>> Brian: Okay. Hi everybody. Control room I hear you talking to me. Is there a reason? No okay we're continuing on with our show then at 888900CNET. We're a tech company can you believe it? Anyway, you call, we take your calls and when that happens what happens?

>> Tom: Ah you'll get to talk to Andrea who's sitting by to get you all informed about what kinds of crazy things we might say or anything like that, and then we'll get you inline to come on the show. Got a bunch of lines open so give us a call.

>> Brian: Yeah. Lines open right now at 8889002638. By the way in case you didn't know that call's free kapesh [assumed spelling]?

>> Tom: In all of the continental United States.

>> Brian: Before we get to those calls though we always treat you to a couple of things we crave.

>> Tom: Here's some of our favorite things on the crave log at crave.cnet.com. I'm going to start with a pump, C Dog, this is wave power. C Dog Pump is a Minnesota company. It's one of the few companies around who are researching this. It takes the power of the waves and converts it to electricity. You can almost see a wire coming off there, going to shore, so I checked with a guy who does this in Ireland and he said, yeah, they wire them up out there. You put a bunch of them out in the sea.

>> Brian: You've got a schematic. Can you show us that?

>> Tom: Yeah so here's the cylinder, wave comes in, raises the cylinder, got the electrical generator right here.

>> Brian: It moves a coil and a core and that makes classic electricity just like in a science fair.

>> Tom: Yeah you know pistons stroke can be B movement in the new pump.

>> Brian: Yeah I know, the old pump, yeah I know. I build them just like that at home.

>> Tom: Oh totally.

>> Brian: Essentially very cool. Because you think about it, it is among the harnessable infinite sources of power. We haven't figured out solar in a good ratio yet but this; and I know that Ireland project you're talking about in the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic is a rough sea, we have great stuff in the Pacific, and like you say lakes, this is going on in Minnesota?

>> Tom: Well it's a Minnesota company. They're doing it in the ocean; it's called the Sea Dog Pump.

>> Brian: It will be a Lake Dog Pump.

>> Tom: They're doing it out in the Gulf of Mexico actually.

>> Brian: Yea, see this is very cool. I like this. Now it's not the kind that you can buy but what I've got for you, you can and should buy. Check this out--HDMI tables that cost next to nothing. Now I know that if you've got a home theater, you've been killed by the cost of cables; 50, 60, 70 bucks, sometimes for a six foot.

>> Tom: These are cheap cables. I want the good cables, right?

>> Brian: These are good cheap cables and that's the same thing in digital because either the 1's and 0's get to the TV or they don't. This isn't like the old analog days where, "Well a better cable"...

>> Tom: Isn't a gold cable better?

>> Brian: Oh cause it will allow your transference of it--no. The 1's and 0's get between things or they don't. If you're not going to get a picture, you'll know it; there'll be no picture, if you are...

>> Tom: And the price keeps going down. The headline says ten dollars but then they update it and the new wave has some for 7 bucks, and then I found some just looking on Blue Jean cables for 4 dollars and eighty cents.

>> Brian: At Blue Jean, you love; you've been to them a lot right?

>> Tom: Yeah I've ordered a bunch of stuff from them, they're great. You can even get a small 1 footer for 360.

>> Brian: But notice the ratio, it's only 30 cents less than a 2 footer so the weak spots at 6 feet. The bottom line is we crave cheap HDMI cables and other digital cables because digital isn't like analog; it doesn't need every little slosh of additional fidelity to get a little bit of picture. It's all or nothing, and what we're simplifying but not too much, buy the cheap cables. Now. Let's get to our phones. Let's start with Landon in Mississippi who's been holding patiently for a long time. Landon welcome to CNET Live. What's your problem?

>> Yeah I'm having a problem with my laptop and it really sucks.

>> Brian: Lay out the suckness for us.

>> Tom: It'll do it for you.

>> Well you see like my start bar went away and a set of my icons; I can't right click, I can't left click, it's just like the whole thing just goes dead. I've got 5 seconds to start up a nap or I have to reboot and if I keep on doing that time after time after time after time, it'll eventually kill it.

>> Tom: Have you been able to even try a system restore?

>> I've tried a system restore by using the little recovery partition in those compacts, and it only gives me the days I'm on. It never gives me a previous day; it just gives me the day I'm on, and I try restoring it and it doesn't do anything.

>> Tom: And this is the windows system restore? Not the compact system restore?

>> Windows system restore. Yes.

>> Brian: Hmm this is wide open. It could be a lot of things.

>> Tom: Yeah and he's gonna have a hard time trouble shooting it if you can't actually get it to run. So you don't want to boot in the safe mode.

>> I booted in the safe mode.

>> Tom: Okay so you're in safe mode and it still does it?

>> It still does it.

>> Brian: This is ugly but have you just installed from scratch, I mean way down from scratch--Windows?

>> I was thinking about doing that but I want to avoid it at all costs.

>> Brian: I know but it's your next logical step because there are so many, literally, tens of thousands of things that could be causing this at the OS level. You've tried all the first things we would think of. You've done restores, you've tried safe mode, it's time to go back and reinstall windows. I know it's ugly.

>> Tom: You want to avoid it because you want to keep your data?

>> I don't have a back up of it--that's the problem.

>> Tom: Okay well one way to get a copy of it is either buy a copy of Laplink and just boot in with that and get the data off that drive to another one, or go to a computer you can use and download a bootable CD. You can find bootable CD's for Windows out there or you can get like Nopics [assumed spelling] or some kind of Linux thing, and then boot with that CD, pull that off onto an external drive to be able to get your data off, then you can try reinstalling Windows.

>> Brian: Or while you're at it, this could be one of those while I'm in there projects where you go ahead and buy a new larger drive if the drive you've got is even a year old, it's really tiny, put a gigunda 750 in there, pull your old drive out, hook that up to your machine once you get a repaired again and just go suck data off of it as a slave. So there's a lot of ways to do this, but that's the first thing I would do. You could geek out on this and try to find the little needle in a haystack. I would blow this thing out. You've got a problem machine. I would clean it up and reinstall. Sorry, oops sorry.

>> Tom: Save your data and bail.

>> Brian: Yeah save your data and bail. Pull the ripcord baby. Let's get one more in here in your quick list. Which one do you want to do? The EPC or the digital projector?

>> Tom: All right. Go for the projector.

>> Brian: A projector it is because neither of us have a good answer for this one. All right. I'm kidding my good friend Jake. Jake Chicago, welcome to CNET Live.

>> Yeah thanks. I'm looking for like a cheap projector for a PC or something like that.

>> Brian: Is this going to be used for showing presentations, PC stuff, or for showing video?

>> Showing video.

>> Brian: But off of a PC?

>> Yeah.

>> Brian: Well the good thing is video off a PC is typically not the most demanding quality out there. It's not like you're hooking up a Blu-Ray player or something of very high fidelity. It's basically DVD quality or a little rougher. Are these going to be videos that you've edited that are good quality or are you putting a bunch of You Tube stuff up on the wall?

>> It doesn't really matter.

>> Brian: Right but you're not totally into fidelity here; you're just into getting a decent picture.

>> Yeah.

>> Brian: And when you say small projector I think you want portable?

>> Yeah and price wise too.

>> Tom: What's your price range that you're thinking about?

>> Around 2 to 300 dollars.

>> Brian: Okay you can squeak in there I think. That's still aggressive. If you go to our search by price, under our projector reviews and you take a look at some of these, you can go to, let's see I'm going to try and find you the basic price of a decent projector. I'll tell you I'm feeling more like 500 is more like where the decent ones come in but let's try and bail you out here. You'll notice this is interesting I'm going to projectors in the 2 or 300 dollar range and notice they're all overhead projectors so (a) I didn't know we reviewed such things; (b) I don't think you want such a thing. So let's get past these transparency projectors. It looks like you're back in third grade again, and get into some LCD's. Okay - 399 for a Sharp, 420 for an Epson Powerlite. Epson Powerlite's a good range. I have one of those at home, of course I paid 1,000 dollars three years ago but those prices have come down.

>> Tom: Yeah the cheapest one I got is an LG LPX G22 LCDF projector for 225 bucks.

>> Brian: Is it rated or just listed?

>> Tom: Unrated.

>> Brian: Unrated. Okay so you can get it under that range.

>> Tom: That's the cheapest one.

>> Brian: But to get a rated projector that CNET actually thinks is okay, you're going to be much closer to the high 500's, so you've got to make the call on this. The things you're looking for are brightness in lumens, you want at least 1,000, 1500 is nice, 6,000 is considered at the top of the stack so that gives you a range. Obviously you'll want to select the resolution that you're interested in. Try and get it as close as possible to the resolution that you use on the output of your computer so that way you're running in native resolution. The same output that you want from your machine is going to map pixel to pixel for the input of the projector. Try not to put a really huge pixel output into a lower res projector. You're not going to like the muddiness of the result so try and match that; and the third thing you want is to get as high a contrast ratio as you can afford--I'm thinking 2,000 to one is considered really good, 1,000 to one might be okay. I'm just off the top of my head here. So those are some ideas or a guideline but you're in a very aggressive price point there but you've got to check our reviews on that.

>> Tom: All right coming up Merlin Mann [assumed spelling] is gonna teach us how to simplify our lives starting with our inbox. But first we've got a close-up look at a 50-inch plasma that David Katzmeier calls one of the best TV's that we've ever tested.

>> Brian: Hmm, really?

>> David: Hi I'm David Katzmeier from CNET.com and I'm sitting next to Panasonic's TH-50 TZ 800 U. That mouthful designates one of Panasonic's better 50-inch flat panel Plasma HD TV's this year. The real kicker on this TV is the THS display certification; we'll get to that in a little bit but one of the other big differences is this TV styling. We really like what Panasonic did here. They actually took a great big pane of glass and just fronted the entire TV with it so when you look at it in person it really looks very slick. Below the screen there's this little kind of pressed lips kind of looking ensemble that consists of this flip down door behind which you'll find an SD card slot, an HDMI input and a few AV inputs. The speakers are completely hidden on this set. They actually downward fire like a lot of the new models. The stand actually looks like it doesn't swivel but it does. There's a lazy Susan underneath here so you can actually get a little bit of swivel out of it. In terms of feature, again there's that THX display certification which manifests as a picture mode labeled THX. You just put it in THX mode and there's really not much more you need to do beyond that to calibrate the TV. There are three HDMI outputs on the back panel along with PC input and a pair of component video inputs, but if you're a real PC nut, you'll probably want to avoid this TV because if you plug a PC into the back of this set with an analog connection, it's not going to give you the highest resolution possible. The picture quality in THX mode is among the best we've ever tested. The colors on the set are very accurate. The greens are right exactly where they should be, not to blue, not to yellow. The black performance was among the best we've tested. Again it's not quite as good as the Pioneer Curo [assumed spelling] plasmas but it's right up there. On the downside it doesn't have the best glare-reducing screen we've seen. Again, it's still pretty good and overall this is one of the best TV's we've tested. This is a quick look at the Panasonic TH50 PZ 800 U and I'm David Katzmeier.

>> Tom: There you go. That's a heck of a TV there Katz. It's funny like we always have these TV's and then we're like this is the best one we've tested yet, but every time it's absolutely true. All right. I want to welcome Merlin Mann to the show. Thanks for stopping buy Merlin.

>> Merlin: Thanks for having me.

>> Tom: It's good to actually be on a show with you in person.

>> Merlin: Yeah.

>> Tom: I know we've done twit [phonetic] a couple of times over the phone and stuff like that, but I wanted to have you on to talk about In Box Zero. What the hell is that?

>> Merlin: In Box Zero is the result of a lot of years of me being really frustrated with e-mail and feeling really horribly overwhelmed by it. It's kind of a simple system that you--the connective tissue of it is just kind of realigning your view about how you think about e-mail.

>> Tom: I think people used to poo poo it a little bit.

>> Merlin: It was poo pooing.

>> Tom: Yeah because it's like, oh it's just an e-mail. What's the big deal? But as you get spam, as people start to reply to all, as they start to use e-mail to communicate every single little thing that's on their minds, it starts to fill up your inbox.

>> Merlin: There's a lot of imperfect e-mail hygiene out there, I'm not gonna lie to you Tom, and I don't think you have to have almost like a form of defensive driving for being able to deal with that stuff or you know that a lot of people say that e-mail is basically turning into a second job, and so they work all week and all weekend they do nothing but answer e-mail and that's not the way to live your life.

>> Tom: So what's the basic of inbox zero? What do you start with?

>> Merlin: Well the basic of inbox zero is an old principal of personal productivity is to try and touch stuff once. So the idea is instead of being somebody who sits there all day checking, checking, checking all day long and not doing anything about it, you want to avoid that impulse that gets you into procrastination and feeling behind, as soon as the stuff comes in you decide what to do about it.

>> Tom: You see now here's the thing. That all makes very good sense right? But then as soon as I don't check my e-mail everybody then somebody says did you get my e-mail? Why didn't you respond to it? And you start getting people get angry.

>> Merlin: Yeah it's true. It's a wet ware problem.

>> Tom: My producer of the show does this to me.

>> Merlin: Should I have a chat with that person?

>> Tom: We'll talk.

>> Merlin: No you're right, you're right. The main thing is though I think that a lot of us get to a point where we have this dissonance. There's something in us that says we want to be the person who's on point and check your e-mail. Yeah you know it makes you feel good, it's like a little hug right, you want to be there for that. But at the same time there's a lot more to life than sitting there standing by your mailbox all day long. I think every team has to find the balance that's gonna work for them. That team can be the family, it can be you and your producer, but finding the balance of how much of your time you can afford to seed, to just monitoring an inbox I think is an important step, and I think a lot of teams are saying at this point, "You know what, we don't want to be spending six hours a day on this, we want to be making stuff. We don't want to just be sitting there all day long with the pitching machine pointed at our heads.

>> Tom: So when you say touch the e-mail only once. Obviously not physically but in other words you look at the e-mail and you do something with it. Immediately?

>> Merlin: Yeah and the basic question you ask yourself and this is self-evident is what does this mean to me? Will this ever have a place in my life? What decision can I make about this e-mail right now so I never have to make a decision about it again? I think the problem or the pattern here is some people do that already but a lot of people who have 500 or a thousand, 5,000 e-mails in their inbox now feel like they're basically up to their ankles in concrete; they don't know what to do; they're kind of full of shame; they don't even know where to start. So the idea or part of the pattern is...

>> Tom: Shove it under the rug.

>> Merlin: Exactly, exactly and so you just end up buying more rugs. And I think that what you want to do is get to the point where you say that starting today I'm gonna try to suck less even if I'm not perfect today, I'm just gonna try to suck less. And that means when something in decide is there some kind of action associated with this that I need to do? Do I need to put this on the calendar, do I need to put this on the to-do list, what can I do about this that I don't have to think about it.

>> Tom: What if you don't have time? Something comes in and you know what to do but you're like, "I've got to run off to a meeting."

>> Merlin: Not to be kung fu but I think if you have time to check your e-mail, you have time to do stuff about your e-mail because if all you do all day long is monitor for boms [phonetic], then you're not really getting anything accomplished. And so one thing you can do if you're getting a very high volume of e-mail, where you're to the point where you say I can't deal with this, you need to delete more stuff.

>> Tom: So if it's something that's going to take a while to respond to instead of leaving it there or figuring out something to do with the e-mail, you're saying put the note on the to do list so that you...

>> Merlin: I know because we're friends Tom I know you and I share a pattern which is that if we get an e-mail and we say you know what I'm super busy, I just want to check for boms [phonetic] but I've got to go into a meeting, so I'm going to put this into a folder called to respond or to refer; but I'm also going to make a deal with myself that I not let that turn into my attic. I'm going to constantly come back to that and get through that. But at the end of the day if you have more e-mail than you can do stuff with, then you're no doing anybody any favors by pretending you can deal with it. You've got to either delete or you've got to find some way to get it out of your life otherwise you're just not going to get anything accomplished.

>> Tom: So our basic premise that we can get from you today is, do something about the e-mail when it comes in and get it out of the inbox. That's kind of the basics of it. Do we have a call for Merlin?

>> Brian: Yeah we do. We've got a call from Miles in Nebraska. Miles you're on CNET Live.

>> Miles: Why hello.

>> Tom: Go ahead Miles.

>> Miles: Okay I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was supposed to go. I was just kind of curious, I know Merlin you've kind of changed a lot over the past year or 18 months and it seems like you're doing to me at least a lot more media in that you've experimented with the Merlin show, you've done things like you look nice today, and has your day changed in the past year over a few months and that you're doing less things spending time writing, that kind of thing?

>> Merlin: That's a good question. I think I'm experiencing something that a lot of people are experiencing which is that more and more people I know are having these careers that don't have the same walls that they used to have. It's true for anybody who's a knowledge worker; it's true for anybody who's an artist or a programmer or a writer or whatever; is that you kind of have to decide where those walls are, whether it's the walls between the different thing that you do or the walls between your work and the rest of your life, and yeah, it's definitely changed a lot. It's the ultimate first world problem to be somebody who has to motivate himself to do that stuff. And so yeah I think there are good days and there are bad days.

>> Tom: Like that whistle doesn't blow at 5:00 and you're done right?

>> Merlin: Well the trouble is I've got a 7-month old daughter and so basically I can be that guy who's on the laptop 24 hours a day or I can be that guy who sets it down and tries to play with the kid for awhile. And so if I spend all my day doing this one thing then I can't do that. It's kind of economics, opportunity costs, which is not to say I don't have time for twitter. I've got to make time for twitter.

>> Tom: Well you do. That is an essential of the day that you can't live without unless it's that twit out day which I totally forgot about. And there's some twit out days that happened accidentally. But anyway so where I was going before we took the call was, you've got that one thing, try to do something with e-mail the minute it comes in, don't let it back up but where can they find out more about inbox zero and where can they learn more about these organizations?

>> Merlin: Well inbox zero started as a series of posts on 43 folders. So if you go to inboxzero.com it will take you to these posts but like I say I think it's part of a larger pattern. I'm not here just to like pimp inbox zero, I think what I'm really trying to say is that as we have an increasing scarcity and the amount of time that we've go to spend on stuff, we have to start making better decisions about what's really valuable. And this is really just a framework for getting smarter about not letting e-mail turn into something that runs your life.

>> Tom: We have not enough time to talk about all the things that I want to talk about. I'll have to get you back again.

>> Merlin: Have me back. Thanks Tom.

>> Tom: Yeah appreciate you coming by. Merlinman43folders.com. When we come back, a download that will help encrypt your communications on the web absolutely free. Stay with us. ^M00:19:03 [ Music ] ^M00:19:07 [ Talking in background ] ^M00:19:22 [ Music ] ^M00:19:32 [ Talking in background ] ^M00:19:38 [ Music ] ^M00:19:56

>> Okay back to CNET Live I'm Brian Cooley, Tom Merritt, taking your calls at 888-900-CNET.

>> Tom: Yes it is time now I believe--oh look at that, download of the week. Hello. ^M00:20:07 [ Music ] ^M00:20:10

>> Tom: Download of the week is brought to you by our good friends at CNET's download.com for the makers of free spyware-free downloads and today we're actually, that was me actually.

>> Brian: It's you now.

>> Tom: No, no, now it is. Today we're looking at the Tore router--you can't say the tore because in fact tore stands for the onion router. It would be redonion [phonetic]. Tore, my apologies, is a way to encrypt your requests that go out on the web, so your data is encrypted and the onion router comes in--there are servers that pass along the information over and over and over and over again until finally one of the servers delivers a response, but it's almost impossible to track down because it's like layers of an onion, the traffic has gone through so many different IP's, you can't track where in fact it's really coming from.

>> Brian: So it's a cloaking technology but more advanced than most of the old cloaking proxy servers we used years ago.

>> Tom: Yeah it was actually developed by the Navy for surfing the web and using the Internet in places like China, where they knew the government was monitoring, but they didn't really want their naval communications to be monitored so they came up with Tore. And now it's an open source project that's just voluntarily operated by different people running onion routers all over the world.

>> Brian: When you install this, do you become one of the onion routers whether you like it or not in a p to p fashion?

>> Tom: Yes and no. Actually let me see if can pull up...

>> Brian: Because I'm not sure I want to do that from a sense of system resources or possible liability for someone doing something through my router, my machine.

>> Tom: Yeah, my router isn't running right now. I thought I had it started but I must have closed it. Let me see if I can get it running. What it will do, I installed it on my Mac, it runs great. You install the bundle, it runs the onion router and that's the thing that's actually connecting with the other routers out there so it sends your traffic along to those routers, and then you have a proxy that is telling your Firefox browser for instance, you can get a plug-in for Firefox that allows you to run the onion router in Firefox, and as you can see down here on the right towards disable. So one of the things you have to remember to turn it on. So if you're surfing the web without it on, it's not doing you any good.

>> Brian: So take that one hand you've got free and turn that back on and there you go. Now you're cloak surfing. Okay let's get back to some calls, shall we? I like that by the way, the old onion and it's a freebie I assume.

>> Tom: Yep. Absolutely free.

>> Brian: Let's hit up--this is a great one here because there's so much going on with these little super tiny computers these days. I want to talk to Anthony here in California about little tiny computers. Hello Anthony, we're on CNET Live. How are you?

>> Anthony: I'm doing great. How are you guys?

>> Brian: We're doing good now what's your question about little tiny computers?

>> Anthony: I'm looking into the sub notebook category and I saw the Aces EPC and the HP mini-note and I'm wondering what will be the best bargain?

>> Brian: Well real quick let's compare them head to head. We've got the HP Mini-Note here; we gave it a 7.5 CNET Editors, 6.9 by the users, so not a whole lot of divergents there; price range 740 to 780. If I go over to the Aces EPC, now we've got more of a variety of models there. These guys are rating in the 7.3 to 7.5 range. So really quite close on that but a lot less money. We're talking about a 4 to 555, 600 dollar product. The E is a little different in environmental design or engineering. It's a different looking thing. It looks like a nicer product in your hands. If you're concerned about the look and field, the E feels a little bit like a kindle if you know what I'm saying. Molly's got an E, built for performance only. Okay so we're giving both of these very similar ratings so they are very close in terms of our overall value. Go check our reviews and check the specifics that matter to you in terms of whether it's a throughput on the graphic system or whether it's just the screen quality or how well the keyboard works; but I can tell you right off the top of my head, the E is a little better value because you're going to get about the same CNET score for as much as 200 dollars, 300 dollars less depending on the configuration. So if you're really price sensitive, the E is going to come in at a lower price point. All right so dig into it. Let's go and talk to Kevin in Ontario. This is a good basic networking question. We get a lot of these. Every month or so somebody has to scratch their head on this. Hey Kevin, welcome to CNET Live.

>> Kevin: Hello.

>> Brian: What are you trying to do when you network my friend?

>> Kevin: Well I have a Mac Pro and I was considering getting a PC but I do a lot of web design stuff and it's important that I can network. I was just wondering is it easy to network a Windows PC with a Mac?

>> Brian: I've had no problem. We have an ambidextrous house.

>> Tom: We do and it depends if you have your Windows PC on a domain where they can see each other, and then your Mac can see that domain; it's like a workgroup probably you can use at home rather than an enterprise domain, shouldn't be a problem. Now everyone once in a while, run into issues where one can't see the other.

>> Brian: And the worse case in our house anyway, you have to go tell the Mac every one in a while, here's the IP of the Windows box. It doesn't always seem to be machine name findable, every once in a while but usually it is. This has been one of the fewest headaches we've had in our blended home.

>> Tom: And you can also get network attached storage as sort of a middle ground to say like well you know what, if everything could see the network attached storage, I could just store stuff up there which the storage being attached to your router even if you have an intermittent problem seeing each other, that way you could transfer those files back and forth easy.

>> Brian: Yeah I've got Windows servers hung on our network, the Mac and the Windows boxes both see it fine and I've also got two snap servers that are just early edition, Nas [assumed spelling] boxes, obviously those are easy to hit so I've got to say this one's pretty easy in the current edition of Windows and Mac OS. They know they have to talk to each other on Mac networks. I would say they've got this pretty dialed in so go for it.

>> Tom: All right. We've got e-mails coming in to CNET Live at cnet.com. Please send a long one like Paul did. Paul wrote in and said, "I have some spyware on my machine. It seems to come back over and again. I try running antispyware and I even deleted it myself. It won't go away. How do I get rid of it?" Well Paul let me show you on today's quick tip.

>> Hi I'm Tom Merritt from CNET.com with a quick tip for using Hijack This to delete stubborn files that won't leave you alone. Occasionally you think you've obliterated a nasty file only to have it reappear the next time you reboot your PC. Here's how to track it down and kill it. Launch Hijack This; press open the miscellaneous tool section; press the button delete the file on reboot; browse for the file you want to ax, you'll know where it is because Hijack This shows file paths and it's scanned. You'll need to reboot your computer before the effect takes place, but or when that's done the next Hijack This scan should show that the file is gone from your system for good. That's it for this quick tip; I'm Tom Merritt for CNET.com.

>> Brian: Okay that's it. A few more call then. Last two calls. Calls with a z. Do it gangster style. Here we go. Let's go to Line 5. It's going to be Kyle in Ontario. Ontario California or Canada Kyle?

>> Kyle: Canada.

>> Brian: That's my man. Okay what's your question for us here on CNET Live?

>> Kyle: Well I'm going from a 54 megabyte wireless router and I really just want to upgrade to a wireless end router, and I was wondering which one is good because I'm always hearing wireless end isn't always a cure so I'm just wondering what's a great router for a great price.

>> Brian: All right so you're making the jump from a G router to what is still I think a pre-end router. I'm not sure they fully bake the new end spec which is 100 megabytes and up.

>> Tom: They're dragging their feet; it's been like ten years now?

>> Brian: At least two years. What do you see for like ends that we like?

>> Tom: Well our editors rate the SMC barricade-end router; if you're talking about security that is the best one, 8.1. It's a well rounded draft-end router, impressive range, smart design; they loved it, 140 or 150 bucks so it's not necessarily the best buy. If you drop down a couple rating points, the trend net, TEW 633 GR runs about 100 bucks and that's the cheapest one I've seen at least at the highly rated one. It's not quite as fast as some of the other routers we've tested but it's cheaper to use and it's got a cheap price. So I'd go with one of those two, either plump down the extra forty bucks to get the SMC or if you need to save a few dollars go with the trend net.

>> Brian: And those are unusual brands that we're seeing there. Those are both what you call second tier brands; it's not Linksys, not Net Gear, not Dealing [phonetic] not the big boys you always think of, but you can't rule those other guys out. There are some really good routers that are not always the top brand names, especially in the early going. Sometimes the more nimble smaller companies will get things out when specs are still new, but bear in mind you're getting into territory that is a little bit fluid so this game may change a little bit in terms of compatibility when they finally lock down the end standard.

>> Tom: And they're not on pre-end anymore, they're on draft-end. So their a little closer to the end but they're not final.

>> Brian: Yeah there's the possibility of some issues later. If you could hold off a few months, it can't hurt but of course we've been saying that like you say for at least ten years. So do as you will--they aren't terribly expensive. Here's our truly last call. We're going to Vichal [phonetic] in New York. Vichal welcome to CNET Live. What can we do for you?

>> Vichal: How Brian and Tom. I just have a question. I have a bunch of DVD's from my videographer for my wedding, I want to rip those and put them on to my computer so I can make my own DVD and show it separately because the other ones are a bunch of DVD's. I wonder what the best free software is to rip and then compose my own DVD?

>> Brian: Okay so you've got your solution figured out for getting the video into your computer right?

>> Vichal: No I don't.

>> Tom: You want the DVD ripping software.

>> Brian: Okay I got it. It's already on a DVD. So DVD ripping there's a bazillion of those on Download.com. Do you have one that you like?

>> Tom: Is it an encrypted DVD?

>> Vichal: No it's not. It's my videographer's so.

>> Tom: I would just take the bobs off right onto your hard drive and then run them through media coder to convert them, and then you just want to do something like small edits something like Abbott Emox [assumed spelling] or Windows Movie Maker will do it for you if you need something a little heavier.

>> Brian: Well you know for a very simple blade editor I like MPEG 2 VCR, great little simple cutter that just let's you nip out all the stuff you don't want. It just snaps it together into a nice clean simple, simple cut. If you want to get into multi-track laying, the various video layers on there and all that, the Windows Movie Maker we're not crazy about. We get tons of complaints about that. You might want to look at the very inexpensive bundle of Photoshop elements and Premier elements. I see this around a lot. These are both great programs to have. They're the simple versions of these well-known pieces of software. I see 99 bucks all the time for the two of them. If you want to spend less go over to Download and you'll find a whole bunch of highly rated editing technologies there, software programs that we like a lot. There are really a lot of them but you know if you buy any kind of a video capture device, if you think you're going to need that in the future, that's going to come with video editing software and frankly they all work about the same at the lower level like this. So you might think if you want to buy a video capture card to digitize your analog tapes, your VHS tapes, go buy that now and you'll get a free editing program in there in almost every case.

>> Tom: And of course OS 10, I DVD and I Movie done.

>> Brian: Oh yeah Apple's not even a question. They make the best and it already is on the platform.

>> Tom: Trucks and packages.

>> Brian: Whew--a lot of stuff. Let's see what's good for the best of the web. All right. Best of the Web brought to you by our good friends over at Webware.com. Okay here we go. Where's that package, where's that package. It's called Track the Pack.com. Dr. Merritt hit the button.

>> Brian: Here we go. Here it comes so check this out. This is a service that lets you track numerous express packages, UPS, FedEx, DHL in one graphical interface. So if you're a big crazy online shopper like I am and you always want to know where your stuff is, you'll get a listing on the left in text that's going to show you where everything is--out for delivery, arrival at a certain location and a graphical map on the right that gives you another way to see the same information. And also Dr. Merritt was filling me in about a related service that will send you a private twitter message to give you the same information. Your package just went to backwards no where Kansas.

>> Tom: And trackthis.pb30.com...

>> Brian: Trackthis.pb30.

>> Tom: Is the website but you just follow it on twitter and do direct messages of your routing information and it sends you a twitter which you can set up to come to your SMS, and be the only thing that comes to your SMS and then you just get a little text message every time it moves from one of these places to the other. So you use both of these. You can follow it on the map or if you're out and about it let's you know.

>> Brian: So there is no longer any excuse not to know where your package is every second or every node that it moves to. Any I like this, trackthepack.com for tracking those packages.

>> Tom: If you're in the drug trade business, I mean you have to put a price on this.

>> Brian: It's critical, it's vital, time is money. C'mon, all right, next week speaking of corruption of time and money, we talk about money and politics with the folks over at Maplite.org. They connect the dots between all that greasy funding and all those bad decisions by politicians. That's going to be a lot of fun.

>> Tom: 4 pm Eastern, 1 pm Pacific.

>> Brian: Saying I'm Hawaiian I think is always what we're sticking by. See you next week. ^M00:33:46 [ Music ] ^M00:33:57

CNET Live: May 29, 2008 Video

CNET Live: May 29, 2008 Video Transcript

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