CNET Live: December 13, 2007

[ Music ] ^M00:00:10 >> Tom Merritt: Coming up on CNET Live, Electric Sheep. >> Brian Cooley: Told you he was lonely. Plus it's gonna be Hammer Time today. >> Tom Merritt: And something to help you get those LPs off the shelf and onto your iPod. All that and more coming up on CNET Live. ^M00:00:23 [ Music ] ^M00:00:30 >> Brian Cooley: Hello everybody. Welcome to our last CNET Live, Live... >> Tom Merritt: Our last live one. We've got 1 more that's not live. >> Brian Cooley: ...of this year. You'll all understand it by the end of the show, I promise. But this is our last chance for you to actually call in live and get your questions in, or ssshhhh, you've got to stop until 2008. The phone line is open at 888-900-CNET. >> Tom Merritt: That's right. When you call, Sheryl will pick up the lines. She's in there setting you up. >> Brian Cooley: There's Sheryl. >> Tom Merritt: Getting you all lined up to put your calls up here where we can answer them. So give her a call: 888-900-CNET. >> Brian Cooley: And right before we open those flood gates, you know how we start it, with Things We Crave. ^M00:01:03 [ Music ] ^M00:01:06 >> Tom Merritt: These are some of our favorite things from the Crave Blog at crave.cnet.com. Starting out with something a little weird here. This is a PC case from TT chassis. >> Brian Cooley: Seriously? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. It's called the TT chassis and it's coming from Omaura. And it's meant to sit right below your television. >> Brian Cooley: It's really cool. >> Tom Merritt: So if your media center PC... >> Brian Cooley: It's really cool. >> Tom Merritt: ...and then pop this baby open. >> Brian Cooley: Oh look at that. So it hinges open, right? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, it just kind of flies open like that, so you can get it... >> Brian Cooley: Hard drive on the right door. CD Rom on the -- DVD Rom on the left door. >> Tom Merritt: Everything accessible if you want to swap out parts. Nice and flat. >> Brian Cooley: I want this. Forget the living room. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's not out yet. They're saying it's gonna come out Q1 of next year. >> Brian Cooley: Super expensive though? >> Tom Merritt: Q1, Q2. Don't know a price or anything about it yet, but it's super cool looking. >> Brian Cooley: That's a great looking computer case. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Alright, so I know what my next PC's gonna look like. No what I've got for you this week's a little bit bigger but equally cool: the panoramic Ford Mustang top. Ford's announced this is gonna be available starting next summer as a factory option. It's gonna be a complete glass roof. So from the back of the hatchback all the way across to the top of the windshield, can be all glass as a 2000 dollar option on Mustangs. They mention the Bullitt Mustang and the Shelby GT500KR off the bat. I'm not sure if you can get this on a garden variety GT, but this is really cool. >> Tom Merritt: You can grow plants in there. >> Brian Cooley: You could easily. You turn this into like a huge pot farming place. You know? Put about 50 plants in there, you got grow lights coming in, yeah. You know, if you want to get busted this is a good way to do it. >> Tom Merritt: Right in your Mustang. >> Brian Cooley: So, this is gonna be very cool plus they're going to have a very old school retro kind of a pull cloth inside liner, like an old fashioned roadster. >> Tom Merritt: Nice. >> Brian Cooley: As opposed to some power thing. It's kind of a retro tech thing. >> Tom Merritt: How much did you say it was? >> Brian Cooley: 2 grand. >> Tom Merritt: You could actually buy an old fashioned Roadster for that. >> Brian Cooley: For 2 grand exactly. It's one of the more expensive things I've craved so far this year, but it's appropriate for our last day live. >> Tom Merritt: Very nice, very nice. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, now enough of that. Let's get to your calls folks at 888-900-CNET, 888-900-2638. Let's see who gets the honor of being the first call on the last live show of the year. Who do you want to take? >> Tom Merritt: Let's go right to Jordan in Long Island. >> Brian Cooley: Been waiting a long time and here he is. Jordan, you were first on hold and now you're first on deck. Hello Jordan, welcome to CNET Live. >> Jordan: Hello, so... >> Tom Merritt: He's actually up to bat. >> Brian Cooley: Up to bat. He's not on deck. You were on deck. >> Jordan: I was one of the stupid people who upgraded to the 1.1.2. phoneware on the iPod Touch... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah? >> Jordan: And now I want to jailbreak it. But whenever I try to downgrade, it gives me L05, unknown error. >> Brian Cooley: Dr. iPhone? >> Tom Merritt: Yes, if you go to www.touchdev.net, they have got the instructions for jailbreaking 1.1.2. >> Jordan: Okay. >> Tom Merritt: You have to get a 1.1.2. jailbreaking utility to run. So don't worry about trying to downgrade on your own, back to 1.1.1. There is a jailbreak for 1.1.2. on iPod Touch and you get it at www.touchdev.net/wiki and then look for the jailbreaking 1.1.2. there. >> Jordan: Okay. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so try that out and let us know if that works out. Give us a call back top of the year, and we get back to you on our next live show when we turn the corner on 2008. Okay, let's go to Chicago. Let's just take them in order here. I'm a masochist so I want to go for this one about splitting up Linux and Windows on a couple of drives, just to make myself hurt. Hello to Mark in Chicago. Hi, Mark. >> Mark: Hi. >> Brian Cooley: What's on your mind today? >> Mark: Well, I've got Windows Vista, and I want to run like a Linux operating system, but since it's Vista you can't run your boot to the [inaudible]. So is there any way of running it on an external hard drive so that way, instead of like messing up my new operating system with [inaudible], I'll be protected. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, yeah sure. You can install Ubuntu and Knoppix and actually several other distros onto an external hard drive, and then you want to set up in your bios to boot from the USB device first, instead of from booting from the hard drive. And then it'll just go right into Linux instead of going into Windows. You know, and it will just run off the hard drive. Now, the downside of that is you're limited to the speed of reading the drive that USB gives you, so you know, you're drive speed reads aren't going to be as fast if you have a really fast hard drive in the computer, but... >> Brian Cooley: Do you know if these Linux distros care if it's a FireWire drive? Is it harder to support that connection for booting? >> Tom Merritt: It's all about bios. If you're bios will boot off it, Linux will run off it. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so that FireWire drive has a little more headroom. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: And, I like this cause it's a very clean way... >> Tom Merritt: Although you just don't have FireWire that often on a PC. You have it all the time on a Mac. >> Brian Cooley: Not as common. Do you have FireWire on your machine Mark? >> Mark: Yes. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so you can try that. >> Tom Merritt: Well there you go. You could try it on a FireWire drive then. >> Brian Cooley: It's a little more high performance external drive and I like this clean -- we get a lot of questions about running multiple OS's on machines and how to partition and all that sort of thing. Separate physical device is always really clean because there's no risk of any pollution between the partitions and the way the operating systems come up. So that's a real, good way to go. So check that out. >> Tom Merritt: You might also want to look at www.APC-MAG.com's tutorial, not PC-MAG but APC-MAG. They have a tutorial on how to dual-boot Vista with Linux if you did want to try putting it on the same hard drive. >> Brian Cooley: Nice. Let's get one more in before the break here. We're gonna go to Matt in the UK, cause I just feel like going international early in the show. He's got a question about video editing. Hello Matt. Welcome to CNET Live. >> Matt: I was wondering what the best PC video editing software is. >> Brian Cooley: Do you want to spend any money or not? >> Matt: Yeah, a little money there. >> Brian Cooley: Little, you could spend a little? >> Matt: Just a little, yes. >> Brian Cooley: Alright, now Tom what's the Open Source video editing program. I keep forgetting the name of that. >> Tom Merritt: Jahshaka. >> Brian Cooley: Jahshaka. Good reviews on Jahshaka Open Source. You can get it at www.sourceforge.net. >> Tom Merritt: It's JAHSHAKA. >> Brian Cooley: Or something like that. If you Google [inaudible]. >> Tom Merritt: : And Google will tell you "Do you mean Jahshaka?" >> Brian Cooley: Right, Google will correct you from whatever Tom just said, although I think he has it right. The other way to go is of course there is a - what's it called - Movie Maker or something in Windows? Everybody hates it but it's free. We get more calls about what else is there? >> Tom Merritt: Molly doesn't hate it. Molly likes it. >> Brian Cooley: Oh Molly likes it? Okay so Molly Wood likes Windows Movie Maker which is probably in your XP machine. >> Tom Merritt: She likes the Vista one though, not the XP. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, in Vista she likes it. One more that I like at a modest cost - I think you can get this pretty affordably in the UK as well - is Adobe Premiere Elements, which is often bundled with a skinny version of Photoshop for under 100 dollars US. Shop around for a good deal on that. That's a nice combination of really good software. Again, it's a scaled down version. It's Elements, not the full Premiere or Photoshop, but those are good programs and they step you into the big program if you ever want to go there. >> Tom Merritt: Hey, I spelled it right. >> Brian Cooley: Jahshaka is Jahshaka? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, I've got it on my screen right now. JAHSHAKA. >> Brian Cooley: That's Dr. Merritt for you. Coming up folks... >> Tom Merritt: I can spell. >> Brian Cooley: You can spell, alright. We'll show you more of his skills later today. Coming up in just a few minutes, I'm gonna be sitting down with Hammer. >> Tom Merritt: And, first we've got something that you've gotta love: it's a turntable that will help you take your LPs and turn them into MP3s that you could put on your music player. Take a look. ^M00:07:59 [ Music ] ^M00:08:02 >> Donald Bell: Hey, I'm Donald Bell, Senior Editor for Digital Audio and MP3 and today we're taking a First Look at the Ion TTUSB10 Turntable. You connect it up to either a Mac or a PC and digitize your vinyl directly from the turntable without having to buy a phono preamp, a sound card, a turntable, a receiver -- you can all of that into 1 solution. It's great for people who don't want to have to repurchase their music in a digital format from iTunes, but want to just take the music they already have and get onto their MP3 player or get onto their computer. So there's a lot of solutions out there like this. The TTUSB10 in particular is valuable because it looks so nice, includes a cover, has a tone arm with replaceable parts, and it just has a kind of impressive look to it. The TTUSB10 cost 200 dollars. It has a less expensive sibling called the TTUSB5, which retails for 100 dollars. The main difference is that the 10 looks way cooler, is a little bit taller and beefier, and it includes a mini jack input for recording other sources aside from vinyl. It's got 33 and 45 RPM speeds. It doesn't have a 78 RPM speed, but you can after you've made the recording, jack up 78 RPM records in the software. We like that it has a nice big start/stop button. It's got a built in 45 RPM little doohickey. What we didn't like about the TTUSB10 is that, you know, it's good for the price but it doesn't include any kind of fine pitch control or pitch adjustment, aside from the 33 and 45 RPM modes. Another thing to that same point, there's no speed calibration marks on the turntable platter itself. The plastic platter itself is gonna be a bummer because over time it might warp from heat and create an unlevel playing service for your records. So I'm Donald Bell and that was a First Look at the Ion TTUSB10 USB Turntable. ^M00:09:59 [ Music ] ^M00:10:03 >> Tom Merritt: Welcome back, CNET Live. I hope you like that LP player. Of course you could patch it in yourself, but if you're just lazy you can grab that, get those LPs onto your iPod. Okay Brian Cooley's got a special guest with us today, Former Executive Vice President of the Oakland A's and musician and the founder of a brand new video website for dance. Brian will explain, take it away. >> Brian Cooley: That's right. Back in 1990, when I was - believe it or not folks - in hip-hop radio morning show, KMEL here in San Francisco, this man was absolutely turning the world on its ear, "Can't Touch This," 1990? >> Hammer: Yeah, 1990. >> Brian Cooley: Biggest crossover of its kind, ever. And now his latest iteration, www.dancejam.com, welcome Hammer. >> Hammer: Well thank you. Good to see you again too. >> Brian Cooley: It's been a long time. >> Hammer: Good to see you. Good to see you. >> Brian Cooley: Good to see you. So what is www.dancejam.com all about. For folks who haven't gone there yet cause it's still in a beta private preview mode... >> Hammer: Right, sure. >> Brian Cooley: ...dance jam tells me something about it. What am I going to see? >> Hammer: Well, when you get there you'll find the first thing is that you'll find people there who like dance, who are dance enthusiasts. You'll find a crowd that liked to view "Dancing with the Stars": just people who like to watch dancing and be entertained by dance. You'll find instructional dance, and you'll find competitive dance. So it's a place for all things dance. >> Brian Cooley: And we do got a little bit of that we can show you on the screen right now. Tom's got it pulled up here. And what does that look like there? So here -- okay, 3 words: chicken noodle soup. Okay? Can we go there? This is such a cool video. Here's a great example of some user submitted stuff coming out of Queens. >> Hammer: Yeah, it's out of Queens. Very good. >> Brian Cooley: And what's cool here is if you see on the right side of the screen there, there are some contextual links that will show you what dance styles came before it in history... >> Hammer: Right. >> Brian Cooley: ...came after it, are like it. >> Hammer: Right, right. >> Brian Cooley: This is not just a place to go look at videos. It's a kind of -- it's a history lesson. >> Hammer: It is a community that it's focused on dance. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Hammer: So with social media, we thought that there were places that you could upload videos and dancing all throughout the web. But there was no place to hang and community around it. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Hammer: Give the historical references and some instructional dancing and things like that. And so we think we nailed it and dialed it in pretty good. >> Brian Cooley: That's the thing. You know the passion of the community really comes through because this is a specialized thing, unlike U Tube. Anyone can put their video up, and I'm sure they will cross post to U Tube as well, but what is it about Dance Jam that's gonna bring people there to see and to upload? >> Hammer: Well first of all, I love U Tube. >> Brian Cooley: You and the rest of the world. >> Hammer: Yeah I do. I love U Tube and I use it a lot as a matter of fact, but the community aspects and the culture that you get by uploading to Dance Jam is a whole difference experience. So I want to be at a place where I know that there are other dancers there, we can talk about dance, where they're choreographers there who might be looking for hot dancers for their next movie, their next video, short films. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Hammer: And then I might want to learn some dances. And you know we have a special little effect on there. You click on the turtle and the video goes into slow motion, so you can really analyze the dance or break the dance down and... >> Brian Cooley: And a lot of your users are getting into that as well. They're posting videos that teach you the moves. Aside from your technology to slow it down, I find a number of them that say "Here's how you do this move. Let me show it to you slowly. Make the squares. Make the rectangles. Bring it up." >> Hammer: Right. >> Brian Cooley: I mean it's like "Here's how you do it." >> Hammer: And now I think that's needed. Being a guy who -- you know I consider myself a master dancer, meaning learning... >> Brian Cooley: Just a little. >> Hammer: Yeah just a little bit, right? So I learn -- I love all styles. Everything from ballroom, to salsa, to hip-hop, to street dancing, hip-hop, urban, whatever you want to call it, and by being able to actually slow the moves down, have some instructions, that allows a lot of the users to really sharpen up and get their dancing up to another level. >> Brian Cooley: This obviously, it prints urban, hip-hop as you first look at it, but you're talking about a lot of styles right now? >> Hammer: Absolutely. Urban is trendsetters, so even in this great gadget world that you guys so about with so much depth everyday, a lot of it gets its traction in the urban world, so I -- especially hip-hop. Hip-hoppers are earlier doctors of technology. Historically. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, absolutely. >> Hammer: If you take any gadget that's come out that's a PA oriented in the last... >> Brian Cooley: That's hit early in hip-hop. Hammer time. >> Hammer: Always early in hip-hop which then becomes early in Hollywood. Hollywood follows hip-hop. And then, so it's the same thing with dance. It's the same way that FOX launched their network years ago. They started off... >> Brian Cooley: That's right. >> Hammer: ...urban programming, and then they moved into mainstream. So we're starting off with urban dancing but ultimately you have cheerleader competitions from youth all the way up to NFL level, every aspect of competitive cheerleading and dancing aside from cheerleading. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Hammer: All of them will be housed there. Just think, a lot of these competitions, and there's hundreds of them every year, different groups go and they meet each other, but there's no contact. So now they can be there and say "Hey, my profile is at Dance Jam. Yours is there. Let's become friends." And then those friends and relationships that you make, both as friends as possibility [inaudible] in the future, you can keep them when you meet at these dance oriented events. >> Brian Cooley: How does it work here real quickly? Is it ad supported? Is there a fee to upload and be part of the membership? How's that work? >> Hammer: So there's no fee, and it's open. And the idea is that ultimately we'll have offline events that are sponsored... >> Brian Cooley: Oh okay. >> Hammer: ...that also continue to feed premium content to the site. And then we'll also have all the traditional means of, that you know very well: ad supported, all generating revenue at the site, so. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, when does it go live? You're in preview mode now. >> Hammer: We'll probably go live - and they hate when I do this... >> Brian Cooley: I know. >> Hammer: Putting on the pressure, right? And putting pressure on the team that is doing a great job... >> Brian Cooley: See that [inaudible]? When can we get into Dance Jam? >> Hammer: I want to say Anthony Young, and Jesse and Fredo are doing a tremendous job and the rest of the Dance Jam team. And so I say that first, right? Now we'll go live probably in about a month. Give them 4 or 5 weeks. It's somewhere in that general area. >> Brian Cooley: Good, turn the corner on the New Year. >> Hammer: Yeah, sure, absolutely. >> Brian Cooley: And we can see a lot. >> Hammer: And we're very excited about it. >> Brian Cooley: Hammer, congratulations. >> Hammer: Thank you. >> Brian Cooley: Thanks a lot. >> Hammer: Good see you again too. Happy Holidays. >> Brian Cooley: Thank you, you too. Hammer folks, here on CNET Live. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, thanks Brian. Next up, the Download of the Week and more of your calls. Stick with us. ^M00:16:05 [ Music ] ^M00:16:10 >> Klaus Unlock [assumed spelling], umpire at the '85 US Open? >> McEnroe. >> Wait, there's a chance that ball did hit the line. You're not evil. >> Are you handling disputes with a simple phone call? Are you a card member? >> Epic-Fu. Now we're on CNET? Sweet. >> Epic-Fu. >> Want to check the tech on the latest rides? CNET TV's Car Tech puts you in the driver's seat, with in depth reviews of the newest models. >> Some of the worse technology implementation I ever seen. >> And special reports from auto shows around the world. Just go to CNET tv.com. ^M00:16:47 [ Music ] ^M00:16:58 >> Catch the baddest techsploitation vids at CNET tv.com. ^M00:17:02 [ Music ] ^M00:17:06 >> Brian Cooley: Okay folks, welcome back to CNET Live. That was a lot of fun having Hammer on the show, but it's time to get back to your calls at 888-900-CNET. Because no matter who comes on our stage, you're the star. >> Tom Merritt: Right, but first it's time for the Download of the Week. ^M00:17:19 [ Music ] ^M00:17:21 >> Tom Merritt: Download of the Week is brought to you by our good friends at CNET download.com where they deliver you free downloads that are free of spyware as well. Isn't that handy? And I'm not normally a fan of screen savers, but this one has actually taken me. >> Brian Cooley: Screen Saver you brought us? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, you don't need a screen saver anymore. >> Brian Cooley: No. >> Tom Merritt: But this one's fun. It's called Electric Sheep. Alright. And let me pull it up here as a demonstration, and there's a sneak peak at all of our calls and my emails. >> Brian Cooley: Good, your email... >> Tom Merritt: Here we go, this is a preview right here. Oh it... >> Brian Cooley: Nice looking. >> Tom Merritt: It actually collaborates with other computers on the internet, running Electric Sheep to develop these patterns. >> Brian Cooley: This is like a SETI project screensaver. >> Tom Merritt: It's kind of a distributed screensaver... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: And it comes up with beautiful stuff. Now I don't like this one so much. I can vote. I use the down arrow, it gives me a down sheep. And then that tells the network "Don't spend so much time of that one. People don't like it." >> Brian Cooley: It's like Pandora with music. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. So it's like you can vote up or down. I like this one: very fractal magic there. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, very 60s man. >> Tom Merritt: So I can vote sheep up. >> Brian Cooley: Very peacock. >> Tom Merritt: And then it just keeps playing. And I tell you, I've tried screensavers like this before, and I just like -- you know after awhile I'm like "I don't need a screensaver. This is hogging up system resources." This one's so light on the system. >> Brian Cooley: That's good. >> Tom Merritt: And it's so pretty when you come back to your desk and you see it. >> Brian Cooley: It does look great, but ladies and gentlemen, realize what you're seeing here: Tom Merritt, America's most sober to it, functional technology master is in love with a screen saver. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah I know. >> Brian Cooley: That must be a hell of a screen saver, that's all I can tell you. >> Tom Merritt: In love with a sheep. There you go. >> Brian Cooley: In love with a sheep. I didn't want to go there, but he did. >> Tom Merritt: I do have Welsh in my background. Let's get to the phone calls. >> Brian Cooley: Hello! 888-900-CNET. We're going to line 3 out to Brooklyn to say hi to Jerome. Hello Jerome, welcome to CNET Live. >> Jerome: How you doing guys? >> Brian Cooley: Very well. >> Tom Merritt: Good Jerome. >> Brian Cooley: What's on your mind today? >> Jerome: Okay, I have a question. I'm using the JBL set up on my home theater. I have the EC 3500 channel with the E30's and the E10's in the back. >> Brian Cooley: [ Inaudible ] >> Jerome: I would like to know if the Polk Audio are better than the JBLs that I have. >> Brian Cooley: Generally speaking, you know I can tell you the history. JBL and Polk Audio of course used to be independent companies. JBL - John B Lansing - Lansing the voice of the theater - the original theater speaker, then movies since World War 2, etcetera, etcetera. Polk Audio was one of the first of the boutique upstarts. Both of them now, if I'm not mistaken have been swallowed by Monolifts [assumed spelling], in fact they might even be owned by the same company: Harmon International. I've got to check that out. I seem to recall that's the case. Bottom line is, you gotta check our reviews if you want to get model specific, and I don't know what model of Polk you're looking at but we've got a great blogger on this: a guy named Steve Guttenberg, who works out of our New York office. He's part of our Blog Network. And if you go over to crave.cnet.com and just type in his last name Guttenberg, he has great reviews on speakers that I think are some of the best out there regardless of what publication or site you're looking at. So I would consult his information and I believe you can find an email link for him underneath his post as well. And he's the real expert on this stuff. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah I mean if you look at our top surround speaker packages, we're looking at KEFs and Aperions and Onkyo even, but we do not rank Polk or JBL real high anymore. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, we're a little thin on the love for those products right now, those brands, because they're not the independents they were. Like Tom just mentioned Aperion which is out of northwest Portland I want to say. They have a tremendous line of speakers at a great price. They've always blown us away with the value and the quality of their speakers. To me they're the Polk of today. They are that little more compact, passion driven, individual, independent company. So you gotta kind of break away from some of the biggest brands. And I won't name some others but you know who they are, and look at some lesser known names cause speakers are a craft more than they are an industry. >> Jerome: Which one would... >> Brian Cooley: Oop. I'm sorry. Hit the drop button on you there. Go check out those reviews on Crave from Steve Guttenberg. He's the guy to check out. >> Tom Merritt: The Polk subwoofer is the only one that makes any of our top lists, and the Aperion subwoofer still ranked higher. >> Brian Cooley: Let's do one here on iPhone. I want to go iPhone because we haven't had an iPhone call today and that just doesn't right. >> Tom Merritt: It was an iPod Touch call, not an iPhone. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, not quite. Joseph's here in Dallas. Hello Joseph, welcome to CNET LIVE. >> Joseph: Hi, how you guys doing? >> Brian Cooley: Good. >> Joseph: I was wondering, do you know when the iPhone - the 3G iPhone - comes out in '08? Do you think you'll be able to upgrade the software and make your non-3G iPhone, or non-iPhone work on the 3G network? >> Tom Merritt: That's an interesting question. >> Brian Cooley: Shouldn't. >> Tom Merritt: I doubt that they will be able to do that. >> Brian Cooley: It's missing a chip. >> Tom Merritt: Well, and it's about the antenna I think, more than the chip. >> Brian Cooley: Is it just that? >> Tom Merritt: It might be the antenna that would stop them. >> Brian Cooley: I thought I heard that one of the reasons they didn't go 3G at first is because the chip itself packaged a little larger than a 2 and a half G chip, and/or took too much power? >> Tom Merritt: Cause the battery life is what I heard. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: It's that 3G sucked down the battery life so much. >> Brian Cooley: Heard that too, yeah. >> Tom Merritt: And then I heard a lot of speculation that the antenna in the iPhone could be upgraded or couldn't do -- there was a lot of that rumor around. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, different frequencies. >> Tom Merritt: And I think the last thing that I understood is that that antenna is not an upgradeable antenna and that would be your limiting factor. Now the chip might also be a program. >> Brian Cooley: But with Apple, nothing's upgradeable anyway cause it's like, they don't want you in that thing. >> Tom Merritt: They're gonna want make you buy a new thing. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: So really, whether it can or can't is all a hacker question. >> Brian Cooley: It's a hack job. >> Tom Merritt: It's a matter of whether you can port that over yourself and do it yourself. My guess is, you know, 90 percent chance that Apple is not going to make it easy for you to upgrade it. Even if you can... >> Brian Cooley: Well it's not in their interest. >> Tom Merritt: And I'm not 100 percent sure on this but I don't think you even can. So you're probably gonna be stuck like the rest of us. >> Joseph: So it would be a lot better just to wait? >> Brian Cooley: I think among hackable projects, this is one of the longest of the long shots to be honest, so I wouldn't. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah and you know 3G, Edge is painful. I'll say that. 3G is not going to be all that because of where it's available. >> Brian Cooley: It's not night and day. >> Tom Merritt: You're gonna be on the Edge network or some other data network a lot of the time anyway. >> Brian Cooley: Although, I gotta say... >> Tom Merritt: [inaudible] it might be better by later this year. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, I went 2.5G to a 3G on a Trio and all else being the same it was a significant and good feeling improvement, although it's not -- you know they say it's like DSL when you're on 3G. No it's not. It's like a really lame VSL one. >> Tom Merritt: It's like a minimal DSL line... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah absolutely. >> Tom Merritt: Whereas Edge is like dial-up. >> Brian Cooley: Yes. >> Tom Merritt: It's like 24K dialing. >> Brian Cooley: Exactly, the world's worst. Okay thanks for the call. Good luck on that. We'll get one more in here although my software is hung so I think you need to go to line 5, if you can. >> Tom Merritt: Alright let's go to Justin. >> Brian Cooley: I want to talk to Justin in New Hampshire. >> Tom Merritt: I want to talk to Justin too but it won't pick up. >> Brian Cooley: Are you hung up too? >> Tom Merritt: Maybe Sheryl can pick it up? >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, maybe Sheryl can push line 5. We're in a little bit of a software communication issue here, right now. Justin, there we go. Thank you, Sheryl. Justin in New Hampshire with a question about GPS Nav. Hello Justin. Oops! Lost him. Okay, let's try another one here. >> Tom Merritt: Oh Justin, call back. >> Brian Cooley: Hey Sheryl, let's do another one here. How about line 3, Patrick in Texas. Can we get Patrick on line 3 in Texas? I can drop lines, let me try again. There we go. Patrick in Texas, we got you back. Welcome just barely, to CNET Live. What can we do for you? >> Patrick: Yeah, a couple of days ago I tried to update the driver on my CD drive and it didn't -- I don't know. It said that it couldn't update because it had the latest version software on it. And now I can not -- none of the drives are working. I've put in those CDs, and it recognized that there's a CD but there's nothing on it. And I put in a memory stick, and it recognizes that there's a memory stick, but it doesn't recognize that there's anything on it. >> Brian Cooley: Really? >> Patrick: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: But your hard drives work obviously? Your machine is [inaudible]. >> Patrick: Yeah, I can get on the internet and get on. >> Brian Cooley: But your removable media is all screwed up in the same way? >> Patrick: Yeah, it's really weird. >> Brian Cooley: Have you encountered that before? >> Tom Merritt: Drivers are weird. I've had similar things. Not exactly that same one before. Do you have Windows XP? >> Patrick: Yeah, I'm running XP. >> Tom Merritt: I would do a system restore to a point before you installed that driver. If you're trying to track down what happened, if it won't upgrade the driver or uninstalling the driver and reinstalling the driver is a mess... >> Brian Cooley: That's a weekend you don't want to spend. >> Tom Merritt: Alright, how long has it been since you installed that -- tried to install that new driver? >> Patrick: Oh I probably tried to update it about 2 days ago. >> Tom Merritt: Okay yeah. So just pick a restore point from before then, if you have system restore on, and then just restore it. It won't take 10, 15 minutes to go through the whole restore process. And I -- believe me, you've seen me if you've watched the show long enough you've seen me do it on the air. It will help fix a lot of issues. You know I'm putting things on and off this thing that break it all the time. And then do a system restore: good as new. >> Brian Cooley: Do you have system restore turned on, do you know? >> Patrick: I think we do. >> Brian Cooley: Cause I'm bad. >> Tom Merritt: That would be your only hang up, if you don't have it on. >> Brian Cooley: I'm bad. I have mine turned off and I have many times have rued the day, but in my mind there's some kind of a system overhead load. I'm probably completely full of it. >> Tom Merritt: Nah, turn it on. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. It does hog some more drive space though, because it has to mirror a bunch of previous files. >> Tom Merritt: Not that much. >> Brian Cooley: I know. I'm so housekeeping oriented. >> Tom Merritt: It's worth it. It's worth it. >> Brian Cooley: Let's get one more in here. We're getting the clearance to go here. >> Tom Merritt: Oh we got Justin back. >> Brian Cooley: We got Justin back. Justin you're my hero in New Hampshire. Hello Justin. >> Justin: Hey how's it going guys? >> Brian Cooley: Good thanks for hanging [inaudible] technical good there after I cut you off. What do you want to know about GPS today? >> Justin: Well I was just calling to see about the Cobra Navigation line, if it was comparable to the Garman's and all that? >> Brian Cooley: Okay, well here's the thing. It could be the ultimate deal because 2 things happened this week that make -- bring you it at an incredible price. One, CompUSA pulled the plug, and 2, Cobra pulled the plug on portable navigation. So a perfect score is to find a Cobra Nav on sale at CompUSA at they're going out of business sale. You might get it for 2 dollars. But seriously, Cobra is out of the business. Do you have any reviews [inaudible] a chance to look at our reviews on Cobra? I don't know that we have ever reviewed one, to be honest. >> Tom Merritt: No I don't have any reviews from us. I've got a Car Audio Mag picture of it. >> Brian Cooley: I've got to tell you, my... >> Justin: So it probably wouldn't be a good idea to buy one. >> Brian Cooley: My impression is that they are not top of the stack, if I may be polite. >> Justin: Okay. >> Brian Cooley: But if you find a scorching deal on one, and again they have gotten out of the business. I think they announced it this morning or yesterday. That was yesterday actually. They're getting out of the PND business: portable navigation device. So you might find some great deals, and of course if it works at all, you get it for under 100 bucks maybe, you know that would be great. I don't know what the MSRP is on it. But there are better units is my hunch, especially since we don't seem to have any reviews on them and we always get the good stuff reviewed. And the other stuff we wait on? So, that's my gut. >> Justin: Alright, great, thank you guys. >> Brian Cooley: Good, thanks a lot. Appreciate the call. >> Tom Merritt: Going back to that iPhone... >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: As far as we can tell no UMTS or HSDPA radio in the current iPhone. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so it's a [inaudible] issue. >> Tom Merritt: So that would just pretty much say, no way. >> Brian Cooley: Unless you've got a really good touch with a very fine soldering iron. >> Tom Merritt: Which someone will have. >> Brian Cooley: That's the worst part. If the [inaudible] match, someone will do it. >> Tom Merritt: Yep. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, folks now it's time for Best of the Web. ^M00:28:06 [ Music ] ^M00:28:10 >> Brian Cooley: Best of the Web. There it is. Here it is. Boom. Okay, here we are folks Best of the Web is -- we just talked about the iPhone. This is the Tri-Phone web service. >> Tom Merritt: I love this. >> Brian Cooley: This is cool and here's how it looks on WebWare: CNET's webware.com where we view to get all of our beautiful Best of the Web pics every week. What it does is it allows you on this website, to go try the interface on some of the hottest, smart phones on the market. So let me go to the actual site now. Here is a Blackberry -- what do we have -- it's a Pearl. And what you do, if you can see there right now it is a simulated Live Blackberry Pearl. Kind of hard to see, but the right hand click portion on the right of the Pearl ball, is blinking, which means that that is a live, clickable part of the screen as if it was a real phone. I go there with my mouse. It turns into a pointing indicator. I hit that and that actually makes things happen on the screen. So I'm navigating a Pearl just as if I had one in my hand. Then I can go hit the Pearl button in the middle here to... >> Tom Merritt: Scroll around. >> Brian Cooley: ...select the browser. >> Tom Merritt: Now, look at that. >> Brian Cooley: And there's that. Now I can hit the up button to go through various selections. Now not everything is mocked up. They have a sample of steps. It's not every single command and detour you can make, but it's a really cool way to try the interface on a smart phone. The downside is they only have 4 models in there: the iPhone and Blackberry... >> Tom Merritt: So far. >> Brian Cooley: So far. It's new. It's fresh. But you're not gonna find... >> Tom Merritt: And you don't get the feel of the buttons or anything. >> Brian Cooley: No. Yep, you're not gonna get click [inaudible]. >> Tom Merritt: It does give you a look at the interface. You know, these emulators have been around forever for developers. >>Brian Cooley: For developers, right. >> Tom Merritt: You could poke around on the web and find them freely available... >> Brian Cooley: Yep. >> Tom Merritt: ...where you could download emulators and play around with the interface and do that kind of stuff. But you had to do some digging, so it's kind of cool that somebody's taking this and making it easily available to people. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, and surfacing -- and you can see on the right here is a list of available demos. So that actually list in text all the potential things you could do, so you can get a pretty good idea of the amount of functions they've got. There's a lot of them in here. You can't even see them all on the screen. So anyway, that's Try Phone. >> Tom Merritt: Alright. >> Brian Cooley: Wow. >> Tom Merritt: That's it. Last live show of the year but we have another show next week right? >> Brian Cooley: Not live but... >> Tom Merritt: Live-ish. >> Brian Cooley: ...it's still CNET Live. You'll see. No calls next week. We're gonna have a very special year end show that we're going to be bringing to you next Thursday. >> Tom Merritt: Oh yeah, and in the tradition of Como, Crosby, Williams. We'll be sitting down by the fireplace you saw over there during the Hammer interview. Having some friends drop by. Talking about tech for the coming year. >> Brian Cooley: Then we get past the holiday break. We come back to you next at CES. The Consumer Electronics Show is our next live show, and that's going to be on the Tuesday of CES which is January 8 at 3 o'clock Pacific - a different time and a different day - Tuesday January 8 at 3 Pacific is our next live show here on CNET Live from the Big Top in Las Vegas. >> Tom Merritt: But don't forget to watch the holiday special. That's next week, Thursday 4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific and 8 a.m. Friday in Sydney. >> Brian Cooley: Always has a surprise for me. Have a great holiday folks. ^M00:31:01 [ Music ] ^M00:31:13 >> Klaus Unlock [assumed spelling], umpire at the '85 US Open? >> McEnroe. >> Wait, there's a chance that ball did hit the line. You're not evil. >> Are you handling disputes with a simple phone call? Are you a card member?