CNET Live: August 21, 2008 Video

CNET Live: August 21, 2008 Video Transcript

[ Pause ] ^M00:00:12 [ Music ]

>> Coming up on CNET Live, how to make sure you're viewing your HDTV correctly.

>> Plus, a new website that helps you bookmark your favorite images.

>> And author, Sherry Boschert, joins us here in the studio to explore the world of plug-in hybrid technology. That all coming up, right here on CNET Live. ^M00:00:30 [ Music ] ^M00:00:35

>> Hey gang, Bryan Cooley and Tom Merritt back together again, but are you on the rights side of the table?

>> Wait a minute, this is the mirror universe.

>> No, we got this back.

>> I'm supposed to have a goatee and you're not.

>> Right, and I'm suppose to be really smart and you're not. Oh what happens, alright.

>> That's normal.

>> Well, here we are.

>> It's Bryan Cooley and Tom Merritt. Don't mind that we're on the wrong side of the screen this week.

>> Taking your calls, answering your questions as usual, together again for the first time.

>> And the last time for a week and-- [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> Yeah, right.

>> But we'll talk about that later. 888-900-CNET, 888-900-2638 is the toll free number to call in. And of course, early in the show we get the phones jammed up. So, remember you can call us early as a half an hour pre-show, like most of our callers did who are sitting here right now, who we're gonna get to momentarily.

>> Or you wait until somebody drops off the line and then you call really quick and you get to talk to Jamie who is screening the calls. She'll tell you all you need to know to get on the show, things like turn down the volume, and that kind of thing.

>> All that stuff. She'll tell you, you know, please be--be good with the whole thing.

>> You can insult Tom but not Bryan.

>> Right. Okay, before we take your calls and all that, let's look at a couple of things we crave. [ Music ]

>> Here are some of our favorite things in the Crave Blog, at crave.cnet.com. What I'm looking at today is Toshiba's new XDE technology, which I consider a really good try.

>> Yeah, I think so.

>> It's essentially, what it is. It's an upconverting DVD player that's supposed to be better than most upconverting DVD players. Pretty smart on Toshiba's part, right?

>> Well, yeah.

>> They lost the HD DVD race to Blu-ray, so now they're kind of come out with an upconverting DVD player that they say is better than the others and will play all of your current DVD's and make them look great on your HDTV.

>> We got a skeptical bunch back in the New York lab [simultaneous talking] more than they say.

>> Mathew Moskoviak [phonetic], tried it out. He's like, "Yeah. You know what, it looks a little fuzzy, the color mode, the contrast mode, they don't really come up to [inaudible]. The sharp mode was actually a little less than sharp.

>> Oh, that was like a winner.

>> So, they said it was a good upconverting DVD player.

>> Yeah.

>> They just didn't see the huge--

>> Yeah, it's not a break for them, right?

>> --improvement that Toshiba would like you to believe is there. So--

>> Yeah. I mean, upconverting DVD players are really great. I've been really impressed by what mine does and it's a garden variety on a Pioneer or something. I paid 150 bucks for it.

>> That's how much this is selling for, but now you can get them for like 60, [simultaneous talking]

>> What I would do when you get upconverting is also consider getting one that's region-free or region-free hackable. So then, you can put all the world's DVDs on. So giving over something weird, you can get it anywhere, Amazon UK and what have you and play it, and upconverting. I like that combination when you're making the move. Okay, what I mean too because everyone knows I'm into my Treo. Treo Pro, finally they rolled this guy out and this is going to be one that has, unfortunately, Windows Mobile 6.1. It's not a Palm OS device. That was really disappointing for me--

>> Is the Palm OS just gone now?

>> I think it's real more [inaudible], and it's this close I think to being poof. Although ACCESS still says they're developing it. It's gonna be having an office mobile suit on it. It's got the direct push technology. It's really a business-oriented device--

>> It's very Centro-looking.

>> Yeah, very narrow and a lot like a Palm Centro, isn't it? Isn't that interesting? And so we've got a keyboard here that is relatively narrow and straight line. It's not the arched keyboard that we've seen on a lot of other Treo devices. So, that's giving us a feel that the Centro was a good hit for them. Anyway, coming up soon, carrier but I do not think we know yet, but you can find that over at Crave and check that guy out and it does have HSDPA support, which is nice broadband and quadband. I think it is a WorldCom, so that is a nice piece.

>> Alright, let's take some calls. On line one, we've got Andrew in Connecticut. Andrew, you are following up on something from this morning's Buzz Out Loud episode, is that right?

>> Yes I am, I was actually listening live to Buzz Out Loud this morning. For those of you who might be watching CNET Live right now and don't know what Buzz Out Loud, it's, I guess CNET's flagship podcast. It's indeterminate length. It's really excellent. You should check it out.

>> Thanks Andrew, you're checking them out. [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> You can have your brother call every week on what's going on here. I'm just curious.

>> Go ahead with your question, Andrew.

>> Sure, so this morning, you can also check this out on the shownotes. They talked about a posting on Slashdot that talked about 42 percent of web users sneaking on to others online accounts. Now you were talking a little bit about, you know, you're using your wife's bank account to pay her student loans and things of that nature. But I was actually having a similar conversation with my mom, who is an HR professional at a financial institution, a couple of weeks ago. And she was saying that she was editing some of the personnel files of some of the people within her organizations--

>> And she was breaking into their accounts?

>> No, she is the HR professional and she was actually editing the files on the people that were in the IT group.

>> Okay.

>> And she was wondering if there was any way for the people in the IT department to access their own files. You know, taxes their own HR files--

>> Okay.

>> And I said, you know, I don't know, but if they administer the server, I would imagine that, you know, they could always just double click on the folder-- [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> Oh, so you're worried about them getting into a file and seeing if there's some sort of note, a disciplinary note, or something like that?

>> Sure. So, you know, she was asking how good the security was on like Microsoft Office files. She knows that you can password protect them. I suggested that, you know, I have actually, even myself for various reasons crack passwords on Word files and on Excel files.

>> Okay.

>> So, what do you think is the best way for her to store, you know, basically HR did it that she wouldn't even want IT to see?

>> Ah, how do you hide the HR data from the IT-- [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> Is it on a server or is it on her own local machine? On server, I assume.

>> Yeah, they suggest that, you know, because it is a financial institution that she uses to search for everything and basically everything is server-based. She doesn't have anything on her laptops that in the event that her laptop--

>> Right.

>> And no, and that's the right way to do it.

>> Well, I imagine IT policy, is it a decent-sized company, right?

>> It's a hundred people-- [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> So they probably have IT policy saying, "We decide how you encrypt". I mean, does she have a lot of input into this?

>> Well, I suggested that she talked to the chief information officer a little bit, but, I mean, you know I think that there is always just some basic human temptation to see-- [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> But, there's definitely a business policy question here, which is who do you talk to, proper channels to get the IT department to help you to stop them from looking at something.

>> Right.

>> So it's kind of a tricky business there. But, just talking to practicalities of it, they could encrypt a volume, either an entire hard drive or a volume within a hard drive, maybe partitions something off just for her that she is able to set up and have the password for that no one else would be able to get at. And if she loses the password, she is up the crypt, but you could use something like true crypt to encrypt that and then nobody in the IT department is gonna be able to unencrypt it. The flipside, as I just mentioned is, nobody in the IT department is gonna be able to unencrypt it. So, if she's out and somebody needs to access that or she forgets the password, you know, there is a risk to that, but that would be the way to lock it up for sure.

>> Yeah, the password would certainly be shared with at least one other person. I mean, no company is gonna let one person have the password to any one machine, normally. But that's it. That's the way--It's more a matter of policy than technology.

>> Let's pick up line number 2. We've got Chris from Wisconsin. Hey, Chris, thanks for calling CNET Live.

>> Hey guys, I've got an iMac G3 that I just got, and I tried to download OpenOffice.org, and that gives us that [inaudible] or whatever?

>> Uhmm.

>> And so--So, I clicked on it. I've tried writing to the desktop. I've tried putting a shortcut on the dock. I've tried all kinds of things, and every time I try and open it, the installer icon appears on the dock for like one half second and then it disappears.

>> So, this only happens to OpenOffice though?

>> No. It's happened to every package--

>> Oh, it happens to--

>> I have to install X11 and it did the same thing.

>> I see, okay. So, anything you try to install now, you have that problem?

>> If it uses the package installer, then yes.

>> Yeah. I would--have you tried repairing from your recovery disk?

>> No.

>> That would be my first step, is to get the disk that comes with the iMac, put that in there, boot from that disk and choose repair permissions. So, that if there may have been a permission that got out of whack when you tried to install that's preventing the installer from writing to the disk, the install package from writing to the disk, and if you repair the permission, that should reset it. That'll be the first step. It's kind of a tricky troubleshooting especially with an old G3 like that. There could be a lot of things, but that would be where I'd start.

>> Yeah. I got this computer second-hand, so I do not have the original disk per se.

>> There is the problem.

>> Well, do you have friends that have a G3, or the OS X that you could ask around?

>> I got the disk from an iBook G4, could I use that?

>> What version of OS X is it?

>> 10.3.9.

>> And what version is on the G3?

>> 10.3.9.

>> Try it, it should work.

>> Okay.

>> We're talking the same process for power PC though.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> So, it should be fine.

>> Yeah, try that out. Okay, good. [Inaudible]

>> Shall we go on to another one or? Oh, okay. Coming up, author Sherry Boschert will be talking to Bryan. But first, Dan Anchorman has a look at a new laptop from Gateway that makes him wonder how the company even stays in business. Take a look. [ Music ]

>> I'm Dan Anchorman, senior editor at CNET.com and we are here with an editor's choice winner, it's the Gateway P-7811FX. We've been big fans of Gateway's FX line of gaming laptops so far this year. What they've managed to do is take in video super high-end GeForce 8800 video card and put it in a 17-inch laptop for like 1200, 1300 dollars. It was real-- [ Music ]

>> Bryan Cooley--

>> --really amazing. Now what they had to do in order to get that done is cut a couple of corners here and there, the CPU's were kind of middling. The display, even though it was a big 17-inch display, had a 1440 by 900 resolution which wasn't great for high-end gaming, and they cut a couple of other corners here and there. The latest version, the 7811FX, pretty much fixes every problem we had with those earlier FX gaming laptops. We've got a new CPU in here. It's an Intel Centrino 2 line. It's P8400 that's super high-end. It's got the very latest in video GeForce graphics card, the 9800. That's about as good as you can get in a laptop right now. And they've taken the display and pumped up the resolution from 1440 by 900 all the way to 19 by 12, which makes it a great high-definition display. We actually wished it kinda had a Blu-ray drive in it or that we could even spend another couple of hundred bucks and get a Blu-ray drive in there. Unfortunately, that's not an option. Otherwise, it's physically identical to the earlier FX laptops we looked at. It's got an HTMI output which is nice. It's got an eSATA port for plugging in an external hard drive, but like that--And the entire look is a little bit plasticky, but it still got some cool metal accents here around the keyboard. Really got no idea how Gateway manages to cram all these high-end components in here and still make money selling these things. But I'm Dan Anchorman and that's the Gateway P-7811FX. [ Music ]

>> Hey gang, Bryan Cooley here, back with you talking now about plug-in hybrids. You know I'm the car tech guy around here. So, it's a pleasure to have Sherry Boschert here, who's written the book called "Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will Recharge America". Let's see how that's gonna work. Hi, Sherry.

>> Hi.

>> Now, first of all, a lot of folks have heard the term plug-in hybrid, but maybe be [inaudible] on what that means. Compared to a typical hybrid today, what's the--a plug-in do differently?

>> Well, if people are familiar with hybrids, they know that basically they took a conventional car internal combustion engine and they added a few electrical components. "Cause all the car companies made electric cars for about a decade and they took some of what they learned and they put in an electric motor and a few batteries.

>> Yeah.

>> And that boosted the efficiency of the car because for part of the time it can run on electricity.

>> Yeah.

>> Well in a conventional hybrid, you use the gasoline engine to recharge those batteries. It's like driving around in a little power plant running on electricity.

>> Right.

>> In a plug-in hybrid, you take that to its logical conclusion and you add a plug. So you can plug-in to a wall socket into cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity. And what that means is you then can have more batteries on board, drive more on electricity--

>> More electric.

>> And--

>> So, it's a more electric hybrid. But the key here, it is not a full electric car, it's still a hybrid.

>> Yes.

>> There is a lean efficient gas engine there and hopefully your diesel, a much brawnier, more upfront electric motor.

>> I call it having the insurance policy of a gas engine and a gas tank behind you.

>> Okay.

>> You can drive initially on electricity for however long your batteries will let you. A 10-mile plug-in hybrid, a 40-mile plug-in hybrid, but if you need to go further, you've got the conventional gas engine to drive just like a hybrid would drive.

>> So it's got a lot of good things about it. Let's talk about the challenges we always hear. First of all, all you're doing is moving the emissions from the tail pipe to some generating plant, truth or myth.

>> Myth. That's one of the most common misconceptions. And it is the issue that I have researched most heavily because I got into this when we first put solar panels on our house in the foggy part of San Francisco.

>> Yeah, right.

>> And then we started driving an electric car 'cause we were making electricity from the sun. So, I really researched this to make sure that even if people don't have solar panels, it's still the clean thing to do.

>> Yeah.

>> I gathered every study I could find that is now more than 50 up on my website and up on pluginamerica.org's website. That showed that even on today's US grid, which is more than 50 percent dirty nasty coal--

>> Coal, right.

>> --it's cleaner to drive on electricity 'cause gasoline is just so darn dirty.

>> Okay. How about the other concern we have is that all those batteries, what are we gonna do with them. If this becomes the de facto car or the most popular car on the roads, wow, that's an explosion in this lithium ion, I assume battery packs, or what we're going to--What are we gonna do with them? Are they toxic? Are they hard to get rid off? What is the disposal and reuse question?

>> Lithium ion batteries and nickel metal hydride batteries that are in the electric car that I currently drive, much less toxic than lead acid batteries, which are in 244 million cars in the country.

>> That's what we have today, in older cars.

>> Right.

>> Yeah.

>> And people don't realize car batteries have a very good recycling record, more than 98 percent are already recycled.

>> Oh yeah. If you go buy a new car battery today, you're really buying a reconditioned used battery.

>> Yeah.

>> They don't make a lot of new batteries. They just recondition the old one you drop off.

>> Well, the metals that are in more modern batteries, nickel metal hydride and lithium ion are much more valuable than lead, and so there will be recycling programs. There already is a good track record, and believe, me they're gonna harvest those metals.

>> If we're gonna be plugging these things in, what happens to our power grid? Here in the bay area, as you know, we've already had rolling blackouts in the last recent years and we don't wanna tax the system beyond its use. Can we afford to charge a large number of cars? Or this is a boutique solution?

>> Well, the US Department of Energy, hardly a radical organization, they did a study on this that they released last year. And they calculated that if everyone had plug-in hybrids, the current US grid without making any change or building any new power plant could handle 73 percent of every car, truck, SUV, and van, in this country for their commute to and from work. That's about 180 million cars.

>> But the key here is that it's thundering off hours, evening, and over into the overnight, right?

>> That's when people plug-in, while we're sleeping.

>> Okay. Yeah.

>> That's the convenient thing to do. And so, hundreds and millions of cars, it will take a decade or more to get them cars.

>> To get there.

>> Yeah.

>> And who knows what we can do with the infrastructure in the meantime. I'm looking at a bunch of press releases I've pulled out here. Toyota Plug-in Hybrid by 2010, Chevy rolled on track for 2010. On the other hand you've got Honda saying, "We're not gonna do a plug-in hybrid". Who do you think is gonna get a plug-in hybrid in the showroom first and when?

>> Yeah, well Honda had bet the farm on fuel cells and they're gonna tank because of it.

>> Yeah, I think so.

>> General Motors is making all the right noises to have 2 plug-in hybrids out in 2010. We'll see if that happens, but they're certainly making all the right moves and all the right investments.

>> They're even way out in front with this in terms of talk.

>> Toyota and several other car companies have made announcements, but they haven't really shown that they're moving heavily in that direction. Toyota is talking about putting 400 demonstration vehicles on the road and studying them. GM is talking about selling 60,000 cars.

>> Okay, so when you see a date for bringing plug-in hybrid on the market, you got to read that and say, "Is that gonna be a test fleet, a flagship fleet, or is it gonna be real cars in the showroom?"

>> Yeah, but the real answer to your question is that it depends on you and me. If the consumers say, "I won't buy another car until it has a plug on it, no plug, no deal, we will get those cars faster."

>> Okay, Sherry Boschert's book is called "Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will Recharge America" and you can go buy it over at pluginamerica.org. Sherry, thanks for your time.

>> Thanks Bryan.

>> Coming up next, our download of the week and more of your calls right here, on CNET Live. ^M00:17:33 [ Music ] ^M00:17:38 [ Background Music ]

>> When Jack left for college, he said he'd major in Communication. But they worried. Fortunately, he had a good adviser. Best [inaudible], you, happier.

>> Bryan Cooley. You know, he's an expert at car tech, but did you know how fast he drives? This is exclusive video of Bryan Cooley driving 56 in a 55-mile per hour zone, and Bryan Cooley doesn't even keep both hands on the wheel. Bryan Cooley, you can trust him with car tech and you can trust him to break the law. Paid for by the people who seriously think you should drive 45 at the middle of a 70-mile per hour rush hour traffic in the fast lane. ^M00:18:17 [ Music ] ^M00:18:35

>> Welcome back to CNET Live, keep those calls coming, phones open. One line free right now at 888-900-CNET.

>> Look at that, line free, but it's time first for the download of the week. ^M00:18:45 [ Music ] ^M00:18:51

>> Download of the week is brought to you by our good friends at CNET's download.com, providers of spyware-free free software. Look at one of my favorite recent discoveries, GParted live CD. It's been around for a while actually. [Simultaneous talking] I just found out about it. Yes, the dearly GParted. Thank you, I'm gonna use that.

>> Okay.

>> It is a partitioning software, ala partition magic.

>> Sounds like a party.

>> You burn it to a CD then you boot it. Now, because I--you have to boot off the CD, I have a second computer here to show it off. The way it works is you go in and it recognizes your partitions there.

>> Yeah.

>> It got one NTFS position, and then apparently 1 megabyte unallocated on this machine.

>> That's a Black Ops thing.

>> Yeah, probably a little spy thing from CNET.com. But, then when you click on that, say you wanna resize it, this can nondestructively resize the partition.

>> Really?

>> So, if you go in here you could see there's the amount of space. You could change that amount up and down. It would free up space and then you [simultaneous talking] then you'd be able to add a partition or take them away.

>> Can I actually just drag that slider back and forth in a true gooey fashion?

>> Let's try it out here, yup, yup. Oh, you can't--No, can't do it. You know, you could use these little arrow things here.

>> And move the allocation boxes up and down.

>> You could use these little arrow things of it.

>> Oh really? Fine.

>> Yeah, there we go. Now there you can.

>> Love it.

>> You can totally do that. Alright [simultaneous talking] sure I cancel this, so I don't actually partition this.

>> Destroy your machine. Now this is a Linux open source app but it doesn't just work on Linux drives, this is for any drive partition.

>> No. Yeah, it's using a Linux to boot, but then it's just running and it recognizes--So, you can recognize HFS plus, NTFS, FAT32, whatever file format you have got, it can handle it.

>> That's very cool.

>> And it is open source and free.

>> Free, now that's partition magic.

>> Now that's--you stole that from me.

>> I took them from you in the rehearsal and I just--

>> I just write the jokes.

>> Yeah exactly.

>> Alright let's go to line four.

>> I'm like Bob Hope.

>> Oh, it's Andy in New Jersey. Hey Andy, thanks for calling CNET Live.

>> Turn your speaker down there, Andy!

>> I know Jamie told you to turn that down.

>> He was sitting there and he got bored. Hello, Andy, what's up?

>> Yes, I'm going to find out is there a difference between upconverting and upscaling DVD players or is it the same thing, and which one would you suggest to buy?

>> Yeah, we don't think that there's a difference. Tom and I are kicking this around in the break and I think it's just that upscaling was an early term and upconverting has become the de facto in the current term. There's a little confusion on this. As far as I know, certainly in today's market, there is an upconverting player out there that is going to artificially create resolution that isn't there using a processor and this makes a regular DVD look near HD quality on a high-def set of course. And typically you have to use, I think you actually do have to use the HTMI out to get the quality improvement. Upscaling would be the same thing.

>> You can't upconvert through a [simultaneous talking] component cables.

>> Yeah.

>> But if they're copy protected, the DVD won't usually be able to do the upconverting. That's why you hear that you have to have HTMI 'cause almost every DVD is copy protected [ Simultaneous Talking ]

>> So in practice, you got to do HTMI, but technically it can be done over component. So, assume you're gonna need an HTMI connector available in your TV for an upconverting deck. As far as which one to buy, go look at our reviews, we have a lot of upconverting ones in there without dragging everybody through the reviews. One thing I'll point out though, is while you're getting an upconverting deck, because obviously you're a buff if you're getting a deck like that, you might also want to consider one that is region-free or region free-hackable, which means you can play DVDs from anywhere else in the world.

>> Pirate you.

>> So when you go out and buy these disks that are hard to find like I do--

>> I would have never thought.

>> --and I could only find them on Amazon UK or something, which isn't all that rag, they'll play anywhere. That's really a nice additional thing. I mean while you're at it don't just get upconverting, add another feature too.

>> It's actually a CNET forums discussion on just this thing, upscaling versus upconverting. I'll throw that on the shownotes at blog.cnettv.com.

>> Nice.

>> Let's go to Winston in Canada. Welcome to CNET Live, Winston, what can we do for you?

>> Hi. I used my Mojo pack and I found out that it was tracking like what I'm doing. So, I'm looking for an alternative, kind of like virtual box for VMware?

>> Okay, you wanna do it on a USB drive?

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. There is a few actually. There is the one that I demonstrated as a download of the week on CNET Live, that name escapes me right now. But I will dig that up from our old shownotes and pop it in the shownotes for today's show as well. There's also U3, if you buy a USB drive with U3 on it, it's free. It's one of those little things that can handle virtualizing--

>> I already tried that.

>> You tried U3, you didn't like it? I don't really like it that much either. There's also Ceedo, have you tried that one?

>> Ah, no.

>> No? C-E-E-D-O. It's free trial, cost 39 bucks to keep though. It's not absolutely free. But there is that little virtualization box, remember I was showing how to use Firefox before it came up. And it is actually from VMware and it's a free download that allow you to virtualize anything. I just can't remember the name.

>> Yeah, and what was that.

>> It's from VMware. I'll find the link--

>> Yeah, I remember that.

>> --from it and throw it up in the shownotes for you.

>> Okay. Alright, good deal.

>> Walter [inaudible] into CNET Live at CNET.com. After listening to you drawn on about HDTV this and HDTV that, I finally sprung for one of those 32 inches they have for cheap at Costco, but the picture I have is all squishy squashy and looks terrible. I thought this was supposed to make video look better. Well, Walter it is. First thing, make sure you have a high def video signal coming into the TV. That could be one problem, because an HDTV can't make a regular old standard def signal look high def. It's got to have a high def signal coming in. Then, once you're sure you got that, you need to set your aspect ratio correctly. Bryan Cooley explains how to do that in today's quick tip. [ Music ] [ Background Music ]

>> Ahh, old fashion TV. They were so easy. You plug them in, connect to the cable and turn them on. But HDTV's are so fiddly by comparison. And one setting I see folks screw up the most is aspect ratio. Aspect ratio is how the TV fills its screen with the signal it's getting. Now since HDTVs are widescreen, there are a number of options, many of them are on. First of all, there's normal or 4 by 3. That will put bars on either side of a standard width signal. That's what it's supposed to do, but a lot of folks don't like that look, so they often will use zoom. Zoom magnifies everything evenly and it will eliminate the window box bars, but it may crop some of the top and bottom of the image. That's not good. Then there's wide or 16 by 9, and that's best for a signal that is natively wide. If you use this mode though to stretch and fill a narrow signal, everything looks weird and people look pudgy. They won't like that. Finally there is panorama and this has various names, but it's a mode that I don't like, whatever it's called. It typically stretches the sides more than the middle so when the camera pans, you almost feel nauseous. The rule for best picture quality is to watch a program in the setting that matches the way it was shot, normal or wide. [ Music ]

>> Okay, let's get to our last call. It's that time of the day, isn't it?

>> Yes it is--

>> Who gets the honor do you think? Macro PC--

>> Your choice, man. I'm not picking them all day. You tell them.

>> Improving coverage for iPhone is very controversial. We've got new Apple products in September. So, free Apple oriented.

>> Well line 4, let's go to Dylan real quick. Hey, Dylan, are you there?

>> In Scotland?

>> Out in Scotland.

>> Scotland, Arizona we mean.

>> Do you wanna know [simultaneous talking] new Apple products coming in September? Yes, I'd say 82 percent probability, Dylan.

>> I do.

>> 80 percent unlikelihood.

>> I say 82 percent probability there will be new Apple products in September.

>> Okay, good.

>> And--

>> That's your answer. I just cut you off 'cause I decided to make an executive decision.

>> Lighting round.

>> Let's go to one more, right now improving coverage for the iPhone. Hello Theresa, you are the last call on CNET Live today. From Irvine, what's your question?

>> Hi, thanks. I just got a new iPhone. I have no ATT coverage at home. I'm looking for a signal booster. CNET reviewed YXZ boost, YX500 DEL in [inaudible]. I just wondered if there are other real good alternatives.

>> Yeah, that's kind of a long time between reviews, isn't it? I did a video on one of these guys, a different model. It wasn't that quite one and that one installed in it. In my experience, this will get you from a bar to 2 bars, from 2 to 3. But if you have nothing at home, I don't think you're gonna get a satisfying boost. You're not gonna suddenly have big coverage. So, I wouldn't hang my hopes on it. Do you literally have like no coverage at home?

>> No, I've got 1 bar upstairs in my bedroom.

>> And nothing downstairs?

>> Correct.

>> Yeah, it's gonna be real iffy to do one of these things, and again, I don't have any new review information for you, but you're gonna wanna make sure that you install the antenna it uses extremely, ambitiously. Don't get lazy and put it in the garage even though they say you can do that. It's got to be outside the house and facing as high as it can be and facing the nearest cell tower you could identify, which might need some going into the geek forums to ask some of the phone freaks, "Where are the towers in my area?" But you're right on the fringe, so going from almost nothing to decent is gonna be asking a little more than these products are necessarily gonna deliver. Make sure you can return it, okay.

>> Alright, you're going again next week?

>> I'm going again next week, so Molly is in.

>> You're gonna miss all of the toys.

>> Oh, I hate that.

>> We've got Kim Bratcher from Wild Planet. He's gonna be on--showing us some pretty cool toys.

>> And you'll have Molly and Tom. That's next week, 1 o'clock Pacific, 4 Eastern. Don't forget the phone is open at 12:30 Pacific, 3:30 Eastern.

>> And the show starts at 10 AM Hawaii.

>> Of course.

>> See you next week.

>> Bye. ^M00:28:36 [ Music ] ^M00:28:48 [ Background Music ]

>> When Jack left for college, he said he'd major in Communication. But they worried. Fortunately, he had a good adviser. Best [inaudible], you, happier.