The trendy iPhones are being unlocked left and right.  What does unlocked mean?  It means being able to use the iPhone with any phone carrier (i.e. Tmobile, Verizon, Sprint) and within any international market.  Currently, the iPhone is being offered solely through ATT and within the United States.  So, it is not officially authorized or set up for non-ATT or overseas markets.  However, where there is a will, there’s a way!  Many programmers or determined phone users have unlocked many phones.

Apple has reportedly sold 3.7 million iPhones at the end of 2007.  However, only 2 million units have been activated through ATT.  That leave 1.7 million iPhones missing!  This discrepancy has certainly affected Apple’s stock price, bringing it down 34% since the beginning of the year. 

Insiders say that up to 1 million phones have been unlocked, especially in nations like China where Apple has yet to put a footprint.  These unlockers need to know about basic engineering and skilled enough to know which chips are connected to the phone carriers’ satellites.  Is this illegal?  Not really.  As long as ATT is the only subscriber for iPhones, then hackers are allowed to use the phone with other carriers.  This is because Apple has treaded the shallow waters by creating a quasi-monopoly with ATT, but has stated it is providing iPhones via ATT first, and then will open up channels to other phone carriers.  Since the FCC is not so thrilled about this alignment, they are not going to be aggressively pursuiting iPhone hackers.

Furthermore, it may be argued that Apple is the overall winner here.  Apple is being hyped up internationally where it hasn’t put an effort into a iPhone presence.  Also, there is a buzz here in the US by this underground unlocked craze.  Once again, Apple is the rebel and gossip of the computer gadget industry.

It is rare to find a clunky VHS tape in someone’s house nowadays.  Even if a VHS is still underneath the couch, chances are it has already been converted to DVD for better quality.  The DVD was released in 1997, but now the standard-resolution DVD is competing with the High-Definition DVD and the latest technology, the Blu-Ray DVD.

What exactly are HD DVD and Blu-ray? 

The HD DVD shows 6x better picture quality by replacing the standard red laser used by regular DVD players with a blue laser.  This blue laser scans data using shorter wavelengths and stores more on discs.  What does shorter wavelengths mean?  Standard DVD players have more space between the laser and disc, suffering more diffraction that limits their ability to focus tightly on the surface.  So the standard DVD players provide for less precision which means less resolution and storage.  The HD DVD discs store up to 15GB (4+ hours) on single-layer and 30GB (8+ hours) on double-layer discs. 

The standard DVD can only hold up to 4.7GB (2+ hours) or 8.5GB (4+ hours) on double-layer discs.  This quick scan and storage allows for eye-popping graphics and up to 7.1 clear surround sound.  This is better sound than most movie theatres.  HD DVD players are backwards-compatible, meaning they can also play standard DVDs also.

The Blu-ray technology improves upon the HD DVD technology by using the same laser, but uses a different disc surface.  The surface is .25mm less and allows for even more precision from the HD DVD resolution.  Also, it can hold up to 25GB (6+ hours) on single-layer discs and 50GB (13+ hours) on double-layer discs.  It is backwards-compatible to also play HD DVDs and standard DVDs.

So, if you’re considering buying your next DVD player, you should probably consider the Blu-ray products to avoid becoming obsolete in a few years.  Remember, that along with buying the Blu-ray player, you’ll need to buy the associated cabling for the player and TV.  And, of course, you’ll need to have a Blu-ray TV to take advantage of this supreme technology.  Once you have the correct equipment, then the hard part is figuring out which movies you’d like to play.

TimeWarner Cable automatically assumes you’d like to lease your cable modem with them.  You don’t have to.  There is no law that says you have to lease their modem.  Cable companies charge at least $3 per month when leasing their modem.   You can buy a modem for $40-50 and save on the year 2 and beyond with your cable modem bill.  There is actually a good sale available on D-Link modems that is $19.99 after a $20 mail-in rebate.

Make sure your cable company is compatible with the D-Link modem although they are generally supported.  It is wise to call up your cable company first to see what they are charging you monthly and  then you can make your decision.  Why not save a few bucks?

Microsoft has produced the Home Server called Windows Home Server.  It is similar to the Windows Small Business Server version that is touted for small businesses, but other than that really doesn’t pose too many differences or unique features about it. 

Microsoft drives one characteristic home with this product - pun intended.  Microsoft Home Server does not need to use RAID, but instead used RAID-like drive pooling with redundancy so speed and data safeguarding are there.   What does this mean?  Typical servers have expensive RAID setups that means that 3-5 drives can be set up to all carry bits of data so any read/write access or running programs are faster.  Further, at least 1 drive is used to ensure that the rest of the drives will carry on operations if 1 drive fails.  So, the home server will do the same thing without the expensive overhead of the RAID card, software, and SCSI hard drives.  You may run regular IDE or SATA drives with this setup.

The Home Server, similar to any other server manages backups, supports disk images for easy restores, and monitors PC health.  You may network PCs, use client-base software for PC interaction, and get all of this for a reasonable cost.   Ultimately, this home server is for computer users who have a little knowledge of networking and have the patience to read a lot of manuals…if you’d like to do it yourselves.  The home server is a good way to what Microsoft says easily set up a server for home to share pictures and make backups.  That being said, we still feel going with a small business server or a simple external hard drive is the better solution due to more features, options, and flexibility.

Windows Vista is now improved with its Service Pack 1 Release.  For more stability and reliability, you may download and install Microsoft’s Service Pack 1 for Vista.  This service pack contains numerous patchs to resolve current bugs and issues.  

Mainly, it is focused on resolving computer performance and reliability issues as well as supporting new types of hardware.  Without Service Pack 1, there was a problem with recognizing many types of printers, scanners, and usb devices.  Without being able to have Vista support, such peripherals forced Windows users to have paperweights instead of useful equipment.  The Service Pack 1 is supposed to support more of these devices. 

Further, IT administration for rolling out Vista is supposed to be easier.  No specific mention of how IT administration would be easier, but we imagine this deals with being able to easily migrate a Vista computer into a current Windows environment.  Also, we will be beta testing this Service Pack 1 to see if Windows VPN / remote support will be more reliable.

Additional features and add-ons will be coming out separately in future releases.  For now, hopefully this SP1 will make Vista more of a reliable stable Windows operating system.

Online backup solutions are becoming very popular due to the growing sizes of pictures and music.  It is difficult to remember to back up files and to do it on a periodic basis.  Online backups make it easy to protect your documents, pictures, and music by backing up your files over the Internet. 

• Who backs up your files?  Websites offer this service where from all over the country and world. 
• Where do your files go?  The websites are owned by people who store your files on their servers and computers.  These machines usually have backups themselves or some form of redundancy to further ensure your data is safe. 
• How do you retrieve your files?  These online sites have an easy interface to select which files you’d like to recover or copy back to your computer. 

Here are the top 4 online back-up sites:

1. IDrive: Offers 2GB of space for free; unlimited space for $49.95/year for personal use; or starts at $99.50/year for 50GB for business use.   One of the most affordable and secure, encrypted solutions.
2. Carbonite: A new service that offers unlimited data backups for any user for $49.95/year or $89.95/ 2 years.  Great price for all users, but back-up and restore time is on the slow side.
3. IBackup:  Starting at $9.95/month for 10GB, this online service offers the best scheduling, restore, and success confirmation features.  You will get the best peace of mind with this stable and secure service.
4. Mozy: Provides $4.95/month for unlimited data on 1 home computer or $3.95/month per license as well as 50 cents per 1GB for 1 business computer.  Probably the easiest interface to work with, but is limited to 1 computer per license so you might have to ask Mozy for permission to restore files to another computer.

All of these online backups are offered for Windows and Mac computers.  It is recommended to try a demo of all of above software first to ensure which interface and features are right for you.

Backing up files to an external hard drive is an easy process.  You just plug in the external hard drive via a USB or firewire port and copy and paste your files over.  You can even go a step above and use automated software to copy your files for you on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis.

The question here is “Are external hard drive backups a reliable solution?”  It is only as reliable as the life of the external hard drive.  Well, all external hard drives have a hard drive inside of the plastic casing.  This hard drive, like all desktop and laptop hard drives, have a shelf life to it.  When the hard drive fails, and it will eventually albeit 1 year or up to 7 years, your backup also fails with it.  What is the solution here then? 

It is recommended to have your files also backed up somewhere else whether on your desktop, laptop, or another external hard drive.  The ideal backup solution is to have an automated backup on one external hard drive where you always keep the external hard drive running or just running when you know it is time for an automated backup.  Then, have another external hard drive that you turn on monthly or quarterly to take a full backup of the primary external hard drive.  This may sound redundant; however, this redundancy can save you time and money instead of being reactionary with data recovery efforts.

Internet Explorer is the popular Internet browser to view websites.  It is one of the most secure Internet browsers out there.  It will guard against viruses, spyware, pop-ups, phishing, and hackers.  However, it is also one of the slowest browsers available due to its robust security features.  If your computer is running slowly to begin with due to minimal RAM and processing speed, Internet Explorer browsing could feel like you’re running on the old dial-up.

In order to speed up your Internet surfing, you can choose 3 alternative Internet browsers to Internet Explorer.  Here are the are:

1. Firefox:  Becoming the browser of choice due to its speed and available add-ons for customization
2. Opera:  A new browser that it touted for its speed and rich features
3. Netscape:  The pioneer and first browser, shows decent speed and good security, but a blocky interface.

Remember to have anti-virus and anti-spyware software installed on your computer when going on the Internet.

We’ve been hearing quite a few adobe printing issues lately.  Have you experienced a computer issue where you are able to print every kind of file except .pdf’s?  Here are some things to try if you cannot print to .pdf’s”

1. Uninstall and reinstall Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader
2. Make sure you install all of the updates for your current Adobe product
3. Set your printer to Postscript for a driver, if available
4. Close out of all of your programs except Adobe, and try printing again
5. See if another computer can print pdf’s to your printer - your printer might not have the capability to print pdf’s

Hope this proves to be worthwhile if you run into a pdf printing issue.

The Giants are going to the Superbowl!  Woohoo!  As avid Giant fans, we are in a total state of shock, but definitely a very pleasant shock.  So, who’s going to Glendale, Arizona to watch the big game?  Where can you get tickets to watch Eli Manning take on the undefeated Patriots?  Most people bought their seats at the beginning of the year so the options are slim at the point.  But, there are still a few tickets available online.

Here are the websites you can visit that are still holding Superbowl tickets:

1. Ticketmaster - an official source where you’ll pay more, but get 100% reliability
2. StubHub! - Where fans buy and sell tickets to each other
3. Razorgater - a newer site offering premium seats
4. GoTickets - offers game seats, parties, hotels & events (i.e. Playboy, Terrell Owens, and John Travolta parties)
5. TickCo - Choose from live inventory or stadium location

Super Bowl XLII tickets are currently on sale from $3,000 - 7,000.  You should check out all of the Superbowl ticket sites since they all offer different seats and pricing.  Check them out throughly, but fast since these tickets tend to fly when a New York team is in the big game.  Go Giants!