Talking About Phones – Windows Phone 8, Nokia Lumia 928, Nokia Lumia 520 , Samsung Galaxy S4, Verizon, Best Buy Mobile, Microsoft Store – RRPG024

Jim and I discuss the soon-to-be-released Blackphone – product of a collaborative effort between Phil Zimmermann (PGP) and Geeksphone. This is their way of taking back privacy for consumers in wake of the NSA revelations. We also talk about Knox Security for the GS4, the SED technology found in Samsung’s 840 EVO 500GB SSD, hacked Internet-connected appliances, McAfee’s rebranding by Intel which is a good idea considering snafu’s McAfee has had in the past which includes a virus definition update that quarantined a critical Windows system file rendering the OS unbootable, and more. Listen Mobile: Intel ditches McAfee name for

  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, OCZ Bankruptcy, Buy The Right Tablet!, DNS Explained, nslookup, TestDisk, Thoughts on Google Glass & Privacy – RRPG025Kevin Schoonover(@schoondoggy1979) joins Jim (@jcollison) and Rich O’Neil (@dvn7) for RRPG #25. We’re all over the map on this one as you can tell by the title of the article. Kevin’s been coming up with a lot of great online deals and posting them in the Home Server Show forums. Listen Mobile: Kevin’s notes: Determine your needs before you buy anything – server, laptop, PC, tablet. Don’t assume anything, do your research! STec was acquired, OCZ files, who

Verizon Window Phones – Nokia Lumia 928 & 520 Kyle Wilcox and Eddie Ramirez join Jim Collison and me to talk about smartphones, specifically a couple of Windows phones from Verizon – the Nokia Lumia 928 and Nokia Lumia 520. We don’t go into all the features as much as hit upon some key points to compare and contrast with the Samsung Galaxy S4 which Jim and I are both using. Kyle, Best Buy Mobile guy, talks about customers and what they consider to be important to them. Everyone’s different, so it’s not a one size fits all solution as

  WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org Jim and I discuss WordPress, the free blogging software that makes it easy for anyone start their own web site with freely–available site templates and plugins. Jim is the experienced one having set up and run his WordPress–based web site theaverageguy.tv for the last few years now. I’m just a beginner who’s recently set up a blog so I can post some of my tech–related articles and stuff. At this point, I want to use my site as a sort of catch–all where I can post some work–related articles as well as personal tech notes and

The guys from Home Tech Podcast show #117 hang around post-show to help me, Rich O’Neil, figure out what to buy as a replacement for my 2 1/2-year old $199 Acer Aspire 5251-1317 laptop. The cheap little laptop has been holding its own, especially since I had I installed an SSD in it, but the screen is beginning to die and I don’t know if I’m going to replace it. Besides, it really doesn’t have enough power to run virtual machines well, something I occasionally require for testing and  schoolwork. Listen Mobile:   The guys and I talk about hardware

This week on Rich’s Random Podcast Generator, we’re joined by John Horton, a University of Southern Maine theatre major on the Gorham campus who’s involved in the technical aspects of theatre. John grew up in a hi-tech household. His dad was a MIT grad who worked as a design engineer for DEC, and later Intel. John was breadboarding basic circuits as a child – flip-flop, 555 timer IC, etc. – and picking up whatever else he could from Forrest M. Mims‘ instructional books originally sold by Radio Shack. Listen Mobile:   John talks about acquiring some old computers from dad’s

“The Last Password You’ll Have to Remember!” Amber Gott, Online Community Manager for LastPass.com joins Jim and Rich to talk about online password management and security. Online security has always been a hot topic, and it’s only going to be more so as time goes on. With that in mind, there’s never been a better time to look at how you’re handling your online presence, specifically the passwords you use for site logins, be it a gaming site or commerce such as Amazon.com. Listen Mobile: To start with, people are known for using the same password across multiple sites because

This week Jim and Rich go guestless and spend some time covering Acronis True Image Home 2012 Backup & Recovery Software.  After talking for a few minutes about working with our friends and neighbors on their PC problems, we take an in depth look at the Acronis UI and spend some time covering items that might be helpful for both beginner and expert.  As a bonus, we’ve included some screenshots for reference.  All images can be seen in full size just by clicking on the image. Listen Mobile: Getting Started Backup and Recovery Disk Backup Schedule your operation DBO –

Nathaniel Lindley joins Jim Collison and Rich O’Neil on RRPG #18 to talk about how he uses a Mac Mini, CrashPlan and Drobo together for his home and social back up strategy.  A former CrashPlan employee, Nathaniel has a lot of interesting things to say about this solid and flexible backup solution.   Listen Mobile: ”In early 2008, my friend and I were looking for a way to backup our children’s photos to each other’s house. We didn’t want to trade external drives; we didn’t want DVD copies. We wanted to use the Internet to transfer. Tried setting up FTP

Mike Howard, Eddie Ramirez, Tim Black, and Paul Braren join Jim Collison and Rich O’Neil for some talk about PC repair, Apple love/hate, white-knuckling over the coming of Windows Phone 8, Drobo’s next (fast) storage devices with mSATA SSD capability, Paul’s personal experience with Lenovo’s USB 3.0 Dock, and Eddie’s new computer repair bench which doubles as a dance floor.   Listen Mobile:   PC repair Isolate your bench computer from the rest of your LAN to avoid spreading any malware Utilities – MSE, Malwarebytes, Symantec Endpoint Protection, SUPERAntiSpyware Get the license keys with ProduKey – www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html and SIW –