MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's the Computer Guys & Gal. Well, it's the Computer Guys & Gal, sans gal. Allison Druin will be back next month. This month, we're tearing up the airwaves and talking about the blazingly fast Thunderbolt. No, not the new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie or that roller derby queen that John Gilroy has been dating. What we are...

MR. JOHN GILROYWell, don't tell my wife.

NNAMDIWhat are we talking about? Great new Mac power or more marketing genius from the folks at Apple. We're also digging into the dirt to find out who is anonymous, and why is anonymous hacking the feds. And, of course, we'll join the speculation on the new iPad. It's a testosterone-dominated edition of the Computer Guys & Gal. You know, our guests, they are John Gilroy, director of business development at SolutionsDevelopers.com. What did you do with Allison Druin this morning?

GILROYI don't know. I have to wait till next month. Maybe, she's preparing for St. Patty's Day.

NNAMDIShe will be back next month.

GILROYYou never know with her.

MR. BILL HARLOWCould be. Could be.

NNAMDIShe will be back next month. Bill Harlow is a former Mac genius, who now works on PCs and Macs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. Where's Allison?

HARLOWI'll never tell.

GILROYWhoa. Anonymous may know.

HARLOWExactly. Ask anonymous.

NNAMDIYou can call us at 800-433-8850. Send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org, tweets @kojoshow, or join the conversation at our website, kojoshow.org. Some days, the news seems to be all Apple all the time. I suspect tomorrow will be one of those days, but before we discuss the rumor mill on iPad, Bill, please straighten me out on Thunderbolt. What is it, and why is everyone so excited about it?

HARLOWI think the name, the name itself, I mean, that's exciting. Thunderbolt, I mean, that's a name of, like, a hot car.

GILROYRacehorse.

HARLOWI mean, computers get faster all the time. It's really nothing new, but this is actually something completely new. It is a -- just a port on the side for you to connect very high-speed devices, so, you know, you're familiar with USB.

NNAMDIYes.

HARLOWUSB 3 is out. I think it hits -- top out at about five or six gigabits.

NNAMDIYes.

HARLOWThe speed of Thunderbolt is 10 gigabits each direction, so it's pretty significant.

NNAMDIWow.

HARLOWIt allows you to mix and match devices, too, so you can have a hard drive thrown in there, maybe some sort of video-capture device, throw a display at the end of that. So for a laptop user, that's huge, because you don't have that -- you don't need a docking station. You don't need a snake of 20 different cables.

NNAMDIMm-hmm.

HARLOWYou just have, you know, power and this thing, and that could be it. Right now, Apple is pioneering this. This is one of the, I think, the only company of products out there that support this but more are coming. So they're taking the first step. They help drive USB adaption way back in the past, so hopefully, they'll drive this, too, because it sounds really, really cool.

GILROYYou know, way back in the past (laugh) we used to have nine-pin serial ports, and then, we had some USB. You know, we had faster USB. And then, Apple comes up with FireWire, and I think what's happening this year is people are focusing on the wire. But I think the transition is going to be wireless. If you can get pretty good speeds with wireless, maybe it's gonna happen, but we'll see what happens with this Thunderbolt. Apple doesn't really bet on two wrong horses, but they've been pretty good with this. But the question is, I mean, is this going to be the end of wire? I mean, maybe the last of the wired-type things, because people just are so focused on wireless transfer.

NNAMDIHow important is the name Thunderbolt? I just love it, Thunderbolt.

HARLOWWell, the working name when Intel was developing this -- it's their technology -- was Light Peak, I believe. And, you know, if that sounds techie, but Thunderbolt, you know, that's like wow. This is possibly dangerous. This could possibly hurt me. I'm interested.

GILROYI'm interested.

NNAMDIUntil recently, we've mostly called the iPad a tablet computer, but I'm wondering if the new iPad has the ability to make video calls and the like. Does it, technically, become a smartphone?

GILROYWell, I saw a press release on it. They talked about gigahertz and gigabytes and media card, and I said this is how they used to talk about computers, huh, Bill?

HARLOW(laugh) I mean, it is a computer. I mean, let's be honest. It's just a really, really easy-to-use computer that you always want to have on your person. So as far as calling it a smartphone, I mean, take the words smart out of the equation. If you see someone holding a lunch tray to their face to make a call.

HARLOWIt looks like it's something else.

NNAMDIThat's what I was about to say. How do you use it as a -- not only a telephone but as a camera? You use it as a camera unless it's much smaller than it currently is. It looks like somebody is trying to hide their face. Hey, there's Charlie Chambeck (sp?).

GILROYExactly. Well, I look at it like Face Time on the iPhone, which is I don't think you're gonna use a camera on the back if there is one all the time, but, you know, for those times where maybe you are chatting and the iPad is normally sitting on a dock next to you, and it's comfortable...

NNAMDILet's try.

GILROY...maybe you want to show what's on other side and pan it around...

NNAMDIThat's true.

GILROY...and say check out this area. But I don't think they'll use it all the time.

HARLOWYou know, I see happening is Kojo should start a company manufacturing bags to carry these devices, because people have their BlackBerry and their notebook. They have an iPad (laugh) and an iPhone.

GILROYIt's a huge industry.

HARLOWIt's like -- oh, my iPad is for my personal life, and then, my BlackBerry is for work. And my -- and it's like where does that end?

NNAMDII like the notion of the iPad -- and nobody has thought of this yet -- being used as a weapon of defense.

NNAMDIIf you can smack somebody with it, then it adds just another app to the many apps that the iPad already has. It's the Computer Guys John Gilroy and Bill Harlow. We're taking your calls at 800-433-8850, or you can send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. Well, let's talk about the iPad 2. Could it be the best thing since slice bread? Well, the best thing since the iPad 1. And are we absolutely sure that that's what's going to be announced tomorrow?

GILROYWell, I haven't been invited, so I don't know for sure. But...

HARLOWWow.

GILROY...the invitation...

NNAMDIIf the Mac geniuses don't get invited, what's left for us?

GILROYThe invitation does show an app screen peeled away revealing an iPad frame, so I think it's a slam-dunk. As far as what it's going to include, the most prominent rumors are other than obviously faster, more memory, possibly more storage, thinner and lighter, and you know, it's only a pound and a half. But I've played with Kindles, you know, versus the iPad, that weight matters if you're holding it up for quite a while.

NNAMDIYeah.

GILROYSo anything they can do to reduce that it's good in my book. And then, of course, the cameras are the other big one. They're expecting Face Time -- they're expecting a front and a rear-facing camera. Beyond that, I think a lot of it could be software. It might be time for a revamp of the iOS again. They might have some really cool ideas they want to show off as well.

HARLOWThey're such a dominant force. They may push everyone into a subscription-type mode of software and then really try to act like a monopolist.

NNAMDIMore -- faster CPU, faster GPU. Initial rumors predicted retina displays for (word?) resolution.

GILROYYeah. I don't think it's gonna happen.

NNAMDICould you explain that?

GILROYSo when the iPhone 4 came out, they had this so-called retina display. The idea being it's so high-resolution, the pixels are so densely packed that for the average human vision at that viewing distance, you can't distinguish individual pixels. So they were hoping for a doubling of pixels on the iPad to get something similar, because it really looks gorgeous and they're really pushing reading on this device. And that resolution would really make that beautiful, but it's really high-res. I mean, you get 30-inch displays at that proposed resolution, and they're expensive. And I imagine that it will be a while before they can put those in iPads affordably and in the yields they'll need, because this thing is super popular.

HARLOWAnd the rumor has it that Apple has gone to the Far East and put contracts on a lot of components for these devices.

GILROYAnd people are saying it might be displays.

HARLOWYeah. And locking in display so the people with Androids and they may get locked out because we have another situation with the control (unintelligible) market.

GILROYThey did the same thing with memory chips for smartphones and iPods as well.

NNAMDIWell, John, you saw something on Slate recently that reminded me of you...

NNAMDI...a guy with buyer's remorse over his iPad purchase.

GILROYWe've got to admit this. This guy's name John Swansberg, and he works at Slate and kind of a fun publication. And he kind of bought it out of social pressure...

GILROY...like some people when they buy sports cars out of social pressure.

NNAMDIYes.

GILROYAnd he got it, and he said, geez, I would have made a better investment buying a salad spinner. (laugh) He said I prefer reading on my Kindle, and there's no Flash on this...

HARLOWBut there's Flash in the Kindle apparently.

GILROY...and I'm kind of happy with my iPhone anyway, and it's almost as easy to use the iPhone as this, and, well, it's kinda nice but -- and so he complained around his office, and people started raising up their hands. I'll take it.

GILROYI'll take it. So maybe he's just playing this to get another column, maybe a deadline pressure so okay. What did you come with here? But, you know, I'm still not a big fan of this device. I'm sure I'll come around one of these days. It's just that I don't see any in the world I live and I don't see any, you know, way it makes my life more productive.

HARLOWI think it's fair to say that for a lot of people, they might be quite happy with what they have, and they say this sort of a redundancy in their life.

NNAMDIYeah. I guess so, but I still like my iPad.

HARLOWI'm still jealous of yours. I'm still -- I'm waiting for the iPad 2, though.

NNAMDIDespite all of those iPads, computers and smartphones in circulation, John, one thing we apparently now know is that kids are no longer really blogging online.

GILROYWell, here's what happened. Let's say old Bill here starts a blog...

HARLOWOld?

GILROY...and it...

NNAMDII was about to say...

GILROYAnd it's Bill blog, and no one is visiting it, you know? And he has to come up...

HARLOWThat actually sounds kind of true.

HARLOWAnd he's got to come up with 200 words, oh, my goodness. That is just so much work. However, if he tweets, hey, here's a picture of Kojo falling.

HARLOWOh, yeah. Everyone wants to see it.

GILROYAlso 140 characters.

NNAMDIYes.

HARLOWYeah, yeah. And, hey, here's -- yeah, I got this doughnut and threw it at Kojo. What do you think? And then comes all a sudden, we get viewers. And what's happening is this shift, there's a 150 million blogs right now, and this make transition to Facebook and Twitter so it's time for me to get a blog, I think.

NNAMDIYeah. This would be about the appropriate time for you. So the blog, the rage on the blog is over. Its moment in the sun is done?

HARLOWI think that's what it is. It's just some funny clip. Here's John. He parked his car funny. What do you think of this? Bang.

GILROYI mean, that blogs are never gonna go away entirely. You know, there's...

NNAMDIYeah, wait till the next presidential campaign.

GILROYWell, it doesn't need for depth, you know, of the articles that they publish, but I think everybody blogging, you're right that's pretty much gone. It's more about, you know, little, you know, quick bits and bites you throw out here and there.

HARLOWNow, at American University, if you told someone 200 words was an in-depth analysis of something...

HARLOW...they would just fall off a chair. You know, it depends on what your perspective is.

NNAMDII advertise this as an in-depth profound conversation...

HARLOWProfound conversation.

NNAMDI...with the computer guys. Please don't knock in-depth. Here's Victor in Silver Spring, Md. Victor, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

VICTORHi. I hope this is a question that is relevant to this program.

NNAMDIEverything is relevant to this program.

VICTOROkay. Thank you. Okay. My question is this. On a still camera or a movie camera, whenever I take a photograph or run a movie or take some movie-type shots, I want to know, you know, if I take a picture of Kojo Nnamdi and I want to see where I last saw him or, you know, it happened on Tuesday, the fourth of January, this was the event I want to record information into it -- into the camera or into the movie or still camera. Is there such a gadget?

GILROYWell, if your camera doesn't do that already, although I believe that almost every camera these days will at least timestamp it, so you'll have that. There are third-party devices. I think (word?) that company has a few products that interestingly they have a GPS triangulation SD cards that you can buy, and they'll actually -- they do it by picking up wi-fi signals and picking up information from that. So look into that. In the past, there were also these external devices. I can't remember the brand names, but they essentially would allow you to plug in your memory card, and they would GPS stamp it. And then, it would set that information into the data inside the photographs. So those might be some things to look into. Also, when it's time for a new camera, more and more pocket cameras are including GPS as well, and that will also stamp the location right into the photo.

NNAMDIGood luck to you, Victor, and thank you very much for your call. Bob in Great Falls, Va., wants to talk about Thunderbolt. Bob, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BOBYes. Well, I'm calling you from my iPhone 4, which I recently upgraded to after many years.

GILROYAT&T or Verizon?

NNAMDIShow off.

BOBWell, no, I was a Verizon customer for five years and switched to AT&T on Christmas. Anyway, I'm happy I can multitask. But what I wanted to let you know is that the word thunderbolt is a long -- has a long history in electronics. It was used by Mercury Marine back in the '50s and '60s to describe their electronic ignition system for their outboard motors.

GILROYCool.

BOBSo they had thunderbolt electronic ignition, one of the earliest ones, which made Mercury some of the fastest engines for hydroplanes and things in those years.

NNAMDIYeah. Well, somebody else thinks it was one of James Bond's throwaway movies...

NNAMDI...but there is an even longer history in black folklore. The black folklore character Stagger Lee who killed Billy Lyons in the bar. Julius Lester had a folktale in which Stagger Lee was living for like 600 years, and God didn't realize Stagger Lee had been running around. And he sent St. Peter to get him, and Stagger Lee rejected St. Peter, and God eventually had to take Stagger Lee out with a thunderbolt…

GILROYThunderbolt.

NNAMDI...after 700 years.

HARLOWSo it is dangerous.

NNAMDISo yes. A thunderbolt can really be dangerous. We're going to take a short break. It is the computer guys sans gal. Allison Druin will be back next month. We're talking with John Gilroy, director of business development at solutionsdevelopers.com. And Bill Harlow, former Mac genius. He works on PCs and Macs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. And you. Call us at 800-433-8850 with your comments and questions, or go to our website kojoshow.org, and join the computer guys there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIIt's the Computer Guys & Gal. Bill Harlow is with us. He's a former Mac Genius who now works on PCs and MACs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. And John Gilroy is director of business development at solutionsdevelopers.com. Allison Druin will be rejoining us next month. We got this e-mail from David in Reston. David says -- full disclosure. He is a self-described happy customer of Bill's employer, Mid-Atlantic Consulting. Here's David's question. "What do you think about Apple's move to bundle OS 10 Server into Lion? What will this mean for home or small office servers and local servers versus cloud storage on the web."

GILROYNow, wait a minute. This is a billable call so….

HARLOWThat's right. So...

GILROYThis is billable. (laugh)

HARLOWIf we could run that clock back there...

GILROYRight.

HARLOWI'll start taking this.

GILROYMinimum one hour. (laugh)

HARLOWExactly. So what I think, initially, is that not much will really change other than, you know, the initial cost of the software. I mean, there's a lot of hardware involved if you're running your own server if you're taking it all seriously. You know, as far as things like power and redundancy and backup. So it's a nice gesture. My big concern, honestly, is that if they're throwing it in for free, does that mean that the support for the software is going to get reduced and -- or you're gonna be more on your own when it comes to setting this up, configuring, asking questions?

HARLOWBut overall, I think it's really cool. I mean, it's -- the antithesis of what Microsoft does as far as having, you know, 20 different skews of their Windows product, you just have -- you buy the version of a -- the one copy of Lion, excuse me, templates (unintelligible) Lion and you're done. That's really cool.

NNAMDIHere's an e-mail we got from Tina in Falls Church. Tina says, "This is what I want. A Windows-based netbook like an iPad, a real chip, not Atom, no cell phone, ability for limited multitasking, e-mail, web browsing, limited Word processing, two gig memory, Wi-Fi. I want to be able to hold it like an iPad. I'm willing to pay the same as an iPad. Does someone make this?"

HARLOWWell, if you just made that into a laptop, you're gonna have a tough time finding it for the cost of an iPad.

GILROYAnd you better go to a psychiatrist and have them erase the whole concept of netbook from your mind...

HARLOWYeah. I mean...

GILROY...because those are going away.

HARLOWAnd once you get away from the Atom and you start adding a little more power and all those other things, you're getting closer to a genuine laptop or a traditional tablet PC which has -- that's existed for years. And, you know, they are powerful and a little bit expensive and they're also much heavier than a tablet.

GILROYI think she's gonna have to get one of those Kojo bags and have a notebook computer there, then an iPad or an iPhone and a Kindle in there.

HARLOWOr like one of those harmonica stands, but, you know, just for your...

GILROY(unintelligible)

HARLOW...just sticking out of your chest.

GILROYGet the Kojo bag.

NNAMDITina adds that, "The Dell Duo is cool but it's the beefy Atom processor. I hear Dell has something in the pipeline. I don't know. Has anyone else heard that?" Apparently, not.

GILROYWell, I know some people at Dell, and it's a great company. I love the people over there, so I'll say (laugh) Dell has good products.

HARLOWThere you go.

GILROYAll I'm gonna say.

NNAMDIAnd these days, speaking of products, John, you're lucky if your product gets old before it gets obsolete.

GILROYWell, this is the most amazing thing is that, you know, if you look at the world, the number of people with smartphones is a pretty small percentage. And so, let's say people like Allison, because she's not here, she has to have -- or her husband, even more, has to have the newest, the bestest, the fastest and so they take...

NNAMDIHere we go, Ben.

GILROYYeah. Here we go, Ben. We're picking on you. And he'll stand in line for six hours and get that brand new device, and his existing device is six months old. So what you can do now is you can take in and resell it, and someone probably in a different country or maybe in Oklahoma would just be dying for something like that.

HARLOWOh, yeah.

GILROYI just think we're at the bleeding edge here of the technology, and we think, Jesus, a six-month-old smartphone? I wouldn't think of using that.

HARLOWI mean, yeah. We are the outliers. I remember just a few years ago, before I had an iPhone, I had some other -- there's a Nokia -- or Sony Ericsson. It's pretty nice. I was complaining about it, and a friend of mine just looked and said, okay, you've got a color screen. Mine is still black and white. You know, mine can't play music. I can't get on the Web with mine. Mine's a phone. What are you complaining about?

NNAMDII took my iPhone to AT&T after owning it for a while, and I asked the guy, the customer service person. I said, check on me. Have I had this for two years? He looked at me disdainfully and sternly, sir, you've had this for three years. It was like a...

GILROYWhoa. Three years?

NNAMDI...a reprimand. It's like...

HARLOWAnd then they called security and...

NNAMDI(laugh) Yeah. It was -- get this man out of here.

GILROYWow. He can't be normal. (laugh)

NNAMDIHere's Bob in Barnesville, Md. Bob, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BOBThank you. My Verizon plan for our family, we're using four phones, and it's just way too expensive. And we're nearing the end of the plan and so I'm looking to switch. I've seen -- my daughter was talking about Virgin Mobile, and I looked online and compared it with a lot of comparisons, and it looks like the Smart Talk that's sold in Wal-Mart and online, of course. Looks like a very good plan, like 1,000 minutes and 1,000 texts a month for 30 -- $25. They even have a free recondition -- several choices of free reconditioned phones. Specifically...

GILROYOoh, Bill's old phone.

BOBWell...

HARLOWExactly. I'll sell you my old phone.

BOBThe question that I -- another part of this question is that the customer service for Smart Talk told me that they use all three tower systems for AT&T, T1 Mobile and also Verizon. So it seems to me that it would have even better coverage than just Verizon alone.

HARLOWWell, it -- first of all, I want to say that you bring up a good point about the plans because a lot of people talk about, oh, the iPhone costs this much or this Android phone costs this much, but the cost is in the plans. That's what you're really paying, and that's where it all kind of becomes a wash. I haven't looked too carefully into Virgin Mobile's calling plans. I have a MiFi to them that I like a lot and I like the flexibility they give me. What I was under the assumption of is that they use Sprint's network so that means that they should be able to roam on Verizon as well. I didn't think they had GSM capability for T-Mobile and AT&T, but if that's what they're saying they do, then that's really cool.

BOBThat's true for the Virgin Mobile, but I was talking specifically about the Smart Talk.

HARLOWWell, that I was unaware of. But that sounds really cool. The big thing to look into is this, you know -- the ones you're talking about, are they contract plans or you just pay as you go because that's what I think...

BOBNo, it's pay as you go.

HARLOWRight. Right.

BOBJust $30 a month and you could drop it whenever. But they even have like four different -- I mean, they have, you know, 16 or 20 different phones available.

HARLOWYeah.

BOBFrom, you know, $100 plus to -- and four of them are free reconditioned phones.

HARLOWI think the big thing to do is just ask around, find out if you know anybody who uses this service around here, if their customer service is pretty good 'cause I mean, on paper, a lot of stuff sounds really appealing, but I think you wanna find out what the ownership experience is actually like.

NNAMDIIndeed. And thank you for your call, Bob. I'm thinking of getting a CPA to join us here on the Computer Guys.

GILROYWell, I was thinking that it's a good opportunity for someone to do a comparison on -- especially for families because it gets very difficult if you have four phones in the (word?) plans and the text messaging and everything.

BOBI mean, the solution is so simple. You should just hang out more.

GILROYHang out more.

NNAMDIIn the gaming world, speaking of hanging out Bill, some people are really excited about Nintendo and its new 3D handheld device.

HARLOWI'm not excited because I'm a grown up, but...

NNAMDIThanks for telling us.

GILROYLoosely. Loosely.

HARLOWYes, yes, yes, yes. But it's pretty cool.

NNAMDIWill that be a game changer?

HARLOWYou know, I don't know, but Nintendo's got a pretty good track record. I was thinking about their history and how they basically revived home gaming back in the '80s after the initial crash. They kind of invented handheld game systems with -- being popular with the Game Boy, you know, with cartridges that can swap out. The DS has become, my understanding, is the most popular handheld ever released. But lately, you know, Apple has been cutting into that with the iPhone. I mean, every device you carry has to justify the space it takes up in your bag or the weight. So, you know, it's true with me. I'm a gamer, but I mainly just, you know, mess around with my iPhone because it's there.

GILROYNow, you got to realize that from Kojo's perspective, a handheld gaming system is throwing darts.

GILROYThat's a handheld gaming system.

HARLOWA deck of cards, that's right. But... (laugh)

NNAMDISnakes and Ladders.

GILROYBut it's -- this is interesting, because it's a handheld gaming system with a 3D screen. On the one hand, I'm thinking, is 3D really that impressive on a four-inch screen? But on the other hand...

NNAMDIYeah.

HARLOW...it doesn't require glasses. It still plays all your DS games. It's a little expensive at 250, but imagine over the -- its life, it'll come down. And, you know, you got a better Nintendo. And it's something that none of these smartphones will do.

GILROYIt may fit in your bag with everything else, all the other portable devices.

HARLOWSo I'm excited. We'll see.

NNAMDIBut can it fit into this hand, John? It's my understanding that you're giving the cool invention of the month award to a robotic hand being developed by Virginia Tech. Do tell.

GILROYWell, you know, I have a son at Virginia Tech, so I guess I'm bias towards certain things there. But...

HARLOWNo.

GILROY...if you think about, you know, of machines taking over the world and singularity, and it's supposed to happen next month, by the way, you look at this hand and you go, my goodness, is this from a movie? No, it's from a device that works. They can type 20 words a minute. I mean, it's just that it shocking what they've come up with. And now, they're gonna take it and encase it with something that's somewhat a plastic. So this mechanical item here can do amazing things. And this is just the start of the things to come. So when Skynet goes online...

HARLOWWhen Watson grasp one of these onto itself, be very afraid is what you're saying?

GILROYYeah, be very afraid. Never thought of combining the two, but Watson and one of these hands typing 20 words a minute, bet he can answer questions on TV by typing it.

HARLOWGot to speed up the buzzer, I think, too. (laugh)

NNAMDIOh. And it could -- the hand, it's my understanding, can -- it has wrist rotation of 110 degrees, something like that?

GILROYIt's amazing. A dexterous anthropomorphic robotic typing, DART...

NNAMDIDoes it do term papers?

GILROYNo, imagine at Virginia Tech, they got those kids doing half their papers with this thing.

NNAMDIThe hand is working for me. (laugh) Here's Dan in Brooklyn in D.C. Dan, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DANHi. Yeah. I'm a long-time listener, so -- but I'm a little frustrated. I'm an Android user. Android has, like, you know, 33 percent of the market. It's kind of -- but I just don't hear anything at all about sort of their new tablets. You know, I'm sure, going back to your transcripts, and it's kind of always Apple, Apple. I'm not sure if your panelists are qualified to talk about that. Or but, you know, they do have some new devices, and I'm sure, I'm kind of interested in hearing their takes on it.

NNAMDIOur panelists can talk about foreign affairs, domestic affairs, the economy, but...

GILROYNo domestic affairs for me. (laugh)

NNAMDI...they just choose to talk about this and they are.

HARLOWWhat's in Android? No, I mean, it's fair. But on the one hand, at least with phones, there are so many coming out all the time. We just can't keep up. It's just a new Android device. At least with the iPhone, it's so much static and it's also insanely popular.

GILROYWell, you know, over the weekend, my wife and I had brunch with a couple, and we talked about the Oscars. Well, on the Oscar weekend, that's what you talk about.

HARLOWYeah.

GILROYRight now, you're just bombarded with so much Apple news.

HARLOWRight.

GILROYI mean, it's just everywhere. And it seems to be on the top of tongue of -- you can probably walk into any these stores on Wisconsin Avenue here, and that's gonna be top of mind. And I realized that Android is very popular, but I think questions don't come in.

HARLOWI will say that, like, when I think of Android, I think of Verizon's Droid brand. I think that actually carries more weight with me than just Android in general, because there are so many different devices doing different things. And it also means that the platform isn't the same. I mean, you can't be confident that one Android phone is going to work exactly the same as another one. In the case of the new tablets, there've been a few out there in the past, but none of them really came close to the iPad experience and they barely made a dent in a market.

HARLOWThe new ones coming out, like, the Motorola Xoom, it sounds interesting. It sounds really powerful. It's also expensive. And it's -- I guess, we don't talk about it, because I don't imagine too many people rushing out to look at this and pick them up.

GILROYWell, I don't wanna act like I'm -- my wife has a Droid phone, and the topic it never even comes up. It just not...

HARLOWYeah.

GILROYAnd we probably talked about iPhones watching as she's texting someone on her Droid. So...

NNAMDIDan, anything you have to say in addition to that about Android?

DANNo. I mean, I, you know, I, sort of, kind of use Droid phone myself. I'm sort of -- I am sort of concerned about the price of the Motorola Xoom. And, you know, if they're gonna have a wireless only version. But I was just kind of interested in sort of what your panelists...

NNAMDIHow, in fact, does the Motorola Xoom stack up against the iPad, Bill?

HARLOWIn a lot of ways, it's a lot more powerful. It gets closer to more of what a conventional computer offers as far as being able to do three multitasking and the way you can, you know, manage the programs and files in the system. That said, it's that what people really looking for from -- with tablet?

NNAMDIThat's what Wayne -- Wayne asked that on our Facebook page. Derrick asked, "Is Motorola making a dent against the met market at all?"

HARLOWI mean, it just came out. So I think...

NNAMDIYeah.

HARLOW...it'll be too soon to tell.

NNAMDIWell, the pricings are -- I mean, all these Acer, Toshiba, (word?), they're priced at $800.

HARLOWYeah.

GILROYGuess what Apple's gonna do? They're gonna start cutting prices...

HARLOWI know.

HARLOWOf all the things, Apple's the one that's dictating the low prices here. That's pretty incredible.

GILROYThe way this has become the topsy turvy from the last 20 years on the air is the...

HARLOWYeah. Now, the big thing about the Xoom though and the ones coming forward is they're using the latest Android OS. It's really tailored to a tablet experience. That's big because the Galaxy tablets that came out a while ago was based on their phone OS and you could kind of tell.

NNAMDIIf you're just joining us, that's Bill Harlow. Here's a former Mac genius who now works on PCs & MACs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. And John Gilroy is director of business development at solutionsdevelopers.com. They are our computer guys. Our computer gal Allison Druin will be joining us next month. Here is Anne in Arlington, Va. Anne, your turn.

ANNEThank you. I grew up in -- we're gonna take a step backward here probably. I grew up in the Dick Tracy generation. And the group of ladies and I were sitting around the other night, wondering why they have never -- with all the ideas around, why they have never manufactured something that's akin to the two-way wrist radio, but more geared to women, that you could wear as an accessory, you wouldn't be laying it down losing it, you wouldn't be putting it in a pocket of the purse and not be able to fish it out when it rings and so forth and so on. Any answers for that?

NNAMDIWell, Bill Harlow happens to be wearing...

GILROYI'm glad you asked that question.

HARLOWYeah.

NNAMDI...the aforementioned Dick Tracy watch even in the studio.

GILROYHe's got one right here.

HARLOWSo what I have here is I picked up on Kickstarter a really cool device known as the LunaTik. And you have to be a lunatic to wear this, I think, but whatever. It's machined aluminum and it encapsulates an iPod Nano. And it's, you know, it's not a two-way radio, but I can listen to FM radio, use it as an iPod. It also tells time. I think it looks kind of cool, but it's pretty big. And I guess the thing that I always thought about with the two-way Dick Tracy radio, and I thought about this, too, and if you're gonna throw dream features, it'll be cool if it has shot lasers. But...

NNAMDIHe is an adult, of course.

HARLOWI'm an adult though.

GILROYYes, he's an adult. He's not a gamer. (laugh)

HARLOWExactly. But I imagined, A, it had to be kind of bulky. And the thing I'm wearing right now is pretty bulky. And, you know, at least on a guy, a big watch can look okay. So that might be maybe a watch not tailored towards women. And the other thing, too, is do you wanna talk into your wrist? I mean, (laugh) it looks kind of weird.

NNAMDIIt's better than talking to your shoe like Maxwell Smart.

HARLOWExactly. Thank you, Kojo.

GILROYBut it would be more normal to talk into your shoe than walk through the Safeway where your mumbling to yourself and I'm looking, I'm going, what are they, out of their mind?

HARLOWWell, Bluetooth headsets...

NNAMDIAnne, and I happen to think the big watches look good on women too. So you might wanna try this one.

ANNEWell, bracelets. You know, there are huge bracelets...

HARLOWThat's true. A good point

ANNE...and all kinds of fashion accessories...

GILROYWhat's it called? It's called custom jewelry, the big stuff, yeah.

ANNEThat's true. And as far as talking into your arm, it's no different than people with their ear buds just talking as their walking along the subway.

HARLOWI agree. That's weirder. I like when people hold a phone or something up, so you can tell that person is in a conversation.

GILROYYeah.

HARLOWThat person is not crazy. I do not have to widen my distance around him.

NNAMDI(laugh) That person just happen to be wearing a Bluetooth and talking and you can't see the Bluetooth device.

HARLOWExactly.

NNAMDIIt looks kind of crazy, mostly because it is. But, Anne, does that help you at all?

ANNEAh, yeah. It's just one of those topics or speculation that you talk about when there's nothing else to talk about. (laugh)

NNAMDIAre you suggesting that we don't have anything else to talk about?

GILROYI'm shocked.

HARLOWAllison, get back soon. Save us.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. Bill, the old cliché says March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. So I guess it's appropriate we talked Mac Lion. It's my understanding that you have seen the developer preview.

HARLOWYes. So we already talked about how they're blending in, the surfer products. So that when you install line, you can choose conventional client version of a full-pledged running a server version. But there are some other things too. One of the things that they didn't really demo that I thought was kind of cool is a -- they took some of the ideas in the iPad version of the mail program and rolled them back into the mail program for the Mac. So I think, you know, it feels more current, more up-to-date, allows you to switch back and forth a little easier, and it's a really slick interface. It takes better use of the screen real estate.

HARLOWThey updated the preview app, which is sort of like the baked-in version of Adobe Reader. But, you know, it has also the things like, you know, e-signing features that are really slick. You know, a lot of nice under-the-hood improvements that I was kind of surprised to see. And the thing that actually that was my favorite feature was QuickTime, which is they're little video playback engine. It kind of got neutered when they released Snow Leopard. It was updated but it seems really limited. And now, they're adding way more of the pro-features to it, so if you wanna do basic editing or cropping video, you can do all that stuff.

NNAMDIOn to Brett in Bethesda, Md. Hi, Brett.

BRETTHi. Good morning. My question is about virus protection software. I've been using my work computer for the last of couple of years, so I haven't had to deal with updating anything. But I'm wondering -- I've just a bought a PC of my own, and I'm wondering what your current favorite antivirus programs are, what's cost effective. And do you guys still recommend things like Ad-Aware or Spybot to clean up my hardware and things like that?

NNAMDIHere's John Gilroy.

GILROYWell, just this morning, I updated AVG, which I use in my desktop computer at home. And it's fine. I think, over the years, what I've seen is behavior modification is probably more important than antivirus...

HARLOWI agree.

GILROY...but antivirus has to be there. And, well, the other utility I run is called Malwarebytes. And...

HARLOWYes, I love that one. That's one of my favorite.

GILROY...and that's -- it's a nice, little one. And then the number three in the troika here is CCleaner. And so, if you run -- three -- you know, those three every now and then, you probably find -- but today, it's mostly behavior based. I mean, if you go to kojoshow.org and you think it's kind of a funky site, I mean, you still -- you have to avoid unusual sites. . I mean...

HARLOWYeah.

GILROY...use standard sites. And someone calls you and ask you for -- this is the bank calling, you have to be careful about social engineering as well.

HARLOWAnd what you're saying about behavior, too, you're right because things like, you know, virus is spreading, you might have AV software that may protect you. But things like a Trojan, where there's, you know, hidden malware baked into a program you went out of your way to download and install...

GILROYYeah.

HARLOW...then that's not gonna help you.

NNAMDIAnd Brett, John Gilroy wants to know that these are some of the things that if you hear them, you ought to be on the lookout. Can we hear this?

NNAMDIJohn. What is that?

GILROYThis is to drive your system administrator crazy. I thought to be nice, as a service to the audience, you know, you got a system administrator that -- you go the kojoshow.org and you go to the site that has recordings of hard drives that are failing. And so, you get the system administrator in your office and you play one of these sounds, and then it starts jumping up and down because everyone has heard the hard drives crash and it just is really a painful sound.

HARLOWIt's got a good beat, you can dance to it. (laugh)

NNAMDILet's hear another one.

GILROYOh.

NNAMDICan we go to a break, please? This is disgusting.

GILROYIt is disgusting, especially if it's your hard drive crashing.

NNAMDISpeaking of disgusting, it's the Computer Guys, Bill Harlow and John Gilroy joining us in studio. Taking your calls at 800-433-8850 or your e-mail, you can send to kojo@wamu.org. We'll be back after this short break. But we are happy to take your questions and comments. You can also do that at our website, kojoshow.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to the Computer Guys. John Gilroy is director of business development at solutionsdevelopers.com. Bill Harlow is a former Mac genius who now works on PCs and Macs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. Allison Druin will be back with us next month. We take your calls at 800-433-8850. You can send us a tweet @kojoshow. Here is Philip in Herndon, Va. Philip, you are on the air. Go ahead, please.

PHILIPHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. I would like to find out if there's a way to (unintelligible) videos that we, you know, take with our, you know, personal camera. If there is a way to play those on our iPad or iPhone, you know, Apple devices?

HARLOWWell, if you have an Apple computer, it makes it somewhat easy. With most of these videos, there's usually some way of just importing it into iMovie, for example, which comes free with a Mac. It's part of iLife. And when you go and you edit it down and you share it out, there are actually options. And they even show your picture and you can pick, you know, what your output destination should be. Are you looking at a, for example, more for TV use or you kind of formatting for YouTube or you're formatting for you iPad or iPhone and then it'll save it in the appropriate MPEG4 format that'll play back in that device.

HARLOWAnd that's one of the easiest way, but there are other tools to you, there's a free tool called HandBrake, which can take almost anything you throw in it and output it to, you know, obscure formats like MKV or MPEG4, H264. And it, too, has a lot of baked-in presets you can select, depending if you wanna set it up so that works on a PlayStation or an Xbox or your iPhone.

PHILIPOkay, great.

NNAMDIHey, Philip, thank you very much for your call. This e-mail we got from Edward, "Does HP have a good idea in putting WebOS onto a tablet and continuing use in phones? I love WebOS on my Palm Pre, but not the phone itself."

HARLOWI'm excited. I think WebOS is awesome. And one of the things I've always liked is the way they've handled both notifications and the way they handle multitasking with these cards you can slide around. So one the brief previews -- videos I saw of the tablet versions, it looks really promising, and I can't wait to get my hands on one.

GILROYThe issue again to go back to 10, 15 minutes ago...

HARLOWSee, we did talk about other things than iPads, people.

GILROY…$800. I mean, if HP thinks they get $800 for this, they got another thing coming.

HARLOWBut it better be, you know, head and shoulders above anything else out there or they better get the price down fast.

NNAMDIAnd now, ladies and gentlemen, the John Gilroy priority, any tech suggestions for ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day? Tech suggestions for ways to celebrate...

GILROYTech suggestions. (laugh)

NNAMDI...for ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

HARLOWWe'll have the listeners call into a vat. (laugh)

NNAMDIJohn generally celebrates it in a very un-tech kind of manner.

GILROY(laugh) Very un-tech.

NNAMDIBut John, let's talk about Wayne Rash a little bit. He had an article recently about coming crackdowns on people who sell cell phone jamming devices.

GILROYA friend of the show, Wayne Rash, he always hits home runs. I just really enjoy reading his articles...

NNAMDIHe'll be on two weeks from today...

GILROYOh.

NNAMDI...to talk tech gadgets, but talk about what he's been writing about lately.

GILROYAnd so, if you go to a movie theater or what they do is they set up little jammer so Bill can't call all his friends and text his friends and do whatever he does in the theater, and makes life easier for me and my wife and kids sitting there. And so, they have jammers out there. Now what's unfortunate is that it jams police signals and other signals, and so the FCC said this is against the law.

GILROYThat's just kind of an interesting topic of social media and electronics and where you draw the line. I mean, I certainly don't wanna have someone sitting behind me on the phone or during, you know, a movie I'm watching. On the other hand, I certainly don't wanna have a police call get disturbed. So, this is a whole new world of legal ramifications of electronic devices. Who dreamed of this, years ago, you know?

NNAMDIWell.

HARLOWSo jammers.

NNAMDIAnd this we got from Eric, Bill Harlow. "What are the true sustained rates for Thunderbolt, not the peak quoted rates, and how does it compare to USB 3? What devices would need this kind of speed?"

HARLOWWell, the examples that they showed in some of these demonstrations, I think they're getting a sustained rate -- read rates from an external rate of, you now, multiple hard drives, you know, strive together for performance. And they were getting, I think, up to 900 megabytes per second. It was substantial. In the real world, you're not gonna need anything close to that. I mean, we talk about Thunderbolt being in the laptops. And the hard drive in a laptop is still really, really slow compared to the ones in the desktop and some of these solid-state devices coming out there.

HARLOWBut I said in a previous show that solid-state drives, I think, are gonna come down in price throughout the year where more and more people will get them. And that's gonna be the future where I've got a solid-state drive in my Mac mini now that saturates my three gigabit Serial ATA in there, and there'll be faster ones over time. And I think that's -- with those, you could see real benefits within the next couple of years with Thunderbolt just with an external fast SSD, any or internal fast SSD talking to each other. Video capture is another one, so...

GILROYBack up.

HARLOWAnd of course, video. You can hook a display to it and a massive high-resolution screen needs really, really fast throughput. So that right there, I mean, display port, you know, is...

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from We-mail (sp?) asking, "Why exactly is Apple developing Thunderbolt when fast HDMI is 10 gigabytes per second capable, more widely used and includes micro formats. Isn't this like reinventing the wheel?"

GILROYIt's not generic, though. That's (word?)

HARLOWWell, it's not generic and also it can handle different protocols. I mean, there are gonna be adaptors coming out so you can take this one port and still connect firewire and USB devices possibly eSATA, external serial ATA devices...

GILROYAnd HDMI.

HARLOWAnd HDMI and display. So it's kind of all purpose and it connects directly to the PCI bus in the computer, which I think is a big, big thing that HDMI doesn't do.

NNAMDIOkay, getting back to some basics, here's Collin in Washington, D.C. Collin or is it Collin? You're on the air. Go ahead, please.

COLLINHi. It's actually Collin. I just had a basic logon question. I've got a Compaq laptop running Windows Vista still. And I had it setup to -- every time I log on, tell me how many successful log ons I've had and how many unsuccessful log ons I had. There's a security feature of -- I think it was AVG's free optimizer program. And basically, I'm always getting a message when I log on that says I've had an unsuccessful log on attempt. And it's usually, like, 30 seconds right after I log on. I noticed the next time I log on, it says, you know, your last unsuccessful log on attempt was, blah, blah, blah, 30 seconds later, you know. So I was wondering if that's something I should be worried about, or is it just sort of a fluke of Windows or…?

GILROYNone of the people in the security community that I know of have ever mentioned this AVG utility called optimizer. I think they tried to push it at the website, so I have no experience with that. Bill, no one's -- no one mentions it.

HARLOWNo. I mean, when I run AVG or Trend Micro, I usually go for the bare bones. I just want AV protection.

GILROYYeah, yeah.

HARLOWI don't install those other stuffs, so.

GILROYThere's got to be sites that'll discuss this. But I -- it's just not something that's the top of tongue -- you can get 10 security experts in town...

HARLOWYeah, exactly.

GILROY...and that's not even gonna be in the radar.

HARLOWYeah, they can't even say whether or not, you know, the count is accurate or if there are any -- if it's a bug implementation or not. So I don't know if it's anything (unintelligible) .

GILROYAnd my guess is to give no support for Vista here. So you're -- probably get rid of it.

HARLOWYeah.

NNAMDIOkay.

COLLINYeah, just get rid of it. Okay. Thanks.

NNAMDIColin, thank you for your call. On to Shay (sp?) in Washington, D.C. Shay, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

SHAYHi, Kojo. I'm calling about speech recognition. I don't like to type. I don't like to text. I like to just speak. And I'd like to know what you think is out there that's really easy to use in terms of smart phones and as well as software for computers that really work and can be expandable in terms of vocabulary.

NNAMDISpeech recognition software. John Gilroy?

GILROYYou know, for 20 years I've said not there yet.

HARLOWYeah.

GILROYAnd the stuff I've seen, not there yet. Although makes for a good movie, "The King's Speech," but... (laugh)

HARLOWYeah. It's gotten better. I mean, you said easy, and that's kind of the word that's gonna throw you off because it is possible to get reliable, accurate dictation, but it requires effort in your end. You have to train the software to recognize your voice, recognize your speaking patterns, and you have to thrown in commands so it knows how to punctuate and break up your sentences. So if you're willing to invest that time, you can look at stuff from Dragon. You know, they -- what's it? NaturallySpeaking?

GILROYYeah. Many of the large VOIP vendors have voice recognition...

HARLOWYeah.

GILROY...systems that have limited capability. Interactive Intelligence in Indiana is a company that leads in this area. There's other -- Cisco, of course. It's just that it's so narrow and the technology is not there yet. It's just too complex.

HARLOWYeah. And he mentioned smartphones, too. And there are, you know -- there's voice recognition in my iPhone for basic tasks, like play this song, call this person. If I want to actually dictate, there's Google app, and even that doesn't do it on the phone. It sends your voice to a server, and that analyzes all that, sends it back to you.

NNAMDIAnd we have done a show before on "Tech Tuesday" on voice recognition and translation software. It's something we'll probably be looking at again in the future. But we'll try to post a link to our website at kojoshow.org, Shay, so you can see when we did the last show on this topic. And hopefully it can be of some assistance to you. Thanks for your call.

SHAYThank you, Kojo. Do you know anything about the Nexus One? I suppose -- I heard that that was capable of sending e-mail to speech recognition.

NNAMDINexus One.

HARLOWI've heard it can, and some people like it. But I don't know what the -- what the success rate of that software is.

GILROYThere's always a gotcha here, a big gotcha.

HARLOWYeah. I'm sure that's not perfect.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Shay. Bill Harlow, if you Google search -- or if your Google search looks different this week, you're not imagining it. How come -- how are so-called content farms gumming up everyone's search? We actually did a show about this on "Tech Tuesday" last week.

HARLOWI've seen it. You do a search for whisky, John, and you get, mixed in with the top 10 hits, a bunch of sites where, you go there, it looks like a spam message.

GILROYKojoshow.org come on top 10? (laugh)

HARLOWIt just says whisky, whisky, and all these search terms, search engine optimization that gain the system to get hits and, you know, get added revenue and clickthroughs. So Google has updated the algorithms to recognize these patterns and actually show you useful stuff again, not just, you know, these bogus hits. And I welcome it because it was starting to drive me nuts. You know, I would actually use Bing sometimes.

GILROYMmm.

NNAMDIOoh.

GILROYBut, you know, there are many consultants in this town who've charged thousands of dollars for SEO, search engine optimization.

HARLOWYeah.

GILROYAnd guess what, they got to go back in. So this has got to be a windfall for these folks who charge money to optimize a website so they come up in Google search.

HARLOWCat and mouse game. Cat and mouse game.

NNAMDISo that they can go to all of those domain names that people are not using a whole lot and try to use them once again for search engine optimization. We'll see...

GILROYYeah, they have to go back.

NNAMDI...if Google can figure it out. Here's Derek on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. Derek, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DEREKHi, Kojo. I wanted to just get some comments about the Motorola ATRIX system that -- that's coming out. I'm trying to see, you know, the general market impact of it with -- you know, I can see really that being the future of computing and cell phones and et cetera. I just wanted to get the -- get your guests' comments on it.

HARLOWCan you refresh my memory on the ATRIX here? I'm blacking out on it.

NNAMDIAnd, by the way, Wayne Rash, as we said, is gonna be on in two weeks. He is at a conference right now, looking at consumer electronics probably...

GILROYIn Europe.

NNAMDI...in Europe, probably looking at the Motorola ATRIX even as we speak. But go ahead.

HARLOWAwesome.

DEREKYeah. The ATRIX system was the winner of the CES show where basically you can take a cell phone, but you can basically dock it into a laptop...

HARLOWOh, right, right, right, right.

DEREK...et cetera, et cetera. And, you know...

GILROYTV commercials for this.

HARLOWYeah, yeah.

DEREK...with that kind of system, I mean, down the road, I can really see the elimination of laptops and tablets and so forth. You just basically have your cell phone and you plug it into whatever kind of device you wanna use.

HARLOWIt's sort of what RIM is starting to do with the PlayBook, too, where you got the BlackBerry and you can use that to actually, you know, implement more functionality into the PlayBook tablet. It could be the way to go. You know, you're -- this tablet is more of, you know, a terminal that associates with your phone. What I'd like to see is, you know, not even have the phone plugged in. You know, don't even pop it in there. Just -- you know, we were talking about wireless earlier. Just -- you got your tablet and your phones nearby. It adds more functionality. So it's tough to say. We'll see. Short-term, I just can't see it replacing full general use laptops. We'll see a lot of, you know, potential use cases where it might come in handy.

NNAMDIThank you for your call, Derek. Here now is Veronica in Owings Mills, Md. Hi, Veronica.

VERONICAHi. Good afternoon, Kojo. Good afternoon, guests. I have a question about having my AC jack repaired on my Sony VAIO. I took it to the shop. Well, it was shorting out at first, and I have to turn my cord a certain way in the Sony VAIO to get a charge on my battery. So they finally diagnosed the problem and ordered a new jack. Now they put the jack in and the battery is not charging. And I'm wondering, is it -- what could the problem be, and is it worth further, you know, troubleshooting this and having the PC repair?

NNAMDIJohn Gilroy?

GILROYMy experience in repairing notebook computers indicates that the jack is part of the motherboard, typically. And if that gets dropped or cracked or bumped into, you can try to replace it all you want, but it's a serious, you know, serious, serious problem.

HARLOWAnd I assume you've tried new power adapters as well, right?

VERONICAWell, I already replaced the power adapter because the original...

HARLOWOkay.

GILROYYeah.

VERONICA...power adapter went dead. And so, now, right after the original power adapter went dead, I started having problems with the jack.

GILROYYeah, my guess is it's the solder connection in the motherboard.

HARLOWRight.

GILROYAnd that -- but it can't be repaired. And -- but to replace a motherboard on a Sony VAIO...

HARLOWOr any laptop. It's pretty expensive.

GILROY...very, very expensive, whether it's a Sony, whether it's an Apple, whether it's a Toshiba. They're all the same type of situation. And, Veronica, I'm not too optimistic on getting this repaired. I think you have to go back and ask Sony to -- I don't know if there's a warranty with this, but they're normally very reliable machines. I have no problem with the Sony VAIO products, but it just happens. If you have 10 notebook computers, someone is gonna bump one accidentally and it damages that. It's like damaging the whole motor of a car.

HARLOWYeah, yeah.

GILROYThe question is, is it worth replacing the motor for $3,000 or -- it's expensive.

NNAMDIVeronica, good luck to you.

VERONICAAll right. Thank you.

NNAMDIAnd thank you very much for your call. And I'm afraid that just about does it for this edition of the "Computer Guys & Gal." Allison Druin will be rejoining us in April. Computer guy Bill Harlow is a former Mac Genius who now works on PCs and Macs with Mid-Atlantic Consulting. Always a pleasure, Bill.

HARLOWAlways a pleasure, too. Thank you.

NNAMDIJohn Gilroy is director of business development at solutionsdevelopers.com. Always a pleasure, John.

GILROYI'll see you on St. Patrick's Day.

NNAMDIWell, let me revise that always a pleasure statement I was making earlier. (laugh)

GILROYNever been a pleasure. (laugh)

NNAMDIThank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.