The Tech Guy Episode 1886 Transcript

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

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Leo Laporte (00:00:07):
This. Hi, this is Leo Laporte and this is my tech guy podcast. This show originally aired on the premier networks on Sunday, April 17th, 2022 episode 1,886. Enjoy. The tech guy podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/tech guy. Well, Hey, Hey, how are you today? Happy Easter, happy ass. Over. Good to see everybody time to talk tech with ma Leo Laport, the tech guy. This is the show where we talk about computers and the internet and smart vehicles. Smart watches, smart phones. Is there anything dumb in this show? Yeah, me 88, 88. Ask dumb enough to try to solve people's problems with technology. Yeah. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo that's the phone number? If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion, the truth is you're not reliant totally upon me.

Leo Laporte (00:01:16):
We have the fabulous chat room available team techGuy@ircdottwi.tv. Often jump in with their suggestions. And of course the vast listening audience who often calls in with good ideas. So 88, 88 ask Leo that's the the number to call and we're all in this together so we can all solve our own problems together. Sam Bo Sam, the, our, a guy, our technology and vehicle technology fella coming up in just a little bit to help us out. A little later it'll be Chris mark, our photo guy. We've got a, a big show planned for you. Big show, rod pile spaceman as well. I we'll talk with Sam about the California clean air resources board saying they're gonna phase out gas powered vehicles in 2035. Although I have to say the headline from protocol went, the state's clean air resources board unveiled its plan to FA haz out gas powered vehicles on Thursday. When I first read that I went, what?

Leo Laporte (00:02:30):
No, they unveiled the plan. They didn't. The plan is actually has a 45 day public comment period, June 9th, public hearing, but that's interesting. 20, 20, 20, 35 that's 13 years. If my math is correct. Not long, not long. Let's see, what else has been going on? Apple is testing new max with their new M two chips. We get this on good authority from mark Gurman, who is the the king of apple rumor mongers at Bloomberg blue, Bloomberg according to developer logs. I don't, I don't. How do you get those? I don't know, but several new, as many as nine new max with four different M two based chips. So let's see. What would you have, you'd have the M two, the M two pro would you do an M two max and ultra, just like, I guess you would, what for four chips or maybe it's just the M M two and M two with some extra stuff we don't know. We'll find out. I think we will find, so does mark, by the way, I think we will find out to come June 6th, which is when Apple's worldwide developers conference is so about six weeks. Something like that. If my math is incorrect, which I'm sure it is Elon Musk.

Leo Laporte (00:03:59):
Wow. He is he is really the gift that keeps on giving in terms of tech news. He he tried to buy Twitter. He offered a slight, slight premium over the current Twitter price. I think Twitter price is 48 bucks. He offered 54 bucks then tells head in, in a Ted talk I don't know if I can do it. See, you know, by the way, this is a good thing to know about billionaires. Elon Musk is worth an estimated 270 billion, but most of that's tied up in stock and stuff. You know, he's got a nice car, real estate investments, that kind of thing, you know, actually he doesn't own any homes. So he sure he can come up with some three or 4 billion here and there. In fact, he did, he's been slowly buying up Twitter pieces of Twitter.

Leo Laporte (00:04:53):
Why would anybody pay anything for Twitter? Is my question. See, you know, I think honestly, Twitter and for invited him on the board when he bought 9.2% and then they renegged one of the other of them said, no, they changed their mind last weekend. Now he says, I'm gonna buy Twitter outright, which makes you think, oh, that's why I didn't wanna be on the board. Cuz you can't do that. You can't do a hostile takeover if you're on the board, there's rules my friends and believe it or not. So, oh, I don't wanna be on and I just wanna buy you. But then he says, I don't know if I can do it. He's very honest or dumb or crazy like a Fox because his hope was, I think I'm projecting here, but he's done it before. I will say I wanna buy Twitter for 54 bucks a share, which will immediately raise the price of 54 bucks a share. I paid for my, you know, 9.2% am me measly 3 billion. You know, I'm gonna make money like, like a billion dollars. Soon as the stock goes up based on me tweeting, I'm gonna buy it. I can sell all my stock and make a billion dollars. Cuz times are tough for billionaires. He, you know, he's gotta, every penny counts

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
This, by the way would be an illegal what they call a pump and dump scam. You pump up a stock, pretend it's gonna be great, $54 a share. And then you sell a before anybody catches on. I don't know if that's what he's doing. He has been accused of doing that before SCC find him 20 million. Somebody did the math by the way. So Elon Musk worth 270 billion. You and I, the average American average net worth actually the median net worth is $110,000. So for the average median American, A 20 million fine to Elon Musk is about the same to us as a small fry at McDonald's. Can you afford a small fry? Yes. Can Elon afford that fine? Yes. Would you like fries with that Mr. Musk? Yes. So what you know, SEC's gonna have to come up with a better thing than a 20 million fine that's Elon Musk. You bad boy. You give us some French fries now, now I mean it or you're in trouble. Mr. Do you bring enough for the whole class? Researchers stopped an attack on the Ukrainian power grid researchers from and Microsoft discovered a new variant of an old piece of malware from 20. Now that malware was used by sand war, AKA fancy bear, AKA the Russian military intelligence, the G U in 2016 to cut the power in Ukraine. They couldn't even come up with a new virus.

Leo Laporte (00:07:56):
Six years later, you're still using the old one. Well that's maybe why Microsoft and EEC caught it stopped the attack before the power grid was brought down. So we've been going back and forth. Why haven't the Russians, you know doing everything nasty that they're doing, why haven't they tried to do a little cyber warfare on on the, on Ukraine and us Frank? Well, maybe this is why They've been busy. They haven't had time to make any new viruses, I guess. I

Leo Laporte (00:08:28):
Dunno.

Leo Laporte (00:08:29):
Sometimes sanctions, you know, a lot of, lot of tech companies issuing sanctions against Russia. It's good. We gotta do something. Gotta do something. Tiktok purged

Leo Laporte (00:08:43):
Blocked all non Russian content on TikTok in, in Russia. You know, that didn't work so well because what did get through all Russia propaganda. So effectively tick TikTok turned itself into a Russian tool for Russia propaganda. That didn't work that did not work. Sometimes the sanctions are have unintended consequences, eighty eight, eighty eight S the phone number (888) 827-5536. That's the number toll free from anywhere in the us or Canada, outside that area. You can use Skype and call us. It shouldn't cost you anything. Website tech, guy labs.com your calls next and says my phone. Yeah. And picks it up. Yeah. Yeah. Hey Kim, Shaer the unbreakable phone angel. Now that's a good song for you. That thank you, Laura. That was very flattering. All blue eyes. Yeah. Yeah. So hello. Hi. Happy Easter. Happy. Oh gosh. Is this Easter? I I think so.

Leo Laporte (00:09:54):
And I have determined. I have spent every Easter with you for the past seven years. Wow. All that and no colored eggs. Nope. It's amazing. It's amazing. There have been mimosas in the past, there've been mimosa, Lisa threatened. She was gonna bring coming to make waffles and she realized it's just the three of us. I know. Since here you said nobody here buzzing on an Easter, but yeah, we, yeah, not anymore. Anyway. A happy Easter happy Easter. Who should I? Who sh what little Easter bunny should I take on the, let's go to Jim in Annapolis, Maryland. He tried something new and Micah recommended last week, but now his computer's acting funny. I take it. You didn't go to Coachella by the way, I'm here. But I have seen that your son is partying his, apparently I haven't seen these videos, but everybody's telling me that salt Hank is having a good time at Coachella. Good time. Where are those videos on Instagram and his stories? Oh Lord. I, I almost don't want to see my son is he's dancing, but is it, you know, I heard he, he was break dancing. Yeah. I think he had his shirt off. I'm not sure. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. Thank you, Kim. For the report on my children, Jim, on the line from Monopoli Maryland. Hello, Jim. Leo Laport, the tech guy.

Caller 1 (00:11:10):
How are you doing today?

Leo Laporte (00:11:11):
I am wonderful. How are you, sir?

Caller 1 (00:11:13):
Good. let me tell you, you, you, you are really very good at what you do. Oh, I, I, wow. I, I listen to your show and thank you. I always walk away with one or two things from each show that, you know, that teach me something as

Leo Laporte (00:11:29):
Long as I'm, you're not walking away with fleas. I feel, I feel good. I feel positive about that. Yes. Thank you. That's nice.

Caller 1 (00:11:35):
But last week I was listening and I, some gentleman must have called in about trying to replace fi get a get a away from a bunch of duplicates.

Leo Laporte (00:11:46):
Oh yeah. He had a problem. A lot of us do where, you know, our photos get doubled and tripled and quadrupled and start taking up a ton of space. Yeah. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:11:54):
And you and Mike have recommended Mac Paul gen Gemini too. Yes. As being something really good. I have a Mac, a 2021 M one MacBook pro. So I I ordered it on Friday. Got it. And so between Friday and Saturday, I was going through, I mean, I got, I, you know, I probably got more stuff than you even got, so anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Unlikely, but go ahead.

Caller 1 (00:12:21):
But it took, it took me all weekend to to, to go through everything and make sure I got it. And so, so I never turned the computer off.

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
Okay.

Caller 1 (00:12:30):
But after I, after I finished, you know, last I, you know, I just shut the computer down and closed it up as apple recommends you to do you know, occasionally. And when I started up this morning, all hell broke loose.

Leo Laporte (00:12:45):
Oh no. What happened?

Caller 1 (00:12:47):
You know, I, I opened it up, started it up and I went into outlook, even though I have a, a Mac, I have Microsoft office on it. And then also I opened up a browser, you know, Firefox

Leo Laporte (00:13:04):
And Gemini too is running in the background at this time.

Caller 1 (00:13:07):
I, which I didn't really realize at that moment. Okay. You know, I thought it was just a deal where if I wanted to use it, I'd click it on and drag the, you know, the folder over and all that type

Leo Laporte (00:13:15):
Of thing. Yeah. I think you have an option of, of letting it continue to spot. Yeah. New copies. Yeah.

Caller 1 (00:13:21):
Yeah. So within minutes, all of a sudden, within a minute I get a screen that says you're running out of memory.

Leo Laporte (00:13:28):
Yeah. How much Ram do you have on that? M one

Caller 1 (00:13:32):
16. Okay. And you know, you need to force quit outlook and you need to force, quit your browser. Otherwise your, your computer's gonna go nuts on you. So, you know, I figured, okay. So I did that. I turned the machine off, turned it back on, see if that would work.

Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
That's the best way to do it. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Caller 1 (00:13:53):
Anyway, it happened. And, and I'm not calling you for a solution cuz I had up calling apple, you know, cause they're really good. I mean the reason I, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:14:01):
They have great support. Yeah. They

Caller 1 (00:14:03):
Have great support. Yeah. And we tried to delete and I told her here's something that just happened in the last couple days, because usually when something goes wrong, you can think back and say, did you do something different?

Leo Laporte (00:14:17):
Yeah. Guess what? You did different, you installed Gemini too. I could see where this is going.

Caller 1 (00:14:23):
So anyway, so we went into applications and we tried to delete it and it wouldn't delete. So she ended up going into the little bit more of the back end and we ended up, you know, dragging it down into the, to trash can and everything. And so make a long story short eventually, you know, it, we were able to clear everything and it's not doing that anymore. I just want to pass the story onto you.

Leo Laporte (00:14:47):
Okay. So let me talk about this, cuz this is not an uncommon problem. Unfortunately, with some M ones, although usually it's with the eight gigabyte Ram version, it's not the 16, it's one of the reasons I say get 16. And it's a problem with Mac OS. And so in future, and of course the apple is probably not gonna tell you this cuz while these people are good, they're not, you know, experts despite the billing of genius in future run the activity monitor. In fact, I'd keep it running for a little while now because there have been problems with M one max with what what's happening is you're getting a memory. What they call a memory leak, which is as a program runs, it, it requests memory from the operating system and then forgets to release it. And over time uses more and more and more.

Leo Laporte (00:15:37):
If you open your activity, monitor, there's a tab in that showing what programs are using, how much memory almost invariably. And I've had this happen to me and I've talked to other people, you'll find something using 3, 4, 5, 5 gigs of Ram. Now maybe it might be Gemini too. It might not be remember if you have it going through a lot of photos, it could be, you know, it's occupying a lot of memory, but in the past one of the problems and I, there have been a number with max operatings. The Mac OS operating system is tied to weirdly enough. And they've, I think they've fixed this, but that doesn't mean they've fixed all problems. If you change the size of your mouse pointer or use a third party program to change the shaper size of your mouse pointer, you know, you can go into accessibility settings and I always do and make my pointer bigger there, it causes a memory leak and then you'll get the window manager among other will show up using 5, 6, 7 gigs of Ram inappropriately.

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
So what I would do is run your activity, monitor and keep an eye on Ram use. And if you see anything using more than a gig, that's a sign. You can kill that process by the way. That's one of the things activity monitor, let you do is, is look at those. So this is a useful tool when you get this memory issue, the operating system attempts to diagnose it, but it isn't gonna do a very good job because it's kind of like looking at your brain from the inside. You just, you, you need an outside observer activity. Monitor will tell you who's using what Ram. And I found that for instance, killing the window, man manager sometimes solves that problem. So I would, I would take a look at that now to see if there's anything going on still, it could, if it was Gemini, then you know, then you would did the right thing to get rid of it. I would write to them and say, you know, tell them what happened. We don't know if it's Gemini the that's the problem. And I'm certainly it could have been, it could be anything running on your system, but we don't know. Sure. Because it's a, you know, it's a holistic problem. And so that's why the activity monitors your best friend in future. She should have, frankly had she known, she would've told you this and opened activity monitor look, and then you can pinpoint it. I think.

Caller 1 (00:17:54):
Yeah. I think she did. And there was a, you know, a,

Leo Laporte (00:17:57):
If it's using a few gigs of Ram, that ain't good. Yeah. That ain't good. I

Caller 1 (00:18:01):
Can't, I can't, I can't remember. But I mean, she went down a whole list of, yeah. It was like 5,600 things. Yeah. I, it seemed like, and then they're all using like, you know, 2.3 mega or something like that.

Leo Laporte (00:18:12):
Yeah. They should all be in the megabyte range, mean gigabytes would be a lot, so, yeah. And I'm sorry that's happened. I haven't heard a widespread issue with Gemini too. It may be. You had so many photos. It choked that sometimes happens. Thanks for the call though. I appreciate it. Sam bull, Sam car guy coming up next.

Leo Laporte (00:18:35):
Yeah. No, I don't think swap would make a big difference. It's a it's yeah. Macs is a little bit of a strange beast. Little bit of an odd, odd beast. What do you in front of Sam? What is that? Oh, you're muted there. Or am I muting there? That is the, no, that was me. I muted it. So I wouldn't interrupt anything extent, like no that, that is the Toyota BZ four X. We're gonna talk about that. Good purpose built EV yeah. Did you go to the New York car show? I did. I was in New York. That's where I met up with the folks from BMW. Nice. Thank you for interceding. I appreciate that. No worries. They were, they were giving us a, a preview of a car that they're going to publicly reveal next week. Oh, exciting.

Leo Laporte (00:19:25):
Yeah. I am glad that I am not buying an EV until 20, 22 5. My next EVV. I might be, I might buy that. Usually we lease them, might buy this one cuz I'm getting old and I'm thinking this might be my last car, you know? So you know, cuz 10 years from now I'll be by, by 2025, you know, there will be a lot more choices. Yeah. There might be something you like better. Yeah. I'm looking at the ID buzz. I like and Volkswagen had some pretty good results with their EVs, right? Yeah. The ID four is really good. You know, it, it I saw one the other day on that highway. It had some, it had some challenges with its infotainment system. The software is a little laggy, but it has gotten better. They've done some OTA updates and it will continue to improve.

Leo Laporte (00:20:08):
I think they're they're aware of the issues are working on it. Yeah. but the ID buzz is really cool. You know, it's, you know, kind of a, a modern take on the classic microbus. Yeah. and they're, they're doing a popup camper version. Like the, the Western I know that'll be so fun. Yeah. They haven't shown that publicly yet, but they have confirmed the a couple years doing that. Yeah. Get a couple years. Yeah. So that'll be right. You know, that'll be, that should be available right around the time that you're ready to make a decision about what to do with, you know, exactly. And there, you know, there will be updated mocks and, and other stuff too. And you know, more stuff from GM and Stant and everybody else. Exactly. But at this time I should like to mention, well, front is so easy.

Leo Laporte (00:20:55):
These days to get sucked into the, you know, the stalks media and go out and buy games, spots, stock, or AMC stock. And you see people making billions on Bitcoin. It's so easy to get sucked in by that, but that my friends, I please listen to me when I tell you is not the right way to prepare for your future. It's fun. I'm not saying don't do it, but, but don't bet the Ru money on it. Stock trading. Yeah. It could be fun, you know, but like casino, gambling and eating street food, it should be done in moderation. That's all I'm gonna say. I hope for your sake. And this is what I tell my kids. And when anybody asks me, you're stashing some safer money in a place like Wealthfront day trading is not the secret to life. And most day traders lose money over time.

Leo Laporte (00:21:49):
The truth is you need a strategy and Wealthfront has a ton of data to show that time. And this is important. This is a great phrase, time in the market. Almost always beats timing the market. You try to time it. When you say what's the right time to buy, I'm gonna buy low, sell high, right. But when is it low and when is it high and how do you know that's timing the market? You need a globally diversified portfolio. That's automatically optimized to hit the goals you set and the risk level you choose. Where do you get that? Well front in fact, did you know, they invented the software for tax loss, harvesting. That's how you can get automatic tax breaks to boost your returns. Even if the market goes down, there's a whole scale a of ways you can use Wealthfront, you can set it and forget it, let them rebalance, let them do all of that stuff based on your goals.

Leo Laporte (00:22:35):
Or it's Al you can pick portfolios with funds you want. And a lot of people say, well, I want socially responsible funds, or I'd like to dabble in crypto or maybe cannabis or, you know, and Wealthfront has a selection of funds, social respons, clean energy cryptocurrency. So you can personalize your portfolio. Wealthfront has 27 billion in assets, half a million people use Wealthfront to build their wealth Investipedia. Name them the best robo advisor for 2022. So start building your wealth, have fun. If you want put $5,000 in right now, you can get it managed free forever, no fees, nothing wealthfront.com/tech guy, w E a L T H. That's the operative word wealth front F R O N T wealthfront.com/tech guy. Start building your wealth, go to wealthfront.com/tech a get started today. Wealthfront.Com/Tech. Okay, thank you. Wealth front. He's driving onto the lot in his low slung Miata, our car guy, Sam bull, Sam he's, principal researcher guide, house insights writes about the automotive industry and, and, and other things there. And of course has a great podcast called wheel bearings with Nicole and Robbie. Two of my favorite people along with Sam and joins us every week to talk cars. Were you at the New York car show?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:00):
I did both Nicole and I were actually in New York this week for the auto show, fun Wednesday and Thursday. I

Leo Laporte (00:24:07):
Never, I've heard of the Detroit auto show and the LA auto show. I, I don't remember. And is this new or is just, I'm not paying attention? No.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:14):
New York auto show's been going on for, well, it's relatively new. I mean, it's only about a hundred years old.

Leo Laporte (00:24:18):
Oh, okay. Well that's why, yeah, I hadn't heard of it yet. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24:22):
It's, it's not one of the shows that generally brings a whole lot of news announcements new product announcements. It's lesser, you know, somewhat lesser in that respect compared to LA and Detroit. Yeah. and this year more so than, than usual. But in general auto shows as a media event have been shrinking much like tech shows, excuse me, much like tech shows. Automakers have learned the lessons from companies like apple and, and Google and Microsoft and realized, you know, we can put on an event of our own away from these trade shows. And we will have all the media attention on us for however long, instead of just for a 20 minute time slot during the day. Right. And it'll cost us a lot less doing, doing an auto show reveal is

Leo Laporte (00:25:15):
It's

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:15):
A big deal, extremely expensive event.

Leo Laporte (00:25:17):
I think that's what happened to E three this year, the big gaming show. No, none of the big companies came. So they said, well, nevermind,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:24):
Like for example, you know, on, on Thursday, I wasn't actually, I was in New York, but I wasn't actually at the show I was at another event getting a preview of a car that will be officially revealed next Wednesday. So we can't talk about that one yet. But I maybe talk about that a little next week. Cuz there's some interesting stuff in there that that you might be interested in.

Leo Laporte (00:25:45):
Well, you're sitting right now in front of, of a newly announced car from Toyota.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:25:51):
Yeah. So this one as, as with the other ones, I was just talking about Toyota actually announced this car back in November a few days before the LA auto show at an event in Sandy or in Encinitas actually. And in fact I, I did the, I did this segment from my hotel room in Encinitas.

Leo Laporte (00:26:11):
Oh, that's right. That's why. Okay. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:13):
Yeah. And then I got, you know, got a chance to drive this a few weeks ago. This is the Toyota BZ four X Toyota, co-developed this with Subaru and Subaru has branded theirs as the Salter. So, you know, I think I would recommend to people that, you know, go by the Subaru instead, because it's got a better name, easier

Leo Laporte (00:26:35):
To practice. That's easier to pronounce Subaru.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:38):
Yeah. Toyota,

Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
20% of Subaru. It's not, they're not, but they have a joint venture in this car.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:43):
Yeah. They've, they've been doing a, a number of joint projects. They've done a, a sports car together called the Toyota 86 and Subaru BZ which has, has 

Leo Laporte (00:26:55):
This looks like a sub actually more than a Toyota. It does.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:26:59):
It does look more like a Subaru. And so this is the first purpose built EV that either company has done Toyota in the past has done a couple of electric battery electric versions of the RAV4. They did one in the late nineties and then they did one in 20 11, 20 12 that they did actually did with Tesla. They got Tesla to do the batteries and, and motor for that RAV4 EV they only sold about 2000 of those before they discontinued it. The BZ four X is gonna be a more mainstream model. This is gonna be a regular production model. BZ is Toyota's branding for, it means beyond zero. So they're gonna be calling a bunch of their EVs, BZ something, oh, four indicates the size in the lineup. Ah and then X is for crossover. So, okay. They'll have a variety of different vehicles

Leo Laporte (00:27:51):
Beyond zero. In mean, in other words, beyond zero emissions

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27:56):
I guess, yeah, something

Leo Laporte (00:27:57):
Like that. I don't know how you can go lowers and zero, but okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:00):
It's, it's, it's a silly name. But you know, I, I, I would further all manufacturers get away from these alpha silly American names and just come up with something

Leo Laporte (00:28:09):
Original. I think my son salt, Hank should have a Salter. He loves Subarus. He's driving Subaru right now. Absolutely. I I'm gonna tell him Salter it's for you. Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:28:18):
Man. So these, these have a range of about 200 as much as 252 miles for the, the base version base front wheel drive version. And the all wheel drive version with the 20 inch wheels, I think is about 222, 224 miles of range. So it's, it's, it's not, it's not class leading, but it's, it's decent, it's sufficient for most people's needs. And it drives, drives quite nicely. It's about the size of a RAV4. It's a couple inches longer than a RAV4, but similar in size. It's got it's a big island is asking how big is the trunk? It's it's roughly about 25 cubic feet. So it's a pretty good size cargo area. Plus you can fold down the rear seats as well as you can with any crossover and really ban that if you need to carry something larger.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:29:09):
I said front wheel drive or all wheel drive versions both have roughly the same amount of power for and one of the questions that actually came up when we were recording wheel bearings earlier this morning was why do front wheel drive on an, on an electric vehicle? Because you know, the electric motors are so much smaller in the past. We did, you know, front wheel drive cars. Cause you turn the engine sideways, you could pack all of the powertrain components under the hood. You have the weight over the, the drive wheels. So you get better traction. And some, a lot of manufacturers have shifted back to doing rear wheel drive with a, with EVs like Hyundai and Volkswagen. Because you get a little better handling, a little better driving dynamics that way. But the downside of that when you're breaking EV rely a lot on regenerative braking, we've talked about this before because you know, motors, when you put force into motors, it will generate electricity that goes back into the battery.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:11):
So when you're, when any vehicle is breaking, you get we'll call weight transfer, you know, you've, you've no doubt experience when you step on the brakes, the car kind of dives forward it noses down a little bit when you're breaking, because not gonna go through all the physics, but basically weight shifts from the back to the front under breaking and, and the opposite direction under acceleration. And if you have a rear wheel drive, EV when you're unloading that rear axle, you can't do as much regenerative braking. When you do a front wheel drive, you you're putting weight on those front wheels. You can, you can do more regenerative breaking that way and recover more energy that you can put back into the battery, and then that helps your range.

Leo Laporte (00:30:54):
Okay. So front's a good way to go.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:30:57):
It's, it's one alternative and it depends on what your priorities are. You know, Hyundai has managed to actually get better range than what Toyota and Subaru are doing even with a rear wheel drive car. So, you know, it's, it's all a matter of trade offs you know, across the board.

Leo Laporte (00:31:14):
I like maybe I'm nuts, but I like the all wheel drive, not offroading four-wheel drive style, but just two motor one on the front and one on the back.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:31:24):
Yeah, no, and that's, that's a great solution, especially if you do sometimes experience poor, you know, poor traction conditions, whether you live in some place like Michigan, where you get winter, or even just driving in the rain, or if you drive up into the mountains, sometimes it might encounter some snow or ice. It's all wheel drive can be very useful for that. And helps to distribute the, the power around the other downside of, of front wheel drive, especially with an EV like like Lisa's mini is you can get some torque steer sometimes because electrical motors have so much torque. If you try to accelerate while you're turning, you'll feel it tugging at the, the steering wheel sometimes. Is

Leo Laporte (00:32:04):
That a good thing or a bad thing?

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:06):
That's, that's a bad thing.

Leo Laporte (00:32:07):
Okay. I'm just curious. Cause I think, I think she likes it. I feel like she wants to drift. She thinks she's drifting well.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:13):
Yeah. Well, you, you're not actually drifting in that case. You're actually probably gonna be understeering.

Leo Laporte (00:32:17):
Oh, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:18):
What, what she's probably looking for is having to back end, come around.

Leo Laporte (00:32:21):
Yeah. She likes

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:21):
That more of with a rear wheel

Leo Laporte (00:32:23):
Drive. She like my own must cause she likes to, to take a hard turn and feel the back wheels go out from under her. I don't know why one would want that, but I it's a thing, I guess

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:33):
It's, it's fun. It's fun.

Leo Laporte (00:32:36):
Depending on your definition, Sam bull salmon. Thank you so much. Wheel bearings, Tom media, Leo Laport tech guy. It's fun. Not for me when I was you you're

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:49):
Your Mae can drift,

Leo Laporte (00:32:51):
Can it,

Sam Abuelsamid (00:32:52):
Oh yeah, cuz you're you've got two motors, but there the rear motor is more powerful than the front motor. So it's actually got a slight rear torque bias. So it's more like a rear wheel drive, but it's still all wheel drive. And you know, when you're going around corners, if you, if you go around corners quickly and you get on the accelerator, as you're, as you're going through the corner, you can get the back end to come around a little bit. Not, you know, not so much that it's gonna be dangerous, but you can, you can use, you can use the accelerator to help steer the vehicle.

Leo Laporte (00:33:22):
Huh? I would have no idea how to do that, but I bet you, Lisa will figure it out. Whenever Lisa says I'll drive. I go, oh no.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:32):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:33:32):
And I find the handle real quick just to hold on. Well, when I was buying that Mustang 10 years ago, I, she said, let me take it out for a test drive. You sit in the back. Oh Lord.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:33:46):
It's in the passenger seat.

Leo Laporte (00:33:47):
You, you don't wanna sit in the back seat. No, I was in the back and it was not. Did you really get in the back? I got in the back. Well, I think there was somebody else with us and yeah, she cuz we have these nice as, you know, country roads. They're pretty deserted and you can have some fun out there.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:02):
Yeah. There's some great roads out your way.

Leo Laporte (00:34:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sam.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:09):
All right. So let's answer some more questions here.

Leo Laporte (00:34:11):
Take, take it away.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:34:13):
All right. So Phoenix warp was put, dropped on a link to the Jeep Wrangler magni concept. Yeah, this is, this is at actually the second year Jeep every year for, for many years now has been doing a a, a series of concepts for the Jeep Easter safari which they don't sponsor. They don't organize it, but it's, it's an event put on by Jeep fans in Moab every year, right around this time. And they've been every year they build a bunch of, of different concepts, mostly to show off some of their aftermarket parts and, you know, do something, do something funny or they'll do a restomod with an old Jeep. She's taking an old Jeep and putting some modern hardware in it. Last year they introduced something called the Wrangler magni, which was their first cut at a battery electric version of the Wrangler.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:02):
And in this year they've done an updated version of it. It's got more power, more battery. What's interesting. One of the things that's interesting about it is they retain the manual transmission from the Wrangler. Most EVs only have a six speed or only have a single speed transmission, basically just a reduction gear to get it down from the, the speed the motor down to the speed that the wheels need to be turning. They don't have multiple gears, but the Wrangler, this Wrangler retains a six speed manual transmission. And they, they did that to make it make installation easier. And also to be able to get the really low gearing for rock crawling. You know, when you're, you're out in Moab going over those trails, you want that you want that rock, that crawl ratio capability. And so that's what they can do by keeping the, the stock transmission and transfer case in that at magni.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:35:57):
And we can expect to see a production electric Wrangler probably in 2024 or 2025 Jeep has promised battery electric versions of every segment that they're in by 2025. So no later in 25, we'll see an electric Wrangler and that, you know, that'll probably be based on the next generation Wrangler. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah. Jeep at the auto show did show off did reveal the long wheel base version of the wagon ear their full size SUV that launched last year. And now it's a full 12 inches longer as if it wasn't already humongous and enough. They, they stretched the wheel base out and stretched out the body a little bit in the back. So you still have the same third seat leg room, but now you have 44 cubic feet of cargo space behind the, the rear a or behind the rear seats. So lots of room for all the stuff that you might want to bring along with your

Leo Laporte (00:36:58):
Thank you Sammy. All right. Have a good one. Leo Laport, the tech guy. Woo woo. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number on the line. Christian from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hello, Christian.

Caller 2 (00:37:16):
Hello, Leo. Happy Easter to

Leo Laporte (00:37:17):
You. Happy Easter. Thanks for calling.

Caller 2 (00:37:21):
I was on hold there for a little bit and it was kind of fitting. I actually hand washed my car.

Leo Laporte (00:37:27):
Well, you were on hold. Very nice.

Caller 2 (00:37:31):
The Sam go. It was all very fitting, so

Leo Laporte (00:37:33):
Perfect. Perfect. And how's the car? What kind of car?

Caller 2 (00:37:39):
I drive a 2012 QX 56.

Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Sam will probably know what that is,

Caller 2 (00:37:45):
But yeah, it's, it's one of the bigger SUVs for infinity.

Leo Laporte (00:37:50):
Nice and clean. Now.

Caller 2 (00:37:52):
It is. It's

Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
Nice. Very nice. There's something about hand washing here.

Caller 2 (00:37:56):
The snow is starting to melt, so it's

Leo Laporte (00:37:58):
Oh boy. More

Caller 2 (00:37:59):
Reasonable.

Leo Laporte (00:38:00):
Oh boy. Spring is coming to Calgary. Nice. So what can I do for you?

Caller 2 (00:38:06):
Well, I built a gaming rig May, 2020, and I put in a rise seven chip on a, on a ASIS tough 40 8:00 AM I say? Or four 50 M motherboard. And just last week, it just, there's no signal going to my mind.

Leo Laporte (00:38:26):
Oh man. Discrete VI. Well, you've got the right. You've got the, I presume it's a gaming rig. You have an AMD or a video card in there. Yeah.

Caller 2 (00:38:36):
Yeah. I have the the RTX 20, 60.

Leo Laporte (00:38:40):
Okay. Very nice. That's a good, good game. And rig you got there. 

Caller 2 (00:38:44):
Yeah, I've been enjoying the game of war on it lately. I wanna get back to it here.

Leo Laporte (00:38:48):
So your monitor's just saying there's no signal coming to me. I don't know what you're talking about.

Caller 2 (00:38:54):
Yeah. Yeah. So I tested it with my laptop and it picked up the signal from the H DMMI and then I went and bought a, a display cable to see if it was a graphics, cardboard or something like that. And still no signal going.

Leo Laporte (00:39:06):
So the bad news, it's the computer. Next thing to try. I presume this ACEs motherboard has a built in video adapter or built a video plug as well, you know, you're using the Invidia card, but also on the motherboard, there should be motherboard video from Intel. Oh, I'm sorry. You have AMD. Yeah. So do you see anything on the motherboard video? I'm and you changed? No. You changed it in the bios to make sure it's using that right. Or even better yet? Take out the Invidia card.

Caller 2 (00:39:40):
I took out the Invidia card. I can't get the bios to come up.

Leo Laporte (00:39:44):
Oh, oh, E sounds like a dead motherboard or something.

Caller 2 (00:39:52):
Yeah. So I hit the internet a little bit, the boards a little bit the, and I'm actually just sitting in front of our local,

Leo Laporte (00:39:59):
But let me ask you a couple questions. Yeah. the fans come on,

Caller 2 (00:40:05):
Fans, come on, LEDs. Come on. But there's no beep and I, I was reading some Reddit thread,

Leo Laporte (00:40:10):
So yeah, that's called the power on self test and some other boards, I don't know about this particular one, but most other boards, if you're in a situation where they can't go any farther, they will beep a, a code to you saying, Hey we're having trouble here. I suppose it's possible if the motherboards really, you know, down and out that it can't do that, you know, it can't even get through the power on self test. So there's two possibilities even there. Everything's okay. It's just that maybe the video, I don't know. Did you, one other thing to try is booting from a USB key, a different try, make sure it's not a software issue. In other words put Lennox on a USB key or a windows installer and just see if you can boot up to the, at, with a screen. Have you tried that?

Caller 2 (00:41:01):
Yeah, I wonder just be there's there's no, there's no power coming to the keyboard mouth either like this.

Leo Laporte (00:41:08):
Ah, okay. So that's interesting. So here you have a situation where you don't have beeps from a power on self test, which would tell you something's wrong, but at the same time, you're not getting power to the USB ports. You're not getting power to the video ports. Yeah. So it's a couple possibilities. If you're in luck, if you're lucky it could be a damaged power supply, which is an easy and inexpensive thing to replace is the laptop or desktops desktop, right?

Caller 2 (00:41:40):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:41:42):
Yeah. So that's an easy thing to, that's an easy thing to replace. If you're unlucky, it could be something wrong with the motherboard. In which case you have to replace the motherboard.

Caller 2 (00:41:53):
Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (00:41:54):
You're sitting that outside of a shop waiting for it to open or

Caller 2 (00:41:58):
No, they're open. I'm surprised actually. They're

Leo Laporte (00:42:00):
Yeah. Easter, huh? Well, that's

Caller 2 (00:42:02):
Nice.

Leo Laporte (00:42:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Gaming must go on.

Caller 2 (00:42:05):
But I, I read something about the CMOs reboot and I've never done that before. Yeah. as, as of, as the last, last try so that's the only thing I think that I haven't done. I've moved my Ram around I've I've, reeded all my power and my graphics card and

Leo Laporte (00:42:24):
Yeah, you've done all the, all the important things to do. Yeah. you know, for instance, if if the, if you took out all the Ram or Ram module is, you know, falling out or coming out, you get a power on self test. That would say, beep beep beep beep beep beep I don't see any Ram. That's why those are there. You know, I can't go past this point, but I can at least give you a beeps, but the, you know, maybe the could be so many things. The bios firmware might have failed, you know, the firmware, you know, there's, that's so a chip, what if that you are died, you know, or something like that. So I think, go ahead and try if, is it a jumper that you jump for? The CMOs reset?

Caller 2 (00:43:06):
I was reading the thing where I have to pull the little battery, silver battery over, pull

Leo Laporte (00:43:10):
Out the battery. Okay. Sometimes it's a jumper or sometimes it's a battery and a jumper. You could do that. I'd bring it in. I mean, if the guy, if you, if you like this shop, you know, they're good. He'll have some diagnostic tools that he can use. He can immediately, for instance, see if it's a power supply issue. 

Caller 2 (00:43:27):
Okay. I should have brought it with me.

Leo Laporte (00:43:29):
Oh, you, you only brought what what'd you bring? Just the mother Mor

Caller 2 (00:43:33):
No, I didn't bring anything. I was just,

Leo Laporte (00:43:35):
You just thought you'd drive over and talk to him, huh?

Caller 2 (00:43:38):
Yeah. I was gonna talk to him. Yeah. Go get

Leo Laporte (00:43:40):
It.

Caller 2 (00:43:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:41):
Yeah. He'll say he'll have the same conversation. But yeah, he could check the power supply voltage immediately, if he's any good. He's got Avol meter. So little things like that are, are probably the first thing I would check the easy stuff. Right. if it's the logic board, that's a tough thing to diagnose, but some, you know, sometimes I'm not sure about that mother board that you have, but it's a modern one. Sometimes they have some onboard diagnostics. They, some of 'em even have a screen on there that, you know, read out of some kind. So there might be some ways of telling that he knows he's pretty good guy.

Caller 2 (00:44:18):
Yeah. They're they're, they're a fairly big shop up here in Western Canada. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:44:22):
Yeah. You're lucky in our city. You're lucky. Those are still around for the most part in this country, you end up going to, I

Caller 2 (00:44:28):
Kind of feel that way too. The

Leo Laporte (00:44:29):
Geek squad at best buy and abandoned all hope be who enter. Yeah. Yeah. So it may be a new motherboard. It could be. I mean, it could be bad Ram could be a bad CPU. Given the machine, the age of the machine and the, and the hard use you've given it, it could be the thermal pace and the CPU has has given up hope, given up the ghost and you know, it could be as simple as re pasting the CPU and then it will run. It could be all sorts of things. If CPU gets hot and it can happen instantly on Budd up, it'll stop everything. It'll say, Nope, not gonna go any farther. You don't want me to burst into flame. Do you? So all of these?

Caller 2 (00:45:11):
Yeah, that was one of the first things I was nervous of doing when building Rigg, I hadn't done it since the nineties. And did

Leo Laporte (00:45:17):
You paste it yourself? Did you do all of

Caller 2 (00:45:19):
The I I did. Yeah, but I was proud when it turned on, but I, in the back of my mind, I wondered you know, if I did it, if I had a pro do that, seed it for me, I did a,

Leo Laporte (00:45:32):
Oh, this is how you learn. This is how you learn when. So for folks who haven't done this, and that's probably 99.9% of you, your processor gets really hot. All those chips get really hot, but the processor especially, so what you do is you code it with a very thin film of conducting pace. Some of it, sometimes it has silver in it, but it, some it conducts heat. And then you attach to that, your active cooling system, whether it's a fan you know, it could be actually liquid cooling, but you attach that to the, and so the, you want that conductor to do a good job, conducting the heat from the processor into the cooling system. And if, if that paste goes bad, it sometimes does. Or it was poorly pasted. That could easily be it too, but that's something a good shop should be able to look at and diagnose pretty quickly. So that's where I'd go next. Hey, happy Easter. Good luck, Leo. Leport the tech, Is it memory guy in Edmonton is asking, is it memory express? Is that where you are?

Caller 2 (00:46:38):
Yeah. Yeah. He nailed it.

Leo Laporte (00:46:41):
Nice. I'm very jealous that you have such a thing in your life. We've we

Caller 2 (00:46:46):
We've. Yeah. These guys started small here in Calgary, I think. And now they have really pretty significant shops. That's awesome. And they're yeah. Three, three locations in Calgary. I don't know how many are in Edmonton. I know they go out to Winnipeg in Manitoba.

Leo Laporte (00:46:58):
So it operated fine until now.

Caller 2 (00:47:02):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It just fully kicked.

Leo Laporte (00:47:04):
You didn't make any major mistakes. Do you, you do have a speaker on the attached to the motherboard so that you could hear the beep codes, right. Somebody in the Chim says you need a speaker, you know? Okay.

Caller 2 (00:47:17):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:17):
I know when I put together computers, sometimes I go, I'm not gonna connect all those things too many wires. Yeah. Hey, good luck. Let me know what happens.

Caller 2 (00:47:26):
I gotta double check that. I gotta double check a few things I in and just see how much info these guys will give me. I know they want they'll want, have a look at it. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:47:34):
Sure they'll have a vol meter. And they'll, that's the first thing they'll do is check the power supply. Cause that those go out. That's not unusual.

Caller 2 (00:47:42):
Yeah. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:47:44):
All right. Have a good one. I'm sorry that happened. Hey,

Caller 2 (00:47:47):
No worries. Thanks a lot, Leah. Right. Have a great weekend.

Leo Laporte (00:47:49):
You too. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye. All yours Sammy.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:47:53):
Thank you, Leo. So let's see. Big island in the chat was asking if, whether the Subaru is going to be allwheel drive like the Outback. Yeah, the Subaru won't be available in the same configurations as the Toyota. So but either front wheel drive or all wheel drive they, they will have a front drive version of the lower cost version. Let's see. Someone was mentioning here about not being able to drift in front wheel drive cars, actually, it is possible depending on the car. And your level of skill you you know, with, with the right combination of timing of the the breaks, doing a little trail breaking into a corner you can get some front wheel drive cars to drift. If you get 'em going fast enough it's it's a little more challenging.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:48:44):
It's definitely easier. And a rear drive car, but it's, it's definitely possible. Let's see. Oh, Goodyear would appreciate your drifting. Yes, that, that is the downside of drifting is it does tend to give you a, a little more excess tire wear. Oh yeah, here was, it was web 30, 47 talking about rear drive for drifting PC guy, 80 88. So liberal application of the parking brake and ICU vehicles will help. Yeah, that's true. That's, that's certainly true. With front wheel drive cars, you probably don't wanna do that with rear wheel drive cars and increasingly on all new cars, it's actually hard to use the parking brake for something like drifting because they, most vehicles are shifting toward electric parking brake systems. So you don't have a, a mechanical lever. You can pull up, there's just a switch on the center console that you pull up on and it will electrically activate the the rear brakes for the parking brake.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:49:44):
So you can't really use that in the way you would traditionally use, you know, the, the, the manual parking brake system Maverick six mentioned the Mercedes-Benz EQs having a range of 485 miles. That range is actually based on the European drive driving test cycle, which is a little more let's say less realistic in terms of the numbers that you get from it. On the EPA driving cycles, the EQs is rated at 350 miles, which is still very good but it's considerably lower. And it's much more representative of the real world driving range that you would get with the EQs. The EQ S is Mercedes current top of the line, EV it's their full size luxury sedan. They also just recently announced the EQ E which is their mid-size model looks very similar to the EQs, but it's a little smaller let's see Eric Deckman says you actually need to drive closer to the limit if you're not any appreciable slip angle, you'll never notice these things.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:50:49):
He's absolutely right. You do have to really push it to get a lot of these vehicles to to drift especially on, on street tires might be mentioned $136,520 for an electric BMW. Don't think I'll be getting one ever. Yeah. That, that price I think is sort, or the the IX M 60, which is their top of the current top of the line EV for, for now, at least Tina asked in the in the chat what is more important in an inevitable crash computer safety technology or structure of the vehicle itself? I would say that both are E coolly important. The, the, the safety systems, the active safety systems can help in trying to avoid or mitigate the impact of a crash. So if you've got sensors that can tell you, you know, enhance your situational awareness or automatically intervene for things like automatic emergency breaking you know, you can help avoid a crash or at least reduce the speed of the impact.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:51:54):
So that reduces the amount of energy in the crash. But when a crash happens, then you want the structure of the vehicle to protect the vehicle occupants from getting injured. It's, it's really a combination of both and enormous progress has been made on both of these counts over the last 50 odd years. Since we, since we started imposing modern federal motor vehicle safety standards if you, if you look online on YouTube, you can find videos of modern vehicles being crashed with older vehicles or just, you know, look for videos of older vehicles being crash tested, and you will see how bad even, you know, old, full size cars that people would think, oh yeah, this thing's got so much space, you know, it's gonna protect me. No, no, they don't. They actually were not very good. Those older vehicles from the 1950s and sixties and seventies even even small cars today are so much better.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:52:59):
There's a, a video that Mercedes-Benz put out some years ago showing a crash test of the little smart 42, their little mini car QEA mini car against a modern E-Class sedan, their, their mainstream mid-size you know, that's their highest volume product. And the you know, it's, it's a significantly larger car than the smart and the structure of the smart was such that it protected the occupants. And also because the car was so light, it actually bounced away from the crash. So even though it doesn't have a whole lot of crush zones in it, it, it bounced away and was still able to protect the occupants. Let's see tech, Dino where are we soon going to be using technology without rare earth elements for the batteries? So the rare earth metals are actually not used so much in the batteries, but rather in the motors they're used for the magnets.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:53:58):
Things like neodinium are used for the permanent magnet motors. Some companies are doing there's two, basically two types of, of AC motors. There's AC induction motors, which don't have magnets in them. And those don't have any rare earth metals in them. And then there are the permanent magnet motors, which are actually more efficient, more energy efficient. So they convert more energy into torque than AC induction motors do. So it's a trade off whether you want efficiency or rare earth. If you go without the rare earth, you're gonna use more energy to do the same amount of work which means you're gonna need a larger battery to get the same range out of it. So most companies are sticking with permanent magnet motors now, but trying to make them even more efficient. So they require less of the rare earth metals.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:54:50):
Speaking of batteries the, a number, there was a question about the number of batteries are gonna be required. Where are we gonna get all these batteries? Oh, that was from web 30, 47 a big where a lot of the materials that are going that go into the batteries are actually fairly readily available. And one of one of the things that's happening right now is we're expanding mining and processing of these batteries and localizing it. So for example currently most of the lithium for batteries is mine in south America, in Australia, processed in China, but there's lithium everywhere on the planet. It just hasn't been economically viable to there hasn't been enough demand to develop the mining of it in other countries and that's starting to happen now. So that that's one part of the equation. Then the other part is recycling. Modern recycling processes for batter can recover about 95 to 98% of those key materials needed for the batteries. And so that's going right back into the, the production stream. So you don't have to use Virgin materials from the ground.

Leo Laporte (00:55:58):
My friend have a wonderful week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:56:01):
Thank

Leo Laporte (00:56:02):
You. And I will next week. Next time. Thanks, Sam. All right, bye. Well, Hey, Hey. Hey, how are you today? Leo Laporte here. The tech guy, time to talk computers, the internet, home theater, digital photography, smart phones, smart watches, all that jazz, everything with a chip in it. Eighty eight eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number (888) 827-5536. We'll see what we can do here to help you out. Tech guy labs.com is the website. That's a good thing to keep in mind because if I mention something story or a product or a, you know, a link of any kind, we'll put those up there on the website, tech guy labs com and audio and video from the show after the fact as well. And it's free. There's no sign up. There's nothing. Let's see. Jerry in Los Angeles is next. Hi, Jerry Leo. Leport the tech guy.

Caller 3 (00:56:59):
Hi Leo. I have a new laptop. Yay.

Leo Laporte (00:57:06):
Sorry.

Caller 3 (00:57:06):
Yeah, really? Yay. Other than I really happy with my old laptop.

Leo Laporte (00:57:13):
Okay. So why'd you get a new one?

Caller 3 (00:57:18):
I think my display went out. I'm not quite sure. Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:57:21):
You needed, you needed it. Okay. Okay.

Caller 3 (00:57:24):
It's it. It's kind of old 2016, but it was an I seven at 

Leo Laporte (00:57:31):
Yeah, 2016. Is it ain't that old six years old. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Caller 3 (00:57:37):
So anyhow, so I got a new one and it has windows 11 home on it. Yeah. And I on my previous computer, which was a Sony laptop, I had windows pro on it.

Leo Laporte (00:57:52):
Okay.

Caller 3 (00:57:53):
Is there any, any way to get that license on

Leo Laporte (00:57:58):
Computer cost you 130 bucks, but yeah. Yeah, all you have to do. It's in, it's actually in the settings, there's an upgrade. And you would just give 'em some money and they would upgrade you you'd download some files. Why do you want pro out of curiosity? Cause for most people, the features of pro really they're more for business. Is there something specific you miss?

Caller 3 (00:58:24):
Yeah. I, I don't know. I really don't

Leo Laporte (00:58:27):
Know. Trust me. There's not. 

Caller 3 (00:58:31):
But that's okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:58:32):
Well, if you don't mind paying, so you wanna know if you could take the license, somebody in the chairman said, oh, you're not listening Leo. He wants to take the license off his old computer. Is that, is that what you're saying?

Caller 3 (00:58:43):
Well, I just, I, I just said that as a way of, I don't know how you do it

Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
Just yeah, you can't. I mean, it's a, it's associated with that license associated with that computer. The 2016 computer although that's an interesting question. You know, windows 10 and 11 are essentially a free upgrade for oh seven. I presume that's what's on the old, or is it a windows 10 computer?

Caller 3 (00:59:11):
I think I got upgraded the windows 10 before I lost it.

Leo Laporte (00:59:16):
Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe you can, maybe you can transfer it. There's you know, if you look at, you could go, Microsoft has a little chart, the differences between home and pro the differences are really something most home users don't care about. Things like being able to log onto a corporate network. The one thing you might carry about is BitLocker the ability to, to encrypt the hard drive that that frankly, Microsoft should be part of all versions of of windows. I'm surprised they don't put that in, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Other than that would be good. Yeah. I wonder if I wonder if there is a way, do you have, have the serial number from your old windows? 10 pro

Caller 3 (01:00:05):
I don't have it in front of me, but yes, I have it.

Leo Laporte (01:00:07):
Yeah. It might be on the case or somewhere if you haven't, you might try. I,

Caller 3 (01:00:10):
I have the original sticker that was on it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:13):
Yeah. It'll be on that sticker. Generally depends on how you got windows on that thing. If you bought it with the computer, it's tied to the computer.

Caller 3 (01:00:24):
Yeah, I, I did by it with the computer.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. We're gonna put, I'm still gonna put, cuz scooter X found a little article on how to transfer it over. If you can, it might be worth just saying, entering in the numbers just to see if it would take it.

Caller 3 (01:00:40):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:00:40):
And then you, then you get yours stuff. There's a command line. S L M G R, which stands for li something licensed manager, SL MGR. There's a command line that you can enter it in. And see if, you know, at least it will take it. It might, you never know if it does then you don't have to pay for it. Otherwise up to grade to pro is something you pay for. I honestly don't think most people would care. You know? Yeah. Is it just, you wanna feel like I got the best, I got the top of the line,

Caller 3 (01:01:16):
You know, I've had windows pro or whatever version ever since I can remember. Yeah. And I think it's just momentum.

Leo Laporte (01:01:28):
Yeah. Momentum. You don't get bit locker device encryption. You don't get windows information, protection whip. W I P which is mostly it's again, it's an enterprise security thing. If you, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes, just so that you can look at the differences. They're very, very minor mobile device management group, policy, enterprise, state, roaming, with Azure assigned access, dynamic provisioning. These are all for businesses. You don't want that. You really don't want that on this system. Kiosk mode support for active directory. You don't need that. That's all, that's all professional stuff. So don't feel bad just cuz it says home doesn't mean you're not a pro cuz my friend, you are a pro. I could tell Jerry, oh

Caller 3 (01:02:17):
Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:02:19):
How do you like windows elevens look

Caller 3 (01:02:23):
I'm getting used to it. You know, I don't have any trouble navigating. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
It, it puts the start menu in the middle. Which some people don't like, there is a switch. You can turn that off. 

Caller 3 (01:02:35):
It doesn't bother me. That

Leo Laporte (01:02:35):
Bother me either. I think it's actually pretty it rounded corners. It's basically windows 10 with a paint job. That's all.

Caller 3 (01:02:44):
It's a, it's like a familiar format cause yeah. Other programs use yeah. A similar format with the controls right at the bottom. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
Exactly. Yeah. Good. So stick with it. The only thing that I think, and I really wish Microsoft would include this in all versions of windows, is that full dis encryption, the thing they call BitLock. And I think the reason they don't is cuz it's easy to get in trouble with bit lit locker as a, as a home user. If you don't know what you're doing, you can actually lock up your drive and lose access to it. And I'm thinking that's probably why the, they don't make it available to everybody, but they should. Yeah. All max come with builtin hard drive encryption. And in fact it's turned on by default on all modern max. I think that's the right thing for privacy and security, but that's Microsoft. They get to do what they want to do. So I'll put a link in the show notes to how to enter your license code, just to see if it works. And I'll put a link in the show notes can pairing windows 10 home versus pro so you can see you're not missing the thing. How about that? Right.

Caller 3 (01:03:46):
Thank

Leo Laporte (01:03:46):
You. Enjoy. What did you get? What, what's your new computer?

Caller 3 (01:03:51):
It's a Dell. Nice. I five very nice gig Ram. Good. S D

Leo Laporte (01:03:58):
I think you're and it feels faster. Doesn't it?

Caller 3 (01:04:01):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:02):
That SSD alone makes a huge difference.

Caller 3 (01:04:06):
Yeah, definitely. Good. I'd upgraded my other one too. And SSD.

Leo Laporte (01:04:11):
Yeah. Oh, you know what you're doing then if you've done that, you know what you're doing? That's a yeah. That's brain surgery. Well, it's a pleasure talking to Jerry. I think I think you're go. I think you're golden, but we'll put those links in if you care to mess around with it.

Caller 2 (01:04:27):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:04:28):
Have a great one. Happy Easter or Passover or whatever you celebrate. I feel like it's, this is like the spring it's like spring, right? It feels a little springy outside. It's cool still. But the sun is shining. It's pretty. It's nice. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. If you want to talk high tech, I'm here for you. 88, 8 8 2 7 5 5 3 6. And as I mentioned, the show notes are free. Open to all@techguylabs.com, tech guy labs.com. I want you back. Leo Laport, the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number Jim on the line from was Celia. Alaska. I think I'm AK is Alaska. Yes. Oh, wait a minute. Wasilla. You're from Wasilla home of Sarah Palin.

Caller 4 (01:05:20):
You got it.

Leo Laporte (01:05:21):
I know Wasilla.

Caller 4 (01:05:23):
Yeah. I think you've been up here once.

Leo Laporte (01:05:25):
Yes. How's things. Yeah. What can I do for you?

Caller 4 (01:05:28):
I go back to the fight with you guys.

Leo Laporte (01:05:32):
Oh wow. Long time.

Caller 4 (01:05:34):
Long

Leo Laporte (01:05:35):
Time. Many, many moon. Although those were glory days. They were fun.

Caller 4 (01:05:41):
I put up the dev fan page on Facebook.

Leo Laporte (01:05:44):
No, thank you. Thank you. As a, as the man who knew dev intimately. Yeah. I thank you. What, what can I do for you today?

Caller 4 (01:05:57):
I've got an older vis HDTV, a 55 inch and it's an older model. It's not the HD. It's not the high Def it's not the H range or any of that stuff. It's not 4k. So it's an older one. And I think last year that a, I got an over the air software upgrade. Yeah. On, on the VI system. Not

Leo Laporte (01:06:19):
Unusual. Yeah.

Caller 4 (01:06:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And since then, I'm getting an error message when I start my TV and it won't decode the video. So I think it's something to do with the HDCP.

Leo Laporte (01:06:30):
Oh, the copy protection.

Caller 4 (01:06:32):
Yeah. And I don't know if it's just that I need to upgrade my H G M I cables are wet because I use a Roku and it's plugged in to one of the H DM I ins on the back.

Leo Laporte (01:06:45):
So the Roku is HDCP compliant. Imagine the TV is, it might be the cable. You literally have to have an HDCP compliant cable. Is that

Caller 4 (01:06:53):
Ridiculous? I think that may it, because it's probably an older cable I got years ago.

Leo Laporte (01:06:57):
Yeah. What makes you think it's kind protection?

Caller 4 (01:07:00):
Well, I get a code that, you know, says repower Yoku and then repower the TV. Yeah. So you have to unplug the power cord and like reboot.

Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
Yeah. It could be that. Does it ever work?

Caller 4 (01:07:13):
Yeah. And now I, all I really have to do is repower the TV, you know, boot the TV module and, and unplug the power cord, plug it back in and then starting up and then it decodes. OK.

Leo Laporte (01:07:26):
So I don't, it may not be a copy protection, cuz if it were copy protection, it wouldn't get better. Unless it's poorly done. Which of course all copy protection is. But it may, it sounds like it's a hand shake issue and you know, a cable might fix it anyway.

Caller 4 (01:07:42):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:07:43):
So get, get a new HGM. I 2.1 cable, you won't, I mean the TV doesn't require it nor the Roku might support it, but at least you'll have, you know, the fastest cable you can get and see if that helps.

Caller 4 (01:07:55):
Cause every time you start up the TV, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:56):
You don't wanna reboot.

Caller 4 (01:07:58):
You gotta go up and unplug the power cord and, and you know, let the pilot light go, go

Leo Laporte (01:08:03):
To, go to monoprice.com. Get an H DMI 2.1 cable. They're 10 bucks. It's not gonna cost you an arm.

Caller 4 (01:08:10):
Okay. Cause I wasn't using the TV for a couple weeks and I think I got an over the air software upgrade. Cause then

Leo Laporte (01:08:16):
Ever since nice upgrade folks. Nice. You broke it ever since

Caller 4 (01:08:20):
Then. It just, I just get, and it's a warning thing. It says, try this, try this, try this. And

Leo Laporte (01:08:26):
I would, I would check firmware on the Roku and on the TV. What, what it almost certainly is, and this is a problem and yeah. Rebooting will fix it is a handshake issue. Cuz what happens is the RO who negotiates with the TV. Well what can you handle? What can you handle? What do you got? I don't know. What do you got? Right. And they then decide just like the old days of modems. That's what all that calling wrong was was negotiation, handshake. We call it and the handshake sometimes fails. It's not unusual. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So it's a video handshake issue.

Caller 4 (01:08:57):
Yeah. And so and, and I did check go into the versions and I've got, you know, it says software checkup and it says you're on the latest versions. Both of the Roku and the TV. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:09:09):
I would, I would try. I would at least try it a new cable.

Caller 4 (01:09:13):
Okay. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
H I cable I've had them go bad, which seems impossible. Right? I mean, it's a cable. What can go bad? But I've had issues with H GMI cables. My poor kid, he's trying to play Elden ring, you know, he's, he's taken on Meina the worst of the bosses. She's a nightmare on this game. And all of sudden the TV starts flicker and purple said, what's going on? Is that a new attack? No, it's the HD my cable. I said, I got some new ones. Let me let me try it. I went and got, I like cable matters. That's one of the, there's some companies that do better job than other companies. The cable matters on Amazon. I found good, good results with, so I got a cable, three cable manner matters. H DMI cables replaced. It works. It's fine. Still can't beat Melania or Melania, but you know, he's working on it. That's a hard game rod in Los Angeles, Leo Laport, the tech guy. Hi rod.

Caller 5 (01:10:15):
Howdy.

Leo Laporte (01:10:16):
Howdy.

Caller 5 (01:10:18):
So I have a couple year old HP laptop. And I started getting this message that said to update the windows 10 to version eight version 21 H two. Yes. And it also says my version of windows has reached the end of service. Yes. Whenever I try to update this, it just gives me this. There were problems installing.

Leo Laporte (01:10:42):
Oh, nuts. Oh, I hate Microsoft. I hate them so much. I hate them with the passion that burns like the flame of hell. So yeah. So even though you have the latest version of windows, well, I mean 10 is, it's still technic, you know, good until 2025. Right. They've done this weird thing where if you don't have the latest version of version of the version of windows 10 you're, you're at a date. So December 14th, version 2004 died. That was the update that you got in the spring of 2000? No, I'm sorry. 2020, 2020 coming up in may in about a month version, 1909 will die. I don't why it's dying later, but it is, you know, figure it out. I don't know. It's Microsoft. So, and then December 8th, 20, 20 version, 1903 died. So you need to get a full update if you can't do it in place and that's not unusual, then another way to do it is to try downloading the update fully from the update page and it

Caller 5 (01:11:56):
From Microsoft update.

Leo Laporte (01:11:58):
Yeah. You can actually download it, put it on a USB key and try it that way. And sometimes that'll work where a update download in place, update doesn't so that's the first thing to try. I'll put a link in the show notes to an article on how to the reason they do this is if you're an it person and you've got 20 machines that you need to update, you don't wanna have to go on each machine and download it. So you just download it once and you go from machine to machine, that kind of thing. Okay. So it's, it's sometimes it's called the, I think the network update or something like that. There's a, it's designed for a business, but anybody can get it. So I'll, I'll give you a link to that. And then if that doesn't work, Hmm. Then I mean, yeah, you really do need to do this partly cuz it is gonna complain about it. But also partly because you're not gonna be secure. You're not, you haven't been secure for a while. What, when when's the last update, did you have 2004?

Caller 5 (01:12:57):
You know, I'm not really sure. Yeah. it was, it was basically, I think it was like late last summer or fall that this started coming up

Leo Laporte (01:13:05):
Immediately.

Caller 5 (01:13:05):
Wouldn't

Leo Laporte (01:13:06):
Update exactly it that's right. But you can't update. So isn't that, isn't that frustrating? Yeah. So I'm gonna put a link here to an art, how to update windows 10 offline has two different methods. You can either get a PC repair tool to do it or download it from Microsoft on a USB key. I would at least try that. If not, you're gonna have to reins. I hate to say this reinstall windows using the latest version, Leo Laport, the tech guy, this is one of the, is I'm not a fan of a Microsoft. So

Caller 5 (01:13:41):
I find the notes on your

Leo Laporte (01:13:43):
Yeah. Tech guy, labs.com. But let me, I can kind of tell you there's a, what they call actually, they call it the portable update. Wait a minute. No, no, no. That's not it. That's not what you want. Hold on. I haven't done this in a while. I'm looking online, offline update Ws, U S offline update. I think this is where you do it. I think this is, yeah, this is no darn it. That's not it. A lot of these people, a lot of these Google results are giving me, oh, you just need to download our free software. No, no, thank you. That's that's not what I want. 21 H one using the media creation tool. Yeah, there you go. Okay. So I'm gonna put this basically the deal is you go Google windows, media creation, tool. You, this is a Microsoft site and you can download the latest version. And when you run the installer, you're gonna run it on a USB key. It will will give you an option to upgrade. And often those are more reliable than trying to download and upgrade in place.

Caller 5 (01:15:00):
Hmm.

Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
Okay. So basically that's the short version. I'll put a link in the show notes to an article that describes how to do this@techguylabs.com.

Caller 5 (01:15:09):
Yeah. I'm on tech guy labs. How do I find the show?

Leo Laporte (01:15:12):
1886. Well, they're not there yet because it's, you'll take a day to get 'em up there.

Caller 5 (01:15:17):
Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Leo Laporte (01:15:17):
Yeah. Nobody's writing right now. We used to have James used to do that, but we've changed the whole system now, so. Okay. unfortunately I had to do that, but so basically if you Google, when media creation tool, you can download the latest version of windows 10, put it on a USB key, run the installer by booting the USB key. And then it'll say, oh, you already have it. You want me to upgrade? And you say yes, please

Caller 5 (01:15:46):
Got it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:48):
And then the advantage of doing that is if it doesn't work still, well, you can install windows from it, but do backup everything first.

Caller 5 (01:15:56):
Well, fortunately this is kind of the, this is not my main computer. Yeah. Network to a bigger computer, which by the way, roughly the same age and it downloaded the, the update. Fine. So I don't know why.

Leo Laporte (01:16:08):
Yeah. Sometimes they just, if what happens is a, if a portion of update fails, it blocks and that's, what's happened at some point an update failed and now you're blocked. There are also, you can Google this ways to unblock blocked updates. That might be another way to route to go around it.

Caller 5 (01:16:26):
Got it.

Leo Laporte (01:16:27):
All right. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Have a good one. You, I hate windows. I'm sorry. Have I told you that? Re yes, Chris, I hate windows. I hate it.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:39):
I haven't used windows. I'm very conveniently able to say now after many years of not using it to anyone who asked me for support that, sorry. Sorry. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
Know. That's what I wish I could say. I don't know anything about it.

Chris Marquardt (01:16:52):
I don't even know how to switch it. I don't know

Leo Laporte (01:16:53):
Anything about windows. What's that?

Chris Marquardt (01:16:57):
Well,

Leo Laporte (01:16:58):
I keep one version of

Chris Marquardt (01:16:59):
Those

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
And I'm saying, stay in touch with the real

Chris Marquardt (01:17:01):
World. And I'm saying this, using something on the Mac that wasn't originally made for the Mac, like OBS for example, as a video switcher, right. Which, which does admittedly run quite a bit better on windows, but it's good enough now. So I was close to running a, like a virtual machine or something just for S but I decided to not do that.

Leo Laporte (01:17:24):
I have a windows boot partition on my PC.

Chris Marquardt (01:17:28):
I need, you have to, you

Leo Laporte (01:17:29):
Have to, I have to kills me every time though.

Chris Marquardt (01:17:34):
M so glad for you.

Leo Laporte (01:17:35):
Oh God. All right. I have the pictures of very expensive names.

Chris Marquardt (01:17:41):
Me too.

Leo Laporte (01:17:42):
These are fun. Me

Chris Marquardt (01:17:43):
Too.

Leo Laporte (01:17:43):
These are fun. I like them. All right, here we go. Yeah, mama, don't take my coat away. That means it's time for our fam our, our film guy, Mr. Chris mark. My personal photo sensei@sensei.photo. Hello, Chris Markt.

Chris Marquardt (01:18:01):
Hi, Leo Koro is unfortunately a thing of the past.

Leo Laporte (01:18:06):
They tried, they tried to keep it around as long as well. They

Chris Marquardt (01:18:09):
Tried, there was, it was really complex, a really complicated way to develop it and you needed to send it in cuz the corner lab couldn't do it. So they'd have to send it to a special place and big machinery. They actually had to hire chemists to keep the chemistry like in good conditions.

Leo Laporte (01:18:26):
So what you're saying is Koro is the windows of photography.

Chris Marquardt (01:18:31):
Not necessarily because you know, Koro is really beautiful. The weight renders, the colors, the contrast and everything. It's just, just amazing. A lot of, a lot of very famous photographers wear. Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:18:43):
Koro shoot. In fact, now you can get Kodachrome filters for your digital photography. Yeah.

Chris Marquardt (01:18:47):
It's not quite the same though.

Leo Laporte (01:18:50):
So it has been four weeks since you issued our last assignment, we have received some wonderful photos. Thank you, everybody. And expensive, expensive. So let's find some expensive pictures.

Chris Marquardt (01:19:04):
Yes. So I have again gone through the whole list. So lemme bring them up on the screen here to the whole list of pictures, all the, all the wonderful submissions here. And I have chosen three to talk about. The first one is by Ron hikes, 816 titled just another NYC view. And it's a, it's a, it's a very, I'm assuming black and white of picture. It's of a couple of tall buildings skyscrapers. One of them being kind of New York style. The other being one of the more modern, I dunno what they call pencil buildings like really thin high towers. 

Leo Laporte (01:19:46):
Yeah, I think that's 4 22 part west. I'm not sure, but yeah, that's a famous,

Chris Marquardt (01:19:52):
Horrible. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:19:53):
So skyscraper.

Chris Marquardt (01:19:54):
Yeah. I'm also not the great fan of them, but, but the photo I think is nice cuz you have the, the, the, all the detail in the sky. So there's the clouds. It's not, not really sunny weather. But good job, Ron, for, for keeping the structure in the sky. And then it's shot through probably from central park, I guess. And it's shot that's right through trees. So you have this, this frame of trees around the entire picture and and the, the buildings are shot through the hole in the trees, which gives them a really nice place to sit in the picture. I always, I'm always about giving subjects a, a good place to sit in a picture and frame really does that well. So in this case it's tree branches and the, the ones that you get in fall or in winter with not much greenery on 'em, so you can actually look through them. So I like

Leo Laporte (01:20:49):
That and it is expensive. I I'm sure that's eight or 9 million for an apartment in that. So probably yeah. Expensive is the

Chris Marquardt (01:20:59):
Word second one. Yes. Yeah. Second one VBA could freeze took a product shot. So what she did is, is she took a picture of of an expensive watch and probably an expensive perfume. I'm not a perfume specialist, but it's Bulgar both the, the, the perfume bottle and the, and the watch. And it's, it's one of those things. I've, I've just spent a lot of time doing kind of product type shots lately because we working on the film photography book and that needs new photos. So it, it looks like just thrown on the table, but it's actually quite a lot of work to arrange a shot. There's a, there's a red flower behind the perfume looking shining through the bottle and lighting something like that and staging it well and making sure that it doesn't look too, I don't know, too artificial, but also looks kind of easy and not fake or not too arranged.

Chris Marquardt (01:21:58):
That is, that is not so easy. Takes some time to get everything right. So good job on that. Good job. I took a, I once took a picture of of, for the film photography book of film roll on the table and they were supposed to look very like, like accidentally thrown on the table. It took me like two hours to set that up. So it looked really it, it looked like it was like an accident. So these kind of things take time. And the third one, yes. DNT Viper, and, well, that is expensive. What we are looking at is shot on Gasol

Chris Marquardt (01:22:41):
Gasoline going into a car. I like the way just, okay, let's stay with the photographic side of it. I like the way this is free aimed, cuz it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a bit of an oblique angle there and it's also the, the way the sharpness is distributed in the picture. It's almost like a, a tilt lens where parts of the picture that are normally in focus are not. So the focus is kind of a, a diagonal sliver of focus going through that picture. And it's the, it's the hose and the whatever the pistol thing that you have in front of, I dunno, the term,

Leo Laporte (01:23:17):
The nozzle, we call that

Chris Marquardt (01:23:19):
The nozzle, that's it? Yeah. I, I did know the term. I just that blanked out. And yeah, it's, it's kind of,

Leo Laporte (01:23:26):
I think it's the most expensive picture in the a bunch actually.

Chris Marquardt (01:23:33):
But if, if we continue that way, then this,

Leo Laporte (01:23:36):
How much is gas in the Germany now per liter?

Chris Marquardt (01:23:39):
Oh, you know, I don't,

Leo Laporte (01:23:42):
Oh, you have an electric

Chris Marquardt (01:23:43):
Vehicle. So, but we had, we had gas prices over two euros, a leader, which is a leader is like a quarter of gallon. Yeah. So,

Leo Laporte (01:23:54):
So it's eight, roughly eight, $9 a gallon, a

Chris Marquardt (01:23:56):
Sevenish seven to eight dollars a gallon, something along those lines. And yeah. So that's just the way it is, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:06):
Yeah. I have a calculator. I took a calculator out to figure out how many your gas is more expensive than ours. Oh,

Chris Marquardt (01:24:15):
It's always been more expensive than

Leo Laporte (01:24:17):
It's $8 and 19 cents a gallon. We're a mirror, $6 a gallon. It still hurts. Actually. That's a California

Chris Marquardt (01:24:24):
Bargain. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:24:25):
It's a bargain at so it's time to go to the fishbowl kids. Thank you for your excellent expensive submissions. Those are all fantastic.

Chris Marquardt (01:24:34):
And here's my expensive fishbowl. And I have it filled with a whole bunch of adjectives on little scraps of paper and I am drawing one blindly and here it is. Oh, oh, oh, I like this one. Elegant, elegant.

Leo Laporte (01:24:54):
Wow. Wow. Here we go. Well, you could bring back 2 22 central park south that would work. But I think we want a new picture this time. Right? That's the idea. I think

Chris Marquardt (01:25:05):
So too.

Leo Laporte (01:25:05):
Cause really it's all about getting out the and taking images. It's it's not, there's no contest. There's no prize. It's just the idea of having a reason to go out and take pictures. You're gonna look for something elegant, something representing the word elegant. You can be, you know, flexible on this. It's just a concept. And then when you find something you like, you could submit up to one image a week to our tech guy group on flicker.com, Renee Silverman. Our moderator will welcome. You make sure you tag it though, as, as you do with photos on flicker in this case, TG elegant for tech guy elegant. And and then in about four weeks, Chris will look him over and pick three out everybody. Now let's all go out there. Take pictures of something elegant. That's my one more

Chris Marquardt (01:25:51):
Favorite elegant picture

Leo Laporte (01:25:53):
Of the picture could be elegant. Maybe the

Chris Marquardt (01:25:54):
Picture it's health can be very, the

Leo Laporte (01:25:56):
Person could be elegant. It could be that's we not, we not gonna specify

Chris Marquardt (01:26:00):
Could be elegant photographer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:26:02):
Yeah. I you know, when I write a really nice piece of computer code, I think it's elegant. Most others would

Chris Marquardt (01:26:08):
Disagree.

Leo Laporte (01:26:08):
Camera camera.

Chris Marquardt (01:26:12):
So many possibilities.

Leo Laporte (01:26:13):
Chris mark wart is a photo sensei, his website, S E N S E i.photo where you could sign up for photo coaching. He does photo work soon back on the road with travel workshops. I hope also working

Chris Marquardt (01:26:28):
On

Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
It, a number of great books, including a book on wide angle photography. And I soon to be updated book on film photography and the oldest and best photography podcast out there. Tips from the top floor TF TTF dot comm. Did I get it all there, Chris?

Chris Marquardt (01:26:45):
I think you did. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
You. Thank you, Chris. Always a pleasure. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. And remember folks, it's all about elegant, elegant Leola port, the tech guy, more calls coming up right after this. Thank you, my friend.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:06):
I just realized that next week

Leo Laporte (01:27:10):
I'm not gonna be here. Okay.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:12):
That's okay. Cause that's the first time in ages that I'm taking a week off.

Leo Laporte (01:27:18):
So only 21 million for a unit in that building. It says Mike. Oh,

Chris Marquardt (01:27:23):
21.

Leo Laporte (01:27:24):
That's nothing.

Chris Marquardt (01:27:25):
Nothing. No next next Sunday I'll be up at the north sea and probably,

Leo Laporte (01:27:32):
Oh, fun

Chris Marquardt (01:27:33):
Among, among sheeps or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:27:35):
Is that a photography thing or just you enjoy

Chris Marquardt (01:27:37):
It? No, it's just a it's vacation. It's actually vacation Monica and I are taking a week off.

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
Good. All right. Well have a great vacation. Wow. What a thought? That's a concept that,

Chris Marquardt (01:27:48):
Yeah. And, and right now the weather's clearing up the, the, the numbers are going down a bit, so it feels like we have to get out.

Leo Laporte (01:27:57):
Yeah,

Chris Marquardt (01:27:57):
Good. Too much. Too much being inside. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:28:00):
I, the feeling well enjoy.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:03):
Yeah. So I should be back on the first problem

Leo Laporte (01:28:06):
Quite right.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:06):
That's what it's looking like

Leo Laporte (01:28:07):
Quite all right. We'll talk to you on the 1st of May.

Chris Marquardt (01:28:11):
All right. See you then. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Take care,

Leo Laporte (01:28:14):
Leo. Leport the tech guy, eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo is my phone number, Rick on the line from long beach, California. Hello, Rick.

Caller 6 (01:28:26):
Hey Leo. How's it going?

Leo Laporte (01:28:27):
It's going great. How are you?

Caller 6 (01:28:29):
I'm good, sir. How are, how's it going? But well,

Leo Laporte (01:28:31):
What can I do for you cuz I think you might have a problem.

Caller 6 (01:28:35):
Yeah. It's it's a desktop. Every time I talk. Every time I try to get on through your show. Hold on a second. Yeah. I'm always in the middle of something this time. I don't have to go to a meeting. I, I I've been listening to you for a long time, but the

Leo Laporte (01:28:48):
Easter bunnies outside knocking on the door, he wants to give you some chocolate bunnies. Get in there.

Caller 6 (01:28:54):
No, I think everybody just wants to hit the bars before we go to our family's house. No, but just kidding.

Leo Laporte (01:29:00):
But I know you're not. No, no you're not. So what, what's the problem?

Caller 6 (01:29:08):
So I have an HP desktop. It's not that old. I, I think it's windows 10. It might be. It's like five years old. Some things in life change. And I ended up moving in with my fiance now and I don't, I didn't use it and I forgot my password for it. Oh. And it just end me about six months ago. I lost my mom. Oh, on that computer. I have so many pictures. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:29:33):
And you want those pictures? Of course.

Caller 6 (01:29:36):
Yes. That's the only, I mean, I could care less about the system anymore. Cause I did listen to your show and I did buy a HP laptop, which I love. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:29:44):
They're nice. Yeah.

Caller 6 (01:29:46):
Oh they're oh yeah. It's one of the student kinds. It's oh, I love it. I love it. Oh good. Never go back. But but what can I do, sir? What do you think?

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
So the first question is when you signed into that computer, the first time you may not remember, did you use my Microsoft account to log?

Caller 6 (01:30:05):
No.

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
You did not. Nowadays, by the way, Microsoft's forcing you to use a Microsoft account. The latest versions of windows 11 will not allow you to create what we call a local account. You'll have to use your Microsoft account. And one of the reasons for this, I would say the chief reason is you because if you forget your password and it's a Microsoft password, you have recourse, you can go to them and get a new password. There's even a reset your password button underneath the login as there is, you know, on many websites and stuff. But if you, if you used a local pay password, well, first thing to do is see if there's an I forgot button. Okay. when you try to log in, because in that case, you are, even if you used a local password it's associated with a local account, there was a moment in the signup process where you get to choose, whether you'll be able to recover that password to a Microsoft account.

Leo Laporte (01:31:05):
So if you did that, cross your fingers again, Microsoft can recover it for you. They'll ask you some security questions. They'll reset your password. If none of, if none of that is the case then you can do, then there are some additional steps. There's Microsoft account recovery. If you have a Microsoft account associated with it, basically the windows 10 login password is not fully secure. So you will, there are ways to get around it. It's really gonna depend on you created that password. So I'll put a link in the show notes on how to reset a forgotten windows, 10 password in article from PC magazine. Cause it's many different steps. And then if, if none of that applies you, you're not sitting in front of it right now. I take it.

Caller 6 (01:32:01):
No, no I, so I do this too. HP coming out, you know, it was, it was great with the two big monitors. It was, it was awesome. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:32:08):
Yeah. Yeah. You want, look, you wanna get into it whether you need it or not. And especially for those photos, there's a good chance unless you encrypted the drive. And most people don't that those photos, photos are visible and you could pull the drive out of the machine, access the hard drive and then pull those photos out. So unless you turned on encryption or whatever, you're probably still right, but let's get you logged into the machine. So yeah,

Caller 6 (01:32:34):
It was, it was still good. I, I used it at home. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
You got two months.

Caller 6 (01:32:40):
Nice. Yeah, I have. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:32:42):
Yeah. So there are various ways of recovering cuz this is probably, I wouldn't get guess Microsoft's number one thing that comes up is

Caller 6 (01:32:49):
I don't think Microsoft guy anymore. I get,

Leo Laporte (01:32:51):
I get a lot of calls for people. I forgot my password. It's very common. It's very common. So this article from PC magazine, I, I just put a link in the room and they'll put it up in the show notes is it gives you a whole bunch of options more than I, you know, I would take me the rest of the show to go through all the different pages of ways to do this. If, if worst case scenario, none of that works, they even mentioned some other tricks. You can try including offline. I think somebody will mention this in the comments, offline password recovery, basically root force hacking programs like pass Geer, windows, password, recovery, things like that. So you there's, let's put it this way. It's not the most secure thing in the world. Chances are when you set it up, you did some things that would make it easy to get it back. Even if you didn't, at some point, you're gonna be able to get in using a variety of their, of Pogo stick.net has a tool. There's a lot of little tools to get in because it's such a common problem, but we'll start with this. Now we we're gonna put on the show notes, tech guy labs.com. This is episode 1886, but you could also Google piece C mag had a reset, a forgotten password in windows 10. And it there's a very nice article. Just updated actually about five days ago. So

Caller 6 (01:34:10):
I'm, I'm glad I'm not the only dummy that did this. It's

Leo Laporte (01:34:12):
The most con literally the most common question I get.

Caller 6 (01:34:15):
Oh wow. Okay, great. Don't feel too bad. Oh no.

Leo Laporte (01:34:18):
Don't no.

Caller 6 (01:34:20):
Yeah. I've had people say you're done. You need a new one or

Leo Laporte (01:34:22):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And as I said, even with all of that, if you still can't get in, you can pull the hard drive out and get those photos off. Those photos are not lost.

Caller 6 (01:34:31):
Yeah, exactly. That was my yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:34:34):
Of course. Yeah. Every time I FaceTime my mom, now I take some screenshots. I miss her. We're gonna go back and see her, but I miss her. I and I met you miss mom terribly. So it's nice to have those pictures.

Caller 6 (01:34:44):
Yeah. Ex exactly, sir. Exactly. All

Leo Laporte (01:34:47):
Right. Thank you, Rick. Have a great, have a good, have a good day. Happy Easter. Don't get too drunk before you see your family. That's also a recipe for dad. Just

Caller 6 (01:34:58):
Have to go to the bars before I see my sisters. That's the one

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
Just, just one drink to, you know, not too many, you know, you know, you don't wanna get in a fight or anything. David is next from Simi valley, California. Hi David.

Caller 7 (01:35:10):
Hi. How you doing Leo?

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
I am great. How are you?

Caller 7 (01:35:13):
I'm doing great. I'm on the phone with you.

Leo Laporte (01:35:16):
Hey, What's what's up. What's happening in your world.

Caller 7 (01:35:22):
Okay. Not a whole lot beautiful day to day, but I'm having some struggles with regards to my my internet speed and I wanted to bounce it off of you and get some feedback from you on it. Okay. So I don't know if I can mention the, the service provider

Leo Laporte (01:35:37):
Name, names, we name names here.

Caller 7 (01:35:40):
All right. So it's gonna be spectrum. Okay. And and the plan that I'm signed up for is which I understand up to one gig megabits per second.

Leo Laporte (01:35:51):
That's 1000 megabits bits by the way, M lowercase BPS. Okay.

Caller 7 (01:35:58):
Exactly. Okay. So when I last tested it, which was earlier today, wired, I'm getting 913.4, which is great.

Leo Laporte (01:36:09):
That's about as good as you're gonna get by the way I'm wired. You never get that full. There's always overhead. So that's good. Yes,

Caller 7 (01:36:16):
Absolutely. So I'm happy with the, but here's the issue I'm having wirelessly. I am dropping from that nine, 13 wire, which I understand, but I'm dropping down to literally just over a hundred wirelessly in the house.

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
Yeah. That's too low. So

Caller 7 (01:36:34):
What I did, what I did to remedy this, or at least I thought of was gonna remedy the, this I should have called you first. I decided on the mesh system. So I picked up S and a router for a mesh, hoping to improve that. I literally only improved it to about one 30.

Leo Laporte (01:36:51):
No, that's not very good. No. So normally with wifi, you, it is not gonna be as fast as wired, but I would say if you're getting nine, 13 wired, you should be getting a five or 600 at least on wifi. Absolutely. Yeah. That's really too low. So there are a few things that go on with wifi. The first thing to do is go stand right next to the router. I presume you've done that. And you're still only getting a hundred.

Caller 7 (01:37:17):
Well, no, I'm getting a little more than hundred. I got 400 standing next

Leo Laporte (01:37:22):
To, okay. Okay. So that's probably, you know, that's limited by other things, including the wifi card and your computer and your phone four, hundred's fine. 400. You're getting as much bandwidths as you're probably gonna get, we're gonna take a break. I'll talk with you off the air, Leo Laport, the TECA.

Leo Laporte (01:37:43):
So that's the first issue, of course. So we know that a lot of the attenuation is caused by distance and barriers. Right. Right. So if you get 400 when you're standing next to the thing, I mean, yeah, you probably would like to get five or 600, but four hundred's pretty good. And honestly, a lot of devices can't go faster than 400. It's not that they can't see more than 400. They just, they're various things issues with, you know, the wifi card itself, the hardware and so forth. So four hundred's good. And it means really that the biggest drop off is caused by distance and barriers. So, okay. A couple things we could do now, your mesh system, which, which one did you get?

Caller 7 (01:38:26):
I am using. Give me one second. Orbi.

Leo Laporte (01:38:30):
Oh, good Orbis. Very good. And you, when you set it up, the beacons is what they call those or they call 'em satellites, I guess the satellites.

Caller 7 (01:38:40):
Yeah. Satellites.

Leo Laporte (01:38:40):
Yeah. You made sure that they got the green light that they're seeing the base and all of that.

Caller 7 (01:38:46):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:38:48):
Okay. Cause Orbi is among the fastest mesh systems out there. Reason being, they have a they, they try band and they use a fourth band for the, a back channel. So it's really fast. That's disappointing. It means in all likelihood you, is it an older building?

Caller 7 (01:39:12):
It was built in 1980. We just moved into it.

Leo Laporte (01:39:16):
Okay. If there's metal in the walls, the other thing you know, that can cause a problem. The other thing you're gonna want to try is is the base station of the Orbi high. You wanna get it as high as you can above the heads of humans. Cause humans are big bags of water. They attenuate the signal as well. So seriously, you're laughing, but it's true. And so any, any living thing in between the Orbi bay station and the Orbi satellites is also gonna attenuate the signal. So move the, or Orbi higher up. If, if you've got, you may have, they may have built it with, with steel metal steel in the wall or mesh in the, you know, drywall does not slow down wifi much, but if there's something else, if there's metal in there could be so, okay. And the idea of a, a mesh system is if you can get those satellites, maybe move those satellites, first of all, move the base station up, move those satellites closer and maybe get another one because it's attenuating by distance. So if the satellite is closer to the base station and can get a higher throughput the other thing is trying on a variety of devices. Do you have a late model iPhone or something like that?

Caller 7 (01:40:34):
I'm a Android guy. So which

Leo Laporte (01:40:36):
Android are you using? Late model. Samsung.

Caller 7 (01:40:40):
Yes. I'll have to make model Samsung.

Leo Laporte (01:40:42):
Okay. Those will probably have the best wifi receivers in them. So use that for your speed test. The good news on Android, there are a number of really excellent wifi signal measurement programs, which will help you quite a bit. Wifi analyzers, the one I use. Okay. So you can, those are free. You can download that and then you can wander around and watch the wifi signal gets, get weaker and weaker and weaker. So you can actually use that to tune it. How many satellites do you have?

Caller 7 (01:41:17):
I have two

Leo Laporte (01:41:18):
That's a lot. And it's how big a house?

Caller 7 (01:41:23):
2200 square feet.

Leo Laporte (01:41:24):
What you should, you should have excellent coverage even with just one.

Caller 7 (01:41:27):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:28):
So something something's in the way. 

Caller 7 (01:41:31):
Yeah. Well, I definitely gonna raise it up because I didn't consider that. And so as soon as you said that, I thought to myself, okay. That's probably a much better idea. Yeah. To lift it up and get it up off of the table.

Leo Laporte (01:41:43):
Yeah. Don't put it under a bed or something. Get it as high as you can put it on top of a bookshelf, you know, that kind of thing. And similarly with the satellites, you, every everything, if it can be higher than a human head, that's a good thing. That'll, that'll really help. And then put it by an open door. If there's a door that's always open, you know, line of sight is the best for wifi, then, you know, there's nothing in the way. So get as close to line of sight as you can. They tell the RB software tells you if the satellites are getting a good signal. So, you know, I, I would try if you've got a, if you had, like, I have a Samsung S 22, if you've got a late model, Samsung, you should be able to get 500 megabits easy. Gotcha. I know the radio's capable of that, so, okay. Play with that. Play with wifi analyzer, play with moving things around.

Caller 7 (01:42:40):
Okay. Okay. Now, quick question, before we go. Yes. So if by chance I'll do all of this and let day I'm getting the same results. Ultimately I would have to consider maybe is this the structure of the house? Or should I consider a more satellites to try to overcome that?

Leo Laporte (01:42:58):
Yeah. More satellite one. You don't need, honestly, you've got alt mall. You need get 'em closer. One more might help. You know, here's the thing. If you've got the and I know you can't really move the base station around much, but the, but, but if you got the base station somewhere where there's, or you know, really thick walls or concrete things in between it and the satellites, that's where the attenuation is gonna happen. It's kinda, it's kind voodoo. It's kind of a dark science. You just have to mess with it.

Caller 7 (01:43:31):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:43:31):
But the good news is you have, which RB did you get?

Caller 7 (01:43:36):
I've got the and I'm trying to look at it here cause I'm not at home. I was,

Leo Laporte (01:43:40):
Oh, that's all right. Just call you. You got a really, you've got a really good Orbi 

Caller 7 (01:43:44):
That's the, I have the seven 50. Yeah. RBR seven.

Leo Laporte (01:43:47):
Perfect. Perfect. I mean, that is a great system that goes very nicely with your gigabit service.

Caller 7 (01:43:54):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:43:55):
So it's not the Orbi nothing you could get in other words is gonna do better than that. You got wifi six on that. So if you can use a wifi six, like I said, a modern Samsung or iPhone has wifi that will give you a better idea of what you're capable of and you, and you got the satellites that go with it, right? The wifi six satellites. Yeah. Yeah. The RBS seven 50. Okay, good. Okay. Yes. You've got the best you can get. Those are good.

Caller 7 (01:44:24):
Great.

Leo Laporte (01:44:24):
So yeah, another one might help if there are obstructions in the wall, But I think you're getting pretty good. Don't expect, you know, more than five or 600 and you might really, but even 300 would be good. I could see why you're not happy with 100. That's still, by the way. Pretty good.

Caller 7 (01:44:42):
Okay. I just figured if I could get four or 500,

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
Well, you ought, you're paying for it. Right? The other thing you could do, I don't wouldn't recommend, but the other thing you could do is you could start looking at other ways of getting the network through the walls, powerline, networking, or MOCA M OCA that uses the cable, the cable. But I, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even bother with that, frankly.

Caller 7 (01:45:05):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:45:06):
Yeah.

Caller 7 (01:45:07):
Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:45:08):
You've got everything you need just mess with it until you get it better.

Caller 7 (01:45:12):
Absolutely. I will do that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. And I've been a long time listener and it's great to talk to you. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:45:18):
I'm so glad you called. Happy Easter. Thank you, David.

Caller 7 (01:45:21):
You too, sir. Thank you much.

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
Take care. Byebye.

Caller 7 (01:45:23):
Sure. Bye-Bye

Leo Laporte (01:45:26):
Well, Hey, Hey. Hey. How are you today? Leo? Leport here. The tech guy, time to talk computers and the internet and home theater and digital photography and smart phones and smart watches and augmented reality and all this stuff that you know, the change in the world, around us, all this technology stuff, anything with the chip in it, eighty eight, eighty eight, ask Leo the phone number as you listen, you'll hear some people with, you know, who are, you know, new to technology, want some help getting, getting going. And you also hear people who are complete and utter geeks. I will attempt to translate. Sometimes I get pulled down into the geekiness and I apologize for that. But, but we're all in it together, right there. Absolutely. Eighty eight eighty eight. Ask Leo the phone number. Now let's see here. Oh, I should mention coming up. Rod pile. Mr. Space guy at half past the hour. Meanwhile, Charles is on the line from San Diego, California. Hi Charles.

Caller 8 (01:46:23):
How you doing

Leo Laporte (01:46:24):
Very well? Very well. It's spring. Spring is sprung. What can I do for you?

Caller 8 (01:46:32):
Well every time I sent an email to a, a friend of mine use his last name@msn.com. Yeah. And it automatically gets rejected and, and goes, somebody said the term would be ghost, but it comes back with his first initial, his last name at the company. He sold two years ago that doesn't even exist anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:47:00):
Oh. So you're sending it to his MSN account, but the bounce, they call that the bounce back, cuz it goes boing and bounces back at you is coming from his old business. That's because he, he may not even remember having done this, but he, at some point told MSN forward my mail to my business account. And of course, since that server's no longer working, it's bouncing back either that, or he is set up a MSN and he may have done this as well with an identity that says, I am not your buddy@msn.com. I am your buddy@galaxywidgets.com.

Leo Laporte (01:47:42):
Yeah. So it's, it's one of the other you could, if you really got, wanna get geeky here, go onto the microscope here, you look at the email headers and you can see what the server was that sent it back. And it may in fact, still be the MSN server. But you know, if you, if you really wanna get geeky some email programs will let you look at the headers. The headers contain all the information about all the servers that, that email went through on its to you. And in this case on its way back. So it's something he has to fix is the bottom line.

Caller 8 (01:48:17):
He's gotta fix it.

Leo Laporte (01:48:18):
He's gotta fix it. Nothing you can do about it. If you have another address for him, send him a note and say, Hey buddy, fix your MSN.

Caller 8 (01:48:28):
Yeah. Cause he, he is, I get frustrated cause I, I send him a couple of things every day, usually jokes and topical things about politics. And are you

Leo Laporte (01:48:38):
Sure he wants that email?

Caller 8 (01:48:40):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:48:41):
He does. Oh, okay. Good. Yeah. He, he might be saying, oh, I know how to, I know how to get rid of Charles. I get you, you know, it's funny. These joke lists, I get a few that I really, I no longer want. And so I just send those to the the waste paper basket. Yes. Yeah. But if he wants 'em it's just something he's gonna have to fix. I'm sorry to say.

Caller 8 (01:49:07):
Okay. Now can he do that? Through office 365? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:11):
I mean, he just depends on what he did. So if, but ultimately he's gotta go to his MSN account and look at the settings on MSN. There's two possibilities. One is you could set up a lot of times you can do with this with Gmail too, by the way you could say, look, I know my email is going to leo@gmail.com, but I wanted to, when I was apply to it, I want it to be coming from my business address. So you're still using Gmail the whole time, but it says in the reply, you know, field or the from field. Yeah. It says the business address. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is he actually told MSN I don't want my mail here forwarded on to my business. I think it's most likely the former, but he's got again, it's all through his account. Yeah. So he'll have to log into his MSN account.

Caller 8 (01:49:56):
Okay. All right. You've I think you've helped me. I gotta tell him and

Leo Laporte (01:50:00):
Yeah. That's the problem you understand? But does he? Well,

Caller 8 (01:50:06):
It's frustrating. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:50:07):
Yeah, of course he wants your jokes.

Caller 8 (01:50:09):
Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (01:50:10):
Yeah. Yeah. That's fun. I hope that helps Charles.

Caller 8 (01:50:15):
Okay. All right.

Leo Laporte (01:50:16):
Thank you. If, if you want I'll call him and walk him through it. No, I won't. I can't. No, that's a good trick though. If you don't wanna get those joke, joke, mailings, you know, just bounce 'em back. Cindy's on the line. Oh no, Cindy's coming up. Sorry, Cindy. Joy's next Torrance, California. And then I'll take Cindy. Hi joy.

Caller 9 (01:50:37):
Hi. thank you for taking my call. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:50:40):
You for calling.

Caller 9 (01:50:42):
I called you once before you might remember because I called that my laptop was overheating. Yes. Because I had too many favorites. Yes. According to gate squad

Leo Laporte (01:50:53):
Wrong, but okay. We fixed it. Right. I

Caller 9 (01:50:56):
Governed my favorites cause

Leo Laporte (01:50:57):
I believe good. Cause they were wrong. Yes. OK. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:51:00):
So that's not what I'm calling about. Yes. I did a bad thing. I went to a site that suddenly, you know, at the end I read this little article at the end of it. It sort of blew up and I thought the world was gonna end. Oh no. You know. And it said that I needed they had frozen everything and I couldn't do anything.

Leo Laporte (01:51:19):
Oh please. Oh please. How annoying

Caller 9 (01:51:22):
Announcing this thing over and over. And I had to call this number. Oh, like an idiot. I called the number. Oh yeah. It's gonna get worse.

Leo Laporte (01:51:31):
They gotcha.

Caller 9 (01:51:32):
They wanted me to download something and it looked like it was Microsoft. So I thought, okay, this is legitimate. You know, this is what Microsoft is supposed to do when things happen

Leo Laporte (01:51:40):
And okay. Here's a little tip. Everybody listening. Microsoft will never call you, pop up something in your rain. They will never do this.

Caller 9 (01:51:52):
Yeah. I know that now.

Leo Laporte (01:51:52):
Yeah. You know it now. So somebody does it. It's not Microsoft. In fact worse. It's somebody pretending to be Microsoft.

Caller 9 (01:51:59):
Yeah. And it's in India apparently because I couldn't hardly understand them. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:03):
You know what often happens? I found out these call centers. They have 'em during the day they're legit. Right? And it not night, people wanna earn some extra hours. They keep 'em running at night and guess what you're gonna be doing? Hello? I I'm calling from Microsoft. I wanna fix your computer.

Caller 9 (01:52:19):
Yeah. And my phone kind cuts out. So it's between two things like,

Leo Laporte (01:52:23):
Oh Lord.

Caller 9 (01:52:24):
After about two

Leo Laporte (01:52:25):
Hours. So did you download this software and put it on the computer twice? Twice. And did you give any money? Huh? Did you, did you give him any money? No. Good.

Caller 9 (01:52:36):
Yeah. I, I

Leo Laporte (01:52:37):
Stopped. So there's three things. These guys do's,

Caller 9 (01:52:40):
I was just like having an anxiety attack.

Leo Laporte (01:52:42):
Of course this is by the way,

Caller 9 (01:52:45):
I

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
Think it will always, it's always designed to scare you, to make you, they don't want you to think. Right. So they want, I

Caller 9 (01:52:53):
Mean, I don't even remember if I tried to shut it off when it says don't shut it off. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:57):
Yeah. They're trying, they, they want to get you thinking viscerally instead of with your brain. Yeah. Because then might do something dumb and, and they got you.

Caller 9 (01:53:08):
They ended up threatening me if I didn't shut up and listen to them and do what I was told.

Leo Laporte (01:53:12):
Oh my God, these people are horrible.

Caller 9 (01:53:16):
But you know,

Leo Laporte (01:53:17):
When they, by the way, when I get calls from them, I say, does your mother know that you take advantage of people like this? That's by the way, they will say where at you, if you say that, I'm just,

Caller 9 (01:53:26):
I finally hung up on them and called a friend of mine. Who's sort of a computer person. She's in the middle doing taxes though. She couldn't help. And so she says, you better call geek squad and oh,

Leo Laporte (01:53:37):
Your friends at geek squad.

Caller 9 (01:53:40):
Well, no, but she didn't have time to help me. No,

Leo Laporte (01:53:42):
She can't help you. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:53:44):
Well, I, I can't do this and I, I listen to these Indian did all,

Leo Laporte (01:53:48):
I know, listen

Caller 9 (01:53:49):
To the announcement going on with this. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:53:53):
Sorry. I'm sorry. Anyway,

Caller 9 (01:53:54):
Called geek squad. I called geek squad. And after a lot of trouble, they couldn't, there's a thing called an S something S that stops them from being able to, to control things.

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
They said, bring it in and we'll fix it.

Caller 9 (01:54:09):
Yeah. I said, I don't have a car, so can't do that. No. 

Leo Laporte (01:54:12):
So look, here's here's let me tell you how these scams work. So you know what your risks are. Sometimes they ask you for money. So that's risk. Number one, you give 'em $93 risk. Number two is often the way that you give them 93 is you give them your credit card. Yeah. Okay. So obviously you were too smart to fall for that. That's good. Yeah. In fact, you, you caught on pretty quickly that this is not right. Well, I, the next thing they do is they say, can we operate your computer remotely so we can fix this problem. And

Caller 9 (01:54:43):
Okay, now, now you're gonna yell at me cuz I let the geek squad do that.

Leo Laporte (01:54:48):
Yeah. But that's okay. Cuz you call them and you know, that's really the geek squad, right? It's not. Yeah. Yeah. So that's okay. In fact, that is in fact, what tech companies will often do is remote access. The problem is you don't want to give bad guys remote access cuz then who knows what they're gonna do. They could download files that could most likely they're gonna put programs on your computer, malware on your computer. And that malware can do any variety of things from encrypt your whole computer and then ask for money to running the background, trying to capture key, pass key, you know, passwords as you key them in sometimes they'll look around for financial and things. You know, if your tax return, you might well might it's on my computer. If it's on the computer, they could find that that's got you social and your address and all sorts of good information.

Caller 9 (01:55:36):
There's nothing that important on the

Leo Laporte (01:55:38):
Yeah. So the worst, the worst thing it sounds like they did to, you was put that software on there.

Caller 9 (01:55:43):
But the other thing when the geek club finally, you know, she kept doing remote things and having to call, she goes, oh well can not call you back. So when she finally did it after about two and a half hours she says, oh, you got tons of viruses all over the place and it's making it run slow and all this. And for 240

Leo Laporte (01:56:01):
That's as much of us scam as these guys.

Caller 9 (01:56:05):
And she goes, well, I says, I don't have them that kind of money. And she says, well, when you have it, call me down. Oh oh, so here's my

Leo Laporte (01:56:13):
Question. Never. So I think we've had too bad experiences now with geek squad haven't we,

Caller 9 (01:56:18):
My friend had said you know, like download some like

Leo Laporte (01:56:22):
No, no, no, no more downloading, stop just

Caller 9 (01:56:24):
Mcafee or

Leo Laporte (01:56:25):
Something. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. So,

Caller 9 (01:56:30):
Or can I

Leo Laporte (01:56:30):
Do the biggest risk? Is that there's something running on your computer right now. And every time you have your computer online, it's sending stuff out to the bed guys. That's the biggest risk. Probably not happening. Probably not happening the software they had you download. Did you install it?

Caller 9 (01:56:48):
I don't know. I just, I really, I'm not a computer person. You

Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
Don't know what happened. Told me. Yeah. You don't know what happened. So I mean the, the, probably the safest thing for you to do at this point would be to wipe the computer and reinstall windows and then you'd be wipe out anything that was on there. Do you have stuff on that computer? You don't wanna lose,

Caller 9 (01:57:08):
Including all those favorites,

Leo Laporte (01:57:10):
You can save them. Good news. Your browser. Let's just save them. So, so definitely save those favorites. You've got, you've put way too much time in that. Yeah.

Caller 9 (01:57:20):
I've even got 'em a little folders down.

Leo Laporte (01:57:22):
Yeah. Yeah. So the browser, you can export your favorites. I would do that. Is there, are there documents on there that you want pictures, anything like that?

Caller 9 (01:57:31):
No's no pictures,

Leo Laporte (01:57:31):
Nothing important. In other words, if I were to take that computer, erase the drive and put on windows again, you'd be okay.

Caller 9 (01:57:38):
And I'd still have my favorites there.

Leo Laporte (01:57:40):
If that's all you, that's all you have to protect. Yeah. That's

Caller 9 (01:57:45):
Email of course. But the email's not really connected. No.

Leo Laporte (01:57:47):
Yeah, yeah. That's right. The nowadays the email's stored wherever your email is. Yeah. So you don't have to worry about that.

Caller 9 (01:57:53):
Well, that's about it, you

Leo Laporte (01:57:54):
Know, I don't, so I want you to export your favorites. This is gonna do that. This is gonna take, this is what the geek watch should have done by the way. But they don't make $200 if they don't no

Caller 9 (01:58:05):
Wanna spend $93 and come to my house.

Leo Laporte (01:58:07):
Exactly. I wish I could come to your house. Cuz this is a fast and easy thing. And if you had a nephew or somebody who knew, you know, knew about computers, they would do this too. You're gonna need a external drive of some kind.

Caller 9 (01:58:21):
Oh, I've got one of those. What's it called? Flash drive. Good in.

Leo Laporte (01:58:26):
Yeah. It'd be nice if you had two, one of them, we're gonna save those favorites out too. Okay. We wanna get the favorites somewhere off the computer cuz that's that's the only thing you wanna save. Right? Everything else is unimportant. Then you're gonna do is you're gonna download windows for Microsoft. Now make sure you get it from Microsoft.

Caller 9 (01:58:44):
Download,

Leo Laporte (01:58:46):
Download windows. And, and the way you can do that is Google or, or any kind of search windows, media creation, tool,

Caller 9 (01:58:54):
Windows,

Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
Media, cuz the media is what you're gonna create creation tool. And that should take you to site@microsoft.com and the site will say download windows 10 and you're gonna down. You're on windows 10. I presume. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna download windows 10 and they have instructions there. Follow 'em step by step to put the windows 10 installer on that flash drive

Caller 9 (01:59:23):
10.

Leo Laporte (01:59:24):
This a little, I, this is a little geeky. You're gonna earn your, your, your, your geek credit for this. It's okay. You, you can do it.

Caller 9 (01:59:30):
My,

Leo Laporte (01:59:31):
I know, I know. It's a good thing to know though.

Caller 9 (01:59:33):
Windows plans

Leo Laporte (01:59:35):
On the site to create a U you wanna make a USB drive that you can boot and you know, if the instructions aren't clear, you can Google making a windows. Installer. Lots of sites have

Caller 9 (01:59:48):
Talking too fast. I gotta write everything down. I really computer stupid. Okay. Create USB. Well, let's be on the web site later.

Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
I'll make sure it is

Caller 9 (01:59:58):
Okay then I want off to write it down. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:00):
Okay. So the, but understand the overall idea. The overarching idea. You don't need to write this down is you're gonna create a on that USB key. You're gonna make a windows installer and you're gonna restart the computer with that key in and it's gonna boot up and it's gonna say, do you want install windows? And you're gonna say yes please. And it's gonna say, but wait, you already have windows. You say wipe that drive. I don't want it. Everything on that have a race. It's gonna install a fresh install of windows. Actually. You know what? Who made the computer that you're using?

Caller 9 (02:00:30):
HP.

Leo Laporte (02:00:31):
Oh, I got a better idea. This will, this will work. This is easier. This is easier. You don't have to download anything. Oh,

Caller 9 (02:00:39):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:00:40):
Windows 10 comes with a reset. My comp computer command.

Caller 9 (02:00:45):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:00:45):
So you hit press. There's a key on your keyboard that looks like the windows logo, press that and a menu, a a window pop up, you type reset my computer and you let it, you walk through the steps. You erase everything. You reset your computer up. Come back to the way it was when you got it home without any malware on there. And now Leo Laporta, I should have, I should have thought of that right away. I'm so sorry. This is much easier. And, and chances are now it's a little, I won't even, I shouldn't bring it up. It might be less effective if they're really smart, these bad guys, they weren't they might they might have put something in there. You know, you can infect the reinstall thing, but I don't think they did. So it's really, this is good reset, reset this PC, which means it's gonna come back to the way it was when you came home with it when you bought it.

Caller 9 (02:01:39):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:01:39):
That's what you want. All that bad stuff is gone, but you'll also lose your favorites. So before you do that, save your favorites out to that flash drive.

Caller 9 (02:01:47):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:01:50):
Okay.

Caller 9 (02:01:51):
Okay. Can I ask you one other question? Yes. my I have a wireless phone, cordless phone. And, but it's for a landline. It's starting to cut out on some conversations. It's perfectly all right today, but you know, it's, I'm hearing like that. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:02:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's as you get farther from the base station.

Caller 9 (02:02:15):
Oh, is that what it is? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:02:16):
It's just, it's a, it's a radio and it's getting,

Caller 9 (02:02:19):
I was right next to it yesterday when I was trying to talk to the people in India, it was horrible.

Leo Laporte (02:02:23):
Could have been them

Caller 9 (02:02:26):
Could have

Leo Laporte (02:02:26):
Been them.

Caller 9 (02:02:27):
Could you recommend a very inexpensive answering machine machine slash cordless phone? Yes. You could turn the volume down all the, a ringer.

Leo Laporte (02:02:40):
Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:02:41):
Cause

Leo Laporte (02:02:41):
I don't want, so you wanna look for the new technology that you wanna look for is D E C T.

Caller 9 (02:02:48):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:02:49):
Decked digital enhanced cordless telecommunications. Those decked phones are much better and they don't cut out anymore

Caller 9 (02:02:58):
Digitally enhanced.

Leo Laporte (02:02:59):
And doesn't matter what you get, you could go to target or whatever and find whatever they've got. Shouldn't should be around. I mean, I see a Vtech for $15 at Walmart.

Caller 9 (02:03:09):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:03:10):
So, and Vtechs fine. So you

Caller 9 (02:03:14):
Be enhanced. I'm sorry, what would it

Leo Laporte (02:03:16):
D E C T that's all you like detective? Yeah.

Caller 9 (02:03:19):
Okay. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (02:03:22):
You're welcome joy. I'm sorry. This is terrible. I hate those people.

Caller 9 (02:03:26):
I know. Well, I've learned my lessons.

Leo Laporte (02:03:28):
I hate them. Yeah, the thing to do is never panic cuz they wanna panic you cuz when you panic, you act without thinking and as soon as then they got you. Right.

Caller 9 (02:03:41):
So my friends would say, you know, maybe because you were just like acting like, oh I dunno what to do. Exactly. Kinda crazy. Maybe they just gave up on you and didn't,

Leo Laporte (02:03:51):
You know, the ch actually the, it sounds like you were able to hang up on 'em before they did anything too, too evil. The, they put software probably might have put software in your system. So that's what you're getting rid of when you do the reset, my PC.

Caller 9 (02:04:04):
Okay. Thank you very

Leo Laporte (02:04:05):
Much. I'm sorry. Joy. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. Bye. Leo Laport, the tech guy. So I stayed on the line a little bit more with joy. I I, the, the best solution, I, I, I'm kind of sometimes stuck in the past, used to have to download windows installer, but nowadays, and I love this. This is exactly what should happen. Microsoft took a page from Android. I think Android phones. There's a reset. This phone. Same on the iPhone. There's a reset this phone back to factory state factory condition. Chromebooks have this feature as well. They call it power wash. The idea is you, you go to a menu entry, you say, oh, I messed this up bad. This is messed up. Put it back the way when it came, I was when it came, remember in the old days of PCs, you'd buy a PC and it would come with a recovery disc. Yes. Then Microsoft told PC makers, no, can't do that anymore. We're gonna charge you extra. If you do it. They, they literally said that, cuz they were worried about piracy. Oh, you might give that disk to somebody else. And they might use windows for free. And so they told PC manufacturers no more recovery discs.

Leo Laporte (02:05:15):
Oh thank you, Microsoft. That was an improvement. So then you might remember this PCs started to come with a, when you first turned on a program and said, make your recovery discs, get, get 53 floppys or four recordable CDs. And we're gonna go through the process, which by the way, I've done many times often fails. I don't know why, but it doesn't work. Then you don't have a recovery disc, most PCs for a long time for I'd say a decade were sold with no recovery disc at all. No way to recover recently. Thank you, Microsoft. Finally, they put this reset your PC command. So it's in the settings. Reset your PC. It goes back to factory state. That's how it ought to be. That's what you should use. Leo Laport tech guy, rod Powell, space guy coming up, everybody sing along now.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:06:15):
Yeah, I'm her. I I've seen Elton John in concert. I've watched his lips closely and I finally had to look it up. Rod pile space guy. You know what he's saying? Burning up my fuse out here alone. I didn't know it until you told me, but he rod pile is our space expert. He editor in chief of the wonderful ad ATRA magazine, the official publication of the national space society, ats.org, the author of amazing stories of the space, age, author of interplanetary robots space 2.0 blueprint for a battle plan in my favorite book, which I have stolen from my very own coffee table at home so that I can hold it up on the radio so that you can't see it first on the moon. This is actually a great book. I'm a big fan. As you know of of all of the Apollo astronauts.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:11):
And this is the story of Apollo 11, the first landing on the moon. It's wonderful. Lots of books. And we love that book because it generated royalty checks for the first time in about eight years for buzz, alre are rare. No for me. Oh for you. Yeah. I had that seat a real royalty check in a while. You know, they'd come in for a thousand or something. Rod, can I just say like serious? I have written 13 books. Yes. Still waiting. Haven't had a check in a while. Well, you know, they're still paying off all those paper clips in that rocking. Anyway, you look at the reports and they'll tell you that, but yeah. So Hey, Hey news today. Yes. And we're gonna have a press conference tomorrow with NASA. Yeah. I saw it. It's not good news. After almost a month of trying to do a fueling account down test with the SLS.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:07:59):
They're rolling it back into the barn, the vehicle assembly, building repairs. Now, before we get to carried away here, I just wanna remind people a couple of things. SLS gets a lot of grief and it deserves a lot of it. What does SLS stand for? Space launch system space launch. So this is the rock that was gonna take humans back to the moon. Yes. And we were supposed to be launching an UN UN crude test. Well now we're saying the summer it was may, then it was June, maybe it's August. And now we're just saying this summer is frustrating. This was for the, the Artemis one moon mission. Right. And you know, and it simplest form, we've sort of been trying to recreate the Saturn five for 20 years, but really what we're doing is trying to take old shuttle hardware and shuttle technology, ah, and repurpose it for an expendable rocket to get us back to the moon cuz the shuttle couldn't leave earth orbit.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:08:54):
It's been a real trial and it's been 23 billion across Ooh, roughly a decade and a half. But you know, that sounds like a lot. And, and it's really upsetting people that this test failed. And I'll get into that in a second, but it's a lot less than the Apollo program cost. Cuz when you adjust those dollars, Apollo is something like 253 billion over a decade in, in 2020 $1, 2020 $2. Right? So, you know, SLS is if you include the capsule and the rocket and everything else, roughly a 10th of that. Well that's so even though we're kind of re going over territory, we've done before and the SLS is very different design to Saturn five. It's understandable. They're having some problems that said it is so frustrating. They rolled this rocket out to the launchpad on the, the mobile, the crawler on March 17th. And they had three attempts to do what they call wet dress rehearsal, which is fueling it, doing the countdown and then stopping at the ten second mark, cuz you don't want it to take off.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:09:55):
Right. But you wanna make sure everything works. They didn't even get that far. No. And the, the weirdest thing. So on the first test, which is April 3rd, they had to scrub because they're having problems with the, not the rocket, but the launch platform fans that are supposed to keep explosive hydrogen gases building up didn't work, they switched to a backup and that also malfunction. And so here's where it gets interest because so starts actually changing the parameters of the tests and saying, okay, well we won't do this part, but we'll do this part cause that'll get us good data. And that makes sense. But it's also kinda like going to a calculus exam and finishing an algebra test, you know, it's making it easier. So you don't have to hit the marks. April 4th, they tried again, they got the oxygen liquid oxygen tank, halfway filled, hydrogen tank had a misconfigured vent valve that they couldn't remotely change.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:10:46):
So that only got, I think 5% filled. So they stopped. Then they had to, to pause the whole thing to let SpaceX launched the Axiom one mission, which is coming back in a day or two. And then on the third test they had more problems, temperature, misalignments and other things. So they did get to a lot of critical events they wanted to get to, but they just couldn't finish the test. And then finally they found leaks and hire of fuel lines. So they just said, okay, on April 14th at 4:00 PM the afternoon, they said, all right, that's it. We're, we're heading back to the barn. So hopefully Boeing, who is the contractor main contractor for this rocket will be able to get those things fixed. Although they've been working on Starliner for months down still haven't re flown test, which partially failed. So fingers crossed.

Leo Laporte (02:11:37):
They can just replace these parts and get the thing back out in a few months. But you know, at this point it could be 20, 23. Okay. The original launch date was 2016. I don't not, let's not cast blame. Space is hard. Space is hard. And you know, this is the moon rocket we had Starship is still being well, that's the question. Yeah. Could Elon have done this better? He could have done it faster. And I think he would've for sure. Done it reusable and the SLS is completely expendable. Everything is tossed used once. So he would've done it with newer technology probably for much, much less, but we don't know, you know, that's a guess in a couple years, if Starship is working, then we'll know yes, that would've been the right way to go. And at 4 billion a copy, we may decide not to fly SLS anymore, but oh man.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:12:31):
And is there blame, is there some, some somebody screw up or no, this just is hard. You know, it's hard, but, but if there's blame, I of course we have done it before turn to Congress because the SLS was to a large extent, kept alive by Congress. NASA a few times had really turned to the commercial sector and said, you know, this would be a good way to go. And Congress has not. I got a rocket, the plant in my district. I've got an engine factory in my district. I've got a heat tile plant in my district. You gotta keep the work coming here. Yeah. So that's too bad. The S SLS and the, the it's it's boondoggles it's bit of pork belly, pork belly. Yeah. Earmarks. But yeah. Yeah. But, but that's the reality of the American political thing. Sure. Right.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:13:18):
That's and there's a lot of people that are being kept a good job. That's right. I guess the other direction I'd point without malice, but I just don't understand what's happening with Boeing. They're having so many challenges. They are okay. Doing things they've done well before in one form or another. Yeah. I mean this valve thing, it was valves on the SLS test to some extent. And it was entirely valves that fouled up the last attempt at launching Starliner, which is Boeing's answer to the crew dragon, which is also supposed to be delivering people to the space station. It's valve bodies, you know, fix the valves. It's probably harder than that, but fix the valve. Most people, I think most people, you know, you and I, cuz we're buff space buffs. You even host a show about space this week in space at TWiT to slash twists with TARC, Malik of space.com.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:06):
So we're, you know, we're abnormally obsessed with this. Probably most people aren't not saying, there they go again, SLS going back. They're not, they're just, when we get to the moon, we'll we'll have a party and that'll be that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But that date keeps slipping. I know, but nobody knows what that date was. It's not like they remember when we were kids during the space race and Apollo got delayed. Paula got delayed and his kids are going, come on, you guys, hurry up. I wanna see this uncle Walter would have to take apart the shoting five model over and over again. And I feel like that's kind of happening again. I mean, I'm very excited about what's going on, but we're still, for instance, trying to figure out what space suits these astronauts are gonna wear in the lunar surface. Cuz newest space suits are about 30 years old.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:14:54):
Wow. You know, what's got some good looking space suits. Yeah. But they're pressure suits. They're not made for walking around the lunar service. They like flight suits. Yeah. But he has offered because he is Elon when he is not buying, I don't trust El he by Twitter, he honest with you. He offered and he said, look, I'll build you suit. And NASA said, oh, we'll get back. Do you? But he probably could. He probably could. I mean, every time you count Elon out for something comes and nails it. Yeah. Except for Twitter. Except for that Twitter thing. Author of space, 2.0 editor in chief of ad Astro host of this in spaces. Is there anything rod pile cannot do except, and this segment on time. Thank you rod radio show. Thank you. I, I look for it. The tech guy, there's just too much to talk about. There he is. And how long are our segment supposed to be? Oh, God only knows. I mean, do you want a timer? I could put a timer up. I have a little, well I have a timer. I bought one for this. Oh, how long is what the, let me ask Laura, how long is his segment supposed to be? Laura? How, what he should he set his timer for? She doesn't know.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:16:01):
Okay. Nine minutes. It's not just me. I think. Yeah. Yeah. 8 28 minutes and 20 set your timer. Okay. For eight 20 any and then just know that you're gonna, you'll be out of time at eight 20. So start wrapping at eight 10 or whatever. Yeah. Okay. And I, you know, that way I could, I always acting like a radio profess. I always start wrapping you. Oh no. It's not your job. It's my job. If we have failed, it is because I have failed. Aw, yes. Not the shame, but we haven't failed. In fact, we can't fail. It's all on a timer. It's automatic. We can. So I was gonna mention cuz we ran outta time, but do you remember the the Apollo four test back in the day? Yes. That was the one where Walter Cronkites. It was the first launch of the Saturn five first test launch.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:16:54):
No people on it. And that's the one where Cronkites had to jump up and hold the window. Oh Lord. I don't remember that so hard. He was afraid it was gonna shatter. There were tiles falling down. Holy cow. And that was the first time they flew the Saturn five. How fun? So was a massive rocket. Wasn't it? Well, and it's kind of analogous to this test right? First time. Yeah. No one knew what to expect. Yeah. And I, I wish we still had uncle Walter cuz he was, oh he was, there are people that argue this, but he was absolutely the best guy to watch. Yeah. For this space dust. Cause he was so into it. Right. Oh yeah. That's the thing, right. That's exactly right. You knew this was important because Walter said so. Yeah. And you remember when Armstrong stepped on the moon and he was just there going, wow.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:17:40):
Wally, I don't know what to say. Sh Shera tearing up cuz he wanted to be there. Right? Oh gosh. But you know, I think our best days behind us, but well, you know, you can only do it the first time once. That's true. But I think that's true. It'll never be as amazing as it was that first time. Of course. But if you go to Kennedy now you see these enormous facilities that both Bezos and blue origin and Musker building they're, they're serious. You know, they've had some setbacks, but these guys are dead serious. And I think once they find a way to start making a little money out there, it won't have to be a lot. It's gonna just catch fire and there's a ton of little companies getting in. It's just, the billionaires can go first cuz they're billionaires.

Leo Laporte / Rod Pyle (02:18:31):
I'm hoping, I'm hoping. Trillionaires I'm hoping to going is my do coin ever gonna get back to the 65? You're the wrong guy. I'll ask Padre next week though. He's a, he was the king of do. Yeah. I was listening to your, your last ad read and I thought yeah did. Yeah. No, my retirement's all in doze coin. Yes. Oh boy. No. Oh boy. Only at that. Oh boy. All right, sir. Have a wonderful childhood and we will see you in a week. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Leo Laporte (02:19:09):
Thank you for letting me be your tech guy every week. Leo Laport, the tech guy, thanks to professor Laura, our a musical director playing the hits for you. Thanks. Of course, to Kim Shaffer, our phone angel, she gets you on the air. Gets you ready for your appearance on national radio bust all. Thanks to those of you, those of you who call and those of you who merely sit and listen, we couldn't do it without both of you. We really appreciate it. Thank you for letting me be your tech guy. I'm mean cop couple more calls I think before we wrap this up for the week Cindy on the line finally from Carson, California. Thanks for your great patience, Cindy. Appreciate it.

Caller 10 (02:19:48):
You are welcome. I lived right in a town next door to your last caller. Joy. Nice. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (02:19:54):
Maybe you could run over and help her because she is, it's a mess. It's a mess. She

Caller 10 (02:20:00):
Was, she was scrambling my brain

Leo Laporte (02:20:03):
And

Caller 10 (02:20:04):
Yeah, I wanna tell you, you whistled very nicely. Thank

Leo Laporte (02:20:06):
You. I try only to do it off the air, but I guess

Caller 10 (02:20:11):
No. Well, and then you turned me on to eye drive and every time I have an issue, I I'm very thankful for you for that.

Leo Laporte (02:20:18):
Yes. Yes. A great backup is, is can save you from a multitude of problems. So I'm so glad to hear that you have taken advantage you. That that's

Caller 10 (02:20:28):
Great right now. The reason I'm calling is I have a year old HP. It just turned over a year. Okay. and what is Dropbox and why do I need it

Leo Laporte (02:20:39):
Dropbox or one drive?

Caller 10 (02:20:42):
I don't know. Are they the same? Cause no,

Leo Laporte (02:20:44):
They're not. But usually on windows, I, people complain about one drive cuz Microsoft's Dropbox and OneDrive and truthfully iDrive, which you're already familiar with are similar. In many ways they are cloud storage storage in over the internet, on somebody's servers out there. And the reason you use it, there's a variety of reasons. The reason you use iDrive is to back up your data and that's how you could use Dropbox or one drive. There are other reasons you might use it. You can use it to share files with other people. So and, and securely too in many cases. So that's a nice feature. If you have a, for instance, let's say you're tax return, you're very busy today. You wanna share those tax returns with your clients better than sending 'em through email would be to store 'em on Dropbox or OneDrive for them to download.

Caller 10 (02:21:41):
Oh, so other people have access to it.

Leo Laporte (02:21:43):
Not yes, you can allow that they don't buy default. You can allow it. Okay. So it's for sharing data, but it's also storing your data and a lot of people you know, it's become more and more popular as we use more devices. So if you have a computer at home, a computer at work, a phone, maybe a tablet and you'd like access to your data from all of those platforms. The easiest way to do it is store it. Not on any one of those, but in the cloud where you all can access it. Your, your email's been doing that for some time. I betcha, right? Your email, you can get your email on all your devices. Yes. And that's because it's stored on the server, whether it's Gmail or Hotmail or outlook or whatever, it's stored on the server where you access it. So it's just like that for your files. Now the probably what you're seeing HP may do this with Dropbox, all Microsoft computers do it with a OneDrive, which is Microsoft's. They would like you to pay them money.

Caller 10 (02:22:41):
Exactly. They want me, they say my box is full.

Leo Laporte (02:22:45):
Ah, your box is full.

Caller 10 (02:22:47):
Yes they have. So

Leo Laporte (02:22:48):
What they all do is they offer you a, a free, a free tier of some amount, knowing that you will sooner and later fill it up and then they can come at you for for money hundred,

Caller 10 (02:23:01):
$118. Well,

Leo Laporte (02:23:02):
No, you don't need to that. There's all sorts of. So you get from Dropbox anyway, you get two gigabytes, which isn't very much for free Apple's eye drive gives you five gigabytes Google's drive gives you I think 10 gigabytes. So two is pretty weak. And so you will fill that up pretty quickly. Why are you filling it up? Well, at some point you created an account you signed in and you said, please let's keep this stuff. You probably have a Dropbox folder on your computer. And whenever you put something in there, it automatically gets copied to Dropbox in the cloud.

Leo Laporte (02:23:35):
Unless you have a use for it, I wouldn't pay for it.

Caller 10 (02:23:39):
I don't know that. I, I really don't recall that I intentionally did anything. And even today, if I, I don't intentionally put any, anything or save it to Dropbox,

Leo Laporte (02:23:48):
Well, what you wanna do is it'll be running in the lower right hand corner. You know, you have those little icons it's called this task bar. There'll be a Dropbox icon there, right? Click it and open it and see what the settings are. You are copying something there. Sometimes it's set up that your documents folder gets copied there. HP may have done that. That's not the normal setup, but HP gets a little money when you buy a Dropbox. That's why computers, these days always come loaded up with what we call trial wear because they don't make enough money selling you the computer. And so they wanna make a little extra on the side. And so they've gotta deal with Dropbox and they may have set it up so that your desktop or your documents, folder or other folders get copied there automatically. And then, you know, you're gonna get that notice, but you don't need it if you're not using it. So I would go to the preferences of Dropbox, just turn it off.

Caller 10 (02:24:38):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (02:24:40):
You already have eye drive for your backup. That's really what you want it for. I don't, unless you're gonna share files with a friend or you, for some reason, want to have a shared folder that multiple computers can use. I, I don't think you need it.

Caller 10 (02:24:53):
Nope, not really. Okay. Sounds great. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. You're very welcome 18.

Leo Laporte (02:24:58):
Yes. Well, I, you know, I, I actually have all of them partly cuz I need to know 'em and use 'em and understand them. And also over time I've secreted many of these. So I have a, a, a Dropbox account on Google drive account, a OneDrive account and I pay for all of those. But I have reasons to use them. I if, unless you know, you need 'em. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't last call of the day. Let's go to Corona, California. Ken is on the line. Hi Ken.

Caller 11 (02:25:27):
Hi Leo. I traded in my iPhone se for a newer iPhone se with with, with, with the larger yeah. Storage or whatever. Good. My problem that I'm having is trying to pay that thing with my, with my car and I've, I've done it two or three times. I've I've called the apple and

Leo Laporte (02:25:49):
Your old one worked fine.

Caller 11 (02:25:51):
The old one worked fine. The new one, occasionally I'll look in, I'll see a little green thing. Oh, it's there. And then a lot of times I wasn't aware of it until one day my daughter called and the radio kept playing and so I had to stop and, oh,

Leo Laporte (02:26:03):
That's frustrating.

Caller 11 (02:26:04):
And I went to a dealer and we did went through the process. It doesn't seem to hold, it comes up from time to time, but it doesn't seem to stay there. So what's the make, what are we doing wrong in the setting? Nothing.

Leo Laporte (02:26:16):
What's the make of the vehicle.

Caller 11 (02:26:18):
It's a Dodge caravan.

Leo Laporte (02:26:20):
Okay. So I have heard problems with a variety of the different manufacturers and pairing phones. Bluetooth itself is a nightmare. And then, yeah, it's not unusual that apple makes an upgrade or, you know, the car has changed. In this case you have an older vehicle. I think. So a newer phone might expect capabilities. The car doesn't have first thing to do. You probably did this at the dealer. I'm sure he tried. But the first thing to do is make sure you forget the old phone in the settings in the Dodge. In fact, I would forget all the phones. So you don't do you get in the car and you look at your Bluetooth settings and you just forget any phone that you don't use.

Caller 11 (02:27:00):
Right. We, we took everything out,

Leo Laporte (02:27:02):
Took everything out. Okay. And then the phone and it worked for a while and it stopped.

Caller 11 (02:27:07):
That's correct.

Leo Laporte (02:27:11):
Yeah. There's, there's probably not a fix for it. I would

Caller 11 (02:27:14):
Wait if 5g makes a difference? No,

Leo Laporte (02:27:17):
Cause it's just Bluetooth, but Bluetooth changes over time. I would Google Google's your friend in this case, cuz there'll be other people who have the new iPhone se with the latest iOS, you know, 15.4 0.1 and a Dodge caravan who are having the same problem. There may not be a fix. It may be up to the manufacturer to fix it. Probably not up to apple because well you know, 10 million people have this phone and if there's a problem with a few of 'em, it's probably the car, not the phone. I'm sorry to say that. This is just a common problem with Bluetooth, to be honest with you. I would check you check with a dealer that was the right thing to do Google online. See if you could find some other people that problem, maybe they found a solution.

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
I'm sorry. It's annoying. You've done. The only thing I could say to do, which is remove the phone and try over Leo Laport, the tech guy, I have a website tech guy labs.com. This is show 1,886. We put all as many of the links as we can up there. Transcripts, audio and video from the show that's open and freed all. Join me there this week and I'll see you next week. Byebye. Well, that's it for the tech guy show for today. Thank you so much for being here and don't forget TWiT T I T it stands for this week at tech and you'll find it at TWiT dot T including the podcast for this show. We talk about we windows and windows weekly, Macintosh on Mac break, weekly iPads, iPhones, apple watches on iOS today. Security and security. Now, I mean, I can go on and on and on. And of course the big show every Sunday afternoon, this week in tech, you'll find it all@twit.tv and I'll be back next week with another great tech.show. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.