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Computer and Technology |
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"Dual Boot XP and Vista", and "What's New With Tivo" Presented by Floyd Skelton,
It was a busy day. We enjoyed three presentations as well as a few answered questions. “Dual Boot systems” has to do with running both systems on the same machine. This can be at the same time or separately. A big question is why do it. One major reason is that some of your favorite XP software will not run on Vista. Floyd mentioned Adobe Acrobat 5.0, Partition Magic and Norton’s Save and Restore among others. He presented two paths that could be followed. In the first case you have an existing machine running XP. This requires that you create a new partition and install Vista on it. In this setup you have to re-boot to move from one system to the other. The second scenario starts with a machine running Vista. Here you again create a new partition. In this case you install “MS Virtual PC 7.0” running Windows XP. Both systems can run simultaneously. He saved for the end of the presentation his real reason for creating a dual boot system. It was “To see if I could”. ( He did). Floyd admits to a liking for a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) to control his TV watching. He particularly likes the TiVo machines. In this presentation he showed that TiVo has now reached his price point. It has come down from $799 to a unit priced at $299. The specs are good. The machine comes with 20 hours of HD recording capability. Add a western Digital Expander to increase this by 65 hours. It is not difficult to configure a wireless system to enable watching throughout the house or to watch and record on your PC. "Online Photo Galleries" Presented by Phil Goff Phil announced that after all of that serious stuff his presentation was going to be fun. He started with a short film clip of people jumping out of an airplane and free falling most of the way to the ground. He wanted to show the high quality picture at a resolution of only 720p. Photo Galleries provide useful services but remember that they are there to sell things to you. He listed some of the major on line galleries and explained how you create albums and up load your photos. You can have the gallery print the photos. You can also share the on line gallery with friends of your choosing. Phil discussed a number of fun things to do with the photos in your on line album. He produces a calendar of his best pictures of the year. This is a favorite family Christmas present. There are many other products that you can produce, i.e. notepads, Coffee Mugs, US postage with your picture on the stamp, etc. Q&A by Dean Steichen and Dick Curry produced a couple of useful answers. To get your email remotely, if from Comcast go to Comcast.com instead of .net and enter your password. To have large capacity online storage for photos try photodrop.com. It is free. |