John Cioffi joins the show to explain the difference between fiber optic cable and copper cable. Find out what you should know and why you should care.

It's an all-call show as we gave away a free BlackBerry Curve. On eof the perks of watching the live version of the show every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern. However there's still lots of good info for the podcast and on-demand viewers. Here are the notes.

Watch the show on CNET TV.

Things we Crave

Plastic Logic eReader

Stealth helicopter camera

First Look

iPod Touch 2nd Gen.

Free Download of the week

BitMeter

Quick Tip

Speed up your Wi-Fi

Best of the Web

FotoNauts

Your calls

A few more ways to sync your iTunes across several computers, this week using an external hard drive. This forum shows a way to trick iTunes into thinking the main library is permanently on the external drive by pointing to the itunes.itl file.

With the iPhone you can Jailbreak and get voicemails off the phone and on to your computer. This Lifehacker article shows you how. For a Nokia or another phone, your best bet is to play the voicemail over the speaker into the computer as a recording.

A couple easy ways to speed up a Mac are to add more RAM or run Onyx, the optimizer. You can find a few more ways in this article.

Want ringtones on your iPhone but can't get them through the iTunes store? Check out Audiko.net as described here.

The Nokia N810 is probably the best Internet tablet we've found. Our caller was from the UK, so here's the CNET UK review.

Want to speed up Windows Vista? Got a flash drive? Good. You can make your computer faster. Watch this video and then refer to the steps below.

One of the cooler things in Windows Vista is something called ReadyBoost. Normally if a system is slow, you have to open it up and add RAM. ReadyBoost lets you use external storage for that. Nothing new there. Windows 3.1 let you do that, but ReadyBoost makes it really simple.

1. Plug in your USB flash drive.
2. You will be given a menu. Choose "Speed up my System." You can access the same option by right-clicking on the USB drive in the computer section and choosing "properties," then the ReadyBoost tab.
3. Next select "use this device." You can adjust how much of the device will be used for memory, leaving the rest of the space for file storage.
4. Press OK.

That's it! You now have a slightly faster computer, no screwdrivers needed.

Here's a quick tip to increase page render speeds in Firefox. If you get confused, you can watch this tip on video at CNET TV.

As with most of these tricks, you'll need to head on into about:config.

The new Firefox 3 gives you a little warning when you go there and I will too. You need to be aware that messing about in about:config can destabilize Firefox. There, you've been warned. Now the fun part. Making your own strings.

By default, Firefox waits 250 milliseconds before it begins displaying a page. We can change that.

Right click anywhere in the about:config page area

Select "New" and "String".

Type nglayout.initialpaint.delay in the box press enter.

Then type 0.

This reduces the wait time to 0.

Mozilla recommends you also create content.notify.interval and set it to match with the nglayout value.

This will make pages start to appear faster, but remember it will increase the overall page load time, since you're starting the page display earlier.

Is your Wi-Fi sluggish? Here are some quick tips for speeding up Wi-Fi.

First things first, how old is your router? If you're using a router that only supports 802.11b, consider an upgrade to a new router ready for the forthcoming 802.11n standard.

If you do that, make sure you upgrade your wireless cards and any repeaters as well so that they're all on the same standard.

If you use 802.11g or N routers don't allow 802.11b devices on your network, they will slow things down.

Hardwire as much as you can. By that, we mean run Ethernet cable from the device to your router. The fewer devices you have competing in the air, the better. Plus the wired connection should be faster and more secure.

Place the router in a central location. Try to keep it away from walls and devices such as TVs and microwave ovens, and keep it about 4-to-6 feet off the ground. Don't put it on the roof.

Do you have a cordless phone? If it's a 2.4GHz wireless phone, it's competing with your router. Try moving the phone into another room, or changing to 900MHz phone.

Finally, if you live in an area with many people running their own Wi-Fi access points, change the channel on your router so you're not fighting your neighbors.

You can do this in the router administration software.