Schrock Innovations Presents a Whole New Way to Enjoy Compute This!

  • Comments: 0
  • Written on: September 8th, 2007

Every week I do a radio show that about 2,500 people listen to on any given Saturday. Compute This is the highest rated weekend AM program in Lincoln and we have always been happy with that.

For those who could not listen because they had to work, we have also made the shows available for download from the Schrock Innovations website.

You might have noticed that the frequency of our website posts had slowed. That is because we were pouring our effort into a new video delivery method that will allow you to watch the radio show as you listen to it.

This is all still VERY beta, so the focus was a little off on the camera and the battery died in the final segment. With that said though, it is still going to be awesome to be able to watch the show as you listen to it.

So without further ado, here is the August 25th show, with the first draft theme song introduction and studio video!

You can also enjoy a full transcript of the show here:

Hosts:
THOR: Thor Schrock
CHRIS: Chris Goforth
CARL: 1st Caller
SAM: 2nd Caller
PETRO: 3rd Caller
MARGE: 4th Caller

VOICE-OVER: Thor Schrock Innovations present: Nebraska’s No. 1 independent computer-repair company. With offices in Lincoln and Omaha, this is Compute This…

[Radio theme song plays over]

CHRIS: Good morning everyone! It is time for Compute This 1240AM KFOR, Thor Schrock’s Schrock Innovations. Join us… as he does. Live again –

THOR: [crosstalk] Absolutely!

CHRIS: — taking us away now.

THOR: No, no, no. We’re in for the long haul, folks! Right here – Compute This! 489 1240 # 1240, get your questions answered. Now, I did have a customer request, last week in the field, specifically for the show, Chris.

CHRIS: Oh, really?

THOR: Yeah. And they said, “That Chris guy, he’s awesome. You know, he’s great, he’s beautiful. But Thor, you know, you need to slow down. You talk too fast!”

So, well you know, we’ve only got an hour. I try to get as much in that hour as I can so we’re going to try to slow it down a little bit today and see if we can get the same amount of content in, but talk a little slower so people can understand me.

CHRIS: Well, Thor — [crosstalk]

THOR: Well, you’re faster than me! [crosstalk]

CHRIS: Oh okay. Well I was wondering if I was included in it.

THOR: No, they said you’re awesome.

CHRIS: I used to have that problem back when I was in retail, before I got into radio and everything… I was a mile-a-minute.

THOR: [laughs]

CHRIS: It was one of those things where I went to visit one of the old stores I used to work at and saw some of the old people that I used to, you know… used to work with all the time, and the first thing they said was: “You know, you talk a lot slower than you used to.”

Well, I’ve learned over the years that people don’t understand [starts talking fast] when you talk like this and you’ve really got to slow down a bit.

THOR: [Laughs louder]

That’s what I’m learning too, so thank you for the feedbacks. See, we are always receptive to our customers’ needs and requests so I will make an effort to slow it down a little bit and get the same amount of content in the one-hour, as we normally would, but just a little more, understandably.

CHRIS: There we go… 489-1240 # 1240 is the phone number to call if you would like to get into the show and ask your question of Thor; pick his brain a bit about computers if you are having a small issue, we’re here to give you free advice —

THOR: Absolutely!

CHRIS: — and while we’re waiting for people to call in… one thing I want to bring up, and I know that you are very limited in what you can talk about because of all the papers you had to sign, but the first episode of The Next Internet Millionaire was released this past week.

THOR: Yup. I posted it up on my blog over at thorschrock.com. You can watch the episode right there on my blog: a 51-minute episode.

CHRIS: Yeah, it was a lot longer… I thought it was only even a half-hour show. To watch it, it is like 9:30 and then… I can’t watch it – [crosstalk]

THOR: To watch the rest, you’re going to have to come back later but you can actually… the nice thing about Revver, which a lot of people haven’t heard about Revver, you know, there’s YouTube for videos and there’s Google video and then there’s Revver.

You can actually right-click on Revver and go to full-screen mode. I watched in a 19-inch wide-screen last night with my wife, you know, in our bedroom. We were just laying there, before going to bed, “Let’s watch the show.“ We put it on and we just watched it and she smacked me a couple of times for saying stupid stuff and – well, you know, ‘what the heck,’ you know.

Actually this first episode, if you’re going to watch any of the episodes, I would definitely recommend you watch the first episode. I certainly got the smack-down laid on me in this episode, so a little humbling in the first day – very first day.

CHRIS: How far into it? ‘Coz I got about twenty minutes in…

THOR: Haha. Oh, you missed all the criticism of me then – the last third of the show.

CHRIS: Oh, okay. Yeah. [crosstalk — lots]

THOR: It was a learning experience and I learned quickly. But nevertheless, watch the episode – it’s awesome. You’re going to really enjoy it. If there’s a lot of drama in there; the personalities really come through. And that’s one of the things you’re going to really appreciate on the show – is that it’s not just a bunch of internet marketers, real stuffed-up, “Oh, were gonna make a bunch of money on the internet.”

These are real people that have real hopes and dreams and a diversity of backgrounds. So check it out, folks – thorschrock.com. Conversely, we can also go to nextinternetmillionaire.com. Oh, and one little request: There’s a forum on nextinternetmillionaire.com. I am prohibited from posting in that forum because I am a contestant. Some contestants broke that rule last week and they got the smack-down laid on them.

CHRIS: That really —

THOR: Yeah, we’re not supposed to post on the forum. We’re not supposed to talk about the contents of the show so I can’t answer specific questions about what happened in the episode. I can talk about the episode and I can talk in generalities about you know – ‘You should watch it.’ ‘This is why you should watch it.’ ‘Check it out.’ [crosstalk] All that stuff.

I can’t get specific. Some people on the forum got very specific and they’re not supposed to do that. Now there’s a place in the forum, it’s kind of scary, because here’s a forum that’s specifically dedicated to talking about – YOU. And, you can’t say anything back.

CHRIS: Ho ho ho… Nooo.

THOR: And so, you know, I would implore my wonderful Compute This listeners, ”if you’re listening to the show, check out The Next Internet Millionaire forum.” It’s at nextinternetmillionaire.com/forum. There’s a little link at the top for the next internet millionaire website. I put a link to it on my blog and you can register there, registrations’ free, and you can put up a post.

You know there was one guy who said, “You know Thor, you kinda had to lay the hammer down in this episode.” [crosstalk] If Thor laid his hand down… yeah, I get it.

And so, anytime anybody might jump in there, I would certainly appreciate being defended. So with that, thank you, that’s all I can say.

I wish I had a [makes drumming sound-effect] sound-effect to that available. [crosstalk] I thought that was pretty fun too – Thor laid his hammer down [Chris laughs in background] – love it, love it!

CHRIS : So what do we have coming up on the show today?

THOR: Well today, folks, we have a pretty cool week actually coming up. Doug has been kicking rear in our shop. We’ve been cranking out computers, getting faster and faster, back up to our normal parse speeds again. We finally have eradicated ourselves from the entire maintenance Check-up Sale and the remnants of that. That was unbelievably huge! I mean, that was three weeks to ago.
We had so many computers coming on the last day of the sale, like this is unusual, but… so we have eradicated that, we are good to go there, we have a new hire. On Monday, Ben, is going to be joining our team at Schrock Innovations.

Ben actually owned his won computer repair shop in Omaha for a while after he worked there for a number of years. He is extremely knowledgeable and he is an outstanding bench tech. We actually asked him to come into our shop and work for a half-day, unpaid, just sow e can get an idea of what we could expect from Ben, and we were impressed. We were very impressed… beyond smart. We basically handed him a checklist and, “Do these things to this computer.” “No, here’s how to do it, here is how we do it, and nothing like that…” – it was exactly like we wanted. The exact level of service, everything, because he owned his own shop. I mean, he knows what people expect and so boom boom boom boom boom (like a machine gun) down the list and it was just amazing. So, we are looking forward to having him join our team on Monday so if you want to call and give Ben some grief.
He’s a little shy the first time he worked so the first day he was a little mousy on the phone so… feel free to call him and ask for Ben and just ask him some silly question like, “How many transistors are there inside a standard mother board?” — and just see what he says, I’d be curious.

[Both hosts laugh]

CHRIS: “Will you work on my 75 MHz computer?” [Then laughs]

THOR: “Yeah, I had a Tandy TRS-80. It’s 1.7MHz. Can you do maintenance check-up on that?”

CHRIS: “I like to upgrade the Vista.”

[Both hosts shares a laugh again]

THOR: “Am I compatible?” Call and give him a hi, I do these to all my employees and they all get like, “What are these calls?” and all the other employees are just sitting there snickering [crosstalk], you know. They know what’s going on.

CHRIS: Welcome to the team.

THOR: Yeah, exactly. He’s an awesome guy and he is going to be a great addition to our team. But perhaps the biggest news of them all from the last week, I have not even had the chance to blog about this because we just did this yesterday – we are moving our Omaha Service Center.

CHRIS: What? Where are you moving to?

THOR: Well actually, there are a few different reasons behind it but the main reason is we had a 1500 sq. ft. retail bay…

CHRIS: Yeah…

THOR: — and it was very conducive to the kind of repair work that we do. But the trouble is the kind of repair work that we do, we do it all in Lincoln. All the computers in Omaha come to Lincoln for repair work and go back to Omaha again.

So why did we need a 1500 sq. ft. retail bay for repair work that we weren’t doing? It didn’t make sense and so we came up to the point, our lease here in October – it was time to decide if we were going to renew. We said, “You know, maybe it’s time to look somewhere else. We needed a little more segment of office space to promote what we were doing for Schrock Desk and web design… we needed a conference room, things like that.

So we actually broke the Schrock Innovations computer repair mold and we successfully leased the entire second floor of an office building in Omaha, downtown Omaha.

Yes, it is a pretty big step and so we had Cox Communications moving all of our internet and phones service over and all the employees came and all my staff was like “Oh boy, we’ve got to move the office,” and I broke down. I did hire a moving company. We didn’t make the computer programmers move their own desks but I did make them put it back together again.

CHRIS: Well there you go. At least you made them work.

THOR: We bought everybody pizza. It was a fun day. Everybody got all hot and sweaty because the air-conditioner was being repaired on the second floor. We were one day early for that so we had to move up, in the heat and humidity. But it is awesome! I have an office now with two banks of windows which lets an awesome natural light for video content, my friend… video.

CHRIS: Yeah, it’s coming at you 4891240#1240… we have a few lines open, if you like to call in and ask a question of Thor Schrock of Schrock Innovations. We’ve got to take a break. We are also going to talk with Dale Johnson – he is over at Ideal Grocery until noon so hold on tight…more of the show coming up, right after this on KFOR.

[short break]

THOR: Thank you much very Dale , we’ll check in with Dale a few more times… this hour, but we are back on Compute This on 1240AM KFOR, Thor Schrock of Schrock Innovations… In The House!

CHRIS: — here to answer your questions. 489 1240 # 1240 on your all Alltel Wireless. We will take care of the call for you…

THOR: — absolutely!

CHRIS: Call, hold on the line, your call will be coming up next… very, very soon. Haaah!

So where are you moving to? We never really actually got an address or anything like that—

THOR: Yes. For those of you who listen in Omaha or who have family in Omaha that have used our Service Center and there’s a lot of Lincoln residents who do that, we moved from our location on 81st & Maple to 511 Turner Blvd. It’s right on the 30th & Dodge area there…

CHRIS: Okay…

THOR: It’s a really nice office complex. It’s a Realty Management company on the lower level and we are on the 2nd floor.

The only downer is there’s no elevator and you have to take the stairs to the 2nd floor and there’s about a dozen stairs. So it’s not terrible but you know it’s one of the concerns we had. If we had customers coming in here who may not be able to do the stairs, we’re going to have to come downstairs and accommodate them.

They are remodeling the 1st floor. I did take some video while we were moving in; everybody that was moving stuff. It was kind of funny…we hired Mike’s office-moving company. They had like four guys there and each guy that came by, “Are you Mike?” “Are you Mike?” [crosstalk] “Are you Mike”

CHRIS: “No.” “No.” “No.”

THOR: “Where’s Mike?”

“Mike? The only thing he moves is his (beep beep) from the couch to the refrigerator and back.”

And I’m like, I’m holding… do they not see the video camera? And I’m like – “What do you think about Mike?” And all these guys, except for one of them, said something bad about Mike.

CHRIS: Hah!

THOR: And I’m like–

CHRIS: — maybe they were just joking?

THOR: “You guys—“ finally at this point I’m like, “You guys see the video camera, right?”

“What? You’re going to send him a copy of the tape?”

I’m like, “Well I’m going to put it on YouTube.” And I’m going to put his name as a tag.

[Crazy hosts laugh ]

So there was one wise man in the group. One wise man who said, “Mike is an awesome boss and I’ll appreciate my promotion.” And he still has a job. [Hosts share laughs again] He’ll probably get promoted.

Oh man, these movers, they’re a strong as oxen. They just grabbed the 100-pound desk and picked it up, walked away with it and you’re just like, “Ohhh…” [Presumably stare in disbelief] That makes my back hurt just looking at that. Some guys just have all the muscles. Thor is not built for moving furniture.

CHRIS: No, no. That’s why you were in computers.

THOR: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

CHRIS: 489 1240 # 1240 on your Alltel Wireless….we go to the phones.

We have Carl on the line. Thank you very much for holding on… Carl, what’s your question?

CARL: Well, first of all, I want to say thanks for the offer last year with the Norton Anti-Virus that you guys had.

CHRIS: Yes sir!

CARL: And my subscription is coming up here due and I came across the Norton Anti-Virus for up to 3 PCs.

CHRIS: Yes.

CARL: Q. I was wondering, if you guys install it on my one computer, what should I look for — pitfalls, down-steps or something, that I might come across when trying to install this new product here.

THOR: Okay, if you buy the retail version of Norton, about fifty to sixty percent of the time, installation will go perfect without a problem. The remaining amount, the remaining times, actually, you will have a little bit of an issue which will require you to do some removal tools and stuff like that. So, the easiest thing that I can tell you to do, the first thing you should do is remove the old version of Norton Anti-Virus from the computer. Do not try to install over the top of it or you’ll have a problems. So uninstall the Norton, I believe it would have been 2006, is that correct?

CARL: I believe… yeah, that is correct.

THOR: Remove the Norton 2006 from the computer. Of course, you go to your Add/Remove Program.

Go to Start Control Panels Add/Remove Programs

And then find the Norton and remove it. A lot of people, they don’t remove it and then the computer will ask you to restart and say, “Oh sure.” They restart and then they’ll immediately put in the new CD and try to install the new Norton and that it’s the mistake that most people make.

Norton, we have found, is that chances of a successful installation increase dramatically if you allow a computer to reboot 2x after you remove the Norton. So the first reboot, certain files are removed from the computer that aren’t needed anymore but after the second reboot, the rest of those files are removed, and that will greatly increase the likelihood that your Norton will install properly because the dilemma that a lot of people find is, you know, we sell the Norton Anti-Virus for $99 and the Norton Internet Security for $149. Well, obviously if you go to, you know, Walmart or any of the other box stores, you’re going to find the software cheaper in there – anywhere from, “On Sale for $40” all the way up to “$80” depending on the version you get.

Well, the trouble with that is if you try to install it and something goes wrong and you end up calling us for help and you pay us a $100 for a bench-hour of labor for fixing your computer… well you’ve now paid $140 or $180 to get that Norton on the computer. It might have been cheaper for you just to buy it from us $150 in the first place and then you get the full one-year warranty that we offer on the Norton throughout the entire time you have it. So if anything goes wrong, you’ve got us right there and you don’t have to call the guys in India.

So now, the interesting thing is the 3-PC license. What that allows you to do is install the Norton on up to 3 different computers in you home.

Have you already purchased the software?

CARL: Yah, I’m looking at it right now in front of me.

THOR: Okay, that’s good. One thing I was going to say is that the actual… it’s kind of shady, the way they package this stuff because you probably paid… “Is that Norton Anti-Virus?”

CARL: Norton Anti-Virus 2007.

THOR: You probably paid about $80-$90 for that 3-license box, right?

CARL: Well, you’re probably right but I’d rather not say.

THOR: No, no. That’s all right. I don’t care.

CARL: I got it for like under $30.

THOR: Ok, good. Then you did the right thing.

There are two boxes that they have on the shelf and one says, “License is for up to 3 PCs” and a great big thing on the front of it – they charge $80 for that one.

And then they’ve got the $30 or $40 version sitting right next to it that has a little tiny print on the box.

Well the software’s exactly the same. And so, a lot of people go out and buy the $80 version thinking that, you know, it makes sense if one PC costs $40 or $50 or whatever. At three PCs for $80 is a pretty good deal and so they buy the more expensive one when in actuality they could have gotten all 3 PCs for the same price anyway.

So as far as that goes, as long as you remove the Norton from the computer first, reboot your computer two times, and then install the new Norton – everything should, in a perfect world, work out.

Now there are those times when it doesn’t and if something goes wrong you can give us a call. We’d be happy to help you out.

CARL: All right, thanks a lot!

THOR: Not a problem.

CARL: And welcome back.

THOR: Oh, thanks! It’s good to be here.

CHRIS: Thank you very much for the call, Carl! 489 1240 # 1240 on your Alltel Wireless is the number to call, if you’d like to get into the show.

You all right there?

THOR: You’re so excited you know?

CHRIS: I was just saying, “I’ll leave a moment for you to talk and you go and cough.” [Laughs] Good timing.

THOR: You’re a professional. You should see the signs of cough distress.

CHRIS: What else am I suppose to say?

THOR: Please – beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. This has been a test. No, no.

Anyway, it’s going to be a pretty awesome – this new office that we have in Omaha. I mean, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to spend at any desk and so I’m so backed up on emails and web things. And funny, from this Next Internet Millionaire program, I’ve actually had people contacting me asking me to develop websites, which isn’t out of the ordinary, we advertise that.

CHRIS: Yah.

THOR: But no, these are special websites. These are the kind of opportunities that you see maybe once a year, once every two years. We’ve had a meeting with a company in town here that sells house plans and they wanted to have me put together a website for them that would sell their house plans. And I said, “Well, golly, we can do that, and you know, we can put a standard e-commerce website together and put your house plans on it and you might sell a few to some contractors here and there, but, you know, at $500 a plan, you know, instead, why don’t we set-up a subscription website where your contractor-customers are going to pay $30 or $50 a month and they get three new house plans every month. And it seems counterintuitive – you’re giving somebody $1500 worth of house plans for $50. But if you get a thousand subscribers… are you happy then? I mean, that’s how much…you know, you’re making a lot of money then. You’re giving the same 3 plans to everybody.”

And they were just, “Wow! That’s amazing!”

I had another opportunity. There is a website that I would encourage you to check out: sidehire.com. They wanted me to explore some options with them to perhaps get their website launched into the local Lincoln community a little bit faster than it is being launched right now.

So we have some exciting stuff going on there but a lot of the stuff that I picked up either directly or indirectly from Next Internet Millionaire is playing a huge role in that.

CHRIS: Well good.

THOR: So if there’s anybody out there that has an idea or has a project that they think is just a home run project and they’ve just been looking for the right partner to try to make it go off the ground, I’m not saying we work for free, so that is one thing I will put out there right away. But on the other hand, if there’s a good opportunity – we see opportunities too – give us a call 423 9595.

CHRIS: The other number 489 1240… that’s for the show right here, right now – to get in and ask Thor a question about your computer. Time to take a break —

THOR: Yup.

CHRIS: We’re going to check in with Dale Johnson on Ideal Grocery at 27th and F as well, so don’t go anywhere, we have a lot of stuff happening… it’s Compute This on KFOR.

[Music Interlude]

CHRIS: Thank you very much, Dale! We’re back on the show! It’s Compute This on 1240 AM KFOR Thor Schrock at Schrock Innovations joining us 489 1240 # 1240 on your Alltel Wireless…

THOR: Absolutely! We got some gadget news coming up here for you, folks!

CHRIS: Ooh! I like gadgets. [crosstalk]

THOR: One of the drawbacks of the IPhone –

CHRIS: Drawback?

THOR: Yes, that’s right —

CHRIS: What?!

THOR: –there’s one thing about the IPhone that is just not cool but that’s coming up here on the show. Also, shame, shame on Dell. Oh, did you hear what Dell did?

CHRIS: No, what did Dell do?

THOR: Oh, oh, horrible, I have to tell you about that sometime.

CHRIS: Dell, not Dale.

THOR: [laughs / crosstalk] No, we’re talking about Dell computers, as in Michael Dell. In what way is Vista better than Macintosh OSX and better than Linux?  Should I buy a Psystar?

CHRIS: Oh now you’re just ticking people off.

THOR: Oh yeah. All kinds… [crosstalk]

CHRIS: You just got everybody upset right there.

THOR: Right now 489 1240 # 1240. We’re looking for your phone calls. We have the Callers Courage Prize Package that I may have neglected to mention. We have these thorschrock.com pad folio – the ThorSchrock.com Pad Folio. And what that is, is a 9 inch tablet basically in a nice leather zippered case, that’s monogrammed, the whole bit… yours free just for calling the show this afternoon at 489 1240… we’ll drop the end of the show and let you know who wins.

CHRIS: Well, last week, it’s kind of funny. A friend of mine – I’m on Facebook —

THOR: Yes….. [crosstalk] Facebook.

CHRIS: Surprise… you know. Yes, Facebook. And a friend of mine sends me a little message saying, “You’re hosting the computer show with Thor, right?”

I’m like, “Y–eah?”

“I was Spencer. I’m the one who won.”

THOR: Ha ha ha ha ha. What a small, small world.

CHRIS: I didn’t even recognize his voice. You know, I hear him talk in person but you hear people on the phone, it’s completely different.

THOR: Well yeah actually, I got my Facebook profile. I haven’t done anything with the page but I got the account set up. I have to add you as a Facebook friend or something…

CHRIS: You should. You should.

THOR: For those of you who don’t know what Facebook is, it’s kind of like MySpace, except, not as popular.

CHRIS: Yeah, yeah. And when it started out, it started out as just like… “college” only and “college” and “high school–”

THOR: Yes, that was their target market.

CHRIS: And then very recently, I believe it was in the spring, they said, “We’re going to let everybody use it.

THOR: Yeah, there was the MySpace targets the teenyboppers, but it’s so popular just about everybody has MySpace. [crosstalk] If you’re a company and you don’t have a MySpace profile for your company name —

CHRIS: It’s not like having a blog —

THOR: Well, you need to get it because somebody else is going to get it if you don’t and they can put whatever the heck they want about your company. They’ll search you up on google results. Some local companies learned that one the hard way so you want to make sure you grab that but Facebook is another one – the targeted the college grads and LinkedIn is the one for professionals.

CHRIS: What’s it called again?

THOR: linkedin.com. [spells it out]

CHRIS: I haven’t heard of that one. Apparently, I’m not a professional.

THOR: Yes, you’re not. [Chris laughs] I’ve sent you a request to add me to… how it works is, with LinkedIn, basically you can see exactly what kind of people each other professional in your environment is hooked up with. So if someone’s like, “Ho ho, I’m Mr. Bigshot,” and you look at his LinkedIn profile, it’s like his mom and his sister, you know… it’s like, wait, wait, who are you? But if you look at the LinkedIn profile – mine you’d see Joy here, from the station, in there. You’d see a number of professionals, you’d see Joel Comm in there, you’d see a lot of people I was on The Next Internet Millionaire show with –

CHRIS: Cool.

THOR: And then what happens is, other people will say, “Well look! So and so knows Thor. Maybe I should know Thor.” Then they’ll request me to be added.

CHRIS: And the Six Degrees begin.

THOR: Precisely, so that’s a good one to go into a well.

CHRIS: 489 1240 # 1240. If I can reach over and hit the button…there we go! We have Sam on the line. Thank you very much for holding on there, Sam! What’s your question?

SAM: Q. Well I’m in the market for a new computer and I have heard so many questionable issues about Vista but I’m wondering whether I should still wait or whether now would be the time to get one?

THOR: In my opinion, if you are going to buy a new computer, at this point, you need to buy Vista on it. And I could give you some guidelines on what you might look for in a new computer because there are companies out there selling computers with Vista on it that is not necessarily the computer that you want to have with Vista on it.

So for example, if you are going to buy a new computer, first of all, biggest thing you want to be concerned about is what kind of Vista License you have.

Unlike Windows XP where you can basically decide between Windows XP Pro, Windows XP Home, or Windows XP Media Center… with Vista, there’s a whole bunch of different options and a lot of companies, especially in the lower-priced computers will put Vista Home Basic on their computers.

SAM: Uhum…

THOR: And you don’t want that. It’s not fun. So Vista Home Premium is what I would recommend for home users so that’s what I would point you toward Vista – the Home Premium.

SAM: Okay.

THOR: If you want more of a multi-media… that’s basically the equivalent of XP Media Center, if you want you put in an equivalent.

You can get Vista Ultimate if you are going to buy the biggest dog computer. If you are going to spend $3.000 on a PC, get Vista Ultimate.

SAM: Uhum…

THOR: If it’s going to be a reasonable purchase on a PC, you are going to want Home Premium.

Memory is the next biggest thing. You need to have at least 2 GB of memory. That is a lot more than we would have recommended for an XP computer but trust me, you are not going to regret having those 2 gigs of RAM around. They are going to come in real handy.

SAM: Would it pay to get any more memory than that?

THOR: Oh absolutely! You know, Vista can address up to 16 GB of memory. There is not that many motherboards out there right now, but I mean, there are some that would go up to 4 or 8 GB. But then the trouble is right now there’s nothing larger than a 1 Gig stick of RAM on the market so if you have most canned PCs, they only have two memory slots. And so you are limited to 2 gigs because you can only buy 1 gig sticks.

SAM: Uhum.

THOR: Now there are some companies that are coming out with 2 and 4 GBe memory sticks, but unfortunately they are not compatible with most motherboards yet. Give them another few months and they will be. But in any rate, so at least 2 gigabytes of memory, more is always merrier as far as memory is concerned with Vista.

Hard drive size, you know, anything out there, you know, 80 gig or greater is going to be fine. Of course if you are going to do video and stuff, you’ll want more but anything along those lines is going to be perfect, that’s not going to be a problem –

CHRIS: That’s kind of the norm, anyway.

THOR: Yeah, yeah. You’re going to find people giving you 200-300 Gig hard drives so it’s not a big deal.

Then, you get down to the aesthetics after that. The other one is the processor, I guess I can’t forget that. You want to make sure, whether you go with Intel or AMD, you know, the 601 half-a-dozen or another at this point, but we recommend AMD. We like them a lot because it’s assumed to be a bit more upgradeable than the Intel processors but you want to make sure you have a dual-core processor. Even if you don’t know what that means, just look for dual-core processors.

Now a lot of people are saying, “Wait, because the quad-core processors are coming out soon.” They’re not going to be that much better than the dual-cores. The testing has revealed that there is not that much of a performance increase. Wait for the eight-core processor, if you’re going to wait.

But then, you know, you can play this game forever. It’s like poker – are you in or are you out? So at any rate, as long as you have a dual-core processor, 2 Gigs of RAM, and at least Vista Home Premium, you‘re going to have a good computer.

SAM: Q. Related to the memory, I have also heard that if you get more than 2 Gigs, that the extra memory won’t even be used? Is that correct or…[crosstalk]

THOR: Ah, it depends on what you’re going to do with the computer. Now, one of the things that a lot of customers have problems with in the field, I was in the field the other day with a customer, whose computer has slowed down considerable since she bought it three years ago.

And what a lot of people don’t realize is that the software you put on your computers, like the Anti-Virus to protect them and the programs you run?

SAM: Uhum.

THOR: Those programs are not static. They don’t stay the same all the time.

So each time you go up to Norton 2007 or 2008 or 2009, you are actually using more memory than you were before—

SAM: Okay.

THOR: So it’s completely possible that you may not use that memory today. But I can tell you with 2GB of RAM, Vista is going to use pretty much… I have 2 GB of RAM on my laptop and I use virtual memory every time I turn my computer on.

SAM: Uhuh.

THOR: So because I run a lot of programs, I run video programs and audio programs, and internet, web design programs – I’m running a lot of Windows at the same time and then tends to trump up your processor a little bit.

SAM: Okay. Thank you very much!

THOR: Hey, not a problem! Thanks for the call!

CHRIS: I appreciate the call, Sam.

THOR: And of course, Chris, we would always recommend at Schrock Innovations a modular PC because then when the bigger RAM sticks come out, you can actually upgrade to them. And we don’t have to take everything out and put everything back in and charge you an arm or a leg to do that, so…

CHRIS: There we go. Check it out! We’re going to take one more call before we take a break because it’s long-distance. Guess who’s calling…

THOR: Oh boy, I can’t… I’d turn around and look but I think it’s Petro.

CHRIS: It’s Petro! Hey Petro! How are you doing?

PETRO: Hey, welcome back and good luck to you, Thor!

THOR: Well thanks! And speaking of welcome back… are you back in the country?

PETRO: I didn’t leave. I’m leaving next summer.

THOR: Oh I thought that was this summer, my friend.

PETRO: Next Summer.

THOR: Oh, all right.

PETRO: You don’t have to plan ahead, you know?

[Chris laughs softly in the background]

THOR: So, were you able to get on that KFOR Stream, right?

PETRO: Aah… here’s the issue. That is what I was calling about – one of the questions. You have all done some changes to the stream.

THOR: Careful where you’re pointing that. Yo, I mean [laughs]

PETRO: I’m sorry.

THOR: No, no, that’s all right. They don’t let me change anything on the KFOR website. Chris has limited access but —

CHRIS: I update the news.

THOR: Are you listening on the web right now?

PETRO: Yes, it’s on but, you know the recording software that I use?

THOR: Uhum:

PETRO: It doesn’t allow… you’ve all done something to the stream. It doesn’t allow me to record the streams silently in the background.

THOR: Yeah, but then I have the same problem here on the board. What I have to do is I have to plug in a headphone jack or an empty cord or something – to kill the speakers. But anyway, what’s going on over here – just to give all of our listeners who aren’t maybe in the Lincoln market a little feedback – KFOR is owned by Three Eagles Communications.

CHRIS: Yes, we are.

THOR: And Three Eagles Communications just purchased a whole slew of Clear Channel stations here in Lincoln. And the Clear Channel stations, they had a pretty good web infrastructure in place. So right now, they’re going through that wonderful merger period where they are trying to take everything that was good from Three Eagles, which there’s quite a bit, and everything that was good from Clear Channel, which again, there was quite a bit, and–

CHRIS: –put it all together

THOR: – together in some meaningful way. So there are going to be some changes. Unfortunately, I do not have any access to a lot of those changes but let’s say someone is listening and they wanted to voice a concern about KFOR or any of the other stations, who do they talk to, Chris, over here at the station group?

CHRIS: For…..?

THOR: For programming.

CHRIS: For programming? Uhm… it’s probably Mark.

THOR: Mark Taylor?

CHRIS: Yeah.

THOR: Okay. Then if you go to kfor1240.com, Mark Taylor’s contact information is there on the website but he would be the gentleman to direct the webstream questions to. He’d be the guy that would get back to you and get you the answers you are looking for.

PETRO: Okay. So you said Three Eagles bought some Clear Channel stations – [crosstalk]

THOR: Oh yeah, they bought all of them in town.

PETRO: –because Clear Channel’s big.

THOR: Yeah, and Clear Channel sold a whole bunch of really good stations to Three Eagles [crosstalk]

CHRIS: They’re one big happy family now.

THOR: Yeah, for one fat check. [Chris laughs]

PETRO: Okay, I’m recording it Thor – just in case you need it..

CHRIS: Heeey…

THOR: Thank you, I appreciate that, Petro.

PETRO: I’m doing this the other way.

THOR: Well I appreciate it.

PETRO: You know, you can record the sound waves. You know when it’s in the air?

THOR: Yup.

PETRO: I know some people don’t like that but —

CHRIS: Hey, whatever it gets it done.

PETRO: [crosstalk] –the speakers, I should be able to record this.

THOR: Yeah. But actually I have switched to using a handheld voice recorder that I’m recording the show right now on. It’s a little more reliable than all the computer stuff. I can’t play with levels like I normally would; that kind of blows but —

PETRO: Let me know if you need the recording, okay?

THOR: Will do, Petro. Thank you.

PETRO: Let me ask one other question, real quick.

THOR: Yeah.

PETRO: The Norton 2007, the Anti-Virus program, the appearance, is it any difference from the 2006?

THOR: Oh it’s completely different. They changed everything.

PETRO: Okay.

THOR: Yeah. It’s totally different. The interface menus are the same as far as the right-click menu is, but when you just try to tweak your firewall settings and do stuff like that, it’s all graphic-based. There is no Alt six [30:10] on the graphics.

PETRO: That’s what I thought

THOR: Yeah. So for a visually-impaired user, it wouldn’t be a very fun day.

PETRO: Yeah, so what I have to do here would just file the subscriptions for another year?

THOR: Uhum. And just stay with the ’06 now.

PETRO: [crosstalk] And just stay with the’06?

THOR: Yeah, stay with the ‘06.

PETRO: And I may get something else next year.

CHRIS: There you go.

THOR: Hey, thanks for the call, Petro.

PETRO: Thank you.

CHRIS/THOR: Have a good one.

CHRIS: We have to take a break. Marge’s holding on the line. When we come back from our break, we’ll get your call and we got Dale as well over at Ideal Grocery – Dale Johnson out there, hanging on until noon, well talk to him as well.

Lots of stuff to do in the last 18 minutes or so [crosstalk]

THOR: Yeah, time flies. We’ve got gadgets! Gadgets! Gadgets! And bad Dell.

CHRIS: We’re going to talk about that, too, as well – bad Dell, not Dale, bad Dell.

[Guffaws]

THOR: Bad Dale! [laughs]

CHRIS: Coming over when we return. This is Compute This on KFOR

[Music break]

CHRIS: Thank you very much Dale! Back on the show…. quick segment here. We’ve got to take one more break before we head out for the day… 489 1240 # 1240 on the Alltel Wireless is how to get on Compute This on KFOR.

THOR: Well, we’ve got some interesting stuff coming up – why is Vista better than Mac OSX or in what way, I should say–

CHRIS: [crosstalk] What way, yeah…

THOR: –is Vista better than Mac OSX or even Linux. And what’s the big – an actual study has found there’s a flaw in the IPhone.

CHRIS/THOR: Dun dun dun [anti climax sound effect]

THOR: And what did Dell do that got in him so much trouble this week? I mean, they were one of Wall Street’s Bad Boys List this week so what did they do? So we’re going to get to that in a second but right now, we got to take Marge’s call.

CHRIS: Yes Marge, thank you very much for holding on. What’s your question for Thor?

MARGE: Well, I have been getting a lot of junk mail

CHRIS: Ewwww…

MARGE: But I’m wondering, am I going to be worse off, I shouldn’t go in and say, uhm, unsubscribe to those, right?

THOR: Oh golly, no.

CHRIS: Noooo!

THOR: One of the things… it’s kind of a 6 1/2 dozen of it again, Catch 22, because you’ve got a situation where the Federal Government has passed laws that says, “If you are going to send junk email, unsolicited mail to people, you have to include a link that allows them to unsubscribe.”

And so, that link will probably unsubscribe you from that particular mailing but then what happens is, now they not only have an email address, they have a “confirmed” email address with someone that they know will read the message and look for a link.

MARGE: And put you about 50 more people on it –

CHRIS: There you goooo…

THOR: Then they put that on another consolidated list and they sell it off to other people, exactly. So the best thing that you can do with junk email is simply ignore it.

You can turn on your filters and do all the different things that you need to do to try to stop the junk mail, but the truth of the matter is, the higher you turn your filters up, the more real mail is going to get sorted off as junk and you’re going to miss out on those messages.

MARGE: Okay, well there’s an article on the paper about contacting the Strict Marketing Association?

THOR: Uhuh…

MARGE: It says it costs you a dollar but you can send in or get on the list at their website…

THOR: Uhuh…

MARGE: And to have your address off onto these – [crosstalk]

THOR: Yeah, and you see, that would get you off all the legitimate ones but I would stipulate 90% of the junk mail you’re getting is probably right now is about ecards?

MARGE: Well, some of them are, yeah.

THOR: You’re getting new ecard or need ecard from your neighbor and —

MARGE: –offers to a site, you get a free this, free that, and all.

THOR: Oh and of course, you’ve got the pills and the porn, I mean, the Viagra and all the nasty stuff—

MARGE: Sure.

THOR –and you’re going to get all that too. That stuff is not being sent actually, by reputable companies. That stuff is being sent by crooks. And if you put your name on a list and the crook is like, “Oh yeah, give me the list so I can see who not to email.”

What do you think that crook is going to do with the list?

CHRIS: EMAIL

MARGE: Right, right.

THOR: Yeah, exactly. The sad thing is they just busted the guy in the United States, golly, a few weeks ago, who was considered like one of the spam kings. I mean, they literally call him the Spam King. And he actually was able to send out millions and millions of emails a minute. And they busted him and immediately after they busted him, all customers noticed a reduction in the amount of spam they were receiving.

Now the trouble is, of course, well once he was gone, somebody else just filled in his shoes.

CHRIS: Yup.

THOR: And so now you’ve got another guy. This guy’s probably off in Russia or Zimbabwe or somewhere, you know, South Africa, I don’t know where —

CHRIS: — you’ll never know…

THOR: But sending them an email is cheap. And they are just blasting emails off, so unfortunately, if you’re getting a lot of the junk mails, that means your name, your email address is already on these lists and what I would suggest you do is actually establish a new email account for yourself. Don’t get rid of your old one though.

Keep your old one, but get a new one and then ask your friends and family not to contact you on your old one. Let them know you’ve moved to your new one and then once you have all the people you care about sending you email to the new list, the new email address, then, whenever something on the web actually asks you to sign up for anything, like ‘put in your email address and continue,’ unless it’s something you really want to subscribe to and you really want to get in your email inbox, which you have to be very, very selective about what you do that with. Put in your old email address and if it’s something where they want you to confirm a link or click on something o the email they send you, you can go do that if you want, but then, you don’t actually have to suffer all the spam in your real inbox and you can kind of choose to sort through it at your own time and not risk losing important messages from your family.

MARGE: Okay. Okay.

CHRIS: The best bet.

THOR: The easiest way. That’s how I do it. I have a nice little hotmail account and I always laugh when real people send me messages there and they get mad at me because I don’t respond to them and I’m like, you know, “this is my junk mail account,” you know.

MARGE: Oh, yeah.

THOR: I mean, I don’t even give this email account I don’t know how you got it but it’s my junk mail account. Don’t send me stuff here.

CHRIS: [Laughs]

MARGE: Okay, well thank you.

CHRIS: [crosstalk] Give that a try Marge. Thank you very much for the phone call. 489 1240 # 1240. We’ve got about 10 minutes left in the show. We’re going to take a quick break but first let’s talk about…

THOR: Which one do you want to hit?

CHRIS: Let’s do the IPhone one. I want to hear the IPhone.

THOR: All right, the IPhone one. A study was done. Fifty individuals took part in this study and it was a study of the texting speed – how fast you can send text messages with an IPhone versus a qwerty keyboard.

CHRIS: He’s showing off his little [crosstalk] itsy phone here…

THOR: Yeahhhhh. So you webcam viewers right there, look at that, PPC – What’s running Windows? Look at that – Windows. Love it. But at any rate, what they did is they basically said that the IPhone keyboard is harder to use and so requires you to use the backspace key more often because you’re mistyping you’re doing whatever –

CHRIS: Right.

THOR: They grabbed fifty people who were experienced text message senders. These weren’t just, you know, Joe’s off… these are people who have the little dents in their thumbs from sending text messages. And then they are very experienced on the other keyboards and they gave them a couple of hours to get used to the IPhone. They didn’t just ask them to pick it up and start testing because they didn’t have IPhones before that so they got used to it and started working with it. And after practicing for a while, they found that the speeds of people who are using the IPhone to text were noticeably slower than the speeds of people who are using the qwerty keyboards to text on the standard phones.

CHRIS: Oh.

THOR: So if you’re a text message fiend, the IPhone may not be the best purchase for you as far as text messaging goes.

On the other hand, they are going to do an on-going study to see if that speed improves over time and there’s a chance that after a month or six months of exposure —

CHRIS: [crosstalk] ‘Coz you’re used to it…

THOR: you might get pretty quick at it. But boy, if you can pick up one keyboard and work on it just [snaps finger?] like that, and you have to pick up an IPhone and it’s going to take you six months to learn how to use it…you’d make your own decision about what you want to do there.

But that’s the IPhone, folks! Right there – the flaw in the IPhone.

CHRIS: There had to be something. This text messaging, it’s not like it’s going to blow up or anything.

THOR: I seriously doubt that any IPhone users are throwing their phone out their car window right now. “I can’t text with this! Forget this piece of junk!”

[Laughter]

CHRIS: Oh we’re up against our final break. We’re going to check in with Dale Johnson. He’s out at Ideal Grocery one last time. This hour we’ll see what he’s doing again next hour as well… so don’t go anywhere. More of the show coming up, right after this…

[short break]

CHRIS: Thank you very much Dale. Let’s check in with Dale just after ABC News…

[38:06 music starts in background and overpowers some of Chris’ words]

–right after 11:00. We’ve still got about 5 minutes. We’ve got to finish up the show, it’s Compute This 1240 AM KFOR

THOR: All right, we have a couple of little gadgetry… [crosstalk]

CHRIS: Yeah, let’s do ‘Bad Dell.’

THOR: Bad Dell.

CHRIS/THOR: Bad Dell. [Laughs]

THOR: Dell actually had a little financial snap. For those of you who follow the markets are going to know this, but they basically admitted to cooking their books.

CHRIS: Meaning?

THOR: Meaning… they were lying on their financial statements–

CHRIS: ohhh

THOR: –which would influence their stock prices.

CHRIS: I’m sure everybody here is. “What did he just say? They’re cooking their books.”

THOR: Yeah, they have this big kettle and cook their books in there [crosstalk]… they were ebooks, you know.

[Both laughs]

THOR: No, no. So I mean that was… Dell, I mean, wow! Dell had to cook their books in order to maintain their image, basically.

CHRIS: So they fibbed on their numbers?

THOR: Yup. They a…

I’m not a financial analyst. You know, Joe is probably a better person to talk to about this than me but the bottom line is, they said some things that weren’t true. Some reason, they went back and corrected those things when they, you know, realized them or realize that they were going to get caught saying them, and said they weren’t true and their books were cooked and they were going to restate earnings for last year.

And so it’s going to be an interesting thing to see how that comes out.

CHRIS: They haven’t restated their earnings yet?

THOR: Not that I’ve seen. Now maybe they have because I don’t follow it. You know, I watch Neil Cavuto and that’s pretty much the extent of my business block, you know —

[Chris laughs]

–as far as the markets go. I turn everything else over to the investors who know what they’re doing.

CHRIS: That’s what I do.

THOR: Well I expect my customers to turn their computers over to me when they need help and I’m not a financial guy, so I turn to a financial person when I need help.

But that was Bad Dell.

CHRIS: [crosstalk] Oh well.

THOR: It’s always interesting when you see a company like Dell have to do that. Dell – they sell more PCs than any company in the world. Why on earth would they have to do that to improve their profitability? Who knows? But that’s what they did and now they got caught doing it so let’s see what happens to them.

CHRIS: We’ve got the little snafoo with IPhone, not a big one – text messaging, ooooooh. And then we have ‘Bad Dell’…

THOR: Bad Dell…

CHRIS: What else have we got?

THOR: We have the “Why is the Windows Vista better than OSX and better than Linux in some ways.

CHRIS: Oh yeah, that’s right!

THOR: What’s been recently, I don’t know if we want to say “discovered” or “found” or… somebody pointed out that fonts in Windows Vista look better on the screen than they do on Mac OSX. And they look a lot better than they do in Linux. And so people pointed out that the fonts that are used in Vista are easier on the eyes, they’re easier to read, you have less eye-fatigue when you read them – even less fatigue than Mac OSX who, previous to Vista, was known for having just easy-on-the-eyes, nice, beautiful look. So it was kind of interesting because the Vista’s just such a huge leap over XP in a user experience – as long as you have enough memory in the computer.

At least 2Gigs, folks! Remember that. 2 Gigs is the magic number for Vista. But at any rate, the bottom line, the funny thing about it is that all those Mac people out there that hate PCs and all the PC guys that hate Macs, so they’ll volley back and forth on this. But it’s just an update. Apple will do something and then they’ll jump back. It’s a constant game but the cool thing about this constant game is that no matter which you use, a PC or MAC, you’re getting better computers every time – because they’re fighting, and fighting is good.

CHRIS: Competition breeds the best.

THOR: Absolutely! I like it.

All right, now, we have a situation here. I’m going to have to draw a name. And we don’t have everybody’s phone number on this sheet so if I call your name and you won the Callers Courage Prize Package, you’re going to have to give us a call back here at 489 1240 and give us your phone number so we can get a hold of you and get you your just dues.

So are you ready with our wonderful music?

CHRIS: Drummer!

[Drumming finale background]

THOR: Thank you! Thank you very much.

CHRIS: He was sleeping.

THOR: Alright. I see, people can see that I actually draw these. I shuffle through them and we get… … Carl! And he has a phone number!

[Chris laughs]

Congratulations Carl!

[Music background]

Carl is number 1 baby. Right there, you see that? Number 1.

Thank you very much for the calls today folks. Make sure you check out my blog at thorschrock.com. Also, you might want to keep a close eye on the Schrock Innovations website – big changes coming very, very soon.

CHRIS: Very soon?

THOR: Very soon, as in, next week-soon.

CHRIS: Ooooh.

THOR: Keep your eye on that. Keep your eye on thorschrock.com. Watch Episode 2 of Next Internet Millionaire next week. If you haven’t seen Episode 1–

CHRIS: Wednesday?

THOR: They said Wednesday for this one but it came out Friday so I’m not quoting days anymore. But if you watch my blog at thorschrock.com, when it comes out, I’ll post–

CHRIS: Yeah, you let us know.

THOR: Absolutely.

CHRIS: Cool! Well, I’m going to finish the rest of the first episode. I got halfway through it and I got to see the drama! Ha ha ha… it’s good, it’s good. You’re going to like it. It’s got to be funny.

[CHRIS or THOR] You go… “pop” and I’m just like, [makes a defeated struggling sound], “Ah, no!”… It’s bad.

It’s a good thing this is radio because people would not—

THOR: Actually, I’ve got the web stuff perfected now. It’s going to be up on the website–

CHRIS: If you want to see what Thor just did, just go check out the. [crosstalk]

THOR: Put your shirt back on, son.

CHRIS: Yah, that’s not right. We gotta go. ABC News coming up. The show will return again next Saturday, 10:00 to 11:00. It’s Compute This with Schrock Innovations on 1240AM KFOR.

What do you think? Join the discussion...

How do I change my avatar?

Go to gravatar.com and upload your preferred avatar.

Subscribe to My RSS Feed

Subscribe Form Click to Subscribe or

      TwitterCounter for @thorschrock

Ed Wunder Loves Schrock's Service

Popular Posts

Top Commentators

Schrock Innovations' New Ride

Revolution Wraps Rocks!

Geek Squad Hires Anyone!

Other Recent Videos


We're on the Morning Blend answering your Lincoln Nebraska computer repair questions regarding warranties


Need your computer repaired in Omaha? If you're never visited Schrock Innovations before (1st time client), stop by for a FREE hour of repair

Our Open Adoption

    Kim and I are seeking to adopt another child through Open Adoption. If you know of a birth mother seeking a stable, loving family in Nebraska, please direct her to our website at nebraskaopenadoption.com.

Thor's Sponsors

© Thor Schrock 2024