CNET Live: June 5, 2008 Video

CNET Live: June 5, 2008 Video Transcript

^M00:00:05 [ Music ] ^M00:00:09

>> Coming up on CNET Live, more reasons to be suspicious of elected officials.

>> And, a way to charge your cell phone anywhere that you have light.

>> Plus, the secret history of Star Wars. Tom will do that, not me, all that and more coming up on CNET Live. ^M00:00:24 [ Music ] ^M00:00:32

>> Hello folks, Brian Cooley with--

>> Hi, Tom Merritt right here.

>> It's Tom Merritt, right there. Good to see you on Thursday. How are you doing?

>> We're already down with one question.

>> We saw...we talked to a guy on the phone beforehand because he had a very interesting question to iPhone 2.0. He's got a hold of the developer's software for the iPhone.

>> He's way out of the front.

>> And, he is having a problem getting to his home screen and I was like, "dude I haven't played with the SDK. I don't have 2.0 yet. He wants to be able, you know, be ahead of the game and be playing with it. So, anybody out there that's got the 2.0 Developer version of the firm ware got their hands on it who has had that problem getting to the home screen and has figured it out. Give us a call.

>> We want that person to call us.

>> Yeah.

>> So we're throwing up a pitch out here at the top of the show, give us a call if that sounds like a problem you've been through, you know what to do, you gotta have the 2.0 SDK, you're way out of front of RS keys on this one, 888-900-CNET, same number, all of your call with your questions and problems.

>> Or, you can send us an email, cnetlive@cnet.com. If you phone, though, they will talk to Andrea.

>> Where is Andrea? There is Andrea.

>> There she is.

>> Hello, Andrea.

>> She is waiting to set you up right there.

>> Waiting for your calls.

>> To find out what your question is, and to get you on the air in here.

>> We call her the gatekeeper, but before you get to us through her, we're gonna show you a couple of things we crave. ^M00:01:45 [ Background Music ] ^M00:01:49

>> These are some of your favorite things from the [inaudible] favorite things from the Crave blog.

>> We're making up your mind for you now.

>> At crave@cnet.com.

>> Where are those craveables?

>> Let me put it up here.

>> Come on crave boy [simultaneous talking], show what we got.

>> This is what I'm talking about at the beginning of the show.

>> This is--

>> Uhuh.

>> From ProFolio actually, I think it's from Juice Bag but it's called the "ProFolio."

>> Yeah.

>> Solar-powered bag.

>> That is going on to the side there.

>> Yeah. So, you got a solar panel on the side. This gonna sell for 299 dollars introductory price, but will go up to 399 dollars. It's a little trying to get you an early sort of deal.

>> But it's still a reverse iPhone pricing there.

>> This will charge most mobile devices. It's got a laptop or it's got a battery built-in--

>> Uhmm.

>> That it charges with the solar panels when you leave in the light, then it could charge your cell phone while you're on the go. It will carry a laptop. It won't actually charge a laptop.

>> No, not enough voltage.

>> Yet, you need the Voltaic Generator.

>> Now we're talking, uhmm.

>> This thing can actually charge a laptop on the go because it's got the photovoltaic--easy for me to say to charge on-the-go.

>> Not really.

>> This one is 599 dollars.

>> You're photovoltaic bag crazy, aren't you? You love this idea.

>> If I had 600 dollars left--

>> You'd be all over this.

>> I'd be buying it.

>> Yeah, I like this idea because I think we're all getting sick and tired of being out of a charge. All right, my little gadget is a whole lot less, well, [bell sound] strategic, isn't it? Well, of course I have it.

>> Oh, I got it. Do you want me to have it? I got it.

>> There you got it. Bring me to it. Do you have it?

>> Oh, there we go.

>> Here we go, shishan-- the Flip Mino. The owner of the Flip USB camera, the one that you take simple video on, you plug it into your camera with USB, well, the new Mino changes it in two ways. First of all, it has a USB stick that sticks straight out, instead of on the sides so ergonomically; it's a lot easier to deal with. And secondly, it doesn't look like some piece of crap you're gonna get off a hook at Walgreen's while you're standing in the cash register line. This actually has "There I say it" kind of a piece Apple design to it. Now, Apple is not gonna like that.

>> I'm a big fan of this Flip video.

>> Really?

>> There are many others is just a better looking Flip video, right?

>> Basically.

>> We got different USB thing.

>> It's still VGA quality so it's that same kind of hey, hey quality. There is it right there. And it has a nice little tripod jack. It has got a nice looking, you know, still smallish, but a nice looking screen on the back, big red button there to activate it. It's got a red tally line on the front. It's a redone industrial design but people are starting to really take this seriously.

>> Hey, do you know what my digital camera does?

>> The casual camcorder takes, video, oh, you know.

>> It's video and hooks up by USB.

>> Yeah, but it's never that easy.

>> Doesn't auto-publish on YouTube.

>> Right. So, the Mino has that whole YouTube connection for folks who wanted to do YouTube easy and now, it's no longer embarrassing to be seen with, there is the crap, the one on your left, here is the new one on the right.

>> It didn't really look that different.

>> Form factor is a little slimmer.

>> Yeah.

>> Design is not...I mean, this is not gonna convince you to that.

>> No.

>> But I'm done trying to be quite honest.

>> I'm unconvinced.

>> Let's go to the phones.

>> Let's see if they can convince us. 888-900-2638 on the line, who we got there?

>> Let's start with the ironic call which is Kevin in Alabama is having a hard time watching, what do you know, CNET videos. Hello Kevin, welcome to CNET Live...

>> Can you see us, Kevin?

>> Hey.

>> How are you?

>> I'm good, how about you?

>> Good. What problem are you having watching our stuff?

>> Uhmm, I can't watch CNET Reviews and I only can get two CNETTV videos out before it just quits on me.

>> All right, so you can't watch Review videos and on CNETTV, you get two and then "pfft".

>> We will talk to our Product Manager, Justin Eckhouse.

>> Yeah.

>> He's in charge of the video and he said "ad blocker, get this question 10 times a week 99.9 percent of the time." So, he has got an ad blocker 'cause there is an ad that rolls before the video on the Reviews section.

>> Yeah.

>> And then there is an ad that rolls two videos in on CNETTV. But then, we talked to him before the show, Kevin, you said you don't think you have an ad blocker.

>> I don't think so. I have Kaspersky, does that going to include an ad blocker?

>> It might.

>> Yeah, good.

>> You might wanna look and see if you've got an ad blocker set there. Also, do you know how to get into the Internet Explorer Extensions?

>> No.

>> Okay. So, do you know how to connect to the Internet Explorer Extension?

>> I don't have Internet Explorer a lot, so I'm gonna have to pull it up.

>> I can pull it up here. It's gonna be under your Tools.

>> Yeah.

>> That's gonna be under our Internet Options. Actually there is possibly something--let me check one thing here.

>> Manage Add-ons. You go to Tools, Manage Add-ons.

>> Yeah, Enable or Disable.

>> You look at those and see if you got some sort of ad blocker in there, or you're going back in.

>> I'll open this up here, yeah. If I can get mine up, we'll show you exactly what it looks like. So, here is the Ad On console, what it looks like, and that's loading up mine now. As you can see, I got a lot of, I mean everything, Google toolbars in there, your delicious thing, your button is in there, all of those things are a little tool add-ons to the basic EIE. Look in there for anything that is an ad blocker. For example, I don't think I have one. I do have spybar. I wonder if that has any ad blocking.

>> Yeah.

>> Alright, just to actually, just to--in my ear said, maybe just tell him to disable Kaspersky--

>> Yeah.

>> To see if that fixes it. Just as a test.

>> Just like you do if you're having what you think it's a firewall problem. Turn off Security for, you know, 15 minutes or just a little while. And then, see if it works, then you know what it is. So, try disabling Kaspersky and then take it from there. Okay, let's go to Richard in Texas. He has an interesting--

>> Richard!

>> Cross DNA issue. Hello, Richard, welcome to CNET Live.

>> Hi Brian.

>> What's your issue? What are you having a problem with printing wise?

>> Well, I have my HP printer plugged into my MacBook Pro and I wanna know how I can share that printer over the network to print from my PC to it.

>> Okay, so it's on your Mac, you want the PC to reach through the Mac to print on a shared printer? Is that an issue? Is that difficult? I go on the other way. We have Windows printers, we reached through the Mac and it's no problem at our place. But, I haven't done the other way around. Dr. Merritt, do you want to do it the other or what, do you want to do it that way specifically like you don't wanna hook the printer up to the Windows box?

>> Yes, I don't want to touch the PC at all.

>> And, you don't want to hang the printer off the network on a little, mini print server or anything?

>> Uhm, not yet.

>> Okay. So, you might try Samba rather than Bon Jour. I'm finding a bunch of people who have tried that. Ah, I haven't done it myself but just, you know, in a quick search looking around, Samba seems to be a way people have had success getting that printer to talk to Windows.

>> No guess, you try that out. I have nothing to offer on this one because like I said, I go the other way. It works fine. The Macs are easily able to see the printers out there on the Windows' network but, you know, that's a different thing you're trying to do. Let's go to line 3. Eric is in Maryland and he's got a question about video conversion but with a little different spin. Hello, Eric, welcome to CNET Live.

>> Hey, thanks for taking my call.

>> Our pleasure. Now, what are you trying to do? You're trying to automate some video here. What are you doing?

>> Well, my camera takes videos in the AVS format but I want to set something up that can essentially open on a schedule, take those files in a specified folder and basically convert them to an iPod format and then just close, and maybe do that once a week.

>> Okay, well, I was gonna scratch my head here and say, "Get the video converter of your choice, couple that with a task automator you can download from download.com. Tell it to do this, launch this with a certain number of command line switches, and all these. And tell them what's across the table and goes, man, you're stupid.

>> That's nuts.

>> Just send them over to iPodifier. Tom found this really cool thing--iPodifier video converter for Windows which does exactly what you're trying to do. It takes the video out of a batch, out of a folder, converts it to iPod format, runs it into iTunes, gets it ready for synching. Done baby, we found this over at Lifehacker. So, that's what you're looking for, is iPodifier. And you're on a Windows machine if I recall, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Yes, Windows?

>> Yeah.

>> Did we lose you?

>> You know what, if he is on OS X--

>> Uh-huh.

>> Which he is not, he's on Windows.

>> He's on Windows.

>> For those on OS X, Richard, our previous caller--

>> Yeah.

>> Actually suggested doing VLC Transcoder.

>> Yeah.

>> And then running automator on OS X.

>> Alright, built in with the--

>> So, yeah.

>> You know, 'cause you already got an automator, or whatever video transcoder if you want to use a hand break or something like that.

>> Yeah, I think that'll be good and then all you got to do is set some wild cards to grab whatever is on the folder but that's not a big deal when you go ahead and set up your, batch converter. And then automate that with the third party piece of software. So, you can do it that way as well but of course, as usual, Tom has the more elegant solution. Boom. Mister elegant boy.

>> We think you're gonna love it.

>> Okay, coming up, I'll be talking to Daniel Newman, Executive Director of MAPLight.org. Interesting website. It helps you shed light on that trail from money to politicians to the laws that we all live under. But first, let's get some direction from Bonnie Cha of the new TomTom GO 930 direction, get it? Take a look.

>> Hi, I'm Bonnie Cha, Senior Editor at CNET.com and today we're taking a first look at the TomTom GO 930. This is the company's high-end in-car GPS and they've kinda revamp the design a little bit and really like it. They've added some new features that some worked well and some need some tweaking. First of all, I'll talk about the design a little bit, sweet, nice, and slim, and it has got this black casing. Previously, they have silver but I kind of like the sexy black. It will look good at any car, I think. It has also got this nice soft touch finish so it'll be easier to grip if you attempt to put it between cars and you don't want it to just slip out of your hands. On front, there is a 4.3 inch touch-screen that is really responsive and bright, you can view the maps in most lighting conditions. They didn't have too many problems. One new feature is you can add addresses by your voice.

>> City.

>> San Francisco.

>> So, you can just speak to the device and enter your street name and city name and I found the feature to be hit or missed.

>> Please state house number.

>> 235. Sometimes it worked really well and sometimes it was just totally off the mark and had to try it 10 times so it's a little bit unreliable. Also there's advance main guidance so if you're on a meter freeway and there are multiple names it'll tell you which exit to take off. It also has a 3D rendering so it's clearer to you and that one final new feature is something call TomTom IQ Routes and basically it will calculate your routes based on historical traffic data so you will get more efficient running and it worked really well during our test. Overall. Good device, really accurate directions and a strong receiver. You'll pay a little bit for the features; it's about 500 dollars but if you are looking for that high-end device I would recommend it. I'm Bonnie Cha and this has been your first look at the TomTom GO 930.

>> Look at you.

>> You're looking one of the laptops, are you? Okay, back to CNET Live. Hi, everybody I'm Brian Cooley, good to have you back. So, let's talk now about this election season which has been fasting in so many levels if you need to have another level of interest to it. Check it out over at MAPLight.org. A website that helps you connect the dots between political money donations and funding to the politicians and then what they vote on and joining us now is executive director of Maplight Daniel Newman. Hi Daniel.

>> Hi.

>> Now, Maplight does what? Can you describe it properly.

>> Yeah Maplight is a tool--a Web 2.0 tool to take all the money given to politicians and put it together with politician, how these legislators vote. So, it's like a tool to fix our broken money down the political system using technology.

>> In the past, it was kind of arcane and you have to be a political buff to really sort this out, right?

>> That's right and not too long ago you actually had to go to these government offices and sort your papers. So, now working with other groups like the Center for Responsive Politics put in together with data that we collect from our research team. You can now have transparency for politicians that you can never have before.

>> Give me an example of what you can show me on this. Make it easy for me.

>> Sure, so say for example, you know, net neutrality, right? This concept that cable companies and the telecom companies wanna put up tool boots on the internet but most of the internet users and the Google in, Yahoo! don't want to do that. So, let me show you a bill that was in Congress about. This bill was a telecom bill and this bill was gonna pass without ensuring that neutrality. So, Google and Yahoo, they oppose this bill but the telecom companies they supported it.

>> Yeah.

>> But we do, we take all the money that the telecom companies gave to members of congress and put it on a graph with how each legislator vote. So, that's what you see here. So, these green bars here show that the 300 members of congress that voted in the way that the telecom companies wanted. They got 15,000 dollars each and the telecom companies and then the legislators who voted the other way got less than half as much.

>> Big difference.

>> Yeah, and then you look at the online computer services like Yahoo! and Google, et cetera, I mean they gave to both sides and more to the people who see with their interest what their total spending is really dwarfed by it.

>> Yes, was so is here, dramatic difference in spending right off the bet. So, you can see who spent more not just what each side bet on. What I always find intriguing here is that a fare amount of money doesn't buy a vote. Look how much money went to each legislator who still didn't vote for the telecoms.

>> That's right and I think you have a situation where the money is also buying access. So, you have, you know, the legislators who are they gonna have meetings with the people that fund their campaigns or just you know Joe average citizen and sometimes will do both but it certainly helped to get a seat at the table if you're given that cash.

>> Now, what's the scope of the kinds of legislators and laws you can follow, what states and what federal level stuff you have in here?

>> We have actually all bills from congress and our site is updated everyday. If something happens in congress of vote, it's updated within an hour on our sites. We're very up to the minute and you can also look at your legislator from every state. You can even take a look--let me show you on this bill that we're just looking at--you can take the money in the vote and you put it on a timeline. So, here you have this little flag shows when the vote took place and this green and red bars are the money from supporting and opposing interests.

>> Yeah.

>> And if you click on one of those bars or go to the next tab here. Now you can actually see the contributions like Google, AT and T, BellSouth, who they gave to on such and such a date. So, and all this information was really hard to dig up.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Unless you spend hours if not days doing it previously.

>> Okay, and as a recipient on the date of the contribution and all of that. Now, do you have any sort of a way to keep me up to this sort of staff without any of a check into the site all the time.

>> We do actually. We use widgets, you know, web to find out technology. So, here's our widget for our presidential candidates. So, here you see Obama, Clinton, and McCain and this is the total funds they've raised so far. So, you can take this widget. You can change the colors if you want to match your website and then just like you would with the YouTube video, you copy this embed code, you put it on your website and it will appear.

>> Nice.

>> On your website or blog.

>> Okay and then I'll get a constant updating meter.

>> Exactly.

>> Of who's getting money so right after a crucial political or primary loss or win during this past primary season, I would assume right away the money flowing different ways to Obama and Clinton each time as they went out and crave more money, needed more, looked weak, looked strong--whatever it was.

>> That's right, every month or so when they file with the right government agency, it goes to our computers and then they got pops up there and you can even do it for your local congress race so you go to our congress widget here, you pick your state like I'll give the example of Ohio.

>> Okay so down level Congress?

>> Yeah, so we'll pick ah, like this guy from Ohio, who had added all candidates from the same district and then you created your own personal widget to track the races in your town and then again you just copy that in embed code, change the colors if you want and you've got your own.

>> Nice

>> Personal widget to track it.

>> Good stuff. Daniel, thanks a lot for showing us Maplights.

>> Yeah.

>> That's MAPLight.org. Daniel Newman there, Executive Director. Check it out. It's a really interesting service especially at this time in history. Coming up next, the download of the week. Right after this. ^M00:16:54 [ Music ] ^M00:17:01

>> Hi, Nigel.

>> Bon Jour.

>> You okay.

>> This is a [unintelligible]

>> Hey it's Kelsey. Are you ready Kelsey?

>> Yeah, I'm here.

>> I love what you're doing with my cookies.

>> I like to discuss some of my new ideas with you.

>> What about jelly bean cookies? ^M00:17:15 [ Music ] ^M00:17:26

>> Cast the baddest exploitation bids at CNETTV.com. ^M00:17:31 [ Music ] ^M00:17:49

>> Okay, folks. Welcome back to CNET Live. Brian Cooley with Tom Merritt. Remember, the phone lines are open 888-900-CNET. That's where you came 'cause you are the backbone of the show 888-900-2638.

>> And it's time now for the download of the week. [ Music ]

>> Download of the week is brought by good friends at CNET's download.com purveyors of free spy ware, free software.

>> Ah-huh.

>> Some extra software I got for you today.

>> Huh?

>> This is a PDF--it's an e-book. It's a book that actually can't be published in print form by any publisher. Nobody else touch it. It's called The Secret History of Star Wars. Got in Michael.

>> This is like the JK Rowling situation where you can put in all the information to go into the web. Once you make a book out of it, they get all hottie.

>> Yeah. He's tried. He's looked into it and everybody's like uhmm--

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, it's all fair to use, I mean, he's pulled quotes from here and there but then getting the reprint licenses for a lot of stuff.

>> Different issue.

>> And it's a whole illustration in the problems of fair use legislation on it's own but--

>> But that's it.

>> It's also an interesting in look, a very academic and well-researched look into the history of the script and story of Star Wars. So, he starts back with the original treatment called The Journal of the Wills which has Mace, Windy, and Anakin star killer and a whole different plot.

>> Yeah.

>> And then follows it through it's various permutations and various treatments and one of the things he brings out is, it was originally the story of Luke Skywalker and the adventures of Luke Skywalker, not even originally, but that's what it became and even at the point of filming, it was still that. Later on, it became the tragedy of Darth Vader and that's what George Lucas talks about the next.

>> This is a just a look at the story of Star Wars. A look at the real life creation of it.

>> Yeah, if you look.

>> It is just in the fictional part.

>> His got you know the.

>> Let's talk about Lucas doing it.

>> He's got not just about the stories result.

>> A lot about the Lucas' what Lucas was doing when he wrote it.

>> Great.

>> He talks about the purgatory, talks about star killer. He talks at all the different script permutations. So, if you're into Star Wars, take a look at it.

>> I wish someone will do this for James Bond. Maybe it'll be me.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay let's get to your call at 888-900-CNET. I think I can do that actually. Okay, ah let's jump into a Firefox issue he's got here. Keith's been holding patiently. If I read this right, Keith your in Italy?

>> I am, yes.

>> Hello Keith, thank you for being I think our first caller from Italy on CNET Live. That said.

>> As far as I can remember.

>> What's the issue you're having?

>> Okay, well first of all, I would like to actually make a suggestion, could the problem that appear is the problem with an Internet Explorer not being able to show videos.

>> Uh-huh.

>> I think I have the web solution for that problem. If the printer didn't have the Windows bit stuff and they can actually go into system fails, at accessory system tools and an Internet Explorer with no add-ons.

>> You just said turn them all off.

>> Yeah turn off all the add-ons.

>> That's a good idea 'cause turning it and it doesn't work that's the next step I think.

>> Yeah, you just go and turn that all add-ons off.

>> It's probably, if they do that it will actually eliminate all add-ons.

>> Yeah.

>> If it is an add-on problem, it will solve the problem then they know.

>> Okay, excellent.

>> That's a good idea, now what can we do for now that you have help out him?

>> I love helping this up.

>> Okay thanks. They say my problem is I have Firefox, the latest edition not the, I haven't upgrade it to 3.0 yet, but I am on using all, I spent 500meg of RAM after been one or two hours of using Firefox.

>> Okay, so wanna cut down.

>> Yeah, you can reset the memory capacity of Firefox. Have you tried that?

>> No, actually I haven't.

>> Okay, so type "about colon config" into the address bar it takes you to a configuration screen we can do a lot of cool stuff you might want to poke around in there but look for "browser.cash.memory.capacity". You can just a control of memory capacity and you can click in there and set an integer limit for the disc capacity. Now, this might slow down your browsing but it is going to say, you can't fill up more RAM than this 'cause Firefox is adaptable in how much RAM it uses sometimes.

>> Whew. Look at that I didn't know about this screen. This is nice. Say alright Keith I will let you go 'cause your connection is breaking up on us but get into that configuration panel on Firefox. I didn't know about that, "about colon config" that's tasty.

>> That is a lot of cool stuff in there.

>> That's right one more here. I wanna go to "rrrr" okay number line 3. We've got Brandon calling in from Utah. He's got a question about power. We were just talking about solar charging power cases. Alright Brandon, what's your question about power?

>> Ah, hi.

>> Hi, how are you?

>> My actual question is I've heard a lot of people telling me that the actual boot-up of your computer is a very stressful and so, you would be better off actually just never booting like never totally shutting down you computer and living it on. Is that correct or I mean what would you recommend as power settings.

>> Well I subscribe to the turn on your computer as seldom as possible maximum because computer power supplies are pretty crude and they tend to shock the mother board more or less, every time you turn the thing on. Eventually, that's in my experience, when computers die when you turn them on. That's every single time that a hard drive go poof and a machine that's say I lost one motherboard but it was on power on at least it appeared to be. That said, if you wanna run your machine as greenly as possible, if you're never gonna turn it off, people get really twisted about this. Let me tell you. I did a column a couple of years ago saying don't turn you damn computer off and I'm still getting death threats. So, here's the thing that you can do when you're running your machine though you wanna go into your power control panel which I got up here and you want to set this aggressively as you can stand your various stand by setting. So, if you got the plug in column which is right here on the left you will find turn off monitor in what? One minute, I mean if you haven't done anything in a minute, you live with your monitor going dark how about turning off the hard disc spinning those down every what? Three minutes or five hours or something in between? In other words, that's where you go to really get aggressive on live activation, plugged in power management and this is on laptops and desktops. It isn't just a battery conservation thing.

>> And I think as you wanna set that number so that it isn't constantly spinning back up for turning the monitor back up.

>> Yup, don't get too aggressive.

>> So, you know I'd say maybe like 10-15 minutes for the monitor, 30 minutes for the hard disc while you're using it.

>> Yeah.

>> And, I would have avoided system standby even though it saves you a lot of power--

>> I don't like it.

>> Windows system Standby is--

>> I don't like it.

>> Also having a hard time coming back out of.

>> Yes, I don't like it. So go ahead and just set some good settings on those three boxes I showed you on your power config and you'll be more or less at your greenest, alright.

>> Alright. We get emails cnetlive@cnet.com. Got one from Mac Versus Windows, if that's his real name. He writes, Tom can you show me how to take an old desktop PCs hard drive and use it as an external drive, is this possible? He wants to do it with a Dell Dimension 2530s hard drive. It's actually not that bad. You buy something in an enclosure like this one, you pop this thing open. You can put a hard drive in here. So, you needed an enclosure that will work with the hard drive you have and then you get, you know, if you happened to be carrying a FireWire or USB cable like this.

>> That's usually on.

>> That's usually on. Plug it in to your laptop, boom, external hard drive. In fact, we have an insider secret that shows how to upgrade your laptops hard drive that will show this process in action take a look. ^M00:25:33 [ Music ] ^M00:25:45

>> Is your laptop hard drive running out of space that you may know you can upgrade your desktop PCs hard drive to a bigger one? But did you know that you can do the same thing to your laptop as well? I'm Tom Merritt editor for cnet.com. On this insider secret, we're gonna show you how to double, maybe even triple, your laptop hard drive space. What we've got here is a ThinkPad with a 30-gigabyte drive, really small. We're gonna replace that with this 100-gigabyte drive that I've bought on the web. We'll need some cloning software. What cloning software does is actually turns your new drive into an exact duplicate of the old drives, so all you have to do is swap it in one your done and boot up. Now, you'll need a way to connect the new drive to the left actually you can do the data transfer. I bought a kit on the web that includes a case that allows you to connect the new drive to the laptop it also came with cloning software that's the easiest way to go. The other nice thing is after you're done, you can actually use this as an external drive with your old laptop hard drive in it. Now before you get started, you want to clean up your laptop. You want to go in and delete any files that you don't need anymore, uninstall some programs that you don't use. You don't wanna waste time transferring data you don't need and you'll want the defragment you hard drive as well. Now, I'm gonna run though this on my ThinkPad. You may have a different experience, you probably have a different laptop you may choose different software and connectors but this will give you the general idea. First thing you need to do, is take your new drive and mount it carefully in the case. Now, be careful with the hard drives. They are very delicate. You can't take a lot of banging around and they can't take a lot of squeezing. Make sure your laptop is off. Attach the USB wire and attach the drive to the laptop. Put in the cloning software and boot directly from the CD. Once it boots up, I'm gonna choose automatic. That way the software determines how the data is copied. It will ask you which drive is the new drive and which drive is the old drive. Make sure you choose the right one or you could lose all the data on your current drive--which is a good reason why you should have backed up already. Then tell it to start. Once it's grinding a way, go ahead and take a break, it may take an hour or so, depending on how much data you have. And, then when it's done, comeback turn off the laptop, unplug it. Take out the battery, you wanna make certain that you don't fry any of your components or worse electrocute yourself. Your data is not worth that. Then look in your manual to find out how to properly remove the hard drive from your laptop. With mine, it tells me to open up the laptop and then carefully remove the hard drive. Once you get your hard drive out of your laptop, look to see if there is a cradle like this one. Remove the cradle from the old drive and attach it to the new one. Then take the new drive, put it on the laptop. Now, close up the laptop, reattach the battery, plug it back in and boot up. If it doesn't work, you could take your old hard drive and put it back in. So, you can troubleshoot. If it does work as it does here then you either doubled or triple your hard drive space. What are you gonna do with all that new space? Don't save movies [inaudible] that's disappointing. One more thing, take the old drive and let's put it in the case. Wholla! You got an external hard drive. Now just delete all the data off it or better yet, keep it on there and maintain it as a back up. That's it for this insider secret. I'm Tom Merritt. For more information on expanding and upgrading, keep breathing cnet.com. [ Background Music ]

>> Yeah, it's the same but I don't.

>> No, you do not.

>> Let's take some calls.

>> Last calls. Lightning round. Let's get through this quickly folks. We're gonna talk to Benjamin right now who is in Texas. Benjamin well someone--here we go Benjamin you got a question on prepaid cell phones. What is your question?

>> Yes, I am wondering about Go Phone from AT&T like how the service works and the handset and customer service and all.

>> Okay, real quick I'm gonna send you over to CNET cell phone section. Kent German and his team have first of all. If you look at this here you got kill your contract, cell phones for prepaid plans. Here are our favorite cell phones that are used on prepaid plans. You can check those out. They all rate in the mid-6's to mid-7's. So, they're pretty good phones. So look for that over on the CNET cell phone section. Also we have a primer on prepaid cellular service available. They will walk you through all the ins and outs of what to look for. There's a lot of details more than we can get into right now but they've got you covered on that. And let's go to--let's see. I think we got Evan in Virginia.

>> Hey, Evan what's your question?

>> Hey, guy, ah, I just like, I put Vista on boot camp in the desktop and I tried to use the fusion you guys suggested a couple of weeks ago the free trial version.

>> Okay.

>> And when I boot back into Vista normally, the screen resolution is all messed up it's either really-really low or really-really high it's look funky either way. And, my window and the -- the arrow interface is deleted like I can't use it.

>> Okay, well one thing I would try is the system restore while in like boot into Vista via boot camp and just roll back to a system restore that may mess up your VM ware tools though so you might need to got through an activation then so beware of that. There's also some ways you can go into the registry and try to repair any registry errors if the system restore doesn't work for some reason. Although there's no reason it shouldn't. And I'll post those up at blog.cnettv.com in our show notes for this episode but system restore ought to do it and before you do a system restore; maybe look at the settings in the video card because sometimes I have that happened and I just have to go and back into the video card and reset it to default settings and I'm fine. That wouldn't get your error back but it would change your resolution.

>> Okay so take a whack of those Evan. Thank you for the call. Let us know next week if it didn't work out for you, all right? Tells me right now that it's time for The Best of the Web. [ Background Music ]

>> Best of the web brought to you by CNET's fantastic webware.com. Check it out folks. How many.

>> You too?

>> People have always wanted, if you too buts it's all new.

>> Oh-oh.

>> You whatever YouTube video you wanna add graphics and annotations to it. You can do this through YouTube as opposed to using your video editor which is a really cumbersome way to do that. So, this YouTube's video annotations beta. It's a new service just came out. Let me show you what sample looks like. Here are some guys who put up a video of his card trick and you put annotations bubbles, pop-ups and at the end you'll see he had an inter activity using annotations.

>> Aha.

>> It's very interesting because you can hyperlink any of these and link off to another video so you kind of create a very crude form of program flow. On this one, he has cards at the very end and he wants you to pick which card do you think is yours and when you click on it, he goes to one of six videos that reveals what each card is.

>> That's really amazing.

>> So, his cleverly structured videos that are linked through these annotations so that you can make interactive but it's really it's not about that, it's about being able to add little bubbles and pop-ups and stuff. It's a cool little tool. It's a beta. It's brand new on YouTube I think you'll have fun playing with it.

>> Next week, we will have a man who fought the law and won. Brewster Kayo [phonetics] from archive.org is here to talk about saving the entire history of the internet and he's running with the FBI.

>> The internet Archive is very cool. Don't miss it, next week. That's gonna be next Thursday 1:00 Pacific 4:00 eastern.

>> 10 a.m. Hawaii. ^M00:33:31 [ Music ] ^M00:33:42