The following program is produced by the Tech Talk Radio Network. Hi, this is Adrian Barbo. You're listening to tech Talk Radio and you're gonna learn a lot. Welcome to another episode of tech Talk Radio.
I'm a D. Taylor.
Hi, I'm Sean de Weird and I'm justin Lemme lot going on in the world of tech. We're one week away from Windows ten support ending, and it seems to you like every everywhere you look, every broadcast, news channel, every feed on tech blogs is all talking about this. How Windows eleven if you haven't upgraded yet, you got
to upgrade. And you know, I don't know if it's fear or whatnot, but Microsoft keeps making some changes too along the way, fighting these people who are trying to hold on to Windows ten.
The frustration I've seen is that they've just kind of blanket statement said we're done, and they've made it seem like nobody's gonna support Windows ten forever again. Or you could pay the thirty dollars for the non proversion or the sixty dollars for the pro version to get in their year, and then I'm sure you're able to pay as the years go on, pay some more money. To keep support. But what I've seen is corporations that security
is a big deal, that's just important. But you've seen it from large corporations just go every Windows ten machine's gone. I've seen pictures on Reddit and stuff of paletts of Windows ten machines just being shipped out and surplussed, and some of them are running I nines with sixty four gigs of ramp. I've been seeing people salvaging these from corporations that are getting rid of all these Windows te
machines that are really good machines. One piece of it can't support Windows ten or Windows eleven, or they just are wholesalling all these computers to get new machines that support Windows eleven. I just don't understand the mass, fleeting, panic and leaving of Windows.
Ten justin you're in it, Like, how does an organization look at this to try and to deal with this?
Well, I mean, I've just I've just been slowly but surely just removing Windows ten from any computer that I possibly can. You know, when it comes up to it. We do have some point of sale machines that running Windows ten, but we actually paid Microsoft for extended support so we can have those machines supported with all the updates for I want to say it's probably twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, maybe, I think so, we've got a
couple more years of support on those. But yeah, if it's like an end user computer, I'm just nope, sorry, you're running Windows eleven. But how far away are we from Windows eleven be an end of support. I mean, they haven't even announced Windows twelve yet. Usually they've got before they end support on one, they've got one out, another one out, and then one announced and on the way. They haven't even said anything about Windows twelve.
We've heard little bits like Windows twelve will do this, we'll do that, it will.
Be cool, it will be good.
And in the timeline of Microsoft, how you look at how they distribute their versions of software, it should be the one that is really good. That's got to get people concerned too, is you know, Microsoft suddenly going to say, well, sorry, you can't use it anymore, We're not going to do the updates. And that's the frustration for a lot of people.
Right now.
Oh oh, I can pay thirty dollars and then I get the updates for another year, or I can back up my one drive and then people go, well, wait a minute, why don't you just give me the security updates so I.
Can run ten anyways? You know why not?
Even the Federal Trade Commission is saying, well, wait a minute, Microsoft, what's going on here? They've started to question some of the madness behind all of this. People are kind of upset.
Yeah, I mean I can see, I can understand why people are upset, and you know, we might touch upon them up later on the show. But Microsoft is making all kinds of mistakes right now. I mean with Xbox Game Pass and everything else. I mean, they're just they're really screwing the pooch here.
Yeah, you know.
One of the things though, okay, for security sake, two PPM two point zero Secure boot. They say it will bring a more secure environment for somebody. You know, we were able to install rufous on this machine, which is just one generation short of making the Windows eleven I have a TPM two point zero, the whole bit, but it wouldn't it wouldn't allow it. So we went ahead and went the rufous route and got Windows eleven installed. But for the sake of security, wouldn't it make sense?
Though most people should have that kind of security enabled to be able to really benefit from from that. I'm not really sold on TPM, the TBM architecture, no matter one point oh, two point oh whatever, three point zero tomorrow, I'm not really sold on it.
I think a lot of the pressure for TPM two point zero is coming from it's a hardware module that exists, right, and you're seeing a lot of the anti cheats having to be installed at the bios or the root level of your machine.
We were talking anti cheat, you're talking about video games.
Yeah, video game anti cheat, right, It's a big problem in the gaming industry, and that's been the big push for it is game are requiring you to have TPM two point zero installed to run their games.
Yeah.
Activisions Activision apparently has said, which is owned by Microsoft. Activision claims ninety seven percent of cheaters it catches and called it duty Black Ops seven are banned within thirty minutes, and they say it's all because of secure boot and ricochet. They say that they actually check if you want to play the game. To be able to play the game, you have to have TPM two point zero and you have to have secure boot. If you at hont have
that you're not gonna be able to play. Battlefield six apparently also requires secure boot as well, so that that actually means that a lot of people who want to play that maybe aren't even on that platform, are not gonna be able to play.
My problem.
My problem right with the whole TPM or you know, the easy NCHET or whatever you want to call it, You're you're allowing a kernel level access to your machine. If and that that is a massive mass a security flaw. If anybody ever finds a way to get into and exploit TPM or exploit secure boot or anything like that, it is going to destroy millions of computers instantly. Don't
ever allow kernel level access to anything. If they're saying, oh, this is for video games, there are so many people out there that don't play video games.
Why do I need TPM? I don't play video games if I mean personally I do. But I'm saying, as a person who doesn't play video games, why would they need TPM. It just doesn't make any sense. I just don't agree with it. Like they say, Oh, it's going to protect you, it's secure, it's secure.
I don't think so.
Yeah, Sean, you were mentioning something earlier though that Microsoft is continuing kind of it's push you know. Of course they'll give you the access to be able to continue to run Windows ten and get the security updates if you allow it to back up to one drive. The downside to that, to ask me, is is that you know, okay, well,
what's wrong with that? The problem is one drive only has a certain a limit when it comes to capacity for the for the free one drive, if you signed up five gig five gig, So if you go be on five gig, which you've experienced before, then you're gonna have to pay for that storage.
So either way you may end up paying paying out money.
It's just it's confusing to use and end users, right. I helped my father in law build his Windows eleven machine, and I tried to do it without without what. I tried to do it with the no pass command line piece that that you know that's been floating around. Didn't work. I had to create account. It created an account. Then he started to move his deveover from flash drives and then he called me and said says, I'm out of storage. I was like, bro, you just got a two gig
tear two terriby driving there. How are you out of space? Well says I only have five gigs And as soon as you said that I do, it was one drive. So I'm just I'm frustrated about that, just like a lot of other people are that it's forcing you to create these these Microsoft accounts, like why, oh, it just serves me ads, it's.
To get my data their AI.
Yeah. So it's just I don't have the disceassity like the platforms in place that go Linux everything. I would love to. It's just there are certain things that I need Windows for. I have a couple of macs that I use and I would love to go Linux, and but I just you know, would have to get Caitlin on board with that. I'd have to. But this, I just don't want the bloat that comes with it, and tying it to a Microsoft account, it just it ties you it. I don't know, it's just frustrating.
Yeah, and you know, people have to understand there are options and that's the thing to And I've noticed I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like Apple has been kind of I don't say slashing the prices, but it noticed that some of the pricing on their you know, MacBooks and and that type of thing seems to be a little more affordable.
And their prices have come down right for their entry level right. And the big part of one of their releases I think earlier this year was upping the base level of RAM and their MacBooks to sixteen gig because they had been at eight for a long time, and they finally bumped up to sixteen for their minimum state. Like there, you can't get anything with less than sixteen.
But with their M chips right and their development of their own M chips, they've been able to significantly drop the prices on their Mac Mini models, their iMac models, their MacBook models, things like that. So you can build a decent PC for five six hundred bucks that can do a lot of things. You'd be hard pressed to find a computer that can compete with, say like an
M four Macmini for five ninety nine. If you were into the types of things you would use a Mac Mini for video editing, video processing, photo processing, photo editing, those types of things. You'd be better off building a PC if you want to do gaming that type of stuff. Because the Steam libraries are more, there's more Steam stuff. The more Steam sport or build a Linux machine. Windows or Linux is going to be better for gaming than a Mac. But gaming on Mac is coming along. It
just hasn't always been there. But their prices are very competitive on their desktop models.
Okay, So say somebody listening to the show right now is saying, okay, I have a Windows seven computer. Originally I updated it to ten and I've used it and it's been great. But now you know, there's no way I'm not going to be able to go to to you know, Windows eleven. What are the steps they would need to do if they decide maybe I'll go ahead and put Linux on this machine.
I mean, is it a difficult process.
No, no, it's not a difficult process. I will make a comment though, if you're going from seven to ten and you use your license to go to ten from seven, that license from ten is good to go to eleven, you can get that license will get you to eleven. So I don't want people to be like, oh I have to I have to go out and buy a
copy of Windows eleven. If you want to upgrade to pro or a different version, yes, then you need to buy a license, But or ten license is good for a license for what is loving with the same version of Windows.
So if you're bernal, if you're running Windows seven though Box, it probably is not gonna have the TPM two point zero, it's not gonna have the secure boot.
You know, it's r.
It's not gonna have anything. I mean, if you're running a Windows seven or if you bought it or built it at a Windows seven, the hardware is so out of date anyway, it's time to build a new computer, right And that's what a lot of people are gonna have to make that decision, you know, building and they have what a less than a week now to get that done.
Now.
It doesn't mean like if some people, is my Windows ten machine not gonna work on the fifteenth, you know.
Yeah, I mean you're gonna get a lot of people that are going to have that that fear tactic of coming out and saying your tech Windows ten machine is gonna quit. I've gotten that from some of my elder family members. Oh hey, I know you're the computer guy, but it's saying that it's going to be out of sports. Is it going to stop working? No, it just means that you're not going to get security updates for it.
Here's a process you can give to just convincing people that the computer boogeyman is not out to eat your Windows ten machines.
I ended up posing one of my machines, and I'll admit it, I really I did. I don't know what the heck I did. So I have an ass board, I have a machine, uh, and I went ahead. Luckily I made a copy of my SSD that had and this is the one one of I have two computers that both have the Adobe Suite on them, the one that I cannot reinstall because it's you know, no, they don't have the service activated.
So I don't want to mess with those.
But this machine, I wanted to see if I could do an in place upgrade, so I made a copy using a docking station and I've checked it.
Copy works great.
Then stupid me decided to go into the bios and start messing around with UEFI and start trying to adjust it so I could get it ready for updating it to Windows eleven and doing trying to do an in place upgrade.
And when I.
Finally got it to when I did all these changes to the bios, I put the drive in to you know, go ahead, Okay, let's just give this a shot. And I got the error message the windloader was having a problem, and I thought, well, what did I do? So I took the original SSD put that in same thing. I get the blue It's like a blue screen, you know, it's like, yeah, it got got some problems here. So and I can't figure out. This is why I take
pictures of everything I do. Can't figure out what I changed in the bios to get it to get back so I could boot up to that. I was able to with another drive I installed just a test. I was able to install Windows eleven on it and do it that way. But once up with this other drive, and I can't. I can't do it.
So I think I know why.
Huh.
So if you changed it to secure boot and your drive is set for Master Boot Record or NBR, it will not it will not read the drive. Well you once your once your once your bios is set for u f I to secure boot TP two point zero. If you change it to secure boot, it physic it your hard d. Your your hard drive is invisible if it's if it's formatted as an m BR, it is
invisible to your machine period. Right, the only way to fix it is to format it for gpt AT, which I don't want to do, which you don't want to do. So if you want to get data off of it, I suggest you put it into an external doc copy it over from there if you want to, because it would be a USB drive or whatever be able to read it as an external drive versus an internal source drive. If you're trying to boot from it.
You can't go back though.
I can't go back and just say okay, forget it, just go back with the original Windows ten and saw that I had on it. Mmm, probably not, so I'd have to buy another board that isn't set for that yet and hopefully it would.
Well, you can, you can. You could change it back in the bios back to turn cabot off.
Yeah.
And then this is what I ran into with one of my work machines that didn't support this is the one that bricked the BIOS when I did this is it was trying to read a MBR drive and it locked up the BIOS and then in corrupted the BIOS and I had to flash the BIOS back to yeah version.
I tried doing a BIO easy flash on it on it to see if I could if that made a difference, and it didn't. So yeah, gonna that's gonna be a project this weekend.
I think.
Yeah. But yeah, so I think that's something that it's going to confuse some people because a lot of older machines that were set for legacy bios before. Because U if I've been out for a while, right when, it's confusing, because everybody in the computer world calls it bios, right, It's just what it's been called for as long as I've been playing with computers. Technically now it's called uf I. Okay, it's not bios. Bios and uf I are two separate things,
but they are all the pre boot function. So it's like everybody's calls it bios. So sometimes if you call it bios, it may not actually mean what you think it means, but it can be confusing. I'm still gonna everybody is. I'm just putting that out there. So like if we're talking about bios and we're talking about Windows eleven, we're likely talking about UFI, but we're saying bios.
All right, Well, I might just try every setting take photos of every time I do anything any change, just to try and figure it out. But yeah, that's the one thing. It wasn't being identified at all. And then I did one other change and then it was coming up saying it was having a problem with the windloader.
I did notice that Rufus does have the ability to.
Install Windows eleven to an MBR, which that was like, oh, okay, that's good, so you don't have to do you know, GPTU install on that. It will install to an MBR, which is good.
That would allow you to that would allow you to boot without secure boot.
Yeah, and do the uh in place upgrade. So we'll just have to see what has happened. I just don't want to again. I'm keeping these drives put aside because I don't want to touch.
I don't want to mess with them.
So to circle back to your original question, Yeah, h what would it takes for somebody to install Linux? Right? There are a handful of flavors of Linux, so you can get out there right. The popular ones would be like up on two or Linux Mint or a handful
of other distributions. To go to Linux Mint, just google it, download it, flash it with rufus or Yummy or any of the other Blena etcher any of those and if you know how to get into your bios or hear you, if I pick that drive as your boot, install it and you can download it and be installed in fifteen to twenty minutes of it.
Ye yeah, yeah, all right cool. I like that.
We do have listener questions this week, but we also want to cover some of the other announcements that have been made. And speaking of Linux, Sean, you were talking earlier a pre show, we were talking about Linux and distributions. I know, originally not long ago, I had tried win boon to and I liked it. It was a good experience. Again, it's for those that really want to have that Windows look. I mean even the screen looked like a Windows, you
know Windows screen. We showed it on television and they were all commenting, that looks like Windows. It was win Boon too, and then it wasn't long after that though, there was a lot of people saying, no, you don't want to use that one. And now there's one that people are saying called win x wi n ux. But actually Boonto has got something new coming out and they've got a really good name for it, which I love.
Yeah. So Ubuntu is always they hear. I'm just gonna read off to these if I say things like Wardy Wardhog or Breezy Badger or Feisty Fon like those are all released names for versions of Ubuntu Linux. And their new version is coming out April of twenty twenty six, so they just announced it and it's called the Resolute Raccoon. So that is the current that is the new name for Linux twenty six point zero four.
Oh cool.
So yeah, So if it's just kind of a fun thing to go back and look at it, and it can go all the way back if you go to just google it, you can find all the Linux names, but all the way from four point one to zero. At least this webpage hasn't listed. But it's Wardy Warhog. I mean, there's some other really fun ones that disc what is it, wreck something raccoon, Resolute raccoon.
Resolute raccoon.
All right.
I have to tell you.
On feedback that we got from some some of the videos we have put on YouTube shorts. You can watch our videos just look for a YouTube page tech talk Radio, but also on TikTok we had posted where we were talking about drive aware and that's a software program you can purchase and it will check your computer for you know, outdated drivers can do the updates. You mean driver easy, driver easy, I keep calling you drive aware. I was gonna say, what is driver driver easy easy? Yes, driver easy,
that's the one I keep calling the other thing. Anyway, So I had posted the video and we had some good comments, This is cool, this is cool. But then we started getting the comments with like, you're putting malware on your computer. Uh. The guy that there's a guy here at the station that is a Linux pro and he said, oh, don't do that. He said, that's absolute malware, spyware. They're spying on you the whole bet. I I went ahead and I ran after I installed the driver easy,
I got it right this time. I went ahead and installed malware bytes towards and I wanted to see what does malware bytes pick up? Didn't pick up a thing.
I use not even just malware bytes. Now, malware bytes is consumer level, off the shelf, you know, standard malware software. I use malware bytes threat Down, which is their elite pro level all in one detection and remedy system with actual case managers that are alerted when there's something that pops up on your computer and they resolve it remotely without even having to have you be user interaction. And I pay thirty thousand dollars a year for this.
This is for the corporate side of things.
Yeah, of malware bytes threat down and it does not pick up anything when I put driver easy on the computer. So whatever this person is saying, there's a few Yeah.
The stuff that I read because we've talked about this when I stalled R and I said that some people had. I saw the comments on our sorts and a lot of people are just saying, oh, it's a third party, it's not affiliated with Windows. Just to use the Windows Driver Update tool. If the Windows Update tool found the fourteen missing drivers that I had that helped stabilize my machine, fine, great, right, but do your job Windows or I won't have to go get third party software to do it for you. Yeah.
These are just Linux.
These are Linux geeks that are just like everything's Linux and there's as soon as you mentioned Windows are just like ugh clubs.
Now, okay, So those people that say that third party software can be vulnerable malware stuff, right, that's there's a history of platforms being delivered with malware, right, that's just a security issue that you just pay attention and if you see it, get rid of it.
It's a non issue. Don't even listen to that. It's just elitist.
Is this elitists that are just saying, oh, I don't use that, so you can't use it because I said so.
Yeah, like I went, I went ahead and bought it after the show and ran it and yeah, it found something like seven teen drivers that were not installed that it could update my system with.
And then you know, I was reading some of the comments and let me, let me check out malware bites. Put it on here.
My subscription that I have to Semantec is going to be ending, uh in December.
So because I.
Were you paid, I paid for a year ahead, and I think I'm going to be switching to Malwura Bites. Everybody's been telling me that. And it's been so frustrating with Semantic because I get pop ups all the time that hey, by this, let us check this.
I not.
I've hated Semantek for probably close to well over a decade. I've hated Semantek.
Well they've they've been on the show before and they'd be great.
You know, the product we looked at it was Hey, it was good for what it did, but they've gone off and branched into so many different directions that I just I I'm frustrated with it.
Now.
I am getting pop ups with Malura bites to buy more things. But again again that's because I haven't paid for it yet. As soon as I pay for it, I hope those go away.
Well that's one of the big that's one of the biggest complaints about any third party software is there. They want your money. They are going to aggressively upsell you until you pay for a premium version. You are gonna get pop ups, so you're gonna get notifications, you're gonna get emails, you're gonna get phone calls, text messages, regular mail. Like you're gonna get it off from them because they want your business. But it doesn't mean that the product stinks.
It's just they're salespeople trying to sell you something.
All Right, we're gonna take a break. We come back.
We've got a question about a webcam, so they want to know our thoughts on webcams. We'll tell you the situation when we come back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor.
I'm Sean de Weird and I'm justin.
Let me be right back. Now back to TIK Talk Radio.
All right, now we're back with a listener question. This one comes from Mary in Green Valley. I'm thinking about getting a webcam to talk with my sister who lives in Florida. I said we could FaceTime we both have iPhones, but she wants to do this over the computer. I need to get a webcam? Do I need to get a webcam for my computer? Any recommendations and the easiest way to do this is Skype still a thing? Well, first off, no, Skype is not a thing. Skype has been shut down about oOoOO.
Yeah, I got replaced.
By crappy teams. Get out of here. Microsoft is the worst teams. They had such a good platform. I just don't get it. They had such a good platform with Skype. And you know, I was I had a Skype account from I think two thousand and four. Yeah, when I was in high school, we had a Skype account and then we used Skype for everything. Had the best little latency. But that's that's not the point.
But boo, yeah, so you know you can't use Skype.
You'd have to use teams or zoom.
I don't even know if Google meat is even a thing. Any think Google Google still does you can.
Do Google meat still, but I mean if to do it straightforwardly face like you said FaceTime in your question, right, that's still obviously the best thing if you have two iPhones, But to do it on a computer, it's harder without a platform.
Like, honestly, I.
Don't even know why you'd want to do this with a computer. I mean, like, if you've got phones that do FaceTime, why why would why would you want to sit there with a computer and be sitting when like you can walk around with your device and be doing FaceTime.
I just personally I don't get it. But that's your sister you're talking about, So to answer your.
Question, maybe she's thinking that she'd have to hold the iPhone the whole time.
You know, you could get it. They have mounts.
They could actually go on your computer screen. You can just attach it to the side of the screen and boom, it's on there. That's actually that might even be a better way to go.
Yeah, but I just feel like you're taking so many more steps to try to do it on a computer, like you like Johnson said, you have to have a platform. It's got to be Discord. It's got to be Zoom.
It's got to be Discord doesn't even do oh yeah it does, it does.
Yeah, they do. They do vidego, but this complicated. Then you got to make an account and then you gotta doss webcam.
So Mary doesn't have a webcam. So it sounds to me like her situation is going to be the most easiest possible. So out of those out of teams Zoom, Uh, what else is there?
Google?
Do you feel like you're just depreciating the value of the video call by trying to move it to a Windows platform. If you both have face time, that's going to be the superior experience there.
You go, all right, Yeah, seriously, I mean I think I think you just need to tell your sister no, we're going to stay with FaceTime.
Honestly.
I mean, it's just it's just going to work. It's the FaceTime platform is so good for people that are in the iOS ecosystem.
Now, even even if you're not an iOS, maybe you have an Android and the sister has an iPhone, you could still do FaceTime. Yep, yeah, you can do. They fixed that on a couple of releases ago. So that's kind of cool, all right. So say she has to get a webcam, what is going to be the best option for her?
I mean all of them have it.
Elgado's got them, Logitech of course.
What's going to be the best route for her to go?
I mean you're gonna be able to go to best Buy, any big, any chain store and walk in and come out and come out with a twenty five dollars webcam that's going to look good. Yeah, I mean you can get one that's you can get them for under fifteen bucks probably if you really wanted to, but you're gonna pay for if you're looking for one that just as video no fun features, no lights, no bells and whistles, fifteen to twenty bucks, I bet from Walmart or best
Buy or wherever your local grocery store is. They all have them now. But if you're looking for one that has good quality four K a microphone attached to it, right, because if you're if you're looking to talk without a headset and a microphone like we're doing on the show, that's a whole other level of cost. Right, Because if you pay go for a cheap one. You're not gonna sell very good, You're not gonna look very good.
And then if if you.
Don't have speakers on your computer, then what now you gotta buy speakers or if you have a laptop that built in speakers. Right, So it's like again going back to the very first part of the question, is like if you already have two phones and you can pair it with your earbuds or your aar pods or whatever, like, I just think you're going down a rabbit hole. That's gonna just cause you a lot of pain and misery. Yep, for a experience you can already do with your phone.
That's mobile. That's mobile. The camera's going to look better, the sounds going to be better. You can do it from anywhere. You don't have to be tied to your computer.
I mean.
Yeah, but yeah, Google the best Buy. I asked the guy at the front desk, Hey, I need a webcam. He'll point you to the webcams. Spend as much or as little as you want if you want to get a webcam. But I just don't see why.
Yeah, the best the best solution, you're honestly mary, is if you if you're both using iPhones to make it easy.
Just use the FaceTime and that's going to be the best.
And if it's one of those things where it's like, well, I don't want her to call me when I'm shopping, so I'll only want to use it while we're sitting at the computer, that could be one thing that just set up a time, just say, you know, we'll set up a time for this.
But if if you're already in the with the Mac ecosystem, or if you already have a Mac, FaceTime works on the Mac also, right, so you don't have to just use your phone. Your sister could be on your on your phone and you could be on your computer or vice versa or iPad or Mac Minnie or an iMac. They all work with FaceTime, so you can receive calls
from many of those. You can start the call, and the call from any of those devices, text messages all through the you know, adding your ICoD account to those devices works really great. And most most of the Mac most of the MacBooks have cameras built in. So again if you're looking for like if you have an iMac or a Mac Minie, some of those may or may not have I don't think the I'm all the imas have webcams in them. Some do, some don't. The Mac
Minis obviously don't, the Mac studios don't. Then you can buy a webcam, right.
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they'll sell Apple products. Sean.
Well, you know, they makes a point though, because you can have an iPhone to a MacBook and that could work, right, Yeah, definitely, So that would be good too. Speaking of that, Sean was telling a story earlier.
We seem to be key.
We hear a lot about settlements when it comes to the tech world. Somebody gets upset, somebody starts a class action lawsuit, and then they go ahead and anybody who bought that product or use the services could get a settlement, and there have been talks about people who've been upset
with Adobe. Of course, Adobe just announced another price I guess a price increase from its light Room package that I think is going to go from nine dollars ninety nine cents up to fifteen dollars a month for those that when you use it, people who've been using the software that was supposed to be in perpetuity that you bought you know, creative Suite like I did, and all of a sudden. You can't use it anymore because you
can't get it, we can't reinstall it. When people now taking this dip in the Windows eleven, it's kind of what I went through. Uh, people have talked class action there. We don't know if that's ever gonna happen, but you found one. This is regarding memory.
Yeah, so I got the I got a notice in the mail and it just says on the front it's a you know, this is from d DDR four and DDR five desktop memory speed settlement. So I was like, okay, I'll bite. It's just to me hat all this information on it. Apparently a settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit against Course their gaming, alleging it violated the law and connection with advertised speeds on some of its DDR four and DDR five non laptop memory products.
So I was like, wait, when did I buy RAM from?
Oh?
That's right. I wanted to play the Battlefield Open beta.
That's right up.
So this was only like two or three months ago and I didn't have enough Oh sorry, it was Monster Hutter Wilds is the game I was trying to play, and I only had sixteen gigs of memory and Monster hutter Wilds is pretty intensive. So I ended up buying two sixteen gig sticks of DDR four memory for my computer, and that was in I have it open here because I was playing up. That was in February of this year,
February twenty four to twenty twenty five. So because I bought that DDR for Cours their memory Coursair Vengeance LPX thirty two gigs to sixteen two sixteen gig sticks, I apparently am partial to a class action lawsuit. Oh wow, Now I don't know what I'm gonna get or what the settlement was. It doesn't say yet because apparently that doesn't come until January eight, two thousand and six.
So is this a good reason to when you buy something for your computer, whether it be a keyboard, a mouse, you know, or a a webcam or another peripheral, that you register it or if you do an update, you register the product you bought, whether.
It be you know again memory.
Yeah, I mean I don't know. I mean probably, but I didn't register this. I just bought it.
I bought it on new Egg, right, so.
I wonder if new Egg got it and then provided my information, you know, they've most tried to but it says, yeah, it's just it's just interesting because it says Class Council will be paid from the settlement fund in an amount to de determined and awarded by the court to award the class representmentives up to five thousand dollars each from the settlement fund.
Oh my, you bought a lot of memory.
It says up to five thousand dollars each. I mean, obviously, right, if there's five million people that bought RAM, it's gonna obviously be significantly less per But.
If justin as it manager had a big budget to buy an upgrade memory, if you bought a bunch of course.
Their memory, he might be buying some bitcoin here. Yeah right, No, so yeah, the court the final court hearing is January twenty twenty six by Zoo video conference. So then you will find I will have to go into that and listen. But yeah, so I filled it out today because I just happened to have it on my desk.
Yeah, filled it out.
It was pretty painless. I had to provide a proof of purchase which new Egg had my receipt. It took took me about five minutes to do, you.
Know, Unfortunately.
You know, there have been scams going around when it comes to the Facebook settlement. Uh. Some of the scams have involved actually sending notifications reaching out to people saying that they needed their username and password to be able to log in so they.
Could set their system.
And some people have fet fellong for that, you know, saying, oh, wait, I want to get some of this Facebook money. Next thing, you know, they click a link because they got an email, and then that link it says, oh, please log in with your username and password to your Facebook accounts so we could verify. And next thing you know, their account is gone. They've it's been taken over. So you got to be really careful of that. Or even worse, you let me give you my checking account number.
Oh jeez.
And yeah, I actually got like thirty bucks from the.
The Facebook settlement. Yeah, I haven't seen my money yet.
I know, I didn't even know there was one, to be honest, probably because I wasn't on Facebook.
Yep, you were on Facebook at the time, though, that because you.
I'm sure that I was privy to the timeline that the settlement covered.
But don't you delete your Facebook account?
No, I just deactivated because in the keynote. Right, if people are interested in getting rid of Facebook and use it as a way to communicate with a lot of family and friends. Right, Using Messenger, you can deactivate your public facing profile, so you can't be searched, can't be you know, all your posts and stuff are hidden. All the data is still there, so it's probably still searchable
by some algorithm somewhere. But if you just deactivate it, it allows you to keep using Messenger to all of your contacts on Facebook, and that includes pages, right, because I I still get all the messages on the page that tech Talk Radio has. So sometimes I get a message, it's like, oh it's somebody that AY can talk to. But it allows me to keep like message people that I need to talk to you that are on Facebook,
and so it's nice. The problem is is occasionally it logs you back in on the back end and reactivates your Facebook. So like if you get logged out of Messenger, Like if you know when I got mine, you know, I upgraded to the new version of iOS and my phone did all that weird stuff and I had to replash my phone. I had to relog into everything, right, and when I relogged into Messenger. It decided I'm really just going to log you back into Facebook and reactivated
my Facebook profile. Didn't tell me it did that, which I feel like is kind of shady. But then I realized, like, oh, I have a notification on my messages, and it actually loaded the mobile version through the Messenger app. So even though I didn't have the Facebook message the Facebook app installed on my phone, it loaded the dust top version through the Messenger app, oh man, and presented it to me as Facebook.
Right.
I was like, that's weird, I thought, I just so, I just disabled it.
Can you have an Instagram account and not have a Facebook account?
No, they're not linked anymore.
Oh they're not.
Nope.
Oh okay, So Facebook and.
Instagram linked for a period of time and were so like logging into Instagram was your face same as your Facebook. They split that probably two years ago or so now, so like I got rid of my Instagram along way way before I got rid of Facebook and then disabled by Facebook. But yeah, neither I don't have any of those.
All right, we gotta take another quick break.
We come back.
Justin talked about something a few weeks ago that he was going to get There was a couple of things that I know that he was going to get.
So we're gonna talk about that when we come back.
If you are a creative person, this is something you may definitely want to tune in for because it's really I really I want one now and we'll be back with more of tech talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean to Weird, and I'm Justin. Let me find us on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
We'll be right back and now back to tech talk Radio.
So Justin, over the years, there have been a lot of hobbies that you and I have shared and I get really excited about something and I spend a lot of money on it, or you spend a lot of money on it.
Does he start at first, Sean, and then you go, oh, I want to do that too.
If it's kind of interesting, if you go back and look at the history with me and Justin's like, oh, arc planes, oh Arci cars, oh, three D printers, drones. You know, so this is kind of funny. We share a lot of similar hobbies. Cameras, that kind of thing. Yeah, but Justin finally upgraded, Yeah, because we were so stagnant on it for a long time, and I haven't touched mine in a while, so I wanted to see what Justin was gonna say about.
Wait, wait, wait a minute, you have one. I don't have one. Now we feel really, I really feel out. Now I have two? WHOA, all right? Why don't you tell us a little bit about it? So we're talking about a three D Was I the first one to get the three D printer?
Shown?
Yes?
Yeah, and I got my first one was a Creolity Ender three, And I think that's what you have, right, I have the Ender.
I think I bought this version two or version three or something. You bought it said it was great. By the time I bought mine it was up one version. It's still great. I've printed.
You might have the Ender five or maybe just the end of three pro anyway.
Probably Ender three pro it's been. I bought it twenty twenty.
Two maybe, yeah, I bought mine in I want to say it was late twenty nineteen, yeah, I think.
And I used it extensively, the Ender three. I use it extensively over COVID. I actually helped print out a bunch of like ear relief holders for masks when everybody was wearing all the masks and it was like digging into their ears.
So this little thing.
So I made a ton of those things, and I made some other just random stuff throughout the years. But then I kind of just fell off on it. And the problem with the ender. The ender was it's just it was so hard because you had to level the bed and that's the print surface where it prints, and you have to It's so intricate how you have to
level this thing perfectly every single time. And I just it got to the point and then it would keep jamming or clogging or the prince wouldn't stick and it would fail, and you'd be printing for twelve fourteen hours and then it would mess up and then welp, there goes fourteen hours and ten bucks worth a filament gone, you know. So it just got to the point where I just didn't like it anymore.
So I stopped.
I remember, honestly, I remember justin when you did that. I could walk into Costco or even you know, Sam's Club and they were selling three D printers there.
It was a huge phase for a while. It's kind of died off a little bit. I mean, as obviously it's still a big hobby and there's still a lot of people that do it, but it's just gotten better and better over the years. And so I recently bought a flash Forge printer. I don't remember the exact model. I can't remember the exact model the top my head. But this one it's it's it's leaps and bounds ahead of what the Ender three could do.
You know. It has it built in web interface. It connects to the internet, so I can I can.
I can send a print from my computer directly to the printer without having because like the End of three, I had to load it onto a USB stick, walk over to the end of three, put it in the end of three's thing, boot it up, let it read the file. You know this, I just say print, and I just press the button on the website and it just sends.
It to the printer. Is it a little faster than the previous is probably twice as fast as as as the other one.
I mean I printed. I printed a Benchi, which is one of the most famous little things you could print. It's like a little tug boat. And I remember on the Creality Ender three a Benchi would probably take about two and a half hours. This one took fourteen minutes. Oh wow, that's amazing. And this is also enclosed, so it has a filtration system built in so I can
print ABS. ABS is a type of filament. It's known for more industrial purposes, I guess you could say, but ABS is also known for releasing particles into the air that aren't really good to breathe in. So with this having an internal filtration system, I can safely print ABS inside the house and not have to worry about these particles getting released into the air. But the biggest part not only just like I said, the website, and it has a built in camera so I can watch the
printer what it's doing. You know, the ABS a filtration system, but it also has automatic bed leveling. So every time at prints, there's an option to level the bed and it will go and it will attempt to look at the variations in the bed and things change over time, I mean the bed moves and the bed heats up, so things warp out of rope and it could be less than a millimeter off and it will throw off your entire print. So but this has so you don't
have to worry about that. Yeah, having the auto leveling is is a big big, huge thing. So I've already printed a few things. I mean a few just little trinkets here and there. And I actually printed out a large desktop figurine I guess you could say of like a suit of power armor from Fallout, the you know,
the TV show Fallout and the video game Fallout. I printed out a huge it's probably about seven inches tall, I guess you could say, so I printed that out Right now, I'm trying to remove all the supports from it, which is the supports are just what the printer uses to be able to print something that that is over the limit, overhangs over the limit of where it could naturally print, so it has to build up a support structure underneath it, think like a bridge, I guess you could say.
So, I'm trying to.
Remove all these like supports everywhere, and it's it's a pain in the butt, but it works really well, and I I like the printer. The only problem was is I didn't really have a place to put it. Is it bigger than the end or it's actually I think it's a tiny bit smaller than the ender, But again it's it's enclosed, so it's just a big black box and it's got windows on it so you can see what you're looking at. It's got a light inside of
it too, so you can see. But I just didn't have a place to put it, and so I initially put it on our kitchen, our dining room table. Oh I bet that went over well yeah, no, no, not not really. So then I tried to move it downstairs, and I just i everywhere I would put it it, the table or the desk that I put it on, it wasn't sturdy enough. And so when the printer is making fine adjustments back and forth and it's printing a
bunch of stuff really really fast, it starts vibrating. And then if the table vibrates and the whole machine vibrates, and then it's kind of like that old video from San Francisco or whatever where that bridge is kind of doing that thing and then the bridge ends up breaking the residence or whatever. Yeah, so you gotta have something sturdy. So I actually went out to what was it, Habitat
for Humanity. They have like an overstock place that you can go to that it's like a bunch of building materials and like kitchen cabinets and countertops and things that are just left over, and I actually found it was actually a donated item. It wasn't even brand new, but it was just this tiny little kind of like an end table with a drawer, but it had a metal frame to it and it was just big enough, wide
enough to place the printer on. So I bought that for twenty five bucks, put it in the basement and put the printer on it, and now it just sits there and it works really well. So yeah, the Flashfarge is the system I got.
Now I really like it. It was about four hundred and fifty dollars. I want to say something like that, about four fifty.
What about the some of you listening to that's thinking, well, this would be great because some people have found that they could make stuff for their home hangars, they could build all.
Kinds of stuff. I mean, there's a bunch of websites you can go to that just have thousands of things. I mean there's things on there. I just browse and I'm like, oh, wow, that'd be kind of cool to do. Like I didn't even know that existed, and I'm like, wow, that's actually kind of a cool thing.
And that's the thing.
You go online, you could find a template basically for something maybe, And with the holiday season is coming up, I'm sure a lot of people create stuff for you know, Halloween or Christmas, yep, you know, Thanksgiving that they could use as part of their decorations.
Yep, exactly. And I've I've already made some Halloween decorations and stuff. So it's a yeah, it's a really cool system. The one that was actually this one still only does a single color print. However, within the printing process, I can tell it to stop at a certain level and then it will wait for me to pull the filament out and change it out. So, for instance, I printed out in ice cream a vanilla ice cream cone.
Okay, the cone itself.
I used a gold filament to make it kind of look like a like a waffle cone, or had a waffle cone with just a regular cone, and then I stopped it at the layer where the ice cream starts, and I swapped it out for white filament. And so when it got done, it looks like a real vanilla ice cream cone.
But three D.
It's three but a three D print. Yeah, it's all plastic.
Now, So what does the cost like when you get down? We don't how much the device is. But what about the cost of the materials. Is it worth it if you're doing a piece here, a piece there to go ahead and make stuff with this? Oh?
Absolutely, I mean the filament's not that expensive. I mean the filaments anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars for one kilogram of a filament, which it'll last you quite a while. Depends on what you're printing. I mean, if you're printing a you know, a big old, you know, seven inch figurine like I mentioned, I probably could print four or
five of those with one roll of filament. But if you're making these little small things like let's say a doorstop or a coat hanger or you know, just something like that, you could print hundreds of those things with one roll of filament. And it's like I said, between twenty and thirty bucks for a film. Nope, Like I bought something like this and I'm showing it out the camera here.
Yeah, easily can make that.
This is a headphone hanger. You put your put it on a desk and then you could hang a headphone on it and it probably paid. You've got one to it, and that's one you made, right. I made this with the original Creality Ender three and it's just a small little headphone hanger headphones is sit right on top here and it just sits on the desk. And this is about five or six years old and it still works great.
I paid maybe thirty bucks for mine this one. Then you could print that for probably about three bucks.
Three bucks. Wow.
It's just a fun project to do. Is Eric kind of taking, you know, taking interest in it as well.
A little bit.
I mean he's he's asked some questions about it, and he's he's found some things that he wants, but he kind of he's like, hey, print this for me. And then I just printed for him, like I made a little fidget clicker thing for him.
To play with.
Yeah, mostly like little fidget things or like these little like you can find them in like gift shops and stuff. But like these three D like dragons or whatever with the tail and it and it kind of wiggles back and forth, but it's all it's all print in place, like you don't have to put it together, and it's got like interchangeable links so it can actually move. And this looks really cool. And I printed a bunch of those, giving them to some friends and kids and stuff like that.
But yeah, I mean I like it. It's it's just it's it's a hobby. It's just a fun little hobby.
Now, if our listeners want to get more information on it, is there do you know of a website they could go to to look up this the civic model that you have and maybe they want to give it a shot and have some fun.
Well, I I've been I've been going to a couple of different ones. Probably the biggest ones out there are maker World makerworld dot com and then thingaverse thingy. It's like th h I n G I verse thingaverse dot com. Those are websites that just have thousands and thousands of print jobs that you can do, and and they're all free, well most of them are free.
There's a couple that.
Are, you know, premium ones that you can pay that you have to pay for, but by far majority of them are free and you just download the file, you load it into a piece of software called a slicer, and there's multiple slicers out in the market that are free. Flashforage actually comes with one called Orca, and you just load the file into the slicer and click slice and then click send the printer and boom it's done. And then it's just just start printing.
All right, We're gonna take another quick break. We come back with more of tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm Sean to Wear and I'm justin. Lemme find us on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
We'll be right back and now fac to tech talk Radio Now.
At the beginning of the show, I mentioned that Microsoft was making a lot of mistakes, including the recent announcement that they are increasing yet again the monthly charge for Xbox Game Pass. This is their subscription service that allows you to play, you know, hundreds of games when you want, and it gives you cloud gaming. It gives you the streaming ability you can stream your console remotely. I bought into the game Pass when it first came out at
ten bucks a month. I stayed with it when it went to nineteen ninety nine a month, and recently was it last year they had a massive deal on Woot, which is Amazon's like subsidiary Woot, and I bought two full years of game Pass, one year for Eric, or actually a year and a half for myself, and a year and a half for Eric and I think I spent like five hundred and fifty bucks, but we got paid both of us up until November of twenty twenty six.
Well as of this November of twenty twenty five, Xbox is increasing it from nineteen ninety nine a month.
To twenty nine ninety nine a month. That's a lot of money.
That's a lot. It's gonna be ridiculous.
And here's the thing.
When they bought when they bought Activision Blizzard, they had to go in front of the FTC and say, we are not going to increase the price of game Pass with this purchase, because that was the big deciding factors whether the government allows them to do this. They were like, hey, you're creating a monopoly here. You're just gonna be able to raise the prices to whatever you want. And they're like, no, no, no, we're not to do that.
Yeah.
Fast forward a year, they're doing it, and there's so many people all over saying we're done, we're done with game Pass, we're done with Microsoft, we're canceling our games. The problem is people don't buy games anymore, so they cancel game Pass and now they have nothing to play because they don't own any games.
Yep.
Now there's another rumor out there, and I don't know how true this is. We have to do some recently.
We can talk about more next week. But somebody was saying on Reddit somewhere that hey, Xbox is saying that if you do not cancel your subscription and you have reoccurring billing turned on, which most people do, that your game pass will be grandfathered in at the price of nineteen ninety nine, and it's only twenty ninety nine for
the people that sign up now moving forward. I don't know how that true that is, because I even even though I'm paid up until November of twenty six, I'm still getting emails saying, hey, your price is going to increase to twenty ninety nine.
So I quickly searched Verge. The Verge, there's an article that says it's delaying the price increased for existing subscribers in certain markets, meaning new purchases get the new pricing, but current users keep existing rates as long as their subscription is still active and set to auto renew.
Okay, all right, well that's good.
Well I want to have you cancel BAK. I canceled mine already, but but I'm paid up. I'm paid up through November twenty six, so at that point I'm done right, right, and.
The mindset to auto renew, and it has been since twenty nineteen, and.
You still have Steam so you can play games there, right, I'd have.
To look to see what I'm paying for it. I know I got an update saying my price is gonna change, but I'm curious if I if because mine set to auto renew, I'm curious if it's gonna change or not.
We'll talk more about this next week.
I'll find out. We'll report back next week.
Sounds good.
That's it for this week's Tech Talk Radio. I'm Andy Taylor, I'm shying to wear and I'm justin. Lemme find us on the web at tech talk radio dot com.
Have yourself great week. We'll see you