About Anthony Hecht

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• Comment on Anthony Hecht's answer…

  0 0 Yeah, which is why I said "own or have a license to." Anthony Hecht commented 6 months ago

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  Can someone explain torrenting to me and offer recommendations for where to begin with using torrents to download music?

  0 0 It should be noted that there's nothing inherently illegal about BitTorrent, or about downloading music. It's illegal to download stuff you don't own (or have a license for, blergh), but there are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent, and the technology shouldn't be confused with it's sometimes being used for illegal things. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 6 months ago Answer, comment & read 4 more answers »

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  Does it make any difference if I buy an i-pad at the apple store or the ATT store?

  5 0 In the end there's no difference, you'll still have an iPad, and you should pay the same price. If you have any questions, the people at the Apple Store will know a LOT more about the device, and they'll be able to help you set it up more effectively, and probably won't try as hard to up-sell you on data plans and such. Personally, I would go with the Apple Store if there's one nearby, but if you know what you want and there's an AT&T store around the corner, you'll walk out with the same thing. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 6 months ago Answer, comment & read 5 more answers »

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  What's everyone's backup schema?

  4 0 Well, I'm not sure I qualify as a member of your target group here, but I'll lay it out anyway: At home: Crashplan backs up all my irreplaceable stuff (mostly media, some document, and email) to Crashplan Central and to a drive attached to my work computer. Time Machine backs up whatever to a dedicated Time Machine drive. All my media are on a RAID 5 array, which isn't backup as you say, but has some redundancy. I SuperDuper my boot drive to an external drive every night. I have some random old ChronoSync routines that make additional copies of my photos and music. At work I just SuperDuper and Crashplan. My laptop I TimeMachine when it's on my home network and plugged in, and Crashplan to Crashplan Central. I don't keep anything unique or critical on my laptop, though. Mail is IMAP, calendars and contacts are synced with MobileMe, and I use Dropbox for various files I want to access everywhere. Most important to me in all this is that it's all virtually 100% unattended. I try to take a look every now and then to make sure everything's still running, but otherwise I don't notice it. The downside of course is that I also might not notice if something isn't working until I really need it, but I think I have enough copies of the important stuff to cover me. So yeah, I'm not sane in this regard. It's probably just like yours. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 7 months ago Answer, comment & read 8 more answers »

• Comment on Anthony Hecht's answer…

  0 0 For the adapters and cables, you can try Monoprice.com. They have almost every kind of cable and adapter imaginable and insanely low prices. They're not all quite as meticulously designed as Apple's, but they'll get the job done. Anthony Hecht commented 7 months ago

• Comment on Anthony Hecht's answer…

  0 0 @infinitepest - Yeah, you can get various adapters to send your iPad's output to your TV. HDMI - http://s.trn.gr/rt1vch VGA - http://s.trn.gr/rbSUWQ Component - http://s.trn.gr/ncRoWm You can find similar cables to go from your laptop, it just depends which model you have and which ports it has. Newer models have Display Port, so you'd need a DP -> HDMI (or whatever you have on your TV) adapter and cable. Etc. Also, you might think about looking into AppleTV. They're $100, which you could easily spend on all these cables, and then you can do a lot of this stuff wirelessly using AirPlay, plus watch Netflix, iTunes rentals, etc. I keep most of my video content on my computer, and then I use the excellent AirVideo app to play it on my iPad or iPhone. If I want to watch it on the TV, in 2 taps it's there, no wires. Anthony Hecht commented 7 months ago

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  Extend the life of my dying phone!

  1 0 The charging issue is a tough one without seeing the thing. You were probably on the right track with the tweezers, but it can be a dicey operation. You just want to get all those contacts as close to their original location as you can on both the charger and the phone to make sure they all make contact. The problem is if they're loose, they'll just get pushed back out of the way when you try to attach the charger. If they've lost contact on the other side (to the battery, or to the charger's power supply), you might be out of luck. If the problem is on the charger side, you could probably pick up a new one on eBay for a few bucks. As for which smart phone to buy, this is basically a religious argument these days. I'm an iPhone guy, so I like those, but there are many great Android phones too, and Windows Phone is also quite good. It comes down to personal preference. If you haven't used them much, you should at least go to the store and use an iPhone and an Android phone for a while to get an idea of which makes most sense to you and feels better, and try some apps for things you're likely to do - email, Twitter, whatever - and see which ones you like better. The consensus is often that iPhone is a bit easier to learn and use and the apps tend to be more stable and polished. There are lots of exceptions and people who would disagree of course, so you should check them out for yourself. I think you'll quickly get a sense of which feels better for you. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 7 months ago Answer, comment & read 3 more answers »

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  Playing DVDs on the big screen TV via the Mac Workbook Pro

  0 0 Yes, should be pretty easy, but first will need to know what model Macbook you have. Go to Apple Menu > About this Mac, tell us what it says there, and then click "More Info" and tell us what it says on the right side when you highlight "Hardware" on the left side. Also, what kind of TV is it? This is important because then we'll know what kind of connectors you'll need. Basically you'll be connecting your laptop to your TV, which will make your big TV into a second display for your laptop. Then when you play a DVD on the laptop, you can make it full screen on the second display and voilá! Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 7 months ago Answer and comment »

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  Wifi signal gets "tired"

  0 0 Hi! Cute dog! ;-) Hmm.. I'm surprised the Apple Store (was it the official Apple Store, or the Mac Store on 45th?) couldn't find the problem or didn't offer more advice. What did they tell you? Did they open it up and re-seat the airport card? Couple things to try: When the signal gets lousy, try just turning Airport off for a minute (in the menu bar) and then back on, instead of shutting down the machine. Does it come back to full strength? Also try relocating your Airport if you can. It's possible there's some strange interference going on, I've seen people report similar problems clearing up when they moved it away from aluminum windows, for example. Do you have another computer you can test out in the same location? If so, that would be a great test. Set up a different machine (laptop, iMac, whatever) in the same place and connect to the same network and see if it still happens. If not, it's likely an issue with the hardware on your Macbook. Also make sure you're running the latest OS and security updates. Hope that helps! Let us know how it goes. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 7 months ago Answer and comment »

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  Can I import my personal files in Hotmail to Thunderbird?

  0 0 Hi.. I'm not an expert at Thunderbird specifically, but I'll try to help. Just to make sure I understand the problem - You're using Thunderbird now with your @msn.com email, but there are some files that you can't access in Thunderbird? Is that right? Are these files emails, or some other kind of file? If you can describe the problem in specific steps - e.g. I open Thunderbird and see ____, I select _____, and I expect to see ____ but instead I see _____ - or something like that, I'll see what I can figure out. Anthony Hecht answered in Geek Week 7 months ago Answer, comment & read 2 more answers »

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