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>> Tom Merritt: Hey. Welcome to CNET.com's the Real Deal. I'm Tom Merritt.
>> Rafe Needleman: I'm Rafe Needleman:
>> Tom Merritt: And today on this new video version, which you might not be getting. You might be all still getting the old audio version, which is fine, but there's a video version, now, of this show, where you can actually see us talking.
>> Rafe Needleman: Thank goodness I got a haircut.
>> Tom Merritt: Why would you want to do that?
>> Rafe Needleman: I have no idea.
>> Tom Merritt: But we're going to be talking about the, the various ways in which you can handle having computers in two places.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yes.
>> Tom Merritt: Or having your data in two places.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah, well, or only in one place but being able to use it from anywhere.
>> Tom Merritt: Exactly. So -
>> Rafe Needleman: Which -
>> Tom Merritt: Let's say maybe you're at home -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yes.
>> Tom Merritt: And you want to be working on the data from work, or maybe you're data's at home, and you're on vacation.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Or maybe your in your second beach home.
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: And you need to do some work.
>> Rafe Needleman: Or one of your many estates.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. Maybe some of that bailout money made it's way into buying you a nice Cape Cod estate.
>> Rafe Needleman: Maybe you had to go on the lam quick, and you're on your yacht.
>> Tom Merritt: That's right.
>> Rafe Needleman: On you way to -
>> Tom Merritt: You're in international waters avoiding people collecting the bailout money that you stole.
>> Rafe Needleman: That's right.
>> Tom Merritt: Probably more likely, you're just at home, and your computer's at work or something like that.
>> Rafe Needleman: Or you're [crosstalk] or you're, or you're in a Starbucks, and there's a file that you left at home on your desktop or something like that.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah.
>> Rafe Needleman: How do you have access to all of those without driving yourself absolutely bonkers?
>> Tom Merritt: My mom used to say, "I can't be two places at once." That's exactly the problem we're dealing with here. Right.
>> Rafe Needleman: But you're data, however, can.
>> Tom Merritt: The easyos [phonetic] way to do this is to carry it around.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Just get a laptop, and you have that be your only computer.
>> Tom Merritt: If you can get a netbook with a high-capacity hard drive, and you're comfortable on that little keyboard and little screen, done. Just throw it in your backpack. Throw it in your briefcase.
>> Rafe Needleman: Why a netbook? Why not just a real laptop?
>> Tom Merritt: If you've got a strong back, [laughter] then go ahead and get a full-on laptop, which is actually what I do. That is my solution to this. I don't have a netbook. I have a MacBookPro.
>> Rafe Needleman: That's your -
>> Tom Merritt: And I carry it home, and use it as my home computer, and I carry it to work, and I keep it backed up. You know, it's essential when you're having all your data in one place is that you make sure you back it up because you don't have a redundant anywhere if you don't do that. But that way, wherever I am, I've got all my programs. I've got all my settings just the way I like them. So, you know, that's, that's kind of my solution to this.
>> Rafe Needleman: So I have a couple of computers, and the, the big desktop at home has this ginormous [phonetic] hard drive, and a lot of files on it that I don't, that won't fit on a laptop. You know, all the video archives and photo archives and, and music and stuff like that. And all archives from jobs going back 10, 15 years that I just don't want to carry around on my laptop.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. You don't need to carry all that stuff around.
>> Rafe Needleman: So I've got basically, you know, one place where I've got all this data, and every now and then I need to get to it, but I don't want to keep it with me all the time. But when I'm on the road on my laptop, I want the data that is current, which I don't want to have to be dragging stuff back and forth all the time. I want all the data that's current. Everything from the last -
>> Tom Merritt: Store it in the cloud.
>> Rafe Needleman: Well, that's one way to do it.
>> Tom Merritt: Actually, that's, that's kind of a half step to where you're going.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: We're go, we're going to get to where you're going down the road, but, but the next step up is to actually use cloud services like Google Docs. So the stuff that you're working on, you upload into Google Docs so that you have access to it. Maybe collaborate. You put all your music on a service like LaLa.com, so you have access to all your music all the time. You can store your photos in something like Picasso or Flicker, or if you just need access to a Photoshop, and it's too big, or you, you don't want to lug it around, you know, you've got it on one computer, you don't want to pay it on a second computer, you can use Photoshop online. There's lots of cloud apps that would allow you to actually have a smaller hard drive.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: On one of those netbooks.
>> Rafe Needleman: Now, these are, I think, the cloud apps are really good for work files. For spreadsheets and documents, if you're comfortable with the, with a word processor that doesn't have all the big giant features of Word or, or something like that or use Open Office. Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, and even Google Presentations they'll do, you know, 75, 80, maybe even 90 percent of the things that everybody needs to do all the time, and the last 10 percent are features that most people don't use. And that's great, but when you're talking about media files, it's very different. At some point, you've got to, your big files, your pictures that come out of your SLR or something that is, you know, one and a half megabyte pictures, that you maybe take a hundred pictures on an outing or something, that's a lot of data to like shuffle up to the cloud every time, you know, you want to offload the pictures from your camera.
>> Tom Merritt: Well, the cloud thing could be used for two computers in two locations.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: This is, and this is probably the most common scenario. Somebody's got a desktop computer at home, and they've got a desktop computer at work. They don't carry them back and forth because they're desktops, and they would get strange looks walking up and down the street with them, or carrying their desktop computer out of the workplace, but -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yes.
>> Tom Merritt: They can use the cloud to say like, well, my music is available at either place, or they can say, well, I most of the time is just working on the docs at work, but when I want, no, oh, I'm going to want to work on that one at home, I'll put it in the Google Docs, and that way I can access it easily on the other end. But what you're getting at is what if that's not enough. What if I really need to have access to these raw files, and -
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: All my docs because I don't know which one I'm going to need.
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: Then you need to sync.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yes, or you need to have remote access, which we'll get to.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. That's the [inaudible], you're jumping ahead. [crosstalk] You're always trying to give away the ending of the book.
>> Rafe Needleman: Oh, I did it again. I'm sorry.
>> Tom Merritt: [laughs] But the syncing, the syncing's the next step.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Syncing is, now, this is what I do, and I, I, if you listen to the show a lot, I, I probably have talked about this a couple of times. In fact, I think I did a whole show on it. But syncing for me is the solution. So I've actually got three computers, and I have a work directory, which is, you know, slash rafe slash data on my hard disc on two Windows machines, actually one xp, one Vista, and one Macintosh, and they're all connected together with Windows Live Sync, formerly known as Folder Share, which is a free peer-to-peer application -
>> Tom Merritt: Is that Live Mesh, or is that a different thing?
>> Rafe Needleman: No. I'll get to Live Mesh in one second. Don't skip ahead.
>> Tom Merritt: OK.
>> Rafe Needleman: Tom.
>> Tom Merritt: I see. Now we're even.
>> Rafe Needleman: Alright. And what Windows Live Sync does, it's a peer-to-peer app that every time you close a file, it, it, it checks, it transmits it to your other computers as long as they're online. So if you've got two computers online, change one file, boom, it's transferred to the next one over the net. Really great is also is a de facto backup. You know, if my laptop goes up in flames, everything that I've done on it up to like 30 seconds ago is on my desktop assuming my desktop's turned on. Now, the great thing about Windows Live Sync is it synchronizes everything in the directory view point no matter how big. There's, it's free, and there's no bandwidth or storage restrictions on it because Windows Live Sync isn't actually storing anything in the cloud. It's just using the cloud as kind of a switchboard to connect your two computers together. Now, if you want offline access to it, then you go to Live Mesh. Now, at some point -
>> Tom Merritt: OK. So that, Live Mesh is different than Live Sync. Live Sync's just keeping two computers together. Live Mesh has a [crosstalk] like a third-party storage.
>> Rafe Needleman: [crosstalk] Off site storage. Also stores stuff in the cloud, and it does sync, but there's a storage limitation.
>> Tom Merritt: Ah ha.
>> Rafe Needleman: Because they're also storing stuff in the cloud, so you have to be kind of careful about what you decide to "synchronize". The advantage is, you can get access to it even when all your computers are offline by going and hanging with the web browser and just, and just getting it that way. [crosstalk]
>> Tom Merritt: And then -
>> Rafe Needleman: That's like, like MobileMe in someways.
>> Tom Merritt: There's other ways you can go with this. You know, you can do MobileMe.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Like you said, which does some syncing, and also does cloud storage, and, and you know, Joey, Joey, Joey, pointed out something in the chat room just now. He's like, "Isn't cloud storage old? I mean, we had FTP sharing on Windows 98", and yes, that's true, but the difference is it's so much easier now. That doing, doing the FTP with like saving your, your docs to a remote server was inexplicable to my mother.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah, it was -
>> Tom Merritt: There was no way she was going to handle that, but being able to say, like go to docs.google.com, and then click on this link, she gets that. So it's kind of a new face. And that's what Live Mesh and Live Sync, all these things are they are taking stuff we've actually had the technology to do this for a long time, but it's making it easier. And, and the other, if you, if, you know, you want to make it a little harder on yourself, but get more storage, you could go to a backup system like Jungle Disc or Carbonite [assumed spelling], which offer web access to your files.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yes.
>> Tom Merritt: But they are more backup oriented.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: So it's less about making it easy to find files.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah, they're, they're designed to be backup, but they are getting more and more data sharing and data accessibility features, and all these things that do sync and cloud storage have some degree of sharing. So while what I've just described is a very personal solution for my data, if I want to share a file, most of the ones that [inaudible] will let you also kind of open a door into your backups and share that file. Now, where was I going with this. Totally off, off the rails here.
>> Tom Merritt: Well, let's, let's, let's go back and, and point out that you actually slipped Live Sync into the syncing -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: In, in a way that honestly is kind of similar to remote access because it doesn't actually store anything in the cloud. Like you said. So it's moving away. You can just roll your own for this if you don't trust the cloud. There's already somebody, I think Hank in here is like, am I alone in not fully trusting this nebulous cloud? No, Hank, you are not. So there's a way to just take it all into your own hands, and do remote access of the computer you have at home all the time.
>> Rafe Needleman: That's like using your, your, whatever your base computer is, your big laptop, your home computer, and terminal access into it, which means basically your remote screen and keyboard and mouse.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. So you use something like Logmein -
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: Or go to My PC or any number of, of VNC solutions or Windows Remote Desktop -
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: And your computer that you're logging into, let's say it's the one at home, has to be on all the time -
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: And then you have to have the password, and you have to have the program running on that one. You have to have the same program running on yours. Logmein's easy that way because you just have the web browser.
>> Rafe Needleman: Logmein is great.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah.
>> Rafe Needleman: Very, very easy to use. Windows Remote Desktop also pretty straightforward assuming you have something that can see it over the web. Now if you're, if you're in a business, chances are your enterprise technology will let you see your machine, or if you have a Windows home server, that will act as a gateway for Windows Remote Desktop as well.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah, and you know, you can do remote access through Mesh using the Windows [crosstalk] -
>> Rafe Needleman: Another way to do it.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah, if you, if you want to combine. You can sort of, well, ZenLD pointed that out. You can combine a few of these depending on the service you're using. But what we haven't talked about yet are all the problems with, with all of these services. Like they're, there are big disadvantages to every single one of these.
>> Rafe Needleman: Before, before we get into the problem, can I just mention a couple of other really cool solutions here?
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah, sure.
>> Rafe Needleman: That I don't think we've touched on. If you want remote access to your media files, there are a bunch of ways to do that. Therefore, accessing iTunes or music database, you can use Simplify Media and share it with yourself. That will let you stream your information or your, your music. Orb does similar things for photos, music, and videos. Somebody asked in the chat room have I fallen out of love with Ever Note. No. Ever Note is a great application. It's one of a small but growing number of applications that both have remote, you know, installed apps with your data local that also have their own built in syncing tools. So if you install the application in two places, you have access to all your data automatically as well as on the web. There's more applications like that coming along. So there's a lot of interesting point solutions or media-specific or app-specific solutions that incorporate some form of synchronization or remote access. No matter what you're looking at, there's probably something out there like that. Sorry, Tom. Before you rain on our parade, why [crosstalk] -
>> Tom Merritt: Why are you, why are you sorry?
>> Rafe Needleman: Because you were going to get into your, on your rant about could go possibly go wrong.
>> Tom Merritt: I'm actually not. I'm going to take a commercial break, and then we can get into the rant and do what's wrong with all of these.
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>> Tom Merritt: So we were just waxing eloquently about all of these wonderful ways of accessing your data, but there's problems with all of them. So when you're carrying stuff around, you can lose it. You got one point of failure there. If you drop that netbook and break the hard drive, you're going to have to spend $3,000 at Drive Savers to get it back.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Or even if you don't drop it. You know, if the hard drive just goes corrupt. So that's why we said, you've got to [crosstalk] -
>> Rafe Needleman: Start spending your money and bank account, yeah. [crosstalk]
>> Tom Merritt: You got to back it up, but for our purposes here, even if you're backed up, if you're out and about, and the netbook fails, you're done. So that, that that is a negative. Cloud computing as a negative we sort of touched on, which is it's somebody else's servers.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: So do you trust them? I mean, frankly, I trust their reliability more than my own server.
>> Rafe Needleman: Reliability, yes. And, and I'm with you. I trust, now they're all going to have some form of down, some [crosstalk] -
>> Tom Merritt: How many 9's are after the 99?
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Whatever.
>> Tom Merritt: It makes a difference, but, you know what, compare that to your one, what's your up time on your personal hard drives? You ever have a hard drive cash?
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. [crosstalk] Or a system crash.
>> Tom Merritt: [crosstalk] Multiple back ups of everything. So I trust it for that. It's the privacy issue.
>> Rafe Needleman: Exactly.
>> Tom Merritt: What are they going to do with your data?
>> Rafe Needleman: That's, I refuse to speak to what Google or Ever Note or Microsoft or whatever, I mean they all, they stake their business and their reputation on keeping your data private, but they haven't been hacked yet. And maybe they never will.
>> Tom Merritt: And the thing is, we're going to have to figure that out because things like S3 for running, you know, for running things in the, in the cloud are widely used. So lots of businesses trust Amazon with their data.
>> Rafe Needleman: Now, one of the things I will say that's very interesting when, when you talk about the, the privacy issue here. Most back up online cloud backup services, I'm going to get some of these names wrong, but the examples that I'm going to talk about here, Carbonite, Mozy, Backplace, [assumed spelling], most of these services, though not necessarily those that I just mentioned, the, the ultimate encryption key is theirs. And they use this so they can, once they verify you, you jump through their hoops, if you forget their password, they can help you recover your data. Some of the services also let you set your own encryption key. Now, this is different from the password to access. This is the actual hardware encryption key. Some of these services, I believe Backplace may be one, let you set what that encryption key is, and only you know it. Now, if they do their technology right, that means that even they cannot access your files if you lose your password.
>> Tom Merritt: Right. Mozilla does that with Weave, the new plugin. When you encrypt your, your backups, you better remember that password, ladies and gentlemen, because you're done if you don't.
>> Rafe Needleman: But if you are concerned about where your, how your data is stored and who might later get access, access to it in a hack or sale of the company or, or something like, or, or a Subpoena for that matter, check to see that the services that you're looking at let you set your own encryption key.
>> Tom Merritt: And don't lose it.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Make sure you don't lose it.
>> Rafe Needleman: Or if you need to lose it, make sure that it [crosstalk]
>> Tom Merritt: OK. So we got sidetracked. Cloud could, some of the dangers of cloud computing. So it's a matter of privacy versus reliability. A lot of people are like, oh, I don't want them to handling my data. What if they lose it? You know what, they're less likely to lose it than you are. So that's not the problem. It's the privacy issue.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Syncing has, has problems just that it doesn't always work as advertised. I mean, it's nice to sync up stuff, but a lot of times, I, I, just, just think of calendar syncing. I am constantly fighting double entries on my calendar -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Because it forgets like, oh, I have never synched with that before, and then it re, you know, it doubles everything. The syncing services are getting better all the time, but they're not, they're not error proof.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. The sync services, the sync service that I like is great for files, but for synchronizing e-mail and calendaring, I have yet to find a totally reliable solution, and, and of course, [crosstalk] the one file -
>> Tom Merritt: And even synching files, you've, you've got to have an Internet connection -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah, and the one file type that Microsoft Live Sync does not do a good job at is my Outlook PSC files. Hilarious.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. So yeah, and if you, if you don't have an Internet connection, you're, you're toast. So that, that's something that you don't have a problem if you carry your netbook and your laptop around with you. You don't need the Internet connection to access your data. If you're syncing, and you haven't synched, and you got no Internet connection, you don't get your latest files.
>> Rafe Needleman: Although, you know, if you're using a Blackberry or an iPhone or a lot of phones, they also have their own sync so you can use your phone as backup to your calendar -
>> Tom Merritt: Right. But then you would have an Internet connection.
>> Rafe Needleman: Well, well, it might be a cellular connection. Right, not a WiFi connection.
>> Tom Merritt: Well, some kind of Internet connection -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah, right, -
>> Tom Merritt: But if you have no Internet connection, the netbook will still have all your data because you have it in your hard drive. You're in an airport, you got no cell service, you got no WiFi -
>> Rafe Needleman: Right. This is why Google Gears is such an important concept. Gears is Google's offline tool that synchronizes data that normally would be in a cloud to your local machine so that you can access it on a [inaudible] connection and then it resyncs it back up and then you're done. So you can like, you know, edit your files on an airplane when you're offline.
>> Tom Merritt: Remote Access has the same problems when you're going into your own computer. You have to have an Internet connection to do it, and you have to make sure that that computer's still on, the power didn't go out, somebody didn't unplug it, turn it off by accident.
>> Rafe Needleman: Or it didn't crash, and by the way, you need a fast connection if you're doing remote access. Otherwise, it can be a really frustrating experience when you're mouse is like, even if your mouse isn't dragging on the screen, [inaudible] might drag. It looks crappy. You know, it's not a full-time solution if you ask me.
>> Tom Merritt: I think the answer to all of these has been anticipated by Chipmunk884 in the chat room, -
>> Rafe Needleman: Which is?
>> Tom Merritt: Why don't you just use all of the mentioned methods?
>> Rafe Needleman: I use a lot of them. [crosstalk] How many, how many do you use?
>> Tom Merritt: Do you use all of them, but a combination that works for you. I don't use remote access because I carry the laptop with me. So I've got nothing to remote access into, but I use all of the rest of these. I use, well, I don't really use syncing, but I use backup. So I, I make sure I have web access to my files if I'm not at my computer, and I use Google Docs. I use LaLa. I use Ever Note. And, and I use the carry it around. So I use three of the four.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: Two and a half of them.
>> Rafe Needleman: Let's see, well, I'm kind of a belt, suspenders, and clothespins type of guy when it comes to backup. So I've got sync, local backup on a Windows home server, and cloud backup on Carbonite. Just, don't ask me why because they just [inaudible] over time all these solutions.
>> Tom Merritt: And the reason -
>> Rafe Needleman: Plus Ever Note plus Google Docs plus occasionally Simplify Media for streaming my, my tunes. In fact, when I, I was looking today, we'll talk about, we're going to cover next time, but I was looking for an application that does a specific thing, and one of the things, I didn't even think about it, but one of the must haves is I don't want to have to worry about the data is. I want the application to deal with it for me. I pull up the app. I want my data. I go to another computer or the web or the phone, I want my data. I don't want to have to be shuffling files around ever. That's what I expect from a modern application these days.
>> Tom Merritt: Well, so the upside of all of this, as someone asked in the chat room, Hank I think, was like, well, OK, I'm not seeing the upside. The upside of this is you then have your data everywhere. So if you're somewhere, and someone's like, hey, can you pull up that document, you can because you have access to it. You're never stuck, you're never caught flatfooted, well, I don't really have that right now. Let me get back home, and then I can e-mail it to you.
>> Rafe Needleman: I'll tell you another big upside to this is if you're computer crashes, or you get a new computer, and you don't want to use the settings, transfer, or whatever tools, you, Ever Note is a great example of this. Get a new computer, install Ever Note, a free application. Give it your password. It downloads your data. Boom, it's there for offline access no problem, and then, then you're online. You don't have to worry about where your file is. It comes with the app.
>> Tom Merritt: And if you're carrying your laptop, you don't even need the Internet access.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah.
>> Tom Merritt: You've got it right there.
>> Rafe Needleman: Exactly.
>> Tom Merritt: Alright. Onto the comments from previous episode. SegDaniel [assumed spelling] wrote on the blog, Ritz went into Chapter 11, but that doesn't mean all the stores are closing. I work for a store in Dallas, and we are remaining open. Less than half our stores are closing. All of the major stores doing good business will remain open. I was under the impression, I really was, that all of the Ritz camera stores were closing. So, good to hear that some of them will stay open.
>> Rafe Needleman: Joey, Joey, Joey writes, I hear the I don't use flash or only natural light because flash is not natural statement a lot, and I find that those that say these are photographers that don't know or haven't taken the time to understand and use flash properly, and just like a lot of podcasts that attempt to talk about photograph, episode 156 was no exception to this. Using proper technique of balancing ambient and flash, bouncing it, or taking it off camera with modifiers, you can achieve photographs that natural-light photographers, photographers would swear was shot without flash. It just takes time to understand how to use flash properly, etc. You are absolutely correct. The problem, of course, is that most cameras including DSLR's, the flash that they have on them is a small flash close to the lens that's generally overpowered and makes things look lousy. For example, I was just taking some pictures in shaded sunlight over the weekend, and I have, you know, a Nikon DSLR, and I was taking some pictures with the flash on it to fill in the shadows, and it looked terrible. So I turned the flash down to underexpose the, to minus, you know, nearly a full stop, and things began to look great. That's tweaking. If you, you're right. If you know how to use it, you can get good results, but if you just take the defaults on a point and shoot, or even an SLR, the flash will give you flat, washed-out images, in my opinion.
>> Tom Merritt: Alright. Inyaki [assumed spelling] wrote in and said there's something very, very important you guys forgot. It's a very critical point. Backwards lens compatibility and lens compatibility in general. There are very many people that think that the best lens, namely Olympus and Kosenia [assumed spelling], can be used with any camera, which is not true. It isn't as well that any lens made for a brand bought, say at a garage sale, can be used with current DSLR's. Nor Nikon nor Canon nor Olympus can use older lens. Only Sony can use Konica Minolta lens. I have to disagree about the IS system. The very best as far as I know in real world tests is the Olympus system.
>> Rafe Needleman: And that's an incamera, not an inlens system.
>> Tom Merritt: So, so, and he's got some more in here about pro cameras, but the lens compatibility is something that we didn't get a chance to touch on.
>> Rafe Needleman: No, we -
>> Tom Merritt: We kind of, we kind of jumped over it, I think, and, but it is something that people should know is that it's not like if you're moving from point and shoot to DSLR -
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Once you buy into a camera, a DSLR system, you're buying into a lens family, and one of the mistaken reasons that I went to Nikon, well, I've used Nikons in college, and I still had some lens. Of course, those were all manual focus lenses that didn't work on the new autofocus cameras. Well, they worked, but they didn't meter. They didn't focus, etc, etc. There are second-brand lens like Vivitar, well, I'm really dating myself now, Tamron [assumed spelling], etc. that makes lens for particular cameras. Once you get a lens for a particular camera brand, it won't work on another. Nikon has great backward compatibility with Nikon lens. Canon is pretty good, etc., etc. But basically once you're into a brand, you're into a brand.
>> Tom Merritt: And then DaveNM [assumed spelling] pointed out on the blog. He said, "You can get an OM adapter ring for the Olympus cameras to use OM lenses on their new DSLR's, and as an OM10 owner, I appreciate this accessory a lot. And as a side note, all of Canon's Eosc [assumed spelling] cameras, even going back to film, can use the same lenses, at least according to a professional photographer friend of mine."
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. I just need to say again, same with Nikon, they can use the old lenses, but modern cameras have capabilities that old lenses don't support. Yes, they'll mount. Yes, they'll take pictures, but you might have to do manual focus, manual apater [phonetic] setting, etc., etc.
>> Tom Merritt: Finally, KenB [assumed spelling] wrote in and said, "I've decided I'm going to cut the cable. However, after that, I don't completely understand how I'm going to wire my system to receive over-the-air standard def programming as well as over-the-air high def programming. Can I have one antenna for both, or do I need two separate antennas? I have three Mitsubishi DLP HD TV's. The oldest is from 2004. Not sure if I need a converter box or not. Any help appreciated. Perhaps others might be interested." Yes, Ken. Good question. Once the transition is done, you're only going to have one signal. It's going to be a digital signal, and some of it will be standard def, and some of it will be high def, but that'll be decided on the side of the TV station. You won't have to pick. So you'll only need one antenna, and if you've got three DLP HD TV's, as long as they all have tuners in them, which they probably should if you bought them as recently as 2004, you won't need a converter box, and you wouldn't need a converter box anyway because they're capable of displaying high def. You'd just need to buy a tuner, which is a whole different thing. The converter box is only for old TV's that only have an analog capability. They don't have the capability of high def. So you need that converter box to turn it into the old analog signal. For you, three Mitsubishi DLP HD TV's, you need one new antenna, and then you need to split off that signal to all three of them, and then they probably all have tuners them, so you should be done. If one of them didn't have a tuner in it, then you might have to go out and buy a tuner, but don't buy a converter box because that's different. That's not what you need if your TV didn't have a, a tuner, but I'm guessing you do. So yeah. Don't get confused by this digital versus high def. Digital is just the way the signal gets to you. It's not about whether it's high def or not. They're not the same thing. We kind of treat them that way, and it's, it's, in some ways our fault for throwing them around interchangeably, but they are two different things. The digital signal is just to distinguish it from the old analog signal. The old analog signal wasn't capable of carrying high def. The digital signal is capable of carrying high def, but it won't always be doing that, and that's, but that's the TV station. That's like a TV station broadcasting in black and white versus color. HD versus, you know, versus standard.
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Tom Merritt: Have I succeeded in confusing Ken, do you think?
>> Rafe Needleman: No. I think that was crystal clear. You're very charitable.
>> Tom Merritt: No. [crosstalk] Next episode. What are we going to do?
>> Rafe Needleman: Let's, well, let me go to my list. Oh, yes. Let's do to-do list.
>> Tom Merritt: It's on my to-do list. My wife did a big exhaustive search in the to-do list so I'm going to mine her for information.
>> Rafe Needleman: And I was this morning trying to figure out what to do for a to-do list. I've been using Ever Note, and it's, it's, I love Ever Note for a lot of things, but not for to-do lists, and I was looking up some other apps, and then you're wife actually re-Twittered my, a response to me, which was very helpful. So she obviously knows some stuff. Lot of solutions. Big problem in our complex lives, how to keep up with all the stuff we need to do. We want to hear what you guys are doing as well. So -
>> Tom Merritt: Yes, absolutely. Many different ways for you to tell us. You can e-mail us, realdeal at cnet.com. Just let us know. You could post on the blog, realdeal.cnet.com in response to this episode. You can go into the forums and just start talking to each other about your favorite to-do list. Please do forums.cnet.com, or give us a call 877-600-CNET, 877-600-2638. Probably e-mail is the best way or forums, forums.cnet.com, but we do want to hear, what's your solution to the to-do list. That keep all of that organized for you. People have different requirements too. [crosstalk] I want to hear, there's not one size fits all.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. I, I, I want to hear what apps people use as well as, you know, what brand of, you know, moleskin paper or whatever.
>> Tom Merritt: Yeah. Yeah. Moleskin paper?
>> Rafe Needleman: Moleskin, how do you pronounce it. Moleskin.
>> Tom Merritt: Moleskin.
>> Rafe Needleman: But it's -
>> Tom Merritt: A paper, that the -
>> Rafe Needleman: Well, you know, the, the books.
>> Tom Merritt: Oh. Yes.
>> Rafe Needleman: I saw a TV show the other day where somebody had a moleskin [crosstalk] a moleskin book, and they took it, and it was some romantic scene, and they, they, they wrote a little note, and ripped out the page, and handed it to somebody. Evil. You would never do that with a moleskin book.
>> Tom Merritt: No, you don't do that.
>> Rafe Needleman: No.
>> Tom Merritt: That's wrong.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. [crosstalk] Alright.
>> Tom Merritt: So give us, send us your to-do list recommendations, realdeal at cnet dot com. We'll see you next week.
>> Rafe Needleman: See you next time.
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^M00:27:50
