along. It
Speaker 3: just hasn't always been there. But their prices are very
Speaker 3: competitive on their desktop models.
Speaker 1: Okay, So say somebody listening to the show right now
Speaker 1: is saying, okay, I have a Windows seven computer. Originally
Speaker 1: I updated it to ten and I've used it and
Speaker 1: it's been great. But now you know, there's no way
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to go to to
Speaker 1: you know, Windows eleven. What are the steps they would
Speaker 1: need to do if they decide maybe I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and put Linux on this machine.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it a difficult process.
Speaker 3: No, no, it's not a difficult process. I will make
Speaker 3: a comment though, if you're going from seven to ten
Speaker 3: and you use your license to go to ten from seven,
Speaker 3: that license from ten is good to go to eleven,
Speaker 3: you can get that license will get you to eleven.
Speaker 3: So I don't want people to be like, oh I
Speaker 3: have to I have to go out and buy a
Speaker 3: copy of Windows eleven. If you want to upgrade to
Speaker 3: pro or a different version, yes, then you need to
Speaker 3: buy a license, But or ten license is good for
Speaker 3: a license for what is loving with the same version
Speaker 3: of Windows.
Speaker 1: So if you're bernal, if you're running Windows seven though Box,
Speaker 1: it probably is not gonna have the TPM two point zero,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna have the secure boot.
Speaker 2: You know, it's r.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna have anything. I mean, if you're running
Speaker 1: a Windows seven or if you bought it or built
Speaker 1: it at a Windows seven, the hardware is so out
Speaker 1: of date anyway, it's time to build a new computer,
Speaker 1: right And that's what a lot of people are gonna
Speaker 1: have to make that decision, you know, building and they
Speaker 1: have what a less than a week now to get
Speaker 1: that done.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean like if some people, is my Windows
Speaker 1: ten machine not gonna work on the fifteenth, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're gonna get a lot of people
Speaker 3: that are going to have that that fear tactic of
Speaker 3: coming out and saying your tech Windows ten machine is
Speaker 3: gonna quit. I've gotten that from some of my elder
Speaker 3: family members. Oh hey, I know you're the computer guy,
Speaker 3: but it's saying that it's going to be out of sports.
Speaker 3: Is it going to stop working? No, it just means
Speaker 3: that you're not going to get security updates for it.
Speaker 3: Here's a process you can give to just convincing people
Speaker 3: that the computer boogeyman is not out to eat your
Speaker 3: Windows ten machines.
Speaker 1: I ended up posing one of my machines, and I'll
Speaker 1: admit it, I really I did. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the heck I did. So I have an ass board,
Speaker 1: I have a machine, uh, and I went ahead. Luckily
Speaker 1: I made a copy of my SSD that had and
Speaker 1: this is the one one of I have two computers
Speaker 1: that both have the Adobe Suite on them, the one
Speaker 1: that I cannot reinstall because it's you know, no, they
Speaker 1: don't have the service activated.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to mess with those.
Speaker 1: But this machine, I wanted to see if I could
Speaker 1: do an in place upgrade, so I made a copy
Speaker 1: using a docking station and I've checked it.
Speaker 2: Copy works great.
Speaker 1: Then stupid me decided to go into the bios and
Speaker 1: start messing around with UEFI and start trying to adjust
Speaker 1: it so I could get it ready for updating it
Speaker 1: to Windows eleven and doing trying to do an in
Speaker 1: place upgrade.
Speaker 2: And when I.
Speaker 1: Finally got it to when I did all these changes
Speaker 1: to the bios, I put the drive in to you know,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Okay, let's just give this a shot. And
Speaker 1: I got the error message the windloader was having a problem,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, what did I do? So I
Speaker 1: took the original SSD put that in same thing. I
Speaker 1: get the blue It's like a blue screen, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it got got some problems here. So
Speaker 1: and I can't figure out. This is why I take
Speaker 1: pictures of everything I do. Can't figure out what I
Speaker 1: changed in the bios to get it to get back
Speaker 1: so I could boot up to that. I was able
Speaker 1: to with another drive I installed just a test. I
Speaker 1: was able to install Windows eleven on it and do
Speaker 1: it that way. But once up with this other drive,
Speaker 1: and I can't. I can't do it.
Speaker 3: So I think I know why.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: So if you changed it to secure boot and your
Speaker 3: drive is set for Master Boot Record or NBR, it
Speaker 3: will not it will not read the drive. Well you
Speaker 3: once your once your once your bios is set for
Speaker 3: u f I to secure boot TP two point zero.
Speaker 3: If you change it to secure boot, it physic it
Speaker 3: your hard d. Your your hard drive is invisible if
Speaker 3: it's if it's formatted as an m BR, it is
Speaker 3: invisible to your machine period. Right, the only way to
Speaker 3: fix it is to format it for gpt AT, which
Speaker 3: I don't want to do, which you don't want to do.
Speaker 3: So if you want to get data off of it,
Speaker 3: I suggest you put it into an external doc copy
Speaker 3: it over from there if you want to, because it
Speaker 3: would be a USB drive or whatever be able to
Speaker 3: read it as an external drive versus an internal source drive.
Speaker 3: If you're trying to boot from it.
Speaker 2: You can't go back though.
Speaker 1: I can't go back and just say okay, forget it,
Speaker 1: just go back with the original Windows ten and saw
Speaker 1: that I had on it. Mmm, probably not, so I'd
Speaker 1: have to buy another board that isn't set for that
Speaker 1: yet and hopefully it would.
Speaker 3: Well, you can, you can. You could change it back
Speaker 3: in the bios back to turn cabot off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then this is what I ran into with one
Speaker 3: of my work machines that didn't support this is the
Speaker 3: one that bricked the BIOS when I did this is
Speaker 3: it was trying to read a MBR drive and it
Speaker 3: locked up the BIOS and then in corrupted the BIOS
Speaker 3: and I had to flash the BIOS back to yeah version.
Speaker 1: I tried doing a BIO easy flash on it on
Speaker 1: it to see if I could if that made a difference,
Speaker 1: and it didn't. So yeah, gonna that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: project this weekend.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But yeah, so I think that's something that it's
Speaker 3: going to confuse some people because a lot of older
Speaker 3: machines that were set for legacy bios before. Because U
Speaker 3: if I've been out for a while, right when, it's confusing,
Speaker 3: because everybody in the computer world calls it bios, right,
Speaker 3: It's just what it's been called for as long as
Speaker 3: I've been playing with computers. Technically now it's called uf I. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's not bios. Bios and uf I are two separate things,
Speaker 3: but they are all the pre boot function. So it's
Speaker 3: like everybody's calls it bios. So sometimes if you call
Speaker 3: it bios, it may not actually mean what you think
Speaker 3: it means, but it can be confusing. I'm still gonna
Speaker 3: everybody is. I'm just putting that out there. So like
Speaker 3: if we're talking about bios and we're talking about Windows eleven,
Speaker 3: we're likely talking about UFI, but we're saying bios.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I might just try every setting take
Speaker 1: photos of every time I do anything any change, just
Speaker 1: to try and figure it out. But yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: one thing. It wasn't being identified at all. And then
Speaker 1: I did one other change and then it was coming
Speaker 1: up saying it was having a problem with the windloader.
Speaker 2: I did notice that Rufus does have the ability to.
Speaker 1: Install Windows eleven to an MBR, which that was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that's good, so you don't have to do you know,
Speaker 1: GPTU install on that. It will install to an MBR,
Speaker 1: which is good.
Speaker 3: That would allow you to that would allow you to
Speaker 3: boot without secure boot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and do the uh in place upgrade. So we'll
Speaker 1: just have to see what has happened. I just don't
Speaker 1: want to again. I'm keeping these drives put aside because
Speaker 1: I don't want to touch.
Speaker 2: I don't want to mess with them.
Speaker 3: So to circle back to your original question, Yeah, h
Speaker 3: what would it takes for somebody to install Linux? Right?
Speaker 3: There are a handful of flavors of Linux, so you
Speaker 3: can get out there right. The popular ones would be
Speaker 3: like up on two or Linux Mint or a handful
Speaker 3: of other distributions. To go to Linux Mint, just google it,
Speaker 3: download it, flash it with rufus or Yummy or any
Speaker 3: of the other Blena etcher any of those and if
Speaker 3: you know how to get into your bios or hear you,
Speaker 3: if I pick that drive as your boot, install it
Speaker 3: and you can download it and be installed in fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty minutes of it.
Speaker 2: Ye yeah, yeah, all right cool. I like that.
Speaker 1: We do have listener questions this week, but we also
Speaker 1: want to cover some of the other announcements that have
Speaker 1: been made. And speaking of Linux, Sean, you were talking
Speaker 1: earlier a pre show, we were talking about Linux and distributions.
Speaker 1: I know, originally not long ago, I had tried win
Speaker 1: boon to and I liked it. It was a good experience. Again,
Speaker 1: it's for those that really want to have that Windows look.
Speaker 1: I mean even the screen looked like a Windows, you
Speaker 1: know Windows screen. We showed it on television and they
Speaker 1: were all commenting, that looks like Windows. It was win
Speaker 1: Boon too, and then it wasn't long after that though,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of people saying, no, you don't
Speaker 1: want to use that one. And now there's one that
Speaker 1: people are saying called win x wi n ux. But
Speaker 1: actually Boonto has got something new coming out and they've
Speaker 1: got a really good name for it, which I love.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Ubuntu is always they hear. I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: read off to these if I say things like Wardy
Speaker 3: Wardhog or Breezy Badger or Feisty Fon like those are
Speaker 3: all released names for versions of Ubuntu Linux. And their
Speaker 3: new version is coming out April of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: so they just announced it and it's called the Resolute Raccoon.
Speaker 3: So that is the current that is the new name
Speaker 3: for Linux twenty six point zero four.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So if it's just kind of a fun
Speaker 3: thing to go back and look at it, and it
Speaker 3: can go all the way back if you go to
Speaker 3: just google it, you can find all the Linux names,
Speaker 3: but all the way from four point one to zero.
Speaker 3: At least this webpage hasn't listed. But it's Wardy Warhog.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some other really fun ones that disc
Speaker 3: what is it, wreck something raccoon, Resolute raccoon.
Speaker 2: Resolute raccoon.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: I have to tell you.
Speaker 1: On feedback that we got from some some of the
Speaker 1: videos we have put on YouTube shorts. You can watch
Speaker 1: our videos just look for a YouTube page tech talk Radio,
Speaker 1: but also on TikTok we had posted where we were
Speaker 1: talking about drive aware and that's a software program you
Speaker 1: can purchase and it will check your computer for you know,
Speaker 1: outdated drivers can do the updates. You mean driver easy,
Speaker 1: driver easy, I keep calling you drive aware. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, what is driver driver easy easy? Yes, driver easy,
Speaker 1: that's the one I keep calling the other thing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So I had posted the video and we had some
Speaker 1: good comments, This is cool, this is cool. But then
Speaker 1: we started getting the comments with like, you're putting malware
Speaker 1: on your computer. Uh. The guy that there's a guy
Speaker 1: here at the station that is a Linux pro and
Speaker 1: he said, oh, don't do that. He said, that's absolute malware, spyware.
Speaker 1: They're spying on you the whole bet. I I went
Speaker 1: ahead and I ran after I installed the driver easy,
Speaker 1: I got it right this time. I went ahead and
Speaker 1: installed malware bytes towards and I wanted to see what
Speaker 1: does malware bytes pick up? Didn't pick up a thing.
Speaker 4: I use not even just malware bytes. Now, malware bytes
Speaker 4: is consumer level, off the shelf, you know, standard malware software.
Speaker 4: I use malware bytes threat Down, which is their elite
Speaker 4: pro level all in one detection and remedy system with
Speaker 4: actual case managers that are alerted when there's something that
Speaker 4: pops up on your computer and they resolve it remotely
Speaker 4: without even having to have you be user interaction. And
Speaker 4: I pay thirty thousand dollars a year for this.
Speaker 2: This is for the corporate side of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of malware bytes threat down and it does not
Speaker 4: pick up anything when I put driver easy on the computer.
Speaker 4: So whatever this person is saying, there's a few Yeah.
Speaker 3: The stuff that I read because we've talked about this
Speaker 3: when I stalled R and I said that some people had.
Speaker 3: I saw the comments on our sorts and a lot
Speaker 3: of people are just saying, oh, it's a third party,
Speaker 3: it's not affiliated with Windows. Just to use the Windows
Speaker 3: Driver Update tool. If the Windows Update tool found the
Speaker 3: fourteen missing drivers that I had that helped stabilize my machine, fine, great, right,
Speaker 3: but do your job Windows or I won't have to
Speaker 3: go get third party software to do it for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: These are just Linux.
Speaker 4: These are Linux geeks that are just like everything's Linux
Speaker 4: and there's as soon as you mentioned Windows are just
Speaker 4: like ugh clubs.
Speaker 3: Now, okay, So those people that say that third party
Speaker 3: software can be vulnerable malware stuff, right, that's there's a
Speaker 3: history of platforms being delivered with malware, right, that's just
Speaker 3: a security issue that you just pay attention and if
Speaker 3: you see it, get rid of it.
Speaker 2: It's a non issue. Don't even listen to that. It's
Speaker 2: just elitist.
Speaker 3: Is this elitists that are just saying, oh, I don't
Speaker 3: use that, so you can't use it because I said so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I went, I went ahead and bought it
Speaker 1: after the show and ran it and yeah, it found
Speaker 1: something like seven teen drivers that were not installed that
Speaker 1: it could update my system with.
Speaker 2: And then you know, I was reading some of the
Speaker 2: comments and let me, let me check out malware bites.
Speaker 2: Put it on here.
Speaker 1: My subscription that I have to Semantec is going to
Speaker 1: be ending, uh in December.
Speaker 2: So because I.
Speaker 1: Were you paid, I paid for a year ahead, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to be switching to Malwura Bites.
Speaker 1: Everybody's been telling me that. And it's been so frustrating
Speaker 1: with Semantic because I get pop ups all the time
Speaker 1: that hey, by this, let us check this.
Speaker 2: I not.
Speaker 4: I've hated Semantek for probably close to well over a decade.
Speaker 4: I've hated Semantek.
Speaker 2: Well they've they've been on the show before and they'd
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 1: You know, the product we looked at it was Hey,
Speaker 1: it was good for what it did, but they've gone
Speaker 1: off and branched into so many different directions that I
Speaker 1: just I I'm frustrated with it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I am getting pop ups with Malura bites to buy
Speaker 1: more things. But again again that's because I haven't paid
Speaker 1: for it yet. As soon as I pay for it,
Speaker 1: I hope those go away.
Speaker 3: Well that's one of the big that's one of the
Speaker 3: biggest complaints about any third party software is there. They
Speaker 3: want your money. They are going to aggressively upsell you
Speaker 3: until you pay for a premium version. You are gonna
Speaker 3: get pop ups, so you're gonna get notifications, you're gonna
Speaker 3: get emails, you're gonna get phone calls, text messages, regular mail.
Speaker 3: Like you're gonna get it off from them because they
Speaker 3: want your business. But it doesn't mean that the product stinks.
Speaker 3: It's just they're salespeople trying to sell you something.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're gonna take a break. We come back.
Speaker 1: We've got a question about a webcam, so they want
Speaker 1: to know our thoughts on webcams. We'll tell you the
Speaker 1: situation when we come back with more of tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor.
Speaker 3: I'm Sean de Weird and I'm justin.
Speaker 2: Let me be right back. Now back to TIK Talk Radio.
Speaker 4: All right, now we're back with a listener question. This
Speaker 4: one comes from Mary in Green Valley. I'm thinking about
Speaker 4: getting a webcam to talk with my sister who lives
Speaker 4: in Florida. I said we could FaceTime we both have iPhones,
Speaker 4: but she wants to do this over the computer. I
Speaker 4: need to get a webcam? Do I need to get
Speaker 4: a webcam for my computer? Any recommendations and the easiest
Speaker 4: way to do this is Skype still a thing? Well,
Speaker 4: first off, no, Skype is not a thing. Skype has
Speaker 4: been shut down about oOoOO.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got replaced.
Speaker 3: By crappy teams. Get out of here. Microsoft is the
Speaker 3: worst teams. They had such a good platform. I just
Speaker 3: don't get it. They had such a good platform with Skype.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was I had a Skype account
Speaker 3: from I think two thousand and four. Yeah, when I
Speaker 3: was in high school, we had a Skype account and
Speaker 3: then we used Skype for everything. Had the best little latency.
Speaker 3: But that's that's not the point.
Speaker 2: But boo, yeah, so you know you can't use Skype.
Speaker 4: You'd have to use teams or zoom.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if Google meat is even a thing.
Speaker 2: Any think Google Google still does you can.
Speaker 3: Do Google meat still, but I mean if to do
Speaker 3: it straightforwardly face like you said FaceTime in your question, right,
Speaker 3: that's still obviously the best thing if you have two iPhones,
Speaker 3: But to do it on a computer, it's harder without
Speaker 3: a platform.
Speaker 2: Like, honestly, I.
Speaker 1: Don't even know why you'd want to do this with
Speaker 1: a computer. I mean, like, if you've got phones that
Speaker 1: do FaceTime, why why would why would you want to
Speaker 1: sit there with a computer and be sitting when like
Speaker 1: you can walk around with your device and be doing FaceTime.
Speaker 4: I just personally I don't get it. But that's your
Speaker 4: sister you're talking about, So to answer your.
Speaker 1: Question, maybe she's thinking that she'd have to hold the
Speaker 1: iPhone the whole time.
Speaker 2: You know, you could get it. They have mounts.
Speaker 1: They could actually go on your computer screen. You can
Speaker 1: just attach it to the side of the screen and boom,
Speaker 1: it's on there. That's actually that might even be a
Speaker 1: better way to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I just feel like you're taking so many
Speaker 3: more steps to try to do it on a computer,
Speaker 3: like you like Johnson said, you have to have a platform.
Speaker 3: It's got to be Discord. It's got to be Zoom.
Speaker 2: It's got to be Discord doesn't even do oh yeah
Speaker 2: it does, it does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. They do vidego, but this complicated. Then
Speaker 3: you got to make an account and then you gotta
Speaker 3: doss webcam.
Speaker 1: So Mary doesn't have a webcam. So it sounds to
Speaker 1: me like her situation is going to be the most
Speaker 1: easiest possible. So out of those out of teams Zoom, Uh,
Speaker 1: what else is there?
Speaker 2: Google?
Speaker 3: Do you feel like you're just depreciating the value of
Speaker 3: the video call by trying to move it to a
Speaker 3: Windows platform. If you both have face time, that's going
Speaker 3: to be the superior experience there.
Speaker 4: You go, all right, Yeah, seriously, I mean I think
Speaker 4: I think you just need to tell your sister no,
Speaker 4: we're going to stay with FaceTime.
Speaker 2: Honestly.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it's just going to work. It's
Speaker 3: the FaceTime platform is so good for people that are
Speaker 3: in the iOS ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Now, even even if you're not an iOS, maybe you
Speaker 1: have an Android and the sister has an iPhone, you
Speaker 1: could still do FaceTime. Yep, yeah, you can do. They
Speaker 1: fixed that on a couple of releases ago. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of cool, all right. So say she has to
Speaker 1: get a webcam, what is going to be the best
Speaker 1: option for her?
Speaker 2: I mean all of them have it.
Speaker 1: Elgado's got them, Logitech of course.
Speaker 2: What's going to be the best route for her to go?
Speaker 3: I mean you're gonna be able to go to best Buy,
Speaker 3: any big, any chain store and walk in and come
Speaker 3: out and come out with a twenty five dollars webcam
Speaker 3: that's going to look good. Yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 3: get one that's you can get them for under fifteen
Speaker 3: bucks probably if you really wanted to, but you're gonna
Speaker 3: pay for if you're looking for one that just as
Speaker 3: video no fun features, no lights, no bells and whistles,
Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty bucks, I bet from Walmart or best
Speaker 3: Buy or wherever your local grocery store is. They all
Speaker 3: have them now. But if you're looking for one that
Speaker 3: has good quality four K a microphone attached to it, right,
Speaker 3: because if you're if you're looking to talk without a
Speaker 3: headset and a microphone like we're doing on the show,
Speaker 3: that's a whole other level of cost. Right, Because if
Speaker 3: you pay go for a cheap one. You're not gonna
Speaker 3: sell very good, You're not gonna look very good.
Speaker 2: And then if if you.
Speaker 3: Don't have speakers on your computer, then what now you
Speaker 3: gotta buy speakers or if you have a laptop that
Speaker 3: built in speakers. Right, So it's like again going back
Speaker 3: to the very first part of the question, is like
Speaker 3: if you already have two phones and you can pair
Speaker 3: it with your earbuds or your aar pods or whatever, like,
Speaker 3: I just think you're going down a rabbit hole. That's
Speaker 3: gonna just cause you a lot of pain and misery. Yep,
Speaker 3: for a experience you can already do with your phone.
Speaker 3: That's mobile. That's mobile. The camera's going to look better,
Speaker 3: the sounds going to be better. You can do it
Speaker 3: from anywhere. You don't have to be tied to your computer.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, Google the best Buy. I asked the
Speaker 3: guy at the front desk, Hey, I need a webcam.
Speaker 3: He'll point you to the webcams. Spend as much or
Speaker 3: as little as you want if you want to get
Speaker 3: a webcam. But I just don't see why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the best the best solution, you're honestly mary, is
Speaker 1: if you if you're both using iPhones to make it easy.
Speaker 2: Just use the FaceTime and that's going to be the best.
Speaker 1: And if it's one of those things where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want her to call me when I'm shopping,
Speaker 1: so I'll only want to use it while we're sitting
Speaker 1: at the computer, that could be one thing that just
Speaker 1: set up a time, just say, you know, we'll set
Speaker 1: up a time for this.
Speaker 3: But if if you're already in the with the Mac ecosystem,
Speaker 3: or if you already have a Mac, FaceTime works on
Speaker 3: the Mac also, right, so you don't have to just
Speaker 3: use your phone. Your sister could be on your on
Speaker 3: your phone and you could be on your computer or
Speaker 3: vice versa or iPad or Mac Minnie or an iMac.
Speaker 3: They all work with FaceTime, so you can receive calls
Speaker 3: from many of those. You can start the call, and
Speaker 3: the call from any of those devices, text messages all
Speaker 3: through the you know, adding your ICoD account to those
Speaker 3: devices works really great. And most most of the Mac
Speaker 3: most of the MacBooks have cameras built in. So again
Speaker 3: if you're looking for like if you have an iMac
Speaker 3: or a Mac Minie, some of those may or may
Speaker 3: not have I don't think the I'm all the imas
Speaker 3: have webcams in them. Some do, some don't. The Mac
Speaker 3: Minis obviously don't, the Mac studios don't. Then you can
Speaker 3: buy a webcam, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they'll sell Apple products. Sean.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, they makes a point though, because you
Speaker 1: can have an iPhone to a MacBook and that could work, right, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: So that would be good too. Speaking of that, Sean
Speaker 1: was telling a story earlier.
Speaker 2: We seem to be key.
Speaker 1: We hear a lot about settlements when it comes to
Speaker 1: the tech world. Somebody gets upset, somebody starts a class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit, and then they go ahead and anybody who
Speaker 1: bought that product or use the services could get a settlement,
Speaker 1: and there have been talks about people who've been upset
Speaker 1: with Adobe. Of course, Adobe just announced another price I
Speaker 1: guess a price increase from its light Room package that
Speaker 1: I think is going to go from nine dollars ninety
Speaker 1: nine cents up to fifteen dollars a month for those
Speaker 1: that when you use it, people who've been using the
Speaker 1: software that was supposed to be in perpetuity that you
Speaker 1: bought you know, creative Suite like I did, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden. You can't use it anymore because you
Speaker 1: can't get it, we can't reinstall it. When people now
Speaker 1: taking this dip in the Windows eleven, it's kind of
Speaker 1: what I went through. Uh, people have talked class action there.
Speaker 1: We don't know if that's ever gonna happen, but you
Speaker 1: found one. This is regarding memory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I got the I got a notice in
Speaker 3: the mail and it just says on the front it's
Speaker 3: a you know, this is from d DDR four and
Speaker 3: DDR five desktop memory speed settlement. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I'll bite. It's just to me hat all this information
Speaker 3: on it. Apparently a settlement has been reached in a
Speaker 3: class action lawsuit against Course their gaming, alleging it violated
Speaker 3: the law and connection with advertised speeds on some of
Speaker 3: its DDR four and DDR five non laptop memory products.
Speaker 3: So I was like, wait, when did I buy RAM from?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: That's right. I wanted to play the Battlefield Open beta.
Speaker 2: That's right up.
Speaker 3: So this was only like two or three months ago
Speaker 3: and I didn't have enough Oh sorry, it was Monster
Speaker 3: Hutter Wilds is the game I was trying to play,
Speaker 3: and I only had sixteen gigs of memory and Monster
Speaker 3: hutter Wilds is pretty intensive. So I ended up buying
Speaker 3: two sixteen gig sticks of DDR four memory for my computer,
Speaker 3: and that was in I have it open here because
Speaker 3: I was playing up. That was in February of this year,
Speaker 3: February twenty four to twenty twenty five. So because I
Speaker 3: bought that DDR for Cours their memory Coursair Vengeance LPX
Speaker 3: thirty two gigs to sixteen two sixteen gig sticks, I
Speaker 3: apparently am partial to a class action lawsuit. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: Now I don't know what I'm gonna get or what
Speaker 3: the settlement was. It doesn't say yet because apparently that
Speaker 3: doesn't come until January eight, two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: So is this a good reason to when you buy
Speaker 1: something for your computer, whether it be a keyboard, a mouse,
Speaker 1: you know, or a a webcam or another peripheral, that
Speaker 1: you register it or if you do an update, you
Speaker 1: register the product you bought, whether.
Speaker 2: It be you know again memory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I don't know. I mean probably, but
Speaker 3: I didn't register this. I just bought it.
Speaker 2: I bought it on new Egg, right, so.
Speaker 3: I wonder if new Egg got it and then provided
Speaker 3: my information, you know, they've most tried to but it says, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just it's just interesting because it says Class Council
Speaker 3: will be paid from the settlement fund in an amount
Speaker 3: to de determined and awarded by the court to award
Speaker 3: the class representmentives up to five thousand dollars each from
Speaker 3: the settlement fund.
Speaker 2: Oh my, you bought a lot of memory.
Speaker 3: It says up to five thousand dollars each. I mean, obviously, right,
Speaker 3: if there's five million people that bought RAM, it's gonna
Speaker 3: obviously be significantly less per But.
Speaker 1: If justin as it manager had a big budget to
Speaker 1: buy an upgrade memory, if you bought a bunch of course.
Speaker 3: Their memory, he might be buying some bitcoin here. Yeah right, No,
Speaker 3: so yeah, the court the final court hearing is January
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six by Zoo video conference. So then you
Speaker 3: will find I will have to go into that and listen.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so I filled it out today because I
Speaker 3: just happened to have it on my desk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, filled it out.
Speaker 3: It was pretty painless. I had to provide a proof
Speaker 3: of purchase which new Egg had my receipt. It took
Speaker 3: took me about five minutes to do, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: You know, there have been scams going around when it
Speaker 1: comes to the Facebook settlement. Uh. Some of the scams
Speaker 1: have involved actually sending notifications reaching out to people saying
Speaker 1: that they needed their username and password to be able
Speaker 1: to log in so they.
Speaker 2: Could set their system.
Speaker 1: And some people have fet fellong for that, you know, saying, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: I want to get some of this Facebook money. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, they click a link because they got an email,
Speaker 1: and then that link it says, oh, please log in
Speaker 1: with your username and password to your Facebook accounts so
Speaker 1: we could verify. And next thing you know, their account
Speaker 1: is gone. They've it's been taken over. So you got
Speaker 1: to be really careful of that. Or even worse, you
Speaker 1: let me give you my checking account number.
Speaker 2: Oh jeez.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I actually got like thirty bucks from the.
Speaker 2: The Facebook settlement. Yeah, I haven't seen my money yet.
Speaker 3: I know, I didn't even know there was one, to
Speaker 3: be honest, probably because I wasn't on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Yep, you were on Facebook at the time, though, that
Speaker 1: because you.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that I was privy to the timeline that
Speaker 3: the settlement covered.
Speaker 2: But don't you delete your Facebook account?
Speaker 3: No, I just deactivated because in the keynote. Right, if
Speaker 3: people are interested in getting rid of Facebook and use
Speaker 3: it as a way to communicate with a lot of
Speaker 3: family and friends. Right, Using Messenger, you can deactivate your
Speaker 3: public facing profile, so you can't be searched, can't be
Speaker 3: you know, all your posts and stuff are hidden. All
Speaker 3: the data is still there, so it's probably still searchable
Speaker 3: by some algorithm somewhere. But if you just deactivate it,
Speaker 3: it allows you to keep using Messenger to all of
Speaker 3: your contacts on Facebook, and that includes pages, right, because
Speaker 3: I I still get all the messages on the page
Speaker 3: that tech Talk Radio has. So sometimes I get a message,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh it's somebody that AY can talk to.
Speaker 3: But it allows me to keep like message people that
Speaker 3: I need to talk to you that are on Facebook,
Speaker 3: and so it's nice. The problem is is occasionally it
Speaker 3: logs you back in on the back end and reactivates
Speaker 3: your Facebook. So like if you get logged out of Messenger,
Speaker 3: Like if you know when I got mine, you know,
Speaker 3: I upgraded to the new version of iOS and my
Speaker 3: phone did all that weird stuff and I had to
Speaker 3: replash my phone. I had to relog into everything, right,
Speaker 3: and when I relogged into Messenger. It decided I'm really
Speaker 3: just going to log you back into Facebook and reactivated
Speaker 3: my Facebook profile. Didn't tell me it did that, which
Speaker 3: I feel like is kind of shady. But then I realized, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have a notification on my messages, and it actually
Speaker 3: loaded the mobile version through the Messenger app. So even
Speaker 3: though I didn't have the Facebook message the Facebook app
Speaker 3: installed on my phone, it loaded the dust top version
Speaker 3: through the Messenger app, oh man, and presented it to
Speaker 3: me as Facebook.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's weird, I thought, I just so,
Speaker 3: I just disabled it.
Speaker 2: Can you have an Instagram account and not have a
Speaker 2: Facebook account?
Speaker 3: No, they're not linked anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh they're not.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So Facebook and.
Speaker 3: Instagram linked for a period of time and were so
Speaker 3: like logging into Instagram was your face same as your Facebook.
Speaker 3: They split that probably two years ago or so now,
Speaker 3: so like I got rid of my Instagram along way
Speaker 3: way before I got rid of Facebook and then disabled
Speaker 3: by Facebook. But yeah, neither I don't have any of those.
Speaker 2: All right, we gotta take another quick break.
Speaker 3: We come back.
Speaker 1: Justin talked about something a few weeks ago that he
Speaker 1: was going to get There was a couple of things
Speaker 1: that I know that he was going to get.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna talk about that when we come back.
Speaker 1: If you are a creative person, this is something you
Speaker 1: may definitely want to tune in for because it's really
Speaker 1: I really I want one now and we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm
Speaker 1: Sean to Weird, and I'm Justin. Let me find us
Speaker 1: on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
Speaker 3: So Justin, over the years, there have been a lot
Speaker 3: of hobbies that you and I have shared and I
Speaker 3: get really excited about something and I spend a lot
Speaker 3: of money on it, or you spend a lot of
Speaker 3: money on it.
Speaker 2: Does he start at first, Sean, and then you go, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to do that too.
Speaker 3: If it's kind of interesting, if you go back and
Speaker 3: look at the history with me and Justin's like, oh,
Speaker 3: arc planes, oh Arci cars, oh, three D printers, drones.
Speaker 3: You know, so this is kind of funny. We share
Speaker 3: a lot of similar hobbies. Cameras, that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but Justin finally upgraded, Yeah, because we were so stagnant
Speaker 3: on it for a long time, and I haven't touched
Speaker 3: mine in a while, so I wanted to see what
Speaker 3: Justin was gonna say about.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait a minute, you have one. I don't
Speaker 2: have one. Now we feel really, I really feel out.
Speaker 2: Now I have two? WHOA, all right? Why don't you
Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about it? So we're talking
Speaker 2: about a three D Was I the first one to
Speaker 2: get the three D printer?
Speaker 4: Shown?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I got my first one was a Creolity
Speaker 4: Ender three, And I think that's what you have, right,
Speaker 4: I have the Ender.
Speaker 3: I think I bought this version two or version three
Speaker 3: or something. You bought it said it was great. By
Speaker 3: the time I bought mine it was up one version.
Speaker 3: It's still great. I've printed.
Speaker 2: You might have the Ender five or maybe just the
Speaker 2: end of three pro anyway.
Speaker 3: Probably Ender three pro it's been. I bought it twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Two maybe, yeah, I bought mine in I want to
Speaker 2: say it was late twenty nineteen, yeah, I think.
Speaker 4: And I used it extensively, the Ender three. I use
Speaker 4: it extensively over COVID. I actually helped print out a
Speaker 4: bunch of like ear relief holders for masks when everybody
Speaker 4: was wearing all the masks and it was like digging
Speaker 4: into their ears.
Speaker 2: So this little thing.
Speaker 4: So I made a ton of those things, and I
Speaker 4: made some other just random stuff throughout the years. But
Speaker 4: then I kind of just fell off on it. And
Speaker 4: the problem with the ender. The ender was it's just
Speaker 4: it was so hard because you had to level the
Speaker 4: bed and that's the print surface where it prints, and
Speaker 4: you have to It's so intricate how you have to
Speaker 4: level this thing perfectly every single time. And I just
Speaker 4: it got to the point and then it would keep
Speaker 4: jamming or clogging or the prince wouldn't stick and it
Speaker 4: would fail, and you'd be printing for twelve fourteen hours
Speaker 4: and then it would mess up and then welp, there
Speaker 4: goes fourteen hours and ten bucks worth a filament gone,
Speaker 4: you know. So it just got to the point where
Speaker 4: I just didn't like it anymore.
Speaker 2: So I stopped.
Speaker 1: I remember, honestly, I remember justin when you did that.
Speaker 1: I could walk into Costco or even you know, Sam's
Speaker 1: Club and they were selling three D printers there.
Speaker 4: It was a huge phase for a while. It's kind
Speaker 4: of died off a little bit. I mean, as obviously
Speaker 4: it's still a big hobby and there's still a lot
Speaker 4: of people that do it, but it's just gotten better
Speaker 4: and better over the years. And so I recently bought
Speaker 4: a flash Forge printer. I don't remember the exact model.
Speaker 4: I can't remember the exact model the top my head.
Speaker 4: But this one it's it's it's leaps and bounds ahead
Speaker 4: of what the Ender three could do.
Speaker 2: You know. It has it built in web interface. It
Speaker 2: connects to the internet, so I can I can.
Speaker 4: I can send a print from my computer directly to
Speaker 4: the printer without having because like the End of three,
Speaker 4: I had to load it onto a USB stick, walk
Speaker 4: over to the end of three, put it in the
Speaker 4: end of three's thing, boot it up, let it read
Speaker 4: the file. You know this, I just say print, and
Speaker 4: I just press the button on the website and it
Speaker 4: just sends.
Speaker 2: It to the printer. Is it a little faster than
Speaker 2: the previous is probably twice as fast as as as
Speaker 2: the other one.
Speaker 4: I mean I printed. I printed a Benchi, which is
Speaker 4: one of the most famous little things you could print.
Speaker 4: It's like a little tug boat. And I remember on
Speaker 4: the Creality Ender three a Benchi would probably take about
Speaker 4: two and a half hours. This one took fourteen minutes.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, that's amazing. And this is also enclosed, so
Speaker 4: it has a filtration system built in so I can
Speaker 4: print ABS. ABS is a type of filament. It's known
Speaker 4: for more industrial purposes, I guess you could say, but
Speaker 4: ABS is also known for releasing particles into the air
Speaker 4: that aren't really good to breathe in. So with this
Speaker 4: having an internal filtration system, I can safely print ABS
Speaker 4: inside the house and not have to worry about these
Speaker 4: particles getting released into the air. But the biggest part
Speaker 4: not only just like I said, the website, and it
Speaker 4: has a built in camera so I can watch the
Speaker 4: printer what it's doing. You know, the ABS a filtration system,
Speaker 4: but it also has automatic bed leveling. So every time
Speaker 4: at prints, there's an option to level the bed and
Speaker 4: it will go and it will attempt to look at
Speaker 4: the variations in the bed and things change over time,
Speaker 4: I mean the bed moves and the bed heats up,
Speaker 4: so things warp out of rope and it could be
Speaker 4: less than a millimeter off and it will throw off
Speaker 4: your entire print. So but this has so you don't
Speaker 4: have to worry about that. Yeah, having the auto leveling
Speaker 4: is is a big big, huge thing. So I've already
Speaker 4: printed a few things. I mean a few just little
Speaker 4: trinkets here and there. And I actually printed out a
Speaker 4: large desktop figurine I guess you could say of like
Speaker 4: a suit of power armor from Fallout, the you know,
Speaker 4: the TV show Fallout and the video game Fallout. I
Speaker 4: printed out a huge it's probably about seven inches tall,
Speaker 4: I guess you could say, so I printed that out
Speaker 4: Right now, I'm trying to remove all the supports from it,
Speaker 4: which is the supports are just what the printer uses
Speaker 4: to be able to print something that that is over
Speaker 4: the limit, overhangs over the limit of where it could
Speaker 4: naturally print, so it has to build up a support
Speaker 4: structure underneath it, think like a bridge, I guess you
Speaker 4: could say.
Speaker 2: So, I'm trying to.
Speaker 4: Remove all these like supports everywhere, and it's it's a
Speaker 4: pain in the butt, but it works really well, and
Speaker 4: I I like the printer. The only problem was is
Speaker 4: I didn't really have a place to put it. Is
Speaker 4: it bigger than the end or it's actually I think
Speaker 4: it's a tiny bit smaller than the ender, But again
Speaker 4: it's it's enclosed, so it's just a big black box
Speaker 4: and it's got windows on it so you can see
Speaker 4: what you're looking at. It's got a light inside of
Speaker 4: it too, so you can see. But I just didn't
Speaker 4: have a place to put it, and so I initially
Speaker 4: put it on our kitchen, our dining room table. Oh
Speaker 4: I bet that went over well yeah, no, no, not
Speaker 4: not really. So then I tried to move it downstairs,
Speaker 4: and I just i everywhere I would put it it,
Speaker 4: the table or the desk that I put it on,
Speaker 4: it wasn't sturdy enough. And so when the printer is
Speaker 4: making fine adjustments back and forth and it's printing a
Speaker 4: bunch of stuff really really fast, it starts vibrating. And
Speaker 4: then if the table vibrates and the whole machine vibrates,
Speaker 4: and then it's kind of like that old video from
Speaker 4: San Francisco or whatever where that bridge is kind of
Speaker 4: doing that thing and then the bridge ends up breaking
Speaker 4: the residence or whatever. Yeah, so you gotta have something sturdy.
Speaker 4: So I actually went out to what was it, Habitat
Speaker 4: for Humanity. They have like an overstock place that you
Speaker 4: can go to that it's like a bunch of building
Speaker 4: materials and like kitchen cabinets and countertops and things that
Speaker 4: are just left over, and I actually found it was
Speaker 4: actually a donated item. It wasn't even brand new, but
Speaker 4: it was just this tiny little kind of like an
Speaker 4: end table with a drawer, but it had a metal
Speaker 4: frame to it and it was just big enough, wide
Speaker 4: enough to place the printer on. So I bought that
Speaker 4: for twenty five bucks, put it in the basement and
Speaker 4: put the printer on it, and now it just sits
Speaker 4: there and it works really well. So yeah, the Flashfarge
Speaker 4: is the system I got.
Speaker 2: Now I really like it. It was about four hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars. I want to say something like that,
Speaker 2: about four fifty.
Speaker 1: What about the some of you listening to that's thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this would be great because some people have found that
Speaker 1: they could make stuff for their home hangars, they could
Speaker 1: build all.
Speaker 4: Kinds of stuff. I mean, there's a bunch of websites
Speaker 4: you can go to that just have thousands of things.
Speaker 4: I mean there's things on there. I just browse and
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, wow, that'd be kind of cool to do.
Speaker 4: Like I didn't even know that existed, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 4: that's actually kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: You go online, you could find a template basically for
Speaker 1: something maybe, And with the holiday season is coming up,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people create stuff for you know,
Speaker 1: Halloween or Christmas, yep, you know, Thanksgiving that they could
Speaker 1: use as part of their decorations.
Speaker 4: Yep, exactly. And I've I've already made some Halloween decorations
Speaker 4: and stuff. So it's a yeah, it's a really cool system.
Speaker 4: The one that was actually this one still only does
Speaker 4: a single color print. However, within the printing process, I
Speaker 4: can tell it to stop at a certain level and
Speaker 4: then it will wait for me to pull the filament
Speaker 4: out and change it out. So, for instance, I printed
Speaker 4: out in ice cream a vanilla ice cream cone.
Speaker 2: Okay, the cone itself.
Speaker 4: I used a gold filament to make it kind of
Speaker 4: look like a like a waffle cone, or had a
Speaker 4: waffle cone with just a regular cone, and then I
Speaker 4: stopped it at the layer where the ice cream starts,
Speaker 4: and I swapped it out for white filament. And so
Speaker 4: when it got done, it looks like a real vanilla
Speaker 4: ice cream cone.
Speaker 3: But three D.
Speaker 2: It's three but a three D print. Yeah, it's all plastic.
Speaker 1: Now, So what does the cost like when you get down?
Speaker 1: We don't how much the device is. But what about
Speaker 1: the cost of the materials. Is it worth it if
Speaker 1: you're doing a piece here, a piece there to go
Speaker 1: ahead and make stuff with this? Oh?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean the filament's not that expensive. I mean
Speaker 4: the filaments anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars for one
Speaker 4: kilogram of a filament, which it'll last you quite a while.
Speaker 4: Depends on what you're printing. I mean, if you're printing
Speaker 4: a you know, a big old, you know, seven inch
Speaker 4: figurine like I mentioned, I probably could print four or
Speaker 4: five of those with one roll of filament. But if
Speaker 4: you're making these little small things like let's say a
Speaker 4: doorstop or a coat hanger or you know, just something
Speaker 4: like that, you could print hundreds of those things with
Speaker 4: one roll of filament. And it's like I said, between
Speaker 4: twenty and thirty bucks for a film. Nope, Like I
Speaker 4: bought something like this and I'm showing it out the
Speaker 4: camera here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, easily can make that.
Speaker 1: This is a headphone hanger. You put your put it
Speaker 1: on a desk and then you could hang a headphone
Speaker 1: on it and it probably paid. You've got one to it,
Speaker 1: and that's one you made, right. I made this with
Speaker 1: the original Creality Ender three and it's just a small
Speaker 1: little headphone hanger headphones is sit right on top here
Speaker 1: and it just sits on the desk. And this is
Speaker 1: about five or six years old and it still works great.
Speaker 1: I paid maybe thirty bucks for mine this one. Then
Speaker 1: you could print that for probably about three bucks.
Speaker 2: Three bucks. Wow.
Speaker 1: It's just a fun project to do. Is Eric kind
Speaker 1: of taking, you know, taking interest in it as well.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 4: I mean he's he's asked some questions about it, and
Speaker 4: he's he's found some things that he wants, but he
Speaker 4: kind of he's like, hey, print this for me. And
Speaker 4: then I just printed for him, like I made a
Speaker 4: little fidget clicker thing for him.
Speaker 2: To play with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, mostly like little fidget things or like these little
Speaker 4: like you can find them in like gift shops and stuff.
Speaker 4: But like these three D like dragons or whatever with
Speaker 4: the tail and it and it kind of wiggles back
Speaker 4: and forth, but it's all it's all print in place,
Speaker 4: like you don't have to put it together, and it's
Speaker 4: got like interchangeable links so it can actually move. And
Speaker 4: this looks really cool. And I printed a bunch of those,
Speaker 4: giving them to some friends and kids and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I like it. It's it's just
Speaker 2: it's it's a hobby. It's just a fun little hobby.
Speaker 1: Now, if our listeners want to get more information on it,
Speaker 1: is there do you know of a website they could
Speaker 1: go to to look up this the civic model that
Speaker 1: you have and maybe they want to give it a
Speaker 1: shot and have some fun.
Speaker 4: Well, I I've been I've been going to a couple
Speaker 4: of different ones. Probably the biggest ones out there are
Speaker 4: maker World makerworld dot com and then thingaverse thingy. It's
Speaker 4: like th h I n G I verse thingaverse dot com.
Speaker 4: Those are websites that just have thousands and thousands of
Speaker 4: print jobs that you can do, and and they're all free,
Speaker 4: well most of them are free.
Speaker 2: There's a couple that.
Speaker 4: Are, you know, premium ones that you can pay that
Speaker 4: you have to pay for, but by far majority of
Speaker 4: them are free and you just download the file, you
Speaker 4: load it into a piece of software called a slicer,
Speaker 4: and there's multiple slicers out in the market that are free.
Speaker 4: Flashforage actually comes with one called Orca, and you just
Speaker 4: load the file into the slicer and click slice and
Speaker 4: then click send the printer and boom it's done. And
Speaker 4: then it's just just start printing.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna take another quick break. We come
Speaker 1: back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Sean to Wear and I'm justin. Lemme find us
Speaker 1: on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back and now fac to tech talk
Speaker 2: Radio Now.
Speaker 4: At the beginning of the show, I mentioned that Microsoft
Speaker 4: was making a lot of mistakes, including the recent announcement
Speaker 4: that they are increasing yet again the monthly charge for
Speaker 4: Xbox Game Pass. This is their subscription service that allows
Speaker 4: you to play, you know, hundreds of games when you want,
Speaker 4: and it gives you cloud gaming. It gives you the
Speaker 4: streaming ability you can stream your console remotely. I bought
Speaker 4: into the game Pass when it first came out at
Speaker 4: ten bucks a month. I stayed with it when it
Speaker 4: went to nineteen ninety nine a month, and recently was
Speaker 4: it last year they had a massive deal on Woot,
Speaker 4: which is Amazon's like subsidiary Woot, and I bought two
Speaker 4: full years of game Pass, one year for Eric, or
Speaker 4: actually a year and a half for myself, and a
Speaker 4: year and a half for Eric and I think I
Speaker 4: spent like five hundred and fifty bucks, but we got
Speaker 4: paid both of us up until November of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: Well as of this November of twenty twenty five, Xbox
Speaker 4: is increasing it from nineteen ninety nine a month.
Speaker 2: To twenty nine ninety nine a month. That's a lot
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 3: That's a lot. It's gonna be ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing.
Speaker 4: When they bought when they bought Activision Blizzard, they had
Speaker 4: to go in front of the FTC and say, we
Speaker 4: are not going to increase the price of game Pass
Speaker 4: with this purchase, because that was the big deciding factors
Speaker 4: whether the government allows them to do this. They were like, hey,
Speaker 4: you're creating a monopoly here. You're just gonna be able
Speaker 4: to raise the prices to whatever you want. And they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're not to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fast forward a year, they're doing it, and there's so
Speaker 4: many people all over saying we're done, we're done with
Speaker 4: game Pass, we're done with Microsoft, we're canceling our games.
Speaker 4: The problem is people don't buy games anymore, so they
Speaker 4: cancel game Pass and now they have nothing to play
Speaker 4: because they don't own any games.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Now there's another rumor out there, and I don't know
Speaker 2: how true this is. We have to do some recently.
Speaker 4: We can talk about more next week. But somebody was
Speaker 4: saying on Reddit somewhere that hey, Xbox is saying that
Speaker 4: if you do not cancel your subscription and you have
Speaker 4: reoccurring billing turned on, which most people do, that your
Speaker 4: game pass will be grandfathered in at the price of
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety nine, and it's only twenty ninety nine for
Speaker 4: the people that sign up now moving forward. I don't
Speaker 4: know how that true that is, because I even even
Speaker 4: though I'm paid up until November of twenty six, I'm
Speaker 4: still getting emails saying, hey, your price is going to
Speaker 4: increase to twenty ninety nine.
Speaker 3: So I quickly searched Verge. The Verge, there's an article
Speaker 3: that says it's delaying the price increased for existing subscribers
Speaker 3: in certain markets, meaning new purchases get the new pricing,
Speaker 3: but current users keep existing rates as long as their
Speaker 3: subscription is still active and set to auto renew.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well that's good.
Speaker 4: Well I want to have you cancel BAK. I canceled
Speaker 4: mine already, but but I'm paid up. I'm paid up
Speaker 4: through November twenty six, so at that point I'm done right, right, and.
Speaker 3: The mindset to auto renew, and it has been since
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, and.
Speaker 1: You still have Steam so you can play games there, right,
Speaker 1: I'd have.
Speaker 3: To look to see what I'm paying for it. I
Speaker 3: know I got an update saying my price is gonna change,
Speaker 3: but I'm curious if I if because mine set to
Speaker 3: auto renew, I'm curious if it's gonna change or not.
Speaker 2: We'll talk more about this next week.
Speaker 3: I'll find out. We'll report back next week.
Speaker 2: Sounds good.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's Tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm shying to wear and I'm justin. Lemme find us
Speaker 1: on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Have yourself great week. We'll see you