DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
1414 clips, strongest first.
Dr. Dave recounts a small company where securing the network should have been technically simple, but an employee resisted providing information and fought both management and the consultant. He concludes that the silicon based task was easy compared with the carbon based problem of getting people to cooperate.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Using a task manager as an example, Dr. Dave criticizes software that adds every conceivable feature until it becomes slow and difficult to learn. He values a streamlined design that handles almost everything people actually need because simplicity makes the useful features discoverable and usable.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Responding to Microsoft's own retrospective criticism of earlier Windows styling, Dr. Dave agrees that interfaces can become overdone but rejects the opposite extreme. He likes simplicity, yet argues that simplifying an interface does not require making it flat, cheap-looking or ugly.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave praises Chrome's early emphasis on simplicity and says the high-tech world too often piles on gadgets and unnecessary capability until software becomes bloatware.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Drawing on his consulting work, Dr. Dave says much of American business consisted of organizations with one hundred employees or fewer, yet technology companies tended to aim either at individual consumers or very large enterprises. His point is not the featured product but the people and businesses left floundering between those two markets.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave admits the website lacks a direct Twitter link, promises to fix it and explains that online networking works only when promotion is not so overt that people immediately tune it out. His 140-character show updates capture early social-media practice.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
After a malware call, Dr. Dave explains that a computer symptom should not automatically be called a virus. Solving every problem except the real one wastes time and may make the computer worse, so understanding the distinction comes first.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Introducing an identity theft report, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve admit that security news can sound relentlessly negative but say people need to know what they are facing. If the user does not want to manage those risks personally, Dr. Dave says a trusted person still has to take responsibility for the system.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
During an Internet traffic report, Dr. Dave reassures listeners that a slow connection does not always mean they have damaged their own computer or setup. Sometimes the problem is simply elsewhere on the network.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave recalls paid consulting engagements where he told executives that their organization’s culture did not fit a large technology implementation. Rather than sell them more systems that would create expense, frustration and errors, he recommended a few essentials and alternative ways to work; the unexpected honesty sometimes changed their outlook.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Explaining his extended netbook trial, Dr. Dave distinguishes short specification-driven reviews from the practical question that matters to an owner: whether the machine will meet real needs every day.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave warns that advertised printer speed and resolution can look far better than everyday results. Two devices can carry the same impressive specifications and still differ sharply in output quality, so judgment has to go beyond the largest number on a sales page.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave calls word processors and spreadsheets two of computing’s most powerful tools and explains how a spreadsheet can organize and reveal business data. Evil Steve admits that the name once intimidated him, and Dr. Dave answers that the tool performs the mathematics so the user does not have to be an accountant.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
While examining Microsoft's new Spartan browser, Dr. Dave returns to a core design value he admires in Google: incredible simplicity. If a team is going to make a design mistake, he says simplifying too much is still a better place to begin than adding complexity to lives already immersed in technology.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
After a long Microsoft critique, Dr. Dave answers the familiar Bill Gates apologist joke with a simple standard: support a company when its work deserves support and withhold it when it does not. The passage captures his independence from brand loyalty.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave compares using the Internet with driving: the benefits are worth accepting, but safety depends on watching other people, anticipating mistakes and remaining attentive without becoming paralyzed by fear. His phrase surf defensively turns a long list of threats into one memorable habit.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave acknowledges that online technical forums can offer valuable help, then condemns experienced users who ridicule newcomers for basic questions. He sees the behavior as insecurity disguised as superiority and tells the bullies to stop, defending a more generous way to share technical knowledge.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave explains that no product or recommendation works perfectly for everyone and that responsible advice requires acknowledging the caveats, compromises and gray areas.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
During a software interview, Dr. Dave steps back from the product and states his broader measure of technology: does it make an end user more efficient, help people track more accurately and make their lives better through better use of limited time? Entertainment has become ubiquitous, he says, but the deeper promise is capability without hours of training and needless friction.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Looking ahead to Windows 8 hardware, Dr. Dave says he does not care whether companies prosper unless they earn the customer's business. After decades in the industry, he still enjoys watching new ideas arrive, useful designs succeed and fads fail.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Using the long hype cycles around Bluetooth and WiMAX, Dr. Dave argues that buyers are too often sold a technology name without knowing what need it will meet. His standard is simpler: people do not need to care which radio system is inside an ordinary device as long as it reliably performs the job they bought it to do.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave defines the show as guaranteed geek-free radio that cuts through hype and helps listeners use practical products and services rather than simply buying what technologists tell them to buy.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave says every person he helps tends to believe that their technology problem is uniquely bad. He reassures listeners that almost none of them are exceptions and that people are largely struggling with the same kinds of difficulties, even when the problem feels isolating.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Dr. Dave opens by defining common-sense computing as practical technology that contributes to a person's life instead of taking from it. A concise mission statement for the show and memorial archive.
Listen to the full show’s available recordings · Source recording and timing
Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
