CNET Live: November 1, 2007

[ music ] ^M00:00:09 [ background music ] >> Coming up on CNET Live, don't think you can write a novel? Think again. We'll show you how with NaNoWriMo's [assumed spelling] Chris Beatty. >> Plus me, Rafe [assumed spelling] Needleman and a very cool Best of the Web. >> And we have a phone, a big, fat, new phone from Motorola. It's a new Q coming up on CNET Live. ^M00:00:24 [ music ] ^M00:00:31 [ background music ] >> Welcome to CNET Live. I'm Tom Merritt. >> I'm Rafe Needleman. >> Rafe Needleman, nice to meet you. >> How you doing, Tom? >> Editor in Chief of Webware.com filling in for Brian Cooley. Thanks a lot. You were filling in for Molly Wood this morning on Buzz Out Loud. You're filling in, you're just like the ultimate, the go to - >> I'm the go to stand-in. >> We just need to get rid of everyone else and have you do everything. Give us a call. We're answering your questions, 888-900-C, N, E, T. That's 888-900-2638. Got problems with gadgets? Which one to buy, stuffs broken, can't get your computer to work? Fine, Rafe will answer all of that. >> And Andrea is here to take your calls. I'm answering everything, huh? >> Actually, if Andrea can't answer it, we'll put you on the show, Rafe will answer it. If Rafe can't answer it, then I'll do a Google search. >> There you go. >> That's kind of how it works. Time now for Things We Crave. ^M00:01:13 [ music ] ^M00:01:18 [ background music ] >> These are some of our favorite things from the Crave Blog at Crave.CNET.com. Starting out with a turntable. >> Turntable? >> Yes, yes. >> That's so old-fashioned, Tom. >> You remember vinyl records. >> Back in the day - >> Discs of wax. This is not actually a new idea. USB turntables have been around for a while. The idea is you plug them in to your computer, and then, you can record directly from the vinyl to your laptop. And that way you can digitize your music and put it on your MP3 player, on your home theater, anything that uses digital music. But the cool thing about this one is it has an iPod dock. >> An iPod? >> Yeah. So you can actually go directly from the vinyl to the iPod. >> Skip the computer entirely. >> You know, I think you probably have to have the computer hooked up to power it and maybe figure out what the track names are and stuff like that. Don't know about that yet. We don't have a price on it yet or all those details. But the idea they say is that you can just send the music directly to the iPod. >> Can you do it the other way? >> Yes, you get an entire recording studio with this that you have, no you can't do it the other way. You can't actually record to vinyl, unfortunately. >> That would be cool. >> That would be cool, yes. That would be really neat. Okay. >> Okay, what do you got? >> Okay, so my crave is the Eye-Fi. It's a SD card, not actual size up on the screen here. >> It don't look that big to you folks but it looks huge on the screen. >> Giant SD card. Bigger than your camera. So idea is that this is a Wi-Fi and memory card. You plug it into your camera, and when you take a picture, it goes by Wi-Fi straight into your computer. >> So you don't need to buy one of the Kodak Easy Shares, or any of those special cameras with the Wi-Fi. This turns any camera into Wi-Fi. >> Yeah. I think it's shipping now or very soon >> That's very cool. >> It's about a hundred bucks and it'll send it to your computer or to Flicker or to Photo Bucket, or wherever you go. So no more cables, take a picture, on line. >> Well now if you don't have a camera built for it, how do you figure out what hot spots it can access? >> Well apparently this is a one L product so it only goes to your computer in your home. >> So you have to configure it separately, and then, okay. >> So it won't work when you're at like, the Starbucks in this rev. >> Well, not quite as cool. >> But looking forward to that, though. >> Yeah. How much it is? >> Should be about a hundred bucks, I think. >> All right. >> Yeah. >> Cool. Let's get to your phone calls. That's what we're here for. 888-900-C, N, E, T. I'm looking down here and I see Andrew from Connecticut is actually in a hurry so let's take him first. Hey, Andrew, what's your question? >> Can I take this phone? Yeah, I want to get a home theater in a box with Blu Ray. >> Okay. >> Okay. And you just want to know what the best one is? >> Mm-hmm. >> Yeah, there's a bunch of them out there. Rafe, you were looking around, did you find any particular suggestion? >> I think that all the vendors are working on them right now. I think Denon [assumed spelling], I think they might have one. But Blu Ray is such an expensive technology right now. Seeing it, I don't know when it's gonna be married across all the vendor's lines with all the Blu Ray in place. >> I know Samsung and Panasonic were kind of the first ones to the game. So we haven't got an Editor's Choice for that yet because it's so new. But I would probably start by looking at those. See which ones fit your budget. And honestly, you know, maybe you're like way into Blu Ray but you might want to hold off a little bit longer to see what format wins cause, you know, we just saw that HD DVDs on now on sale for ninety-eight bucks at Wal-Mart. >> At Wal-Mart is it? >> Yeah. >> It's a one day special, we think, but you can get a High def DVD player for just a hundred bucks, so plug that in as a stopgap. >> All right then. We have another Andrew on the line from New York. I don't think it's the same Andrew cause he's in a whole different state. >> We'll know unless he faked his voice. >> What city in New York you calling from, Andrew? >> Hey, I had a quick question about purchasing a Mac. >> Sure. >> I'm thinking of getting a Mac Mini for Christmas because I love the like, Leopard system and everything. I think it looks really cool. >> Yeah. >> But I had a few questions about Time Machine. >> Okay. >> It looks a little more complicated than it would actually be. I was wondering do you actually need like, you need an external hard drive attached to your machine for it to work? >> Yes. >> Well, yeah. I think with the Mac Mini you're definitely going to. >> Yeah, that's what it's designed for. >> Yeah. >> I mean the idea's that you have your computer, and then you have the external drive, and everything that you do is mirrored onto the external drive so you can go back in time. >> If you got a large enough drive, you could partition a part of it and work it around that way. But it's a little complicated. External drives, you know, even a hundred gig drives are fairly cheap these days. >> A hundred gig is tiny. >> Yeah. >> I mean you can get like a two-fifty or a five hundred for a very reasonable price. Although the Mac Mini is a low priced machine, so it might kind of skew the equation a bit. >> Yeah, it depends on what your budget it. But the short answer is yes, you absolutely have to have an external drive unless you're gonna do some partitioning to make Time Machine work. >> That's what it's made for, yeah. >> All right. Hope that helps you out, Mike. Let's go to another call. We've got Bruce here on the line from New York. Another Apple question. Hey, Bruce. Thanks for calling. >> Yeah, thanks for taking the call. I wondered what the rumor is about Apple coming out with new MacBooks, because if you go to the store now to get Leopard, they give you a disc with the old MacBooks, but it's not pre-installed yet. So I wonder if they're coming out with new MacBooks. >> Yeah. Actually today they announced some upgrades to the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. The Santa Rosa chips are going into the new MacBooks. Looks like you can get from a thirteen inch, eighty gigabyte, two gigahertz, white model for the MacBook on up to a hundred sixty gigabyte, two-point-two gigahertz. And the MacBook Pros, they just did a tiny tweak. There's now a two-point-six gigahertz Core II duo available. >> Right. >> So we think this is probably the only refresh before the holiday season. >> But the key point being that these are, this is a refreshed line. They've got, they've kind of tweaked the, the MacBook and MacBook Pro up a notch. The radical new models that some of us are waiting for - >> Radicals. >> Like the UltraLite, is not upon us yet. >> Yes. >> That's the one that I'm waiting for is the super slim ultra lite MacBook. >> That we would probably see around Mac world in January, I'm guessing. >> That's what was scheduled. >> So there you go. If you're waiting, that's probably as good as it's gonna get before the holidays. Let's go and take another call here. Still on the Mac theme here. This is Mike in Connecticut. Hey, Mike. >> Hi. I was wondering if I should get a Mac mini or an iMac. I want to run like, the iLife suite. >> You want to run your what? >> I want to run the iLife suite. >> Oh, the iLife suite (inaudible) iMac. Well, do you have a monitor and keyboard already? >> No I don't. >> Okay. >> IMac. >> You probably want to go iMac - >> Okay. >> - unless you want to add the extra expense of buying a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor to the Mac mini. >> I think it would probably be less expensive to go with a Mac mini and a cheap keyboard and a low priced monitor. But the iMac is such a gorgeous machine and so easy to set up. And those monitors are gi-normous. >> Do you think that you'll have this machine for a while? Or do you plan on sort of swapping parts out as you, as you get more money or get more needs? >> I want to have it for around two or three years, somewhere around there. >> Yeah. >> As long as the machine will go. >> I would say go with the iMac then. Cause the only other advantage to the Mac mini is that you can actually swap out the parts, you know, you can change the Mac mini and keep the monitor and all that. With the iMac, it's all in one. But if you plan on keeping it for two or three years, I think that's good for you. All right, let's go to an e-mail we got from Lori in Columbus, Ohio. She wrote to CNET Live at CNET.com. I was at the store shopping for a new computer and the salesman was pushing dual core. It seems like all the computers have dual core and I remember reading that gigahertz didn't matter that much. Does dual core? Well yes, it kind of does. We'll explain all about it in today's edition of Ask Anything. ^M00:08:32 [ music ] ^M00:08:38 >> Hey there. What's going on? Rich DeMuro with CNET TV. Welcoming you to another edition of Ask Anything where there are no stupid questions. Dan Ackerman joining me today to talk laptops. And you know, when you're buying a laptop, the important thing is the processor. Back in the day they used to have three-eighty six, four eighty six, now it's this dual core thing. What is that all about? >> Well dual core is basically just the current state of the art when it comes to CPUs. It means it has two cores inside so it can run two programs at the same time. It can do more stuff. Pretty much any laptop you buy today is gonna have a dual core processor. There might be some super cheap ones that have old, single core processors, but if it says Intel Core II Duo or AMD-XII, then you're fine. >> Okay. So a lot of times there are brand names attached to these as well so AMD and Intel have their own flavor? >> That's right. Everything you buy these days is gonna be a dual core. You really shouldn't worry about it too much unless it says like single core, and then stay away from it. >> Stay away from the single core. >> Might as well. >> Now do you get more processing power if you go with the dual core? Is it almost like two processors in one? >> It is kind of like two processors in one and that's like 90% of the laptops out there. So chances are by default that's what you're gonna get and that's what you should have. >> Okay. Is it gonna cost us more to get that? >> Nah, cause that's kind of the standard these days. >> Are we gonna see like, four core soon? >> That's coming sooner than you think. [ background music ] >> It is, huh? Okay. Dan Ackerman, thanks so much for answering our questions about dual core. I'm Rich DeMuro with CNET TV. This has been another edition of Ask Anything. >> Tom's about to do some asking of his own, and maybe some writing. >> Thanks Rafe. I am here with Chris Beatty, the founder of the National Novel Writing Month. Thanks for joining us, Chris. >> Thank you, Tom. >> Appreciate it. National Novel Writing Month is something I've participated in three times and won once. So I'm one for three, I'm hoping to go two for three. But let's explain a little bit about what it is. You, you try to write a novel in a month. >> Yeah it's basically, the idea is that everybody in the world should be spending November writing a fifty thousand word novel from scratch. And we have a website. It's totally free. You sign up and basically pledge your November away to the noveling pursuit. And then you write like crazy throughout the month. And if at the end of the month you have written fifty thousand words, you upload a version of your novel to our website where we have a team of very esteemed word counting robots who count it, and then delete it. And you get added to our winner's page. You get a wonderful PDF of the winner's certificate that you have to download and then write your own name on. The prizes are not really the point. It's really more just to spend a month writing and kind of having an adventure in your own imagination. >> Well the satisfaction is you have a novel at the end that may not be in perfect shape, but it's something you can start editing and start working on. And what I loved about it is the idea that I can, it just got me to start working on it and stop putting it off. >> Exactly. >> And it really pushed me through it. >> Yeah. I mean I think what you have at the end of the month, it really probably should be called National First Draft of a Novel Writing Month. >> Yeah. >> But you do have a beginning, you have a middle, and you have an end. And it's, I mean you can revise a bad first draft into a really good second draft, but you really can't revise a blank page into anything but a blank page. >> That's actually where I am with this. I published this on lulu.com on demand. It's a good second draft. >> A good second. >> But I'm still working on it. But it's nice that you can actually you know, come out with something at the end rather than just saying oh, one of these days I'm gonna write. Does it even have to be a novel? Could it be non-fiction? >> It has to be a novel. In fact we have a team of flying monkeys that actually do orbit the earth and impose these rules. If you are not writing a novel, they will come visit you in the night. >> Okay, so there's a non-fiction writers, they don't have their own month or anything like that? >> Well, we do have, we run Script Frenzy in the off season in the spring, and that's where you write a screen play. But then, there's so many events that have been inspired by NaNoWriMo where you can do National Novel Editing Month, February Album Recording Month where you write a solo album in February and record it. There's a lot of options, but this is basically for novels. >> How many times have you finished this? >> This is eight times. I'm heading for my ninth NaNoWriMo victory this year. >> And you've got, you've got books out of all of them? >> Every year, yeah. Books, I definitely - >> You got something. >> Four out of eight have been really great and the other four are not doing a whole lot right now. >> What's a couple of titles of your work? >> I had one called Busy Town. It was actually set in the dot-com boom in 1999, that's the first one. There was a sort of a vampire, lawyer, aquatic zombie thriller. >> Oh, that old song. >> Yeah, and that one came out two years ago and it's still untitled. I feel like it's hard to title when you've covered so much ground, you know, coming up with a title to encapsulate all that. >> All right, now we've got a bunch of books sitting here and this is just proof that these novels don't just always sit on someone's hard drive at the end of the month. Like these have been published. >> Yeah. >> By major publishers. >> Yeah, in fact, we've had about seventeen of our participants have sold their manuscripts to kind of big time publishing houses. In fact, this past year we had our very first number one New York Times Best Seller. That book is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, an excellent, excellent book. And Sara actually has published two of her National Novel Writing Month manuscripts. And you know, actually I would say the vast majority of people who do this do not do it to get a book published. I think that really they're doing it just for the experience in the same way that some people might run a marathon or play a pickup basketball game, just because it's kind of nice to exercise your brain, and kind of spend a month tackling an oversized challenge. >> And the website is a great place to just socialize about this. I mean you have forums on there. You have ways to have buddies that you write with and can e-mail with. Tell us about all the different ways that people use the technology involved to keep themselves going through the month. >> Yeah, well we have, we have participants in about seventy countries around the world. So the nice thing about the website is it's kind of a common room where everybody can come whether you live in Zimbabwe or Sascatoon [assumed spelling], and kind of moan and complain about the novel writing process, and also kind of share ideas and inspiration. And so we have our forums where people can ask questions. If they don't want to do research, they want to know you know, what would you eat if you were lost in the woods in Poland? Inevitably, a Polish participant will write in and say - >> That's a fantastic research tool. >> You would eat cattail tubers. >> Is that what you eat? >> You really would eat them. >> Huh, well. >> But then we also use the site, you have a buddy list where you can see your buddy's word count and nothing - >> That's what I did last year. >> Yeah. >> We kept telling each other, like, what was happening in our novels to kind of keep us interested in each other's work. But also, that word count bar really pushed you along. >> Yeah, and that's, the word count bar is this beautiful kind of candy colored bar that grows. You enter your word count as often as you like, and some people have a little too many word count updating sessions per day. It kind of becomes the primary way to not write your novel is simply to update your word count for your novel. >> Write three words, update word count. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. >> See it go up. >> But it's actually a real motivator to kind of see that bar get bigger. And then once you validate your novel, then it turns purple and says winner. And then we also through the site, we send out pep talks so. >> I got one from Tom Robbins this morning. >> Tom Robbins was the one we sent out this morning. We have pep talks from Sue Grafton, Neil Gamen, fantastic novelists who have basically, you know, stepped forward to say, I'd love to send out some words of encouragement to these people. And those are kind of nice because it, you know, sometimes you're feeling a little low, maybe around week two when the novelty has worn off and you kind of run out of ideas. >> Neil Gamen writes you a good job. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah, you can't beat that. >> So it's get back to that keyboard. >> November first, today, it starts. It's not too late though, right? >> No, you can sign up, we actually have people who write their entire novels in twenty-four hours. Every year some crazy, I don't know what their carpal tunnels look like after that but, absolutely. You can sign up through the end of the month, and you know, it's absolutely, you know, I think it's a great exercise no matter when you start. And in fact, you know, a lot of people say oh I failed. I didn't write fifty thousand words. But you know, if you write twenty thousand words in a month, that's more than most people write in their lifetime. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I failed the first two times. I kept going and finally got it and it's a great feeling, last year. So I encourage people if you have even the slightest inkling to do this, go to NaNoWriMo.org. That's N, A, N, O, W, R, I, M, O dot org. That's the only URL, right? >> That is for the main program. If you are a twelve and under author, a young author, we have a young writer's program website which is at http://ywp.NaNoWriMo.org. Or there's a link from it off the main site. >> All right. I'm gonna go get writing now, Rafe. Back to you. >> Okay. Okay, thanks, Tom. Best of the Web is next, right after this. ^M00:16:43 [ music ] ^M00:16:50 >> Klauss [inaudible], umpire at the eighty five U.S. Open. >> Macenroe. >> Wait, there's a chance that ball did hit the line, you're not evil. >> Are you handling disputes with a simple phone call? [ background music ] Are you a card member? ^M00:17:04 [ music ] ^M00:17:14 [ background music ] >> Catch the baddest techsploitation vids at CNETTV.com. >> Let's check the tech. >> Check the tech. >> Check the tech. >> Technology is leading the way, and I want to show you some tech highlights. ^M00:17:24 [ music ] ^M00:17:31 [ background music ] >> CNET TV, up to our necks in tech. [ music ] ^M00:17:37 >> Welcome back to CNET Live, 888-900-C, N, E, T, 888-900-2638 is the phone numbers. There's actually a line open if you didn't think you can get through. Give us a ring, get on the show. >> Now it's time for Best of the Web. ^M00:17:51 [ music ] ^M00:17:56 >> Best of the Web brought to you as usual from our friends at Webware. >> Dot com. >> Which is you. >> Which is me, I'm the editor of Webware.com. I'm glad you keep this segment on here. It makes me feel good. >> We can't drop it today. >> No, not today. My pick this week is EveryScape.com which is like Google maps, Google street view, but you can go inside the buildings. >> That's cool. >> So instead of just walking down the street. >> And looking at street scapes, you can walk down the street and look at street scapes and go inside. This, what I'm looking at right here. >> Looks like an artist's impression. >> Is a hotel. No, this is a photograph. >> Oh it is a photograph. >> A three-sixty degree panoramic photograph. >> So they're not coming into your house. >> Of the Fontainebleau Hotel. >> This isn't like Google street view when the van's gonna drive through your front door and take pictures. This is businesses, right? >> Yeah. No, that would be a little disruptive. No this is, businesses pay to have their hotels, restaurants, theaters, or whatever put on line. Let me pan this around so you can see what's going on here which is kind of cool. And you can, whoa. Hold on. And you can zoom. >> Don't disturb those nice people having their lunch. >> And you can like zoom in to things. There we go. And see what it's like to be at the locations. So they pay to have themselves put online, and it's just a really cool way to see what a business is gonna look like. >> It's perfect for hotels, right? >> Yeah. >> Cause a lot of times you think like well, they got a restaurant but what kind of restaurant is it? A couple of tables by a bar or is it like a big, fancy thing where everybody's dressed up. You can go actually and virtually walk around. It's pretty nice. >> Yeah. And they also show related links and attractions nearby. Right now it's only active in two cities. One of them is Miami. There are two other EveryScapes cities that have outside views only, and they're trying to roll it out to a city near you any time. >> All right. So EveryScape.com. >> EveryScape.com. >> All right. Time to get your calls, 888-900-C, N, E, T. On the line, this is a doozy. Dan, where you calling from? Hello, Dan. Are you still there, Dan? Dan has fallen asleep while he was waiting for us to pick up the line. We apologize for that, Dan. We'll try to be faster next time. >> That's good because that was a really hard question. >> Yeah, exactly. Let's go to Manuel in Texas. Hey, Manuel. >> Hello. >> Okay. Are you awake? >> Yeah, I'm here. >> We'll actually take your call. What's up? What's your question? >> Okay. Yes, I'm a student. I've been looking out to buy a laptop for a while now. My main concern is just a good price, and for it to be portable and can take it to school, you know, every day. >> So you want, but you want to play games on the laptop? >> No, I'm not a big, I don't, I don't - >> Oh, you're not a gamer. So you just want something practical. All right. We ought to be able to help you out with that. >> So I, here we go. No, wait. So if you search for a bunch of laptops, we've got the Dell Latitude D630 comes up on top. Dell makes a line of really nice, budget-priced machines. So although the question I would ask you is Mac or PC. Cause a lot of schools, a lot of campuses right now, it seems like 80, 90% of the students are Mac, are Mac heads and that's something - >> Or you might get a discount at the store on a Mac. >> That's true. There are always student discounts so, you know - >> Do you have a preference, Manuel? >> Well, I own like, an MP3 player and it's a DRM, and I have some other, you know, devices that probably would not be compatible with the Mac. >> Okay, so you want to stick in the PC world then. >> Yeah. And like probably, I think that Macs seem to be a little bit pricier. >> Yeah. Well, if you can get a discount on them through your school, that would be one way to go, but yeah go with that Dell. I think that's a good, good option for you. >> Dell has a whole line of reasonably priced laptops. And some of them are editors' choices as well. >> Appreciate the call, Manuel. Let's go to, the next caller is Nelson. Where you calling from, Nelson? Oh, I'm asking you a question and you can't hear me cause the line's not picking up. There you go. Hey, the line actually fell asleep. >> [Inaudible] New Jersey. >> Where you are in New Jersey? >> Central Jersey. >> Central Jersey. What's your question? >> Yeah, is there a way that you could clone or transfer your whole pack of PCs, 6800 or like the HTC? Is there a way that you could copy the whole thing? >> Just, you just want to down, you mean the operating system or just the data that's on it? >> Everything, like, as if [inaudible] swap it back or just restore it? >> Okay. I'm not sure exactly what the question is. It's a little noise on the line. So you want to, you want to copy the entire pocket PC's contents and restore it? >> Yeah, basically. >> Oh, okay. >> And also, with the registry and all that cause there's a lot of registry tweaks that they have. >> Okay. >> Yes. So you could image it. Could you? >> Yeah. >> Yeah? >> You could treat it as a drive and try to image it. >> That is uncharted territory as far as I'm concerned. >> Yeah, I agree. That's tough stuff. Try the easy stuff. >> You can get all the data off of a pocket PC really easily with the sync tool, with Active Sync which comes with it. And you can also put data onto a card. A lot of pocket PCs, phones have cards that you can put the data on. That won't do the registry. >> Yeah. >> I mean, that's like buried deep inside and there's probably, I don't know about this, but there's probably a registry back-up utility somewhere out there. >> Okay, yeah. Go to our forums, Forums.CNET.com and ask about that, about the registry backup. But let's, let's get up to our first look for today, no? >> Okay. >> We've got another update to Motorola's Q. It's just released Q9h Smart Thumb. Take a look. ^M00:23:24 [ music ] ^M00:23:28 [ background music ] >> Hi, I'm Bonnie Cha, Senior Editor at CNET.com and today we're taking a first look at the Motorola Q9H. So after about a year and a half after the first Q was released, we finally have a GSM version of the phone, which is great news for AT&T customers. In terms of design, it's not as sleek as the original Q. It's a bit wider, but that also makes room for a more spacious keyboard. It's probably one of the best keyboards I've used, so it's good for messaging. I do wish the screen was a little bit bigger, but it's sharp and bright. Also it's packed with features. Inside you've got Bluetooth, GPS, and it also has all the IM clients including Yahoo and AIM. As far as multi-media, it's also good as well. It has a dual speaker system, so music sounded really good, and there's also a two mega pixel camera on the back. [ background music ] At launch, it's gonna be a hundred and ninety-nine dollars with a two year contract so that's a really great value. And overall, I'm really pleased with the device. It has good call quality and performance. So, I'm Bonnie Cha and this has been your first look at the Motorola Q9H. ^M00:24:23 [ music ] ^M00:24:27 >> Okay, did a few searches there for our friend in central Jersey, and there's several tools online that will back up your registry for him. They're usually registry cleaner tools, so I found one called Registry Power Cleaner. Just look around for stuff like that, and you can not only clean up your registry and get rid of like, some orphaned entries on your Power PC, but also back up that registry, and that would help you out when you re-image or restore that Power PC later. All right? Let's go get some more phone calls, 888-900-C, N, E, T is the number. We actually still do have a line open. Only have time for a couple of calls here. Let's start with Patrick. Where you calling from, Patrick? >> I'm calling from a very, very, very little town in the middle of central Texas. >> Which town? >> It's called Westfalia [assumed spelling]. >> Okay, Westfalia, Texas. >> Yeah. Maybe three hundred people at one time in the town. >> All right. Well, thanks for calling. Appreciate it. What's your question? >> Thank you. I have an iPod video and I have a fairly new computer. I got it about a year ago. It has a DVD reader, like, I'm able to play, I should be able to play DVDs on my, on my hard drive and everything. But it, one it won't play. And two, I can't rip DVDs to my hard drive. I wanna try to get them off, not really off the DVD but import the video onto my hard drive. >> Yeah, get the video down onto your hard drive. >> Exactly. >> Now, is your DVD player, you said it's not playing the DVDs either? >> It's not even recognizing it. >> Are you using XP? >> Yes. >> Yeah. So, well Windows XP should play a DVD. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, in other words, it doesn't even know that there's anything in the player? >> No. I put the DVD into the drive and my cursor has the, it shows the little CD or DVD icon right next to it. But I pull up my computer, and it's not even recognizing that's there's anything in the drive. >> Well, you know what this sounds like, and this could be totally crazy but this sounds like it's a CD drive and not a DVD drive. That couldn't be the case, could it? >> No, it has DVD drive written on it and I saw it on My Computer. >> Good. >> That's just one of those, is it plugged in questions we have to ask. >> Yeah. >> Have you updated the driver on that DVD player? On the DVD drive? >> No, because I don't really use it that often. >> You might try that. >> I remember when we first got it about a year ago, I could play DVDs on it just fine. In fact I played like three the first week that we got it. And then I went back a couple of months, that's when I got my iPod video, and I was gonna try to do that and it wouldn't work. >> Well, assuming it's not a hardware problem, if you can find the restore discs that came with the machine. >> It didn't come with any discs. The funny thing is we had to do a restore on it about a week and a half ago because it crashed. >> Well you know what? I bet if you update the driver on just that DVD player, go to the, go to the manufacturer's website and say I need to get new drivers. Update that driver, that might fix your problem, because they may have shipped it to you with an updated driver, but gave you restore discs that had an old driver that doesn't work. So that would be the first place I would check. >> Yeah. >> And then after that, you should be able to see something, and there's plenty of options for getting the video off of that DVD. VLC Media Player should be able to play anything if you're having problems with the player. And then there's - >> With CyberLink PowerDVD player. >> Yeah, forget those. Sometimes those stop working or don't work or something comes off the DVD player and overrides them. I would either use Windows Media Player, works fine, or VLC Media Player, I'd download that for playback once you can actually see the DVD again. And then as far as getting it onto your iPod. >> So once you've got the DVD player working again, which we assume will happen, and you want, and you want to get the video onto your iPod, you want a couple of programs for the PC, DVD Decrypter and Videora iPod Converter. And we got these from Lifehacker. If you go into Lifehacker.com and search for DVDs to iPod you'll find the story and get the full links and everything you need to do. >> All right, Patrick. Hope that helps you out. At least it gave you a start. If you need extra help, go to our forums, Forums.CNET.com. Time now for the Download of the Week. ^M00:28:35 [ music ] ^M00:28:38 [ background music ] >> Download of the Week is brought to you by our good friends at CNETdownload.com. This week, we're taking a look at an alternate web browser as I so often like to do. It's the new one-point-oh BETA version of Flock. And hey, you're jumping the gun. We're showing Rafe's. This is the download.com page about Flock one-point-oh BETA. And this, my friends, right here, is Flock. So as we zoom out you'll see, there's a place in the middle for your regular old web pages. And then there's some sidebars you can activate. And they're not always active. I just them active right now as a demonstration. On the left here you see though, I've got all my Twitter postings showing up in a nice, convenient little sidebar. >> Hey, look. There's me. >> Yeah, look. Hey, you were getting ready to record CNET Live. Actually stream. >> That's right, I was. >> But I also have a, you have a FaceBook status update. You can have Flicker, your Flicker friends over here. Up here in this top part is a stream of all my friends' photos from all the different social networks I'm part of. And then there's lots of other stuff you can actually, like if I click this little button here, it gives me this big, white space where I can write a blog entry. You know, I actually can't write right now but, yeah, I can put my novel in there and blog it as I go along. Anyway, it's a really cool web browser based on Firefox if you're into the whole social networking two-point-oh type of stuff. >> Right. And because it's based on Firefox, any page that Firefox or IE will display, or Firefox will display, Flock will display just the same way. The thing about Flock, though, it has all these capabilities. >> It was a little hard for me to get set up, actually. I had to cheat. >> Funny you should mention that, Tom. >> Yeah. I had to use a guide. >> Because, you know, we saw Flock coming along. As soon as it went into one-point-oh open BETA. >> Hey, where'd the guide go? >> Oh, I don't know where it is. As soon as Flock went into one-point-oh, we at Webware wrote a newbies guide for it. So, how to get started. >> That's the thing you saw a sneak peek of right before we went back to my screen. >> It should be up there. Let's try that one more time. >> I saw a hint of it. There it is. >> There it is. So Newbies Guide to Flock on Webware.com. Everything you need to do if you're brand new to Flock. Four steps to get you up and running and using all the full features of the browser. >> I actually used this and it helped me out. Not that I couldn't have figured it out on my own, but it was all set out so nicely by Josh, and it made it real easy. Hey, Rafe, we're almost done. >> Ah, what a shame. >> Thanks for stopping in. We appreciate you helping out. >> Thanks for having me over. >> We'll have to have you co-host all of our shows. >> Okay. >> Cause you pretty much have today. >> Right on. Okay. >> Next week is Stump the Geek. We're gonna have the Geek Squad folks sitting in with, Molly and Brian will be hosting the show next week. [ background music ] I'll be off as well. And the Geek Squad will be helping take some calls. So see if you can stump them, 888-900-C, N, E, T. Next week, four PM Eastern, one PM Pacific, ten AM Hawaiian. Don't forget to set those clocks back in the U.S., too. >> So long. ^M00:31:15 [ music ] ^M00:31:29 >> Klauss [inaudible], umpire at the eighty five U.S. Open. >> Macenroe. >> Wait, there's a chance that ball did hit the line, you're not evil. >> Are you handling disputes with a simple phone call? [ background music ] Are you a card member? [ music ]