Speaker 1: The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network.
Speaker 2: Right it does a Colin Macria.
Speaker 3: Whose line is it? Anyway you're listening to tech talk radio.
Speaker 2: I don't know how it works.
Speaker 4: It's all magical stuff for me.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor,
Speaker 1: I'm Sean de Weird, and we have questions from last
Speaker 1: week's show. Sean, if you remember at the end of
Speaker 1: last week, it just seems like every week we're ending
Speaker 1: in some kind of a cliffhanger, or we're.
Speaker 3: Making somebody mad, or they're called us out we have
Speaker 3: to rebute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our listeners, Well, all right, this one. I was
Speaker 1: talking about me buying a USB hub at a discount store.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, right, and it's electronic necessities. It's a
Speaker 1: USB a four port hub. It has one USB C
Speaker 1: port on it. And you guys brought up something really
Speaker 1: important at the end of the show that I had
Speaker 1: to be careful before I plug this in. Because you
Speaker 1: bought it at a store doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna
Speaker 1: be safe. It's safe, and you know, I had a
Speaker 1: couple of people ask me, like, wait, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: What kind of dangerous could you run into. I remembered
Speaker 1: not long ago seeing posts where people had been buying
Speaker 1: storage drives now number when you don't want to get
Speaker 1: ripped off, but they've been buying storage drives online and
Speaker 1: when they get the storage drive, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: a no name brand or whatnot, and when they open
Speaker 1: it up, they're basically SD cards that have been hot
Speaker 1: glued into the inside of this.
Speaker 3: Thing, or it's just a small chip that's mimicking saying
Speaker 3: you have two terabytes. But then you fill it up
Speaker 3: and you're like you put one picture on it, and
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Right? Yeah, So anyway, I went
Speaker 1: ahead and I promised you guys, I said I would
Speaker 1: I would go ahead and take a look at it.
Speaker 1: So I took the enclosure.
Speaker 3: We actually took it apart, and I took it apart.
Speaker 1: Very it's actually pretty easy to take apart, which that
Speaker 1: also worried me a little. And here is basically the inners,
Speaker 1: and I'll show you of what I got on this.
Speaker 1: And it looks like an honest to goodness USB hub
Speaker 1: with USB three, USB A and one USB C.
Speaker 3: It looks like a legit, no nefarious looking pieces or
Speaker 3: transmitters or anything on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll be able to put it back in
Speaker 1: the housing very easily and it should should hopefully work
Speaker 1: for me. But that it was actually kind of fun
Speaker 1: to open the thing up, and yeah, try and do
Speaker 1: it so I didn't just absolutely destroy it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean you just like, just so our
Speaker 3: listeners catch up, right, try to avoid buying USB cables
Speaker 3: from gas stations and you know, convenience stores or other
Speaker 3: strange places, like go to a reputable vendor, go to anchor,
Speaker 3: go to BNH photo. Bend a little bit more money
Speaker 3: than this is three dollars, it's going to give me
Speaker 3: four USB poort. It's like, spend a little bit more
Speaker 3: money just for some piece of mind.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, security wise, Sean, we have talked about
Speaker 1: this in the past. If you're walking out on a
Speaker 1: maybe a school campus or even a you know, a
Speaker 1: shopping area and you see a USB drive on the floor,
Speaker 1: plug it in. Yeah, don't want to do that. It's
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to do is plug that
Speaker 1: thing in. Because it has been common for people to
Speaker 1: use the method of a flash drive with you know,
Speaker 1: malware whatever on it. Just drop them somewhere somebody takes it,
Speaker 1: the curiosity killed the cat, plugs it into your computer,
Speaker 1: and next thing you know, you run into other problems.
Speaker 3: With the ease of being able to put scripts on something.
Speaker 3: So you plug a USB drive in, all of a
Speaker 3: sudden it's installed malware in the back end, and you've
Speaker 3: got a botnet running and somebody's mining crypto. Like, there's
Speaker 3: all sorts of stuff that people can do with a
Speaker 3: simple USB driver.
Speaker 1: I'm always nervous. Have you ever had the situation sean
Speaker 1: where somebody comes over. It could be a family member,
Speaker 1: it could be a friend, So, oh yeah, here, let
Speaker 1: me plug my drive in to your computer. Some people,
Speaker 1: my kids have looked at me like, dad, come on,
Speaker 1: it's me. But I don't know where that drive's been
Speaker 1: true And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't know if their system has been compromised
Speaker 3: or not. That's why I have a Windows well not
Speaker 3: wind know, since running Linux. But if somebody wants to
Speaker 3: pug something in, Okay, you want to give you some files,
Speaker 3: do you go plug it into this computer that I
Speaker 3: don't care about that I can reimage in two seconds.
Speaker 1: Being on that note, you know of a USB drive,
Speaker 1: a flash drive, you know, whatever capacity I mean, even
Speaker 1: just a smaller, older drive could cause some damage. The
Speaker 1: idea now is we've seen this at airports and other places, restaurants,
Speaker 1: coffee shops, where somebody just leaves the USB cable behind
Speaker 1: and you look at it and you think, wow, I
Speaker 1: can use that. That's going to be great. Now, don't
Speaker 1: want to do that either, No, don't.
Speaker 3: Just I'm just gonna say again, don't trust anybody else's
Speaker 3: USB cables. Don't trust a stranger. Don't trust I mean
Speaker 3: even just plugging into Like you know, you sit at
Speaker 3: a desk at most air now and they have USP
Speaker 3: ports to them. Don't do it. Don't do it?
Speaker 1: Oh you mean like you it right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like you know, they take a regular outlet and
Speaker 3: they put you know, two Edison plugs into USB ports
Speaker 3: in it. Don't plug into those USB ports. You don't
Speaker 3: know where that goes. Yeah now yeah, okay, give everybody
Speaker 3: the benefit of the doubt. Right. An airport is a
Speaker 3: public space. There's no way they want to compromise that.
Speaker 3: But you don't know, You just don't know, right, So
Speaker 3: just you know, use your own power brick, or just
Speaker 3: use your own USB cable or you know, plug into
Speaker 3: power first and then because there are also they also
Speaker 3: make cables that will just power.
Speaker 1: Right, somebody tell me, you know, one of the benefits
Speaker 1: of the newer laptops is longer battery life. So if
Speaker 1: you go to a coffee shop and you're running out
Speaker 1: of battery, that means it's time to leave the coffee shop.
Speaker 1: So you don't have to plug in to their power.
Speaker 3: I mean unless you're playing video games at the coffee shop.
Speaker 3: If you're doing just writing or notebooking, or you know,
Speaker 3: just catching up on emails, you should have no issue
Speaker 3: with bad life on a current laptop or an iPad or.
Speaker 1: Something right right, I was speaking of laptops. You have
Speaker 1: been consulting with your your parents, your in laws. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've been consulting with the in laws about a
Speaker 1: system you ended up finding. I believe it was old
Speaker 1: in Novo that you want.
Speaker 3: To So we right after Christmas we spent some time
Speaker 3: looking at They said, hey, we've got a really old
Speaker 3: HP laptop from twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen. It's got
Speaker 3: four gigabytes a RAM in it. It won't upgrade to
Speaker 3: Windows eleven. Basically, they got the Windows eleven update alert
Speaker 3: saying you're our computer. It needs to be updated Windows eleven.
Speaker 3: And then they took it to the local computer shop
Speaker 3: and then they said, oh yeah, this won't upgrade to
Speaker 3: Windows eleven. And so they're like, we want to get
Speaker 3: a new computer that you know, we don't in the
Speaker 3: next five to six years, don't have to replace. Right,
Speaker 3: So they gave me a budget of eight hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: It's not that much, No, it's not.
Speaker 3: But you can get a reasonably rice laptop. You can
Speaker 3: get a reasonably good laptop for that price. So I
Speaker 3: started looking, right, and really my my options were limited
Speaker 3: to some Lenovo's and some Dells and a couple of
Speaker 3: Acers in there. Right but right, So I really wanted
Speaker 3: to get something from somewhere I knew. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to go to bet. I didn't want him to go
Speaker 3: down to the street to best Buy. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to go to Target, Meyer, Walmart, any of those types
Speaker 3: of things. So we looked at we narrowed it down
Speaker 3: to Microcenter.
Speaker 1: We don't have one of those out here.
Speaker 3: In micro Center about two hours from where they live, right,
Speaker 3: but you can get them shipped from micro Center. It's
Speaker 3: worth it any plus, you can get the Microcenter warranty,
Speaker 3: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I remember when when I was looking for a thirty
Speaker 1: eighty graphics card and you know, they it was like
Speaker 1: they're coming out. I sent my son, who lives in
Speaker 1: hunting A Beach to Irvine to our microcenter there, which
Speaker 1: is about thirty minutes away, because it showed that they
Speaker 1: had one, and he got there and they did. They
Speaker 1: were out of them.
Speaker 3: I went to the one in Indianapolis when it opened,
Speaker 3: because it opened maybe a year and a half ago now,
Speaker 3: right right before the eclipse actually, And it's cool. It's
Speaker 3: just that it's just a big geek story. I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you have fries out there?
Speaker 3: No? So not here. We had a frize when I
Speaker 3: lived in San Diego and that was awesome because I
Speaker 3: went there all the time to buy resistors and you know,
Speaker 3: when I was doing a little hobby project working. You
Speaker 3: walk in turn to the right, there's just components everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wall of.
Speaker 3: Components and you can't like, you know, because I used
Speaker 3: to go to Radio Shack all the time when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, when I was building my RC planes
Speaker 3: and RC cars and stuff. Man, radio shack was the
Speaker 3: place to go. And now it's you get cheap garbage
Speaker 3: on Amazon. If you want it quick and fast, you
Speaker 3: gotta you know, so, like I'm going to sidetrack here.
Speaker 3: But if you're looking for good quality components online, digikey
Speaker 3: or mouser.
Speaker 1: What you did?
Speaker 3: You did you key or mouser or mouser, I don't
Speaker 3: know how they pronounce it. Yeah, those are the two
Speaker 3: that every hand radio subreddit, every hand radio club that
Speaker 3: I've ever been a part of, has told me those
Speaker 3: are the two plus the Xbox modding community. Because I
Speaker 3: bought an old original Xbox that I'm I'm repairing and upgrade.
Speaker 1: On original expert g.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bought it. I got it on good I
Speaker 3: got bought it at Goodwill. So we'll talk about that
Speaker 3: another time. But yeah, So there are certain things that
Speaker 3: you can get you don't want to cheap out on,
Speaker 3: and that's electronical components, So digitke mouser, those four components.
Speaker 3: But a right back on track till that top uh
Speaker 3: So microcenter. That's where we got off track. Narrowed it
Speaker 3: down a hr bucks and ended up getting them a
Speaker 3: Lenovo think Pad to seventeen. Oh that's good, which is good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: one terabyte of storage sixteen gigabytes of RAM, you know,
Speaker 3: six fourteen and a half inch screen or you know whatever,
Speaker 3: sixteen inch total. Yeah, and it Windows eleven Home more
Speaker 3: than enough for what they need. And then we started
Speaker 3: the well let's get some time. You come down here
Speaker 3: to my house, right and we'll move all your stuff over.
Speaker 3: Oh good?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And I had recommended PC.
Speaker 3: Mover, but right, well, PC, I'm a big proponent of
Speaker 3: not moving over installed like.
Speaker 1: Not just like fresh install file.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a fresh install, like here's the program, reinstall it
Speaker 3: so it's fresh, it's not pulling over any garbage temporary files.
Speaker 3: I got screwed, oh no, by Microsoft one Drive.
Speaker 1: Really what happened?
Speaker 3: I thought I had it disabled because I hate one Drive.
Speaker 3: It's it comes installed and pre installed. You have to
Speaker 3: log in, and I was trying to do the there's
Speaker 3: a secret code you can punch in when you're at
Speaker 3: the screen. You hit you know, win F ten and
Speaker 3: then type in the little cheat code so that you know,
Speaker 3: reboot and doesn't ask you for the log in. It
Speaker 3: couldn't get to work. Couldn't get it to work. We
Speaker 3: were run out of time, so I just said, log
Speaker 3: in with your Microsoft account. We'll get you hooked up
Speaker 3: whatever thought we had disabled one drive, got my mother
Speaker 3: in law's account also created disabled one drive, copy stuff
Speaker 3: over to a sixty four gig thumb drive for them, right,
Speaker 3: because they didn't really have that much stuff. It was
Speaker 3: about fifty fifty five gigs with the stuff they wanted
Speaker 3: to copy over. Yeah, Pete started copying it over and
Speaker 3: called me and said, hey, it says I'm out of space.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, And I said, what do you mean. You
Speaker 3: have a thousand gigabytes and you have fifty five gigabytes
Speaker 3: for the stuff like this. Yeah, he says, it's telling
Speaker 3: me that I can go online and buy more storage. Oh.
Speaker 3: I was like, don't do that because his account was
Speaker 3: automatically set up for all of his files on his
Speaker 3: desktop and everything to back up to one drive. Boy,
Speaker 3: so didn't matter as soon as he started copying files
Speaker 3: over and they were just going up to the club,
Speaker 3: right right, Okay, So then we had to get rid
Speaker 3: of one drive, remove it, restart the copying process over,
Speaker 3: make sure we had everything. So just was a little
Speaker 3: bit of a pain trying to like, I just want
Speaker 3: don't let me, don't make me make an account, right,
Speaker 3: this is what I this is one of my biggest
Speaker 3: pet peeves about Windows. Don't make me log in, Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't sink. Don't sink me, like, I'll sink all that
Speaker 3: stuff later if I want to, Like, don't make me
Speaker 3: do that right off the rip, Like, give me a fresh,
Speaker 3: bare bones installed that I can then log into whatever
Speaker 3: I want.
Speaker 1: And please don't don't just throw co pilot at me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so to say, yeah, sorry, I uninstalled one drive,
Speaker 3: I installed, uninstalled co Pilot, I u installed all that garbage,
Speaker 3: which was great because now they're they're home free. It's
Speaker 3: they're loving the computer that it's They're like, holy cow,
Speaker 3: we can't believe it's so fast. I mean they're going
Speaker 3: from this ancient I don't even remember what model it is,
Speaker 3: but it's it was very slow, but they're very happy
Speaker 3: with it. For those of you who know Lenovo laptops,
Speaker 3: they were confused by the little red nib in the
Speaker 3: middle right like you need the mouse, you know, the
Speaker 3: little They were like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Is it do?
Speaker 3: I was like, what do you mean? What what? We've
Speaker 3: never seen this before on a computer before in our lives.
Speaker 3: I was like, you put your finger around it is
Speaker 3: the mouse, and yeah, what and they're like, yeah, watch
Speaker 3: and then I showed them you can move it. So
Speaker 3: they were very confused by that. At first I told
Speaker 3: them about it, but they'd obviously forgotten.
Speaker 1: Are they going to get a regular mouse?
Speaker 3: They had the Bluetooth USB mouse that they had had
Speaker 3: on their old computer, which has already moved over. And
Speaker 3: you know, but just when they're traveling and sometimes it's
Speaker 3: easier just to do My father loves it. He would
Speaker 3: prefer to use that little red nap and the touchbit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: My mother law not a trackpad person by any means.
Speaker 3: She hates she hates check. Now they're all logged in.
Speaker 3: They were amazed at how easy it was to sink
Speaker 3: their Google accounts. Oh cool, they're like, I want all
Speaker 3: my book works. Well let's just log you in. Here's
Speaker 3: how your bookworks. Well that's fast. So the Google stuff
Speaker 3: was great. They were worried about their Google Photos, like
Speaker 3: they're like, how are you gonna make sure all of
Speaker 3: our Google photos are there? Like, well, they're already in
Speaker 3: the clouds. You just log in and you see them
Speaker 3: because we set them up. So all their all their
Speaker 3: phone there, they have the fours and they update all
Speaker 3: their photos to the cloud automatically, and I've really made
Speaker 3: it very I don't want to say I forced some
Speaker 3: things onto them, but getting them to a point where
Speaker 3: they can just take pictures on their phones and they're
Speaker 3: on their phone, but they're also in the cloud has
Speaker 3: been wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the best thing in the world.
Speaker 3: Well, I deleted it off my phone and that and
Speaker 3: I don't have it anymore. No, it's still in the cloud.
Speaker 3: Don't worry. They're happy with it. Connects to their WiFi
Speaker 3: just fine. They haven't had any issues with it.
Speaker 1: What about third party programs? I mean, were you thinking
Speaker 1: because here, you know, you get a new computer for
Speaker 1: somebody who hasn't upgrade in a while. You know, there's
Speaker 1: so many different options. Number one antivirus, number two, you
Speaker 1: know productivity software like you know Office, You're I believe
Speaker 1: you're an aw user. Then you know, do you do
Speaker 1: you go and get GAMP? Do you or do you
Speaker 1: go to alternative to what do you end up doing?
Speaker 3: Well? For them, they had a very limited selection of
Speaker 3: things they needed right so, so the things they had
Speaker 3: were malwaur bytes, Sea Cleaner. They had a student license
Speaker 3: of Microsoft twenty sixteen that they had bought back in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. If you install that, it actually puts you
Speaker 3: into Microsoft three sixty five, which was which was weird.
Speaker 3: It uses that license but gives you access to the
Speaker 3: base level of Microsoft three sixty five. So that's all
Speaker 3: they needed for that. And then he had avery label
Speaker 3: maker that he had a software for that that we
Speaker 3: reinstalled so he can print his beer beer cap labels.
Speaker 3: I used, Yeah, he prints his beer camp labels. He
Speaker 3: has the little designs and all this stuff, so he
Speaker 3: didn't want to lose all that.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 3: And then then I used but I used no night.
Speaker 3: We'll talked about that on the show. So I just
Speaker 3: clicked you know, I have the seven things I needed
Speaker 3: it for to install. You know, I did Chrome, Firefox,
Speaker 3: malware Bytes, a couple other I don't remember, the office
Speaker 3: Suite whatever. I just picked boom. It was so easy,
Speaker 3: so I recommend that night. But other than that, I
Speaker 3: just put ad Blocker plus right there, Chrome and their
Speaker 3: home there scot free.
Speaker 1: So this week I worked on a Dell. The Dell
Speaker 1: their screen had gone out, so they brought me this.
Speaker 1: They brought me the laptop and I went ahead and
Speaker 1: hooked it up and I hooked up their HDMI, pored
Speaker 1: out saw that it was working on an external monitor.
Speaker 1: So I knew, okay, it's not your board, it's not
Speaker 1: you know, a graphics card, it's it's this screen. So
Speaker 1: it had and I ordered the screen. The screen came
Speaker 1: in very easy to replace. I found a great website
Speaker 1: and even though I hadn't found out about this website
Speaker 1: until I had bought the parts from a different vendor,
Speaker 1: this website had some great walkthroughs and they have a
Speaker 1: lot of parts. It's parts dash people dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find that all there. Great stuff. I'll put a
Speaker 1: link up on our blog as well. Once I got
Speaker 1: the you know, got the screen in and got it
Speaker 1: booted up, I had to call them and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I need the code because I need to check because
Speaker 1: when you work with the replacement of a screen, you
Speaker 1: generally have to disconnect your WiFi the Wi Fi card,
Speaker 1: and the WiFi card sometimes could be a little iffy,
Speaker 1: so I want to make sure the WiFi was working.
Speaker 1: And I got that working and everything, but then, oh boy,
Speaker 1: then I saw the pop ups then wandered programs that
Speaker 1: were on the laptop. So I had to place a
Speaker 1: call into her and say, okay, here's what I got.
Speaker 1: And I said, may I run malware bytes on it?
Speaker 1: And she said no, yeah, please, because the only thing
Speaker 1: I want is Chrome and she had some other kind
Speaker 1: of browser that was completely hijacking. So we ran malware
Speaker 1: bites one hundred and ninety some odd different issues with
Speaker 1: the computer with malwaur bytes, and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: it has been kind of slow lately, so we had
Speaker 1: malware bites do the cleanup, and that thing is real peppy. Now,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how a program like that can really find
Speaker 1: some of the crud that you don't want on your
Speaker 1: computer that may get installed. And some of this stuff
Speaker 1: was installed just because they installed some other program and
Speaker 1: it just wanted to install a whole bunch of others
Speaker 1: like driver Tonic just it was just a mess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that's what I was really really wanted
Speaker 3: to walk through my in loss, through the whole process
Speaker 3: so they didn't get Chrome or get some other software
Speaker 3: and say, oh I need this this, this software looks fun. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's this one and this, Oh I need want to
Speaker 3: update my drivers, let's click on this link. And I'm
Speaker 3: really really trying to get them into a good repetition
Speaker 3: of not downloading programs and installing them just because you
Speaker 3: know they had two different ad bot search and destroyers,
Speaker 3: or you know, you know stuff that they clearly just
Speaker 3: clicked on links to download stuff.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you got to be really careful.
Speaker 3: It's it's hard when every site is so aggressive on
Speaker 3: the fake links and the fake downloads, right, it's hard
Speaker 3: for people not to click on stuff, even even legitimate websites.
Speaker 3: Like you get clicked on this to download, it starts downloading,
Speaker 3: but then it pops up and say download now, and
Speaker 3: you're like, oh wait, don't click on that. Oh wait,
Speaker 3: it's starting downloading.
Speaker 1: Or if you go I've done this before where you
Speaker 1: go to a website and you want to get a
Speaker 1: program and it will say you you're you're looking for
Speaker 1: the program and there is an ad and it says
Speaker 1: download now, and you're thinking you're downloading the program that
Speaker 1: you wanted, but you're not. You're click You're clicking on
Speaker 1: a link, and that is what is causing the problems. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta be really careful. Now, do you
Speaker 1: prefer nine Night Over alternative to do work? How does
Speaker 1: how does that work?
Speaker 3: They're they're both their own thing, all right, Right, So
Speaker 3: nine Night it's got okay, just tells you pick the
Speaker 3: apps you want, right, So, I want Chrome, malware Bytes, Zoom, Discord, Skype, okay, iTunes, VLC, win, Amp, Audacity,
Speaker 3: you know, just a Python okay, visual code, studio code okay.
Speaker 3: Ever note you know, but there's probably seventy apps on here.
Speaker 3: And then you hit get your nine night and it downloads,
Speaker 3: it downloads a package, and then it just mass installs them.
Speaker 1: Now is there a cost for this or is it
Speaker 1: pretty much free? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Now you can manage your downloads with nine night, meaning
Speaker 3: it will look for updates and apply those updates, and
Speaker 3: you can nine night Pro. You can get n night
Speaker 3: Pro if you want.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, n I N I T E dot Com.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, But then, like you said, alternative too, right,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a different type of website right now,
Speaker 3: that's just a all right, I have Microsoft Office, right, well,
Speaker 3: what are my alternatives to Microsoft Office? You type in
Speaker 3: Microsoft Office and it's gonna give you Notepad plus plus.
Speaker 3: You know, it's gonna give you Open Office, Libra Office.
Speaker 3: You know it's gonna give you alternatives to that software.
Speaker 1: I was, uh, float charting a network, you got your shirt,
Speaker 1: your switch here, you got your hub here, you got
Speaker 1: your computer here, got another computer. I was doing that
Speaker 1: and Visio, uh, Microsoft Video has been one of those
Speaker 1: that a lot of people use but don't have it.
Speaker 1: So I went to alternative too, and it recommended Lucid,
Speaker 1: so I went ahead and you know, ran that and yeah,
Speaker 1: it handled it perfectly. And it's you know, you could
Speaker 1: use a free version of it. You get so many
Speaker 1: templates that you can work with, or you could buy
Speaker 1: the full versus. So it's great. It's a gateway to
Speaker 1: maybe a program that you could really get into if
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend the money for Visio or
Speaker 1: or another program that could do something similar. So I
Speaker 1: liked it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So overall overall the install went good, right, and
Speaker 3: they're happy, they're super happy. Yes, Yeah, just the beginning
Speaker 3: steps where he started copying you know, pictures and music
Speaker 3: from his desktop over and all of a sudden it
Speaker 3: was all going to the cloud. I was frustrated by that.
Speaker 3: It's just I don't want it. There's no need for
Speaker 3: it for him, for them, and it just was frustrated
Speaker 3: because it's like it blocked him. Then he's all frustrated.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm out of space. But I thought you
Speaker 3: said we had a thousand gigabytes. But now it's telling
Speaker 3: me I need to buy more space, and I'm about
Speaker 3: to use my credit card to buy more space.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, apparently. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw the news about this, and this would be
Speaker 1: something that maybe somebody would want to look at, and
Speaker 1: I haven't really delved into it too much. Microsoft has
Speaker 1: a program PC Manager, and it's a Microsoft program. But
Speaker 1: apparently this PC manager is they're saying it's an easier
Speaker 1: way to clear cash files, clear old programs, and I
Speaker 1: mean there has that has been a part of Microsoft,
Speaker 1: but now they're making it to make it a little
Speaker 1: a little richer, a little more of a better experience
Speaker 1: when wanting to manage your Windows. And again, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it a full try and that I should have
Speaker 1: a kind of an update for you next week on
Speaker 1: the show. But it looks like a pretty good program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's available on the Microsoft Store and I just
Speaker 3: looked at it. I'm downloading it right now. Just check
Speaker 3: it out. Yep, it's free.
Speaker 1: That makes it nice.
Speaker 3: Microsoft PC Manager is the utility app for your PC.
Speaker 3: That episolutely enhances PC performance.
Speaker 1: There you go, all right, we're gonna take quick break,
Speaker 1: come back. I got a chance this week to talk
Speaker 1: with Mickey and Steve. They're the minds behind something really
Speaker 1: cool taking place in calif It's next weekend. You could
Speaker 1: take a drive and go check this out. It is
Speaker 1: the Vintage Computer Festival, all kinds of great stuff and
Speaker 1: again we'll be talking with them next on tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 3: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Seanda Weir, and find us on
Speaker 3: the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back and now back to tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to be able to get Mickey
Speaker 1: and Steve on with us. They're the people behind Vintage
Speaker 1: Computer Festival So cal which is coming up actually next weekend.
Speaker 1: So if you want to think about a getaway, you
Speaker 1: want to go out to the city of Orange, Orange,
Speaker 1: California for Hotel Farra at the event center there for
Speaker 1: this big vintage computer festival. And when I first saw this, Steve,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I was like, Oh, this would
Speaker 1: be so much fun to go to. And this has
Speaker 1: got to be a lot of fun for you guys
Speaker 1: to put together. Next question, okay, fun, but a lot
Speaker 1: of work. I know, that's where you were going with it. Seriously,
Speaker 1: So where did this idea come up with when you
Speaker 1: realize that people really did like vintage computers?
Speaker 2: Well, people have loved vintage computers for years, of course,
Speaker 2: it's just it keeps shifting. You know. My vintage computer
Speaker 2: years is the late seventies, eighties and then nineties became
Speaker 2: like my adult life and I'm working on ibms and
Speaker 2: fixing printer problems. So that's not that's not vintage to me,
Speaker 2: at least me.
Speaker 4: But it is now.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, of course I know it. But well yeah,
Speaker 2: so Mickey and I we do the VCF so cal
Speaker 2: and it wasn't a hard idea to come up with
Speaker 2: because there's other ones in the country that you know,
Speaker 2: of course we've been to them, or like, why isn't
Speaker 2: there one here? So we've been doing the vint Nerd
Speaker 2: YouTube channel and that's what all this. We're in the
Speaker 2: nerd studio right now, and so we started that about
Speaker 2: four years ago and as we tried out, you know,
Speaker 2: going out to vc across the country to check them
Speaker 2: out again. Roadshow, right, road show the vit Nerd. I
Speaker 2: would be appropriate to say. I wrote to Mickey into
Speaker 2: like we could do one here, and she loves planning things,
Speaker 2: and there got you know, not just a back ariad
Speaker 2: party or something like you know, events inside events, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's my wheelhouse. And then I do have
Speaker 4: is that mine right there?
Speaker 1: That's the commodo.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I have some roots in the vintage myself, and so
Speaker 4: I was enthusiastic about it. Was a challenge, right, can
Speaker 4: we bring this this sounth in California? Can we entice people?
Speaker 4: Is there an appetite here? Are there fans of vintage computing?
Speaker 4: And what we also found at the other events we
Speaker 4: went to is the community is just so enthusiastic and
Speaker 4: so friendly that we were like, this is great, and
Speaker 4: that's what we found. So we did it for the
Speaker 4: first time last year, and folks are stoked to come
Speaker 4: back and do it again. I think we heard one
Speaker 4: person say I found my tribe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're expecting over one thousand people.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. And this is going on for two days
Speaker 1: next weekend, Saturday and Sunday. You know, I honestly think
Speaker 1: it's kind of like cars. Everybody remembers their first car.
Speaker 1: Mine would be this Chevy Vega, and they love to
Speaker 1: talk about it and reminisce and talk about the radio
Speaker 1: it had in it or this. But honestly, a lot
Speaker 1: of us computer people we like talking about our first
Speaker 1: computers because we remember getting down and dirty and you
Speaker 1: remember saying, oh, ye had one hundred and twenty eight
Speaker 1: megs of RAM, or if we're lucky, you know it,
Speaker 1: and that's what.
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty eight bytes of brands.
Speaker 1: Exactly, you know? Or you talk about the hard drive
Speaker 1: that was ten megabytes, that was seriously the size of
Speaker 1: a shoe box. People love to talk about that. Do
Speaker 1: you find people come to this, this event and the
Speaker 1: other ones that you've been to around the country and
Speaker 1: they become friends with people sharing waxing poetic Yeah, we're.
Speaker 4: Talking about it just the other day that you you
Speaker 4: don't in everyday life, you cannot meet You're unlikely to
Speaker 4: meet someone who has shares an interest in vented vintage computing.
Speaker 4: But here they're they're collected and so you can build
Speaker 4: that camaraderie and then the network just grows and grows.
Speaker 1: Now you have this this video channel too, do you
Speaker 1: what what kind of things do you do with the
Speaker 1: video channel that kind of ties with the festival you've
Speaker 1: put on.
Speaker 2: Well, we bake some recipes. We might get some crocheting
Speaker 2: from time to time.
Speaker 1: I hope not really. Yeah, No, one of.
Speaker 2: My favorite aspects is working with nails and wood.
Speaker 1: Yeah great.
Speaker 2: Not all this stuff. Well, most of this up here
Speaker 2: works or works now, but not all of it does.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's tweaks and there's fixes, there's there's
Speaker 2: known issues. There's things that watch out for REFA capacitors,
Speaker 2: other capacitors, video outputs. So I cover a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff. But one of the things a lot of
Speaker 2: people might not realize is there is new products for
Speaker 2: this old hardware. They're you know, like this, reach back here.
Speaker 2: This is a Fuji Now. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: heard of this, right, They make these for multiple computers.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Well, when I say makes, there's a group, the Fujia
Speaker 2: team that designs the hardware out for the love of it,
Speaker 2: and then they go here is how to make it,
Speaker 2: and then people make it and then they sell it.
Speaker 2: So this is about you know, depending on where you
Speaker 2: get it and what you get, you know, sixty seventy
Speaker 2: eighty bucks depending on the model. And this plugs in
Speaker 2: this particular one plugs into an entire apic computer and
Speaker 2: this will act as the disk drive. You can print
Speaker 2: to a PDF file on the SD card here you
Speaker 2: can I can't remember anything.
Speaker 4: You can get on the internet.
Speaker 2: Well, I was just going to get to that. You
Speaker 2: can put your software on the SD card and asks
Speaker 2: like the act like the dis drive and getting too excited.
Speaker 2: But you can also get onto the internet with this.
Speaker 2: This is Wi Fi capable. And they've written some games
Speaker 2: that you can play other people over the Internet on
Speaker 2: your old Atari or Commodore or Apple too, And they've
Speaker 2: written some games that you can be on a Commodore
Speaker 2: and play over the Internet against somebody on an Atari, right,
Speaker 2: And that's the thing you couldn't even do back in
Speaker 2: the day. So again new technology, new products. This is
Speaker 2: the Apple version of that as well. This is this
Speaker 2: comes out of Poland from Lothar rac. This is for
Speaker 2: the Atari ape bit and this is a MIDI device
Speaker 2: in here. So this is the audio output. And so
Speaker 2: from your Atari a bit you can play songs that
Speaker 2: play MIDI out to your speakers, which you know that
Speaker 2: wasn't that capable or even that small way way back then.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 2: He was asking.
Speaker 4: The tie into the show is you'll talk about these
Speaker 4: things on your own, you know, but got these shows.
Speaker 4: You can buy them and you can learn how to
Speaker 4: use them, and it's just tying it all together.
Speaker 1: Do you get people that come out to the seed
Speaker 1: that bring their to eighty six or they break you
Speaker 1: know that maybe is running some really cool stuff they
Speaker 1: do they sell that at these shows? Or is it
Speaker 1: mainly stuff like this where they can add on and
Speaker 1: really get benefits from running that old technology and having
Speaker 1: a good time with it.
Speaker 2: Well, we have pretty much three what's the phrase. We
Speaker 2: have exhibitors, we have vendors, and we have attendees, right
Speaker 2: and of course mix it in there, and we have
Speaker 2: staff and whatever going out speakers, presentations and all oh cool.
Speaker 2: So exhibitors are ones they get a table or two
Speaker 2: or three and they bring out their favorite retro They're
Speaker 2: not there to sell anything, and they're just there to
Speaker 2: hang out show they're cool things. Maybe they're showing their
Speaker 2: game that they wrote in the nineties or what they
Speaker 2: were doing with printers and such. And then we have
Speaker 2: vendors who bring in some computers maybe the show things,
Speaker 2: but they're selling old hardware. New hardware, refurbished hardware. So
Speaker 2: there's that, and then we have a consignment area. So
Speaker 2: if you're just attending, or you're an exhibitor and you
Speaker 2: want to get rid of some of your duplicates or
Speaker 2: some other you're done with Commodore and you want to
Speaker 2: really go with something else, you can bring it into
Speaker 2: our consignment area and sell it. We of course for that,
Speaker 2: keep a twenty percent fee for that and pay the
Speaker 2: credit card charges and whatever.
Speaker 4: So we bring the audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we bring it in the attendees. So an attendees
Speaker 2: can check out the exhibitors tables, they can check out
Speaker 2: what the vendors are doing, they can check out consignment,
Speaker 2: they can check out the presentations. We have panels, we
Speaker 2: have a super fun game show plan for Saturday. It's
Speaker 2: cool audience participate patient. So it's some pretty fun stuff.
Speaker 1: What is some of the best advancements I always is
Speaker 1: this is so wide, but the best advance was when
Speaker 1: it comes to the technology that maybe you're looking at
Speaker 1: with a vintage computer festival that's happening next weekend, that
Speaker 1: you you get to the show and you see somebody
Speaker 1: who's brought something and it's like, oh wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Has there something that's really knocked her socks off?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, all over the place. Yeah, not just our
Speaker 2: show or other shows just out there in the world.
Speaker 2: We have a gentleman, Sean Harrington who loves the Aquarius computer.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the Aquarius?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: If you ever went for a time share lecture where
Speaker 2: they're like, sit down for two hours to get a
Speaker 2: free computer, they would give you an Aquarius Wow. It
Speaker 2: was from Mattel. It was one of those orphan the computers,
Speaker 2: the ones that didn't sell as well because everybody, everybody
Speaker 2: came out with their computer. You sell and click a
Speaker 2: vision and whatever dream cast. Yeah, the Aquarius is a
Speaker 2: little orphan, but Shanz picked it up and he now
Speaker 2: actually makes the Aquarius plus Wow, which is a modern
Speaker 2: version of it that will work with stuff from the
Speaker 2: past but also get you those new things like internet
Speaker 2: access and just better graphics and stuff if the software
Speaker 2: is written to do that well.
Speaker 4: And the reason that so many people are able to
Speaker 4: do this now is because of that maker community. We
Speaker 4: have access to three D printers and there's just so
Speaker 4: much more you can do in your own workshop. So
Speaker 4: people are producing these things, these new devices at home.
Speaker 1: So some of the speakers could include somebody that's created
Speaker 1: something like this. Who else is lined up?
Speaker 4: We got folks that were in the industry way back,
Speaker 4: like early game programmers. You've got a woman who worked
Speaker 4: for in television and is now part of They call
Speaker 4: themselves the Blue Sky Rangers. They're actually kind of alumni group,
Speaker 4: but they were the first ones hired, mainly from aerosp
Speaker 4: to be programmers for the gaming industry that just didn't
Speaker 4: exist at the time.
Speaker 2: And he's going to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow.
Speaker 2: You know, he's getting out of college and the parents
Speaker 2: are like, you're going to go into this and he's like,
Speaker 2: I want to write games or you know, at least
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that was Bill, but I've heard
Speaker 2: that from some of the early programmers. So again Bill
Speaker 2: is going to be there talking about that. And if
Speaker 2: you played some of those games back then, he wrote
Speaker 2: some of those.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Another speaker we have is Lee, who do you remember
Speaker 2: the Osbourne one?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, oh gosh yeah.
Speaker 2: Lee designed it. So he's going to be there, wow,
Speaker 2: But he's not going to talk about the We'll probably
Speaker 2: talk about the Osborne a little bit. How could he
Speaker 2: not yeah, but he's actually heavy into social media. He
Speaker 2: was designing social media before we even knew there was
Speaker 2: social media. So he's got a new book and he's
Speaker 2: going to be there talking about that, about what he
Speaker 2: perceives as the implications of social media and where go next?
Speaker 1: Oh cool, Yeah, this is gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: fun again. A lot of people are gonna be heading
Speaker 1: out to it. Well what's the cost. You can buy tickets.
Speaker 1: They're all on the website, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you can buy tickets online or at the door.
Speaker 4: They're twenty five dollars a day. We've got a deal
Speaker 4: for the weekend for forty dollars. We have another ticket
Speaker 4: that enables you to kind of support the show a
Speaker 4: little more. It's called the Vintage Fan Bundle, so it
Speaker 4: gets you a T shirt and a fun badge and
Speaker 4: some applause as you walk past the registration table.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I might have to try and take the
Speaker 1: weekend off work to come on out for this, because
Speaker 1: this is going to be an episode blast.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's a three day weekend.
Speaker 1: It's President's Day week exactly exactly what. We take the
Speaker 1: day off a different day because we do a big
Speaker 1: Tucson rodeo thing out here, and it's enormous, but this
Speaker 1: would be absolutely a lot of fun. I want tell
Speaker 1: our listeners to definitely check out your website and again
Speaker 1: follow you on social and follow, you know, check out
Speaker 1: all the fun stuff you guys are doing, because I
Speaker 1: mean you did radio some years ago. I know you
Speaker 1: were doing a tech show as well. I mean before
Speaker 1: tech shows, before tech shows were tech shows right right.
Speaker 2: The Collins shows. You know, why why is my windows
Speaker 2: not booting? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? By phone? Yeah? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smoke is supposed to come out of it? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was always kind of scary.
Speaker 2: Well, listen, tell her is the smoke?
Speaker 1: Yeah? All right. What's the website address? Our listeners can
Speaker 1: follow you and check it out right now.
Speaker 4: It is vcfsocal dot com. So Vintage Computer Festival VCF.
Speaker 1: I want to thank both of you for coming on
Speaker 1: Tech Talk Radio and talking about Like I said, I
Speaker 1: got really excited when I saw this that this is
Speaker 1: an absolute blast. Take the drive. It's only about six
Speaker 1: and a half hours to get from Tucson to Orange
Speaker 1: County h And again, all the information is available up
Speaker 1: on your website. Thank you so much. For coming on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: We will be back with more of tech Talk Radio
Speaker 1: and got something really cool to check out. Sean is
Speaker 1: going to get a copy of it as well. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about this. And if you have kids
Speaker 1: you want them to get into the technology, you'd like
Speaker 1: them to learn more about, you know, circuitry, transistors and
Speaker 1: what goes behind the scenes. Definitely want to check that
Speaker 1: one out, and we'll tell you all about that when
Speaker 1: we come back with more of tech talk Radio. You
Speaker 1: can find us on the worldwide web at tech talk
Speaker 1: radio dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: We post all kinds of content up there, whether it
Speaker 1: be from the show or the TV segments we do
Speaker 1: at chemis B Fox eleven, which is always a blast
Speaker 1: on Mondays. If you ever get a chance to check
Speaker 1: those out. And of course, if you've got a question
Speaker 1: for the show, two ways to get that into us.
Speaker 1: You can drop us an email tech guys at tech
Speaker 1: talk radio dot com. We like to share those questions,
Speaker 1: or you can go ahead and give us a call
Speaker 1: at five two zero seven seven seven ninety five eighty
Speaker 1: and leave a message and we'll get back to you
Speaker 1: and we may even use your question on the air.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'll be back with more of tech
Speaker 1: Talk Radio that's coming up next. Now back to tip
Speaker 1: Talk Radio. I want to thank Mickey and Steve again
Speaker 1: from Vintage Computer Festival SoCal for coming on and talking
Speaker 1: with us. Now, in that first segment, we got a
Speaker 1: chance to talk about PC Manager apparently now available for
Speaker 1: Windows users. Microsoft putting this out, making it available in
Speaker 1: the Microsoft Store, but Sean went ahead, just grabbed it
Speaker 1: and right away You're not happy with it.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna tell people if you get Microsoft PC
Speaker 3: Manager there when you open it for the first time,
Speaker 3: there are two checked boxes all right in the dialogue
Speaker 3: that pop up. One that says start automatically when Windows
Speaker 3: is when signed into Windows. All right, that's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm still not a fan of that.
Speaker 3: The second one says restore settings to ensure the native
Speaker 3: Windows experience.
Speaker 1: Wait, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: And below that it says restore default settings taskbar all
Speaker 3: of my task If I clicked start, all of my
Speaker 3: taskbar settings that I have set would be back to default.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that means that means my layout. That means
Speaker 3: my apps. That means copile it's going to be back.
Speaker 3: That means that the task view is going to be back.
Speaker 3: That means all of the widgets are going to be back.
Speaker 3: That would I would have I would have walked away.
Speaker 1: From my computer for that happened your bottom?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like right now I've got the search bar hidden.
Speaker 3: I've got it like I've got my task bar the
Speaker 3: way I want it. I don't see the widgets. I
Speaker 3: don't see anything. If that reset, oh man, I would
Speaker 3: have been hot because it's just like somebody else drives
Speaker 3: your car, move your seats, they move your mirrors, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: Like that would have that would have made me mad.
Speaker 3: Like that's the kind of stuff that really irks me
Speaker 3: about the Windows experience. Let me just let me leave
Speaker 3: me alone. Yeah, a lot of people, I'm gonna uncheck that.
Speaker 1: All right, you're still gonna you're still gonna move forward
Speaker 1: or no.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean that's one little thing. But that
Speaker 3: that's something that like I like the task by the way,
Speaker 3: it is, like I don't want the widgets. I don't
Speaker 3: want the task of you. I don't I don't want copilot,
Speaker 3: I don't want suggested apps. I don't want like there
Speaker 3: are certain things that you can turn off in tailor
Speaker 3: so that you don't get a full bloated experience from
Speaker 3: Windows eleven.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's the problem here is maybe is that
Speaker 1: what they're going for. You think, let's let's put the
Speaker 1: standards on there, like co pilot. So if you, yeah, get.
Speaker 3: It back to the basics. So then somebody get they
Speaker 3: just get frustrated and leave it. And then every time
Speaker 3: they click on the start menu, you now they've got
Speaker 3: suggested apps. Now they can give you suggested apps. They
Speaker 3: can tailor it to your experience. They can use your
Speaker 3: data to push you certain things and advertisements and blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah. If anybody's used Sea Cleaner, yeah,
Speaker 3: by pre form like this is this is basically Microsoft's
Speaker 3: version of Sea Cleaner. The layout looks the same. It's
Speaker 3: kind of got the same thing, but just at a
Speaker 3: Microsoft level.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's like it's kind of building in It's kind of
Speaker 3: combining Windows Defender and See Cleaner on in one. It's
Speaker 3: got you know your Windows protection, Hey are your windows?
Speaker 3: Are your Windows? Is your Windows up to date? Pop
Speaker 3: up management? You know, notifications that stuff. You know, it
Speaker 3: can do a give your drives. It can manage your
Speaker 3: downloaded files. It can hey, you can look at all
Speaker 3: your different drives and see large files. It can look
Speaker 3: at duplicate files, temporary files, that that stuff. And then
Speaker 3: in the apps, right, you can do startup apps, you
Speaker 3: can don install apps, add more apps to the store,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And then it's got a quick thing. This
Speaker 3: is kind of cool. You can get quick in that.
Speaker 3: There's a toolbox option which gives you quick things to
Speaker 3: like screenshots, video and voice recorder, close captions, no pad, calculator,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 1: But no word pad. You notice that?
Speaker 3: Have you no pad?
Speaker 1: No pad? Have you run twenty four h yet that
Speaker 1: got rid of word pad?
Speaker 3: Probably?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also gotten rid of well the biggest
Speaker 1: problem I've had is with network shares, and I've got
Speaker 1: to sit down and figure that out yet because.
Speaker 3: I still have word pads, so I still haven't.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, you haven't done that one yet. I
Speaker 1: was working on a system the other day and they
Speaker 1: wanted to update, and I told them you might want
Speaker 1: to hold off. Let's just wait. Let's say just wait
Speaker 1: just a little bit. So again, all right, so PC
Speaker 1: Manager it's available in the Windows Store. Make sure you
Speaker 1: check what you're clicking on, just don't try and go
Speaker 1: through it real fast, all right. So there is a
Speaker 1: company out there that has been making some really good
Speaker 1: products since two thousand and two. Actually they made electronics
Speaker 1: before then. And it's called a Lenko. And if you've
Speaker 1: heard of the company, A Lenko has a product out
Speaker 1: there called snap Circuits and they are fun ways for
Speaker 1: kids you to learn about electronic components, but also there
Speaker 1: are a lot of fun for US adults too. They
Speaker 1: put out a brand new one. It is from again
Speaker 1: from a Leco called Snap Circuits Top Secret Spy Kit.
Speaker 1: And what you get is you get a I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna it's not a PCV board, but it is a
Speaker 1: board and everything snaps. There's no soldering, no tools. And
Speaker 1: what I have built, uh, and I did this in
Speaker 1: about ten minutes was a motion alarm. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and turn it on, all right. So it's
Speaker 1: powered by three double A batteries and I will move
Speaker 1: and as soon as I move, the motion detector continues
Speaker 1: to go. So again, this is really cool. You could
Speaker 1: build it, but just one of the many projects that
Speaker 1: you could do. There's twenty five projects available in the
Speaker 1: SPI kit and remember it comes with everything except for
Speaker 1: the batteries. You just plug them in. You've followed the directions,
Speaker 1: you'll learn the circuitries, transitions, transistors, but all without having
Speaker 1: to do any soldering, with having to do any wiring,
Speaker 1: and learn how some of this stuff works. And they're interchangeable.
Speaker 1: And the spike k it is one that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send to you a Sean, so you'll have all these
Speaker 1: parts and again all the different projects you can make,
Speaker 1: whether it be a trip wire, a motion detection, and
Speaker 1: you've got fun putting this stuff together. Would you want
Speaker 1: to do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that I like doing. Iye,
Speaker 3: tinkering with stuff like this, I mean I would. I
Speaker 3: know Maxwell love this. He likes legos, he's obsessed with legos.
Speaker 1: Oh, then he'll love this.
Speaker 3: He'll like this. And I just feel basic understanding of
Speaker 3: electronics can make and break a lot of things in
Speaker 3: your life. Right. There are a lot of little things
Speaker 3: that with my rudimentary knowledge of electronics. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not an electric but I've been able to repair a
Speaker 3: lot of things just based on Oh it's a blown fuse,
Speaker 3: it's a blown resistor it's a blown capacitor, or hey,
Speaker 3: I could use my multimeter and test this and know
Speaker 3: that this component is the bad one and replace it.
Speaker 3: Like I've saved thousands and thousands of dollars over my
Speaker 3: lifetime in electronics because I've just fixed them, yeah, instead
Speaker 3: of just going eh, it's junk and thrown it out.
Speaker 1: Same with computers. You know, we'd do that accounts right.
Speaker 1: The other one that I got, it's a Snap Circuits Explorer.
Speaker 1: It's the Junior Snap Circuits Junior. This one is one
Speaker 1: hundred projects. And the project that I built and I
Speaker 1: tried to show on television was what's just called the
Speaker 1: flying saucer. And you put all all of it together
Speaker 1: on again, it's a plastic board. It all snaps into place.
Speaker 1: You follow the directions and then you push a button
Speaker 1: and this little flying saucer goes spinning into the air.
Speaker 1: Probably is I hooked it up backwards on the circuit.
Speaker 1: So it's good to know about circuitry and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: so it didn't take off, and it wasn't until I,
Speaker 1: you know, we had finished the live segment on television.
Speaker 1: I walked over the other counter and I was pulling
Speaker 1: it apart, and I said, wait a minute, and I
Speaker 1: connected it the opposite way, and then of course it's
Speaker 1: spun and went into the air. So Snap Circuits Explorer
Speaker 1: runs about thirty dollars, and you can get the spy
Speaker 1: Kits for about fifty bucks. But I want to thank
Speaker 1: Snap Circuits Alenko for sending that to us so we
Speaker 1: can play around with it and have some fun with it.
Speaker 1: And this one only requires two double A batteries. So
Speaker 1: and again there's like one hundred different projects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these are not that expensive like that spy
Speaker 3: Kit one was only forty nine ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So and you can stock on their website.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll have good fun with it. And it's good
Speaker 1: with the kids because they'll they'll see how it gets
Speaker 1: all put together and then be able to understand. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all circuitry. Transistors, electronics work, and the only electronics
Speaker 1: are the batteries. Now you don't want to give you know,
Speaker 1: these are seven and up, but you don't want to
Speaker 1: you know, just give the kids a battery. You can
Speaker 1: actually work with them and and put these together.
Speaker 3: But I've bought like you, you bought the kid the child.
Speaker 1: Version, right, So you have the adult version of something,
Speaker 1: well this is this is or the grown up version,
Speaker 1: I should say, not adult.
Speaker 3: The forty eight bit digital electric electronic clock.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, which has which.
Speaker 3: Has the entire every single piece of component and it
Speaker 3: comes with a complete base. You solder every little itty
Speaker 3: bitty component on here. The resistor is a transistor everything.
Speaker 1: So are you good at soldering? I'm terrible at soldering.
Speaker 3: I thoroughly enjoy it. I wouldn't say I'm great at it,
Speaker 3: but I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the kind of guy who'd solder my eyeball shit.
Speaker 1: I just I just I'm terrible with stuff like that.
Speaker 3: No, I do a lot of I don't do a
Speaker 3: lot of soldering at work, but you know, we make
Speaker 3: a lot of our own customer cables, so I do
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of excell R soldering, uh
Speaker 3: for three four and five pan of large power. I
Speaker 3: do all my own hobby stuff here at home. Darcy
Speaker 3: planes right, tons of soldering and Arcy planes and drones
Speaker 3: and stuff. I mean, I've got two soldering irons in my.
Speaker 1: Workshop and wow, yeah flus and you.
Speaker 3: Know I've got it flux and solder and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm terrible with that stuff. Oh well, well all right,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty good. Where do you find that at?
Speaker 1: To build your own clock? And I know they even
Speaker 1: have like you can build your own radios too.
Speaker 3: I just I just kind of scour the electronics subreddits
Speaker 3: and the ham radio clubs and stuff that I'm part
Speaker 3: of because a lot of this stuff is mostly for
Speaker 3: kids or people learning. But it's like it's fun to
Speaker 3: do there. You know on this Alenko website too, right,
Speaker 3: they have a make your own FM radio kit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you can buy this. It's twenty nine dollars and
Speaker 3: you get all the components and a circuit board and
Speaker 3: you build it your is this to radio? Yep?
Speaker 1: They I think they even have an AMFM one as well,
Speaker 1: so you could even do an AM one, which is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So I mean, just if you're into that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, yeah, am AMFM Radio Transition Kids sixty
Speaker 3: five bucks. And what I like about it though, is
Speaker 3: it explains things to you, like here's what this piece does, right,
Speaker 3: instead of just skiing solder this on here right exactly?
Speaker 1: Wow, all right, I want to share this with you.
Speaker 1: Verge had a story and we were talking about co Pilot.
Speaker 1: A little bit ago that LG and Samsung are adding
Speaker 1: Microsoft co Pilot to their TVs, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: do we want AI on our television? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the benefit of roku is you know, you get a
Speaker 1: vote voice. You could tell it I want a comedy
Speaker 1: or I want a specific show. But do we really
Speaker 1: want to have co pilot as a part of our interface?
Speaker 1: And does that mean more ads?
Speaker 3: Of course, it means more ads. It means more detailed ads.
Speaker 3: It means more targeted ads. It means more understanding your habits, right,
Speaker 3: which means more targeted ads. It'll understand targeted ads based
Speaker 3: on the time you watch things like if you're an
Speaker 3: habitual watcher before dinner time, you're gonna get more food ads, right,
Speaker 3: You're gonna get it's It's all it is is just
Speaker 3: targeted data collection. That's AI is a tool, right, right,
Speaker 3: That's what I used it for. I use it for
Speaker 3: a tool. I just don't understand. I just there's so
Speaker 3: much data collection happening on everybody and everything. It's scary, right,
Speaker 3: And I don't need AI running everything for me. And
Speaker 3: a coworker we were talking about AI the ore day
Speaker 3: at work and a co worker made a really good point. AI.
Speaker 3: They're always touting or eighty two point six percent accurate, right,
Speaker 3: you know when they do AI stuff. Well, if I
Speaker 3: was eighty two six percent accurate in my job, I
Speaker 3: get fired.
Speaker 1: Good point, right, that's what.
Speaker 3: My coworker said. My coworker is what he does most
Speaker 3: of our video graphics for the TV shows and the
Speaker 3: broadcast that we do. He said, if I made that
Speaker 3: many mistakes on the graphics that I produced, I'd be fired.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So everybody's so excited that they're eighty two percent accurate.
Speaker 3: There's still We've talked about this before in the show.
Speaker 3: There's still the human element in everything we do in
Speaker 3: our lives that is being replaced by computers. And it's
Speaker 3: becoming scary how little we're interacting with ourselves, let alone
Speaker 3: other people, and we're relying so much on AI to
Speaker 3: do stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe too much. All Right, we got to take another
Speaker 1: quick break. We'll be back with more of tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean de Weird.
Speaker 3: Find us on Facebook at tech Talkers.
Speaker 1: And now back to tech Talk Radio.
Speaker 3: I am Rick Darringer, Rock and Roll, hoo Chiku and
Speaker 3: you're listening to talk radio.
Speaker 1: Conventions can be fun and Sean little jealous just found
Speaker 1: out he's gonna be going to one of the premiere
Speaker 1: conventions for broadcasting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it'll be the first time I've gotten to
Speaker 3: go in my twenty years in broadcast.
Speaker 1: Really, you've never been to NAB before.
Speaker 3: I've never been to anything. Only been in Vegas twice.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I've been to an NAB show and it's
Speaker 1: a blast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So NAB is the National Association of Broadcasters show.
Speaker 3: It's their yearly. They do a big one in Vegas.
Speaker 3: They do one in New York, but it's it's the
Speaker 3: Who's it and What's it of broadcast. It's in Vegas.
Speaker 3: It's five days. I get to go for all five days.
Speaker 3: I'm excited because I've never for one. Again, I've never been,
Speaker 3: but it's it's a great opportunity for me to look
Speaker 3: and see the new technology, meet with our vendors. We've
Speaker 3: already got We've already got vendor meetings lined up. RAC
Speaker 3: Callan is already populating with meetings because it's it's everybody
Speaker 3: that's everybody in the business goes. So I'm really excited.
Speaker 1: Now, Well, companies like black Magic Design that makes the
Speaker 1: ATM Mani and so many other broadcasting products beyond on site.
Speaker 3: I guarantee, I guarantee every piece of equipment we used
Speaker 3: to do this show, somebody from that business will be there.
Speaker 3: Stream Al, Gatto will be there, Atem, black Magic, Uh, Logitech.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's CS on steroids, it's cees at
Speaker 3: the at the broadcast level, right, Yeah, see, yes, it
Speaker 3: is the consumer track show. So it's all consumer level
Speaker 3: of tracks, right. You take it one step up from that,
Speaker 3: you get the prosumer right, and then you're at the
Speaker 3: the pro level of equipment. So you know we're gonna
Speaker 3: be seeing and listening to There's gonna be keynotes and
Speaker 3: discussion panels and stuff like that. So this is gonna
Speaker 3: be the topic at CS was was aim and in
Speaker 3: automated cars and AI and stuff, and so that's a
Speaker 3: big topic is but the big topic is is cloud right?
Speaker 3: Cloud move the moving productions to the cloud. So that's
Speaker 3: part of something we're working on at at the university
Speaker 3: is what what can we leverage in the cloud for
Speaker 3: our productions versus staying on prem right. So it's it's
Speaker 3: just gonna be five days of networking and knowledge based
Speaker 3: learning and getting the experiment and play around with some
Speaker 3: of the new stuff.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a lot of fun. All right. So
Speaker 1: this is Weddy. It's gonna be in April.
Speaker 3: April fifth to the ninth in Vegas.
Speaker 1: So when you get back, we'll get like a full
Speaker 1: rundown of what's going on in the world broadcast.
Speaker 3: Have so many stickers and brochures to go through, and
Speaker 3: I can give you guys a rundown on what I
Speaker 3: saw and what I liked, and I.
Speaker 1: Mean, all right, baby, now, maybe next week on the
Speaker 1: show too, because I'm gonna we're gonna send you out
Speaker 1: the Spike kit from Staff Circuits. We'll see what you
Speaker 1: can you could build. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm dude. I love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Max loves his Computer Engineering for Baby's book, so I'm
Speaker 3: sure he's gonna love.
Speaker 1: This Computer Engineering for Babies.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I will, I will. I will show a
Speaker 3: demo the Computer Engineering for Babies book and the Computer
Speaker 3: Engineering for Big Baby's book next week on the show.
Speaker 1: All right, perfect, that's it for this week. Have yourselves
Speaker 1: a fantastic week. We'll be back next week with some
Speaker 1: great stuff. As you heard, I'm Andy Taylor.
Speaker 3: I'm Seonda Weird. Have a great week.