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.
Rick asks whether a cleaned computer is safe to back up, and Dr. Dave explains that old backups may also contain the infection while still emphasizing that preserved data can be cleaned later.
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Scott has lost two drives and has been told to replace the whole computer. Dr. Dave refuses to assume what testing has not shown, explains intermittent hardware and logical failures, ties recovery spending to the value of the data and stresses that a damaged Windows installation is not the same as a physically dead drive.
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John asks whether to leave an older business PC for a Macintosh. Dr. Dave rejects both reflexive platform worship and reflexive dismissal, explains the tradeoff between Apple's control and flexibility and sees Intel Macs running Windows as a new bridge across previously separate computing environments.
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Dr. Dave connects computer troubleshooting with his hobby of working on cars. Repair professionals taught him not to assume a new replacement part is good: before moving farther down the diagnostic tree, revisit the replacement itself because it may be defective too.
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A caller asks about hard-drive reliability, and Dr. Dave uses the uncertainty of failure to insist that anyone who values the data needs disciplined, redundant backups.
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Caller Daniel explains that his music sessions and photographed paintings create enormous original files he must retain for future work. Dr. Dave recognizes that this is a professional archive rather than a hobby, adapts his answer and praises Daniel for seeking help before a failure turns preservation into emergency recovery.
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Dr. Dave explains why personal-computer autonomy mattered so deeply to him, then documents how a Palm Pre and netbook persuaded him to conduct a real cloud experiment while offline storage preserved access, redundancy and a measure of control.
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A business owner’s new touchscreen works only when its exposed USB cable is held up with Velcro. Dr. Dave agrees that a patched new monitor is not acceptable, recommends a model with a less stressed connection and then broadens the solution to custom physical protection suitable for a public retail counter.
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When a caller asks about a laptop with built-in cellular service, Dr. Dave questions buying hardware that permanently ties the owner to one carrier. A removable card, he says, preserves the freedom to change providers without making the entire laptop obsolete.
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A caller's failing laptop display would once have made the machine a total loss. Dr. Dave explains that eBay creates two practical alternatives: buy an affordable replacement screen and repair it, or part out the remaining screws, bumpers, panels and electronics so useful pieces stay in circulation rather than going straight into the trash.
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When longtime caller Tom admits he is too lazy to leave familiar AOL software, Dr. Dave distinguishes ineffective laziness from effective laziness. A self-repair may temporarily restore the program, but the truly lazy and efficient choice is to eliminate the incompatibility at its root so the same problem does not have to be revisited.
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Drawing on his data-recovery work, Dr. Dave warns a caller that modern high-density drives can fail even while under warranty. His answer is not faith in a preferred brand but redundancy, because sometimes the device holding the backup fails too.
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Kyle explains that he props his overheating laptop on two bricks wrapped in aluminum foil to improve airflow, prompting design and tinfoil-hat jokes. After troubleshooting the connection, Dr. Dave praises him for using a durable solution that works without worrying about ridicule and explains the compromises that make portable computers less rugged than people expect.
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A sensitive privacy problem forces Dr. Dave to admit that his own software is not designed to erase every possible trace from a computer. When the caller needs its narrower function only once, Dr. Dave tells him to use the trial instead of paying, then answers Evil Steve’s disbelief with the simple explanation that he cannot lie.
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As fake antivirus screens become more convincing, Dr. Dave tells listeners to learn the name and appearance of their real protection before a warning appears, then offers behavioral clues that a sudden scan may be a scam.
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Dr. Dave explains that clients can reasonably confuse a firewall, antivirus product and full security suite when a vendor offers several similarly named downloads, so careful support begins by identifying what is actually installed.
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Caller Bob finds that a replacement motherboard prevents an original recovery disc from working. Dr. Dave explains that he once followed the same problem all the way through a manufacturer because sometimes he has to learn the hard way so his listeners will not have to, then gives the practical answer even though it is not the answer the caller hoped for.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember buying a MiniDisc recorder around 2001 to produce interviews for the radio show. Sony's restrictions were meant to protect commercial media, but they also made the brothers' own recordings and voices painfully difficult to use, turning a promising tool into wasted time and money.
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At the end of the interview, Palm congratulates Dr. Dave for more than fifteen years of broadcasting and what he does for listeners. Dr. Dave responds by stating his editorial position plainly: he does not pretend to be impartial about products he has used and invites guests when he believes their work may benefit the audience.
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Dr. Dave observes that a strong password still fails the user when nobody knows which account it belongs to. Drawing on repeated client confusion, he distinguishes a provider's billing login from its separate email credentials and stresses that people must label and manage those relationships clearly.
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Answering a small business caller who lost calendar sharing after an Outlook upgrade, Dr. Dave distinguishes a product’s theoretical power from capability an ordinary office can realistically deploy. A feature that requires expensive server infrastructure does not solve the problem for a three person field team, so he points the caller toward a simpler shared tool.
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Alice wants to donate an old laptop without exposing her files. Dr. Dave explains that the needed level of erasure depends on who will receive it and favors giving an unknown nonprofit a clean drive together with legitimate recovery media.
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Laura asks whether recovered files should be written to a CD or another location. Dr. Dave explains that restoring one of several deleted files onto the same drive can overwrite another recoverable file, so a separate drive, disc or flash device protects what has not yet been recovered.
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Andy's laptop is trapped at a recovery screen with unbacked-up data. Dr. Dave refuses to guess from one symptom and warns that attempts to repair a drive are not automatically harmless: before trying more, determine whether the failure is in Windows, a partition, recovery software or the hardware itself, because the wrong step can erase what remains.
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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.
