GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 41, 11-7-09

Sat Nov 7 18:17:14 PST 2009

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

Vol. 9, No. 41                           

11-7-09

1 Another Sony recall 

2 Maybe it’s not the power cord

3 Google inventory, LHC fowled, 1,000 apps, AT&T and Verizon catfight

4 Video montage gadget

5 Dell or iMac?

Sony, in yet another show of high quality electronics, has issued a recall on thousands of AC adapters due to shock and short-circuit hazards.

Much like the massive laptop battery recall of a few years ago, these adapters were faulty when they left the factory.  Seems bad insulation fails over time and can cause fires and/or give you a nasty shock.  

The recall applies to docking and stations and all-in-one PCs sold between 2005 and 2009 so they’ve been floating around for a while.  Luckily no injuries have been reported in the US yet.

If your Sony device uses a 19.5 volt adapter with the model number VGP-AC19V17 you need to immediately power the device down and disconnect the adapter from the wall.

If this applies to you call 877-361-4481 for a free replacement.

Warning aside, Sony seems to be prone to this sort of thing.  The quality of their products has dropped quite a bit since the turn of the century, starting with the RIAA lawsuits against the original Napster, followed a few years later by the secret rootkit fiasco resulting in multiple lawsuits and a further drop in their media sales.

Would YOU buy a CD or DVD from these people?

Personally I haven’t purchased any CDs since 2000, save for Warren Zevon’s last CD.  It was issued the day after he died in 2003.  

I stopped buying any Sony products period after their secret plot to plant rootkits on user’s PCs that blocked the use of CD-RW drives.  If you were unfortunate enough to own a Mac, well, you know the damage you hade visited upon your equipment.

Followed by the flaming batteries and now the flaming AC adapters.  Can this company do anything right anymore?  I won’t even buy blank Sony media.  Who know what it will do to my optical drives?

On another note, I apologize for the short article and late newsletter.  A bout with a nasty sinus infection laid me low for a couple of days and threw everything way off schedule.

And speaking of schedules, we may as well get the holiday schedule out there so the crew and readers are both aware of it.  There won’t be an issue on 11-26 obviously, since that’s Thanksgiving.  The last issue of the year will be 12-17-09 and the first issue next year will be 1-7-10.

The three issues in December will be our annual gadget-shopping guide but I’ll jumpstart the tips for Black Friday shoppers by telling you netbooks and the Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade (for users of Vista Home Premium) will likely be quite popular.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

microdome at seidata.com

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

Google released their Dashboard today to let you see exactly what data they have stored about you in all the different services they offer you:

https://www.google.com/dashboard/ (Link to Dashboard)
http://tinyurl.com/y92l757  (Introduction from Google)

The Large Hadron Collider was shut down again today due to a bird dropping a piece of bread into the equipment:

http://tinyurl.com/yezw36a

Apple announces that over one hundred thousand apps are now available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

If you've seen the "There's a MAP for that" spoof add from Verizon that's poking fun at AT&T, AT&T doesn't think it's fun any more.  They're suing Verizon for damages because the maps are confusing and misleading:

http://gizmodo.com/5396332/

Keep us in the loop on the latest tech news!

Daniel A. Williams  

daniel at thepcgurus.com

Download of the Week

Filmmaker Ken Burns has popularized the technique of slowly panning across still images and fading into new ones in several PBS documentary productions.  It has become a common technique for videographers with limited budgets. PhotoFilmStrip, created by Jens Gopfert and Markus Wintermann, provides a one-stop application you can use to generate just such a video montage from your digital photos.  Get it here: 

http://tinyurl.com/ybwarq9 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I have always enjoyed your weekly mailing here in South Carolina and
here is my question. I need to replace my Dell which has some age and I am
considering a Imac. Do you have any opinion on the comparison of Dell and
IMac.

A:  I am personally a huge fan of Apple products even though my iMac is
now retired and I'm back to using a PC. The newest baseline iMac is
$1199. With that you receive a 3Ghz dual-core processor, 4GB RAM, a
500GB Hard Drive, a nice video chipset and a beautiful 21.5" LCD
screen. If you've ever used the Mac Operating System (OS X), you know
how easy and intuitive it is.

There is one big reason why I steered back towards a PC---the ability
to upgrade components easily. The PC on which I'm typing this has had
a new hard drive, video card, monitor and RAM since it was new. The
new iMac, while certainly beautiful and fast today, is not easily
upgradeable. In fact, the only component that is user-accessible is
the RAM.

So here's my answer: if you plan on keeping your new computer for a
while (say four or five years) without upgrading anything AND you want
to buy a completely new system, I would consider an iMac. If you're
like me and others on our team who can't keep their hands off their
machine's components, you need to stick with a PC. Let me say, though,
that moving on to a new PC does NOT mean you have to marry Windows
again. I'm no Linux expert, but there are Linux distributions out
there that my mother could install with no problem and that are as
intuitive as the Mac OS.

Matt Dattilo

thepcgurus at gmail.com

Contact info and legal stuff

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