Episode 10 [Discussion]

[chuckles]

We've got our final list of $500 PC parts. The grand total with tax and shipping: $492.98!

Nicolaus is right: an AMD 64 X2 5200+ would also make a great CPU for our $500 PC. Patrick just wants the chance to overclock the heck out of Intel's 4500. (We're going for a 40% overclock!)

Looking for a way to subscribe to Tekzilla and other video podcasts without using iTunes? Check out Miro. Great way to automatically download, not to mention serach for, video shows online. Your mileage w/ the player might very; some folks find it less stable than others. Thanks for emailing in the idea, Ephryn!

How much will next gen DVD players cost this season? Think $200 to $500, if you missed Walmart's $99 selloff of Toshiba's HD-A2. (You can still pick it up for $200 - $250.

Sony's PS3 is no longer the cheapest Blu-ray option. Sony's BDP-S300 is down to $350 if you shop carefully. For the money we'd rather use the PS3 or Samsung's BDP-1200, tho!

We've got info on what the next step up price wise, along w/ LG's BH100, aka the Super Blu on the show.

Jessica's Code Red: Kody at Apple Service has a possible fix for Jessica's problem child Macbook Pro: it's Resetting the SMC and it fixed it!

Dusan's got a good point: we should do our Black Friday show earlier! We certainly will next year.

Patrick went ballistic and replaced all the batteries in his house with rechargables... he should be able to recharge 'em at least 500 times, according to Energizer.

Here's the link for Porkshank's mad steampunk modded MP3 player... er, "Ambience Enhancer." Way cool!

Star Wars Insider: The Galaxy How's that for a star chart?

Rock Band: 1Up's Garnett Lee joins Neha to find out if the latest rock sim --which includes drums and a mic-- surpasses Guitar Hero.

Datarobotics Drobo vs. Buffalo TeraStation Pro II: Saeed wants to know what the differences are between the Drobo and a more traditional RAID NAS. First off, there's no networking in the Drobo... it's USB only. Second, Datarobotics says Drobo doesn't use RAID, tho it does have a lot of the nifty characteristics of a RAID 5. Most important: Drobo's dead simple to maintain... if you can read lights, you can keep it running.

Oh, btw, Drobo can use mixed sizes of hard drives without wasting capacity. The trade off? It's probably a bit slower than the TeraStation... we'd love to benchmark 'em both.

Want some great ideas for keeping your data safe? Check out Ten Storage Strategies for the Home. ExtremeTech's Loyd Case wrote it, and there's some great info in there.

Are you a bookworm? Miss your books when you're at work or traveling? Then you'll love Shelfari, a social site built around books for book lovers. It's Heather's producer pick o' the week!

Eric wants to know what Intel's Turbo Memory does, and if he should drop $50 on it when he buys his next notebook.

[mrpopular]

Hehe that ^ was alot of stuff fit into a 30mins show.

Great episode! I always look forward to watching on fridays.

Keep Up the great work Everybody!!

[frankiethewaffle]

My new mantra, "Did your shoes arrive early? HA HA!"

I like keeping up with the stuff Nawton does. From the MAME cabinet to the $500 PC. This all again reminds me of the stuff I used to see him do on TV.

Like most of Rev3's shows. Can't wait till next week. All of this show is worth watching. More than once likely.

[kl0ndike5]

hail 'Mates,

i second the above views about content, pace etc. this show is back in the groove and picking up speed. thx.

oh and Patrick, it's pronounced wa - CHOO - ka. Fort Huachuca, AZ is near Sierra Vista. as we increase our visitors/residents, i'm becoming more familiar with the 'readers pronounciation' to a few sites in this the copper state.

10 year resident of Pahonix, between Ahwatukee and the Mogollon Rim.

[vurtigo]

I love Jessica Corbin's "deer in the headlights" look when Patrick is reading off the teleprompter.


Great show this week. One of the best !

[technutjob]

Hehe that ^ was alot of stuff fit into a 30mins show.

I agree... that was a ton of content. i think it would be nice if some of the content was maybe explained more or covered more indepth and less of the video game stuff. Isn't that what we all hate about G4? f' the games.. leave that for someone else. i miss the zdtv, techtv.. anyways. by covering it more you could explain the details behind 60 frames per second.. what that means, how the tv uses that and what is behind the actual technology of 1080p (lines of resolution, interlace vs progressive, etc.)

[ryudo]

I like the games side of it ..games and tech go together well..and G4 mainly abandoned both and tried to be male teen oriented and put in skits and acting like retards and hiring actors/Models to host shows and leaving out people who actually know about Tech/Games also added unrelated shows like cops and cheaters and Man Show.

I hate the current G4 and was ahuge Tech TV fan in the day but here was a time G4 was as professional to games as Tech TV was Professional to Technology (and remember they covered games and Game releated stuff also even on TSS ..remember the thursday Lan Parties or Extended play and on Call for help/TSS when they built DYI gaming rigs...yeah.



one last thing I am by no means an audiophile but it sounded recorded at a low volume and at times heard scratching noises.



Anyway great show this week guys!

[frankiethewaffle]

I like the games side of it ..games and tech go together well..and G4 mainly abandoned both and tried to be male teen oriented and put in skits and acting like retards and hiring actors/Models to host shows and leaving out people who actually know about Tech/Games also added unrelated shows like cops and cheaters and Man Show.

I hate the current G4 and was a huge Tech TV fan in the day but here was a time G4 was as professional to games as Tech TV was Professional to Technology (and remember they covered games and Game releated stuff also even on TSS ..remember the thursday Lan Parties or Extended play and on Call for help/TSS when they built DYI gaming rigs...yeah.



one last thing I am by no means an audiophile but it sounded recorded at a low volume and at times heard scratching noises.



Anyway great show this week guys!

I agree. I love to watch Jimmie Kimmel now, but the MAN SHOW is NOT TECH. Cops was always cool but never TECH. Cheaters just plain sucks.

G4 dumped the best Tech TV, if not all good TV for the crap now. I thank the great one that we have Rev3 to fall back on. It will only get better.

I just hope the G4 guy that made those choices, NEVER works in ANY town again.

[rumblestrip]

Solid show, not a gamer, but the longer more in depth of Rock Band I thought was well done and didn't drag.

Sadly my girl Jess was <JoeNameth>STRA-GA-LING</JoeNameth> trying to read off the prompter. DAMNIT use larger font! :D

[baddox]

Wow. @ 26:10 into the episode, you should definitely use a mosaic, not a blur on those numbers! Great episode though, I'm still wishing I could afford a drobo since I first saw them on dl.tv.

[bsg]

Don't get me wrong, I've really liked everything Jessica has been part of, but I can't really get into the show because of her. It feels like she's bored with a majority of the rather technical details, and she seems more of a chorus than an actual host. She's far better at prerecorded consumer reviews than she is at technical discussion, which seems to help maintain a shallow depth to the show. Combine this with the still-sparse studio, poor audio, and all-too-claustrophobic camera work, and you've got a rather mediocre experience.

But I think I'm looking for the high production quality of The Screen Savers, and we're just not going to get that. No news on the top, no witty banter between Pat and Leo, no tech questions answered over the phone, and no in-depth yet pointed interviews. Just half-hearted flirting with technology mixed with awkward and boring interviews.

I still have high hopes for Tekzilla, and I think it's come lightyears from the first show (and from my first critical review), it just hasn't hit the mark it's trying for yet.

[ryudo]

Don't get me wrong, I've really liked everything Jessica has been part of, but I can't really get into the show because of her. It feels like she's bored with a majority of the rather technical details, and she seems more of a chorus than an actual host. She's far better at prerecorded consumer reviews than she is at technical discussion, which seems to help maintain a shallow depth to the show. Combine this with the still-sparse studio, poor audio, and all-too-claustrophobic camera work, and you've got a rather mediocre experience.

But I think I'm looking for the high production quality of The Screen Savers, and we're just not going to get that. No news on the top, no witty banter between Pat and Leo, no tech questions answered over the phone, and no in-depth yet pointed interviews. Just half-hearted flirting with technology mixed with awkward and boring interviews.

I still have high hopes for Tekzilla, and I think it's come lightyears from the first show (and from my first critical review), it just hasn't hit the mark it's trying for yet.

It's now a broken record saying this but Tekzilla will eventually do the live stuff and phone calls but he studio is still not finished....the set they are on now is temp and just sitting in the middle of the offices.

[zorgul]

I don't understand why some people want the Screen Savers back. It was fun back then but TSS is over, so try appreciate something new like Tekzilla.

I'm not to eager to have live phone calls. Usually people answering the call don't have/don't take the time to research their answer and give crappy answer.

Tekzilla is a great show!

[masherscf]

I understand the TSS thing. It's one of those stages of loss. People feel that TSS was ripped away from them.

However, the future is bright.

[frankiethewaffle]

I don't understand why some people want the Screen Savers back. It was fun back then but TSS is over, so try appreciate something new like Tekzilla.

I'm not to eager to have live phone calls. Usually people answering the call don't have/don't take the time to research their answer and give crappy answer.

Tekzilla is a great show!

Make no mistake. TSS was great and all. Any reference to it is just pointing out how much we enjoy Tekzilla and other Rev3 content. I very much enjoy what Nawton does. I only compare when what he does brings back happy memories. I look forward to more. I liked him on DL.TV too.

[denebola]

I posted this in another thread, but how about a review of third party batteries for Mac and PC laptops? Great show! I'm sure it's still growing so I'll keep watching.

[ryudo]

I understand the TSS thing. It's one of those stages of loss. People feel that TSS was ripped away from them.

However, the future is bright.
Yup agreed.

And it's too bad Cnet Live has two VERY BORING hosts because the show is pretty much TSS just shorter.

[hankddog]

Patrick went ballistic and replaced all the batteries in his house with rechargables... he should be able to recharge 'em at least 500 times, according to Energizer.



I would be curious to know why he went with Energizer and not some of the other brands. I have a 2 1/2 year old and want to do the same thing but I don't know which ones are the best.

[ayeaux]

In my experience I would stay away from the energizers. I got several of them last Christmas and they are all almost useless already. They will only hold a charge for about a week, after 2 weeks 6 of 8 batteries I own were completely self discharged after sitting in a drawer. They still work okay for now if I use them immediately after charging. Also, the Energizer C and D sized rechargeables aren't true C & D capacities. They have the same capacity as there AA's (2500mah). I've tried running some of my kids toys with my Energizer AA's in D sized adapters and got horrible runtimes for their toys (maybe 1 week versus almost 2 months with alkaline D's)

I am now working on replacing all of my rechargeable batteries with Sanyo Eneloops. Although I haven't used them yet, I have read many good reviews about them. They only have 2000mah capacity (compared to Energizers 2500mah), but have a low self discharge rate. Which means that if they sit in my digital camera for a month, they will have nearly the same capacity as when I first charged them. Unlike my current energizers which would have died in 2 weeks.

Check out Costco, they have a Eneloop pack with a charger, several AA and AAA batteries and adapters to use the AA's as C & D sizes. About $20 i think.

Good luck with your Batts Patrick. I hope they work out better than mine did. Congrats on the boy. And get some sleep!!

[drdarkeny]

As I've said elsewhere - so not into the games stuff! Yes, TSS used to do a gaming night - once a week, or a portion of one hour out of five hours a week. TEKZILLA is a half-hour once a week, by contrast - and they're barely skimming the surface of tech stories as is without wasting time on game reviews and stories (which tend to meander, to boot!). If they want to do games, do a games program....

I'm not sure I like taking live phone calls, either, and I don't think it's necessary. Taking prerecorded audio and video questions, or just e-mailed questions, is just as helpful, and the staff will have more time to formulate intelligent answers. Though a new, bigger studio? ABSOLUTELY a good idea!

[alaskalonewolf]

I would like a designated driver. I 'm about to use this laptop I bought as a skeet.

The Vista of drivers episode was a nice touch; since I recently started working on this laptop it was like de ja vu'. For those who are dirt poor, you understand why I went with a Wal-Mart special, the Acer Aspire 5610Z, and tried to plug a Avermedia 5748536 TV Tuner into the PCMCIA slot. Guess what, it doesn't just plug-n-play. Had to cleanse my soul with Halo 3 for an hour. But, my newbie ass is still baffled.... aaaah but there are so many beers and so few brain cells.

[hankddog]

In my experience I would stay away from the energizers. I got several of them last Christmas and they are all almost useless already. They will only hold a charge for about a week, after 2 weeks 6 of 8 batteries I own were completely self discharged after sitting in a drawer. They still work okay for now if I use them immediately after charging. Also, the Energizer C and D sized rechargeables aren't true C & D capacities. They have the same capacity as there AA's (2500mah). I've tried running some of my kids toys with my Energizer AA's in D sized adapters and got horrible runtimes for their toys (maybe 1 week versus almost 2 months with alkaline D's)

I am now working on replacing all of my rechargeable batteries with Sanyo Eneloops. Although I haven't used them yet, I have read many good reviews about them. They only have 2000mah capacity (compared to Energizers 2500mah), but have a low self discharge rate. Which means that if they sit in my digital camera for a month, they will have nearly the same capacity as when I first charged them. Unlike my current energizers which would have died in 2 weeks.

Check out Costco, they have a Eneloop pack with a charger, several AA and AAA batteries and adapters to use the AA's as C & D sizes. About $20 i think.

Good luck with your Batts Patrick. I hope they work out better than mine did. Congrats on the boy. And get some sleep!!

Thanks for the heads up. I'll give them a try.