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.
Immediately after praising an expert who knows his limits, Dr. Dave admits that he often starts without knowing enough and becomes capable through persistence, remembering an early carburetion theory others rejected.
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Dr. Dave explains why he repeats useful lessons on the show: not everyone hears every segment, familiar information is easily forgotten and something routine to an expert may still be new to the listener.
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After offering Ben follow-up help and refusing to diagnose beyond what he can know without handling the machine, Dr. Dave says the small tricks of his profession are not taught in classes but learned daily with real people and real computers.
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When a listener asks whether to stop updating security tools, Dr. Dave distinguishes his suspicion from a confirmed fact, refuses to overstate the evidence, and promises to follow up.
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Dr. Dave worries that repeating security warnings can make listeners tune them out, then compares the work to putting gas in a car or changing its oil. His own decision to stop raging at unreliable cellular service becomes a lesson in doing necessary maintenance calmly instead of letting frustration become a harmful habit.
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Dr. Dave says Facebook became useful for telling listeners when the show would air, reconnecting with old friends and keeping in touch with family. Evil Steve admires the more rational approach: ignore the parts that waste time and use the service deliberately for what has value.
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Elizabeth says accounting software she believed she owned stopped allowing her to reach years of family financial records unless she paid to upgrade. Dr. Dave compares software to a purchased book, acknowledges the human stakes of records for her household and disabled son, and argues that forced upgrades substitute vendor control for earning a customer through a better product.
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Dr. Dave tells how a client asked him to diagnose delayed email, heard that the temporary fault was outside the computer and bought a new machine anyway. He jokes that the client wanted an excuse to shop, then states the practical lesson that a new computer cannot fix an Internet problem when the computer is not the cause.
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Dr. Dave admits he keeps adding to a body of website material instead of releasing it. Evil Steve proposes publishing useful portions now, and they work through how to share advanced tools while warning users honestly about risk and limits.
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After a support intervention resets a client’s user account and apparently hides years of customization and mail, Dr. Dave explains how to ask about risk without attacking the technician or breaking trust.
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Dr. Dave recounts having working local, long-distance, toll-free and voicemail services while AT&T, the company receiving his payments, says it cannot find his account. His hours trying to reach a human become a vivid example of automated support costing customers their time.
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While discussing a laptop, Dr. Dave points out that his own computer may spend six or seven hours of an eight hour day inside a briefcase and only one hour in use. Weight and size therefore matter during the hours a portable device is carried, not only when its screen and performance are being enjoyed.
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Remembering the preceding show's technical scramble, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve identify the difference experience made: the situation was still chaotic, but this time the crew knew what was happening and had concrete recovery steps.
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Dr. Dave asks whether a framed photograph of one's grandparents or its digital file is more likely to survive, remembers his own vanished eight-inch floppy media and explains how rapid changes in formats, programs and storage can strand email, records and culture unless people actively migrate and back them up.
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Dr. Dave says broken software costs him the same sleep, time, money and productivity it costs listeners, although years of work may help him recover sooner. He credits much of what he knows to repeated experience rather than brilliance.
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Dr. Dave looks back on the beginning of his technical career and the radio show, when his job often meant persuading skeptical people that computers could improve their lives. He explains that the spread of technology gradually reversed that role: he increasingly found himself warning enthusiastic users to slow down, reconsider and ask whether a particular use of technology was wise at all.
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After a technical networking explanation, Dr. Dave acknowledges that some listeners may feel overwhelmed but says Computer Talk sometimes has to enter the machinery to make things work. Evil Steve answers that Dr. Dave’s strength is getting into those details and then getting back out before people become lost.
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After challenging the impulse to carry every fashionable device, Dr. Dave rejects both blind adoption and reflexive resistance: the answer is to be honest and choose whichever product actually fits the person.
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Dr. Dave returns after the break having searched the software company's support pages without finding Bruce's answer, considers Evil Steve's hidden-window idea, hopes it helps and laughs when the bumper claims that he “actually answers” questions: this time, he only attempted.
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A heavily infected tablet fights every repair attempt by rebuilding and defending the malicious software. Dr. Dave imagines an evil creature inside the machine and says it might outsmart him, but it would not outcommit, outwork or outpersist him; after a long fight, he wins.
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While describing his long-term Linux experiment, Dr. Dave openly admits that he enjoys spending extraordinary amounts of time tinkering just to learn what is possible. He therefore refuses to treat his own tolerance as universal and evaluates the system from the viewpoint of ordinary Windows and Mac users, including how much effort and unfamiliarity they should reasonably be asked to accept.
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A casual mention of Dr. Dave's old portable Canon printer produces a flood of listener email. Long after the model left stores, he still owns and uses his because its unusual capabilities remain useful; availability and prices are erratic, but his underlying answer is simple: if the tool is not broken, replacement is not automatically progress.
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Dr. Dave explains a decision he and Evil Steve made when the show became nationally known: they would continue doing hands-on work with people instead of becoming media personalities who merely repeat press releases. Staying where users struggle to make technology work supplies experience that cannot be replaced and gives the show material listeners will not hear elsewhere.
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Dr. Dave explains that he does not know everything and learns because he encounters the same printer trouble and changing technology as everyone else, even after nearly twenty years in the field.
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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.
