Marc and Mario are in the studio with
Guest: Michelle Meskill, Assistant Marketing Manager for Celestron
Michelle Meskill is Assistant Marketing Manager for Celestron and is talking about one of the coolest devices for astronomy. Celestron has made telescopes since 1960, as well as spotting scopes, binoculars, their latest product, the SkyScout.
SkyScout is an award winning product.
Basically a Personal Planetarium, incorporating 3 basic components:
- GPS - for time, date and location
- Celestial Database - the "brains" with a 6,000 object database
- Gravitational Sensors - so the brain knows how you are holding it
Together, those 3 components accurately locate and identify night sky objects for you. You simply go out in the night, look at the stars, point the SkyScout at it, press a button, and the SkyScout tells you what you're looking at - planets, stars, and constellations.
It also has audio and text data on what you're looking at. As well as identifying night sky objects, it can also tell you what to look for and where to find it with a list of the best objects for you to see on a particular night, and with arrows in the viewfinder, it guides you to it.
The SkyScout Personal Planetarium is about the size of a camcorder, and street prices currently run at $399.00 and there's also a $50.00 rebate until 12/31/07. Check out Amazon for competative prices.
Their most expensive telescope is the CGE 1400 Telescope which is a fully computerized GPS equipped and gets deep sky objects really clear. It's over $6,000!
Michelle is going to give a lucky caller a free SkyScout Personal Planetarium in the 10 O'Clock hour.
Caller: Gary in Huntington Beach
How do you clear browsing history? Regedit will allow you to remove certain sites, you can delete the entire history from Internet Options, under history you can also clear your history.
BTW, Gary's voice is heard in the opening of the show, he "Loves coming to the remotes because he wins so much!"
Gary also cannot find out why he keeps getting kicked off the internet, and wants a freebie gift certificate for some tech help!
As it's Christmas, CyberDefender are offering free tech support to KABC listeners on December 26, 2007.
Use the code "Holiday" to get 24hrs of free tech support from CyberDefender. Call 1-877-377-3765
Caller: Cathy in Woodland Hills
Has a 4 year old desktop, and now has a notebook with Vista. Hasn't done any backups, wants to know how to transfer her data from old PC to new. Vista comes with Easy Transfer, all she needs is to download the Easy Transfer program to her old PC, and get a cable, available from Belkin
and IOGEAR for $30.00
The program & cable will transfer data, but not programs which have to be reinstalled.
Find & Delete Duplicated Files
Cathy also has loads of duplicates of files and wants to know how to eliminate them. Drag and drop them to the external had drive, then connect the external hard drive to the new PC and drag and drop them to the new PC. There are also programs that will locate and eliminate duplicate files, check out PC World's recommendations for finding and eliminating duplicate files.
Make Vista More User Friendly
Cathy is also not loving Vista, does she need a little more time with it? Does she have User Account enabled? It can be annoying, and Marc disabled it after about 3 hours of using Vista.
There is also something called TweakVI a series of programs that allows you to customize Vista to make it easier to use.
Cathy's other complaint is that Vista is very slow to start taking 5 minutes. She doesn't know if there are too many startup programs. To check, go to "Start," then select "Run," and type in "msconfig" which will then show how many startup programs are running and possibly slowing down the system boot up.
If it's been slow from the beginning, take it back to the store.
Caller: Marie in Torrance
Wonders if she should carry on with her computer insurance? She has both a desktop and a laptop. Marc thinks it's better to have insurance on a laptop, but then again, most laptop insurance plans do not cover damage to the screen, which is the part most likely to be damaged on a laptop. Marc also believes that if there's going to be a problem with a PC, it will show up in the first month of ownership, when the PC is still under warranty. Marie's insurance also covers technical support.
Marc is very impressed with his Apple MacBook, he went to the Apple Store and found that they give excellent technical support at the store on Apple Computers, and really good One on One training and help.
AppleCare, Apple's extended warranty gives 3 years of coverage, and
ProCare and
One-To-One, which for $99.00 gives you virtually unlimited support for your Apple computers, even when they're out of warranty.
Bottom line, if Marie's insurance also gives tech support for $99 a year, it's worthwhile.
10 O'Clock Hour
In this hour, the caller with the answer to the question, "Who invented the telescope?" will get a free Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium.
Guest: Mark from Adobe
Photoshop Elements is an affordable program that Marc recommends for photo editing.
But as Mark says, it does a whole lot more than basic editing allowing users to create:
- Digital Scrap Books
- Digital Slide Shows and presentations
- Upload a Dynamic Flash-based Web Gallery
All of that is built into Adobe Photoshop Elements. Retail is $99 and upgrade is only $20.
Check out best prices at Amazon
What's the best way to use Elements?
For a beginner, there's a new mode called "Guided Edit Mode" which is ideal for a beginner to get started. It shows you how to crop, or how to make portions of the photo lighter or darker, once you've got the basics in Guided Edit Mode, you can progress to more advanced modes, like "Quick Fix Mode," and finally, "Full Edit Mode."
What's the next step up from Elements?
Photoshop Lightroom is used by a lot of professionals and is especially designed for editing RAW images which allows very precise editing. LightRoom runs around $300.
At the top of the ladder is Adobe Creative Suite, for really enthusiastic amateurs and professionals.
Mario wants to know if there's anything new with Adobe Audition? There's a new program called SoundBooth that's designed to be a little easier to use for movie sound editing. It comes with Creative Suite.
Go to www.Adobe.com for more information on all Adobe's products.
BOTW
At Buy.com, Lexmark X7350 MultiFunction color inkjet printer, copier, scanner & fax;
Regular price is $129.99, but available for only $69.99 including shipping! Go to Buy.com.
Celestron Competition Winner
Jim from Montery Park has the answer!
It's Hans Lipperhey who invented the telescope, not Galileo Galilee as many other callers thought, and not Thomas Edison as Mario thought. So Jim's the lucky winner of the SkyScout Personal Planetarium.
Caller: Marty
Has an old telescope, what does Michelle recommend to replace his 1954 scope? Call Celestron's tech support or visit their website for advice.
A good new product from Celestron is the SkyScope is a new telescope that works with the SkyScout to get a better view at what you've found.
Caller: Robin
His son's computer started freezing up, he plays flight simulator games. Wants to know if there's a monitoring program that will tell him what's causing the PC to freeze? Windows has a system monitor built into it, but there are some things that typically cause gaming problems:
1) Make sure you have the latest video card drivers installed, check for updates.
2) Direct X - make sure you have the latest version.
3) Memory can be an issue, make sure there's enough RAM.
4) Make sure that you have checked Windows for other updates.
5) Shut down any other running processes that are not needed.
6) Run a virus and spyware scan.
As the PC is freezing even when he's not gaming, it's likely to be one of the above reasons, rather than anything specific to the game program.
Caller: Denny in Torrance
Has a Compaq Presario 2800 laptop that he's had for a few years and it's running slow, running XP Home, with 512 RAM. Wants to erase the HDD and do a clean install, but Compaq's restore disk won't let him do it. Usually, going to the command prompt and typing Format: C/s will do it, but it Denny emails Marc with specifics on his PC, Marc will send instructions.
Caller: Steve in Los Angeles
Wants advice on getting a GPS device - Garmin, Magellan, or what? What gives the most bang for the buck? Do any have real time traffic information?
Garmin is very good, and NavMan has a great feature that allows you to take a digital photos and encode it with location data.
Marc will be going to CES in January and will have the best information on what's hot in GPS devices then.
If you cannot wait for CES, try the Garmin Nuvi 650 from PC RUSH it's under $400!
Click here for a full review.
The newer Garmin 660/670/680 features real time traffic infromation too.