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.
After years of avoiding anything that felt like an infomercial, Dr. Dave says several people he respects convinced him that his own perception was wrong and that useful services should be explained rather than hidden.
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Evil Steve explains that Dr. Dave’s recommendations follow service and performance rather than brand loyalty, even when praising a Microsoft product feels deeply unnatural to both of them.
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A router comparison leads Dr. Dave to his deeper consulting ethic. Because he resents companies that strong-arm people into loyalty, he tries to make clients as independent and autonomous as possible. Evil Steve says he trusts Dr. Dave because he truly knows what is going on.
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Dr. Dave says protection tools cannot override a user's consent, but vigilance need not make someone an expert or consume a life. The practical standard is simply to pause when something looks wrong and learn more before acting.
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A free-software recommendation leads Dr. Dave to reject the assumption that cost proves quality, describe the unusual pleasure of improving people's technology without charging them for a product and explain that his research and past mistakes help listeners avoid their own.
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Two real recovery cases lead Dr. Dave to a durable rule: if you think you know but are not sure, assume you may be wrong before taking an action that can overwrite the only copy. He admits that the accidental external-drive overwrite was an easy mistake he could have made too.
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Dr. Dave says professionalized cybercrime has made him less confident than in earlier years that he can tell listeners how to remain safe, yet behavior still matters; the word “free” becomes his example of how attackers exploit ordinary desire.
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Explaining Google's simplicity, Dr. Dave credits Evil Steve's art background with teaching him that unused space is an active part of business communication and can matter even more than the filled space.
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Dr. Dave names himself the anti-fad guy in both radio and technology and says long experience taught him to distrust promises that half the products cannot fulfill.
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A customer returns old computer memory in a new package, and that switched package later reaches Dr. Dave during a client installation. He explains why consulting experience taught him to carry several plausible parts even when the documented specifications appear exact.
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Dr. Dave admits that recommending a Microsoft security product still feels strange to him, but he and Evil Steve agree that good consulting requires saying what the evidence supports rather than letting a familiar brand preference decide the answer.
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Dr. Dave remembers clients judging a new printer by a test made on old cheap paper and explains that the machine was functioning correctly even though the result looked poor. Evil Steve follows with a case where a scanned and reprinted image became so sharp that he had to reduce it to match the original.
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Charles points out a mobile-Internet option Dr. Dave overlooked, and Dr. Dave accepts the correction. He then recalls using a Palm Centro to find a Chinese buffet for his wife and explains the standard behind his “hype-free” recommendations: a tool should help an ordinary person accomplish a real task, not consume so much effort that the promised productivity disappears.
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Dr. Dave admits that blogging and Twitter require a mental habit he does not naturally have while concentrating on several tasks, but says he wants to share small troubleshooting discoveries from the office or a client visit whenever they may help someone.
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Using his own short-lived steampunk Linux theme as an example, Dr. Dave explains that a visually impressive interface can quickly become distracting. His high-tech, high-touch standard is not decoration for its own sake: good presentation should help people use the technology rather than get in their way.
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Dr. Dave explains that modern technology brings revolutionary benefits and serious vulnerabilities, then identifies his own communication challenge: make risk real enough for people to act without frightening them away from the internet.
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The brothers examine TigerDirect's attempt to revive CompUSA as an in-store online-ordering experience, compare it with Gateway's failed stores and return to the importance of knowing what one is buying and how the seller treats customers.
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Dr. Dave describes the delicate work of warning people without making them paranoid or complacent and concludes that communication succeeds according to what people hear, not simply what he says.
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A simple drive upgrade unexpectedly fails, and a customer innocently picks up the running drive. Dr. Dave describes the technician’s panic, the mutual stereotypes between experts and users and his responsibility to absorb the recovery work and make the client whole.
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After giving a caller a practical answer about clearing an old computer, Dr. Dave explains that he must judge both the user’s ability and the actual level of concern. A corporation facing industrial espionage deserves different safeguards from a family passing a computer to a grandson, so the technically strongest procedure is not automatically the right recommendation for everyone.
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Former show engineer and friend Big John calls to ask whether bad weather can disturb a coffee-shop wireless connection. After a scheduled interview, Dr. Dave returns to the question and explains how rain or a changing environment can tip an already weak signal into failure.
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Longtime listener Bob describes repeated crashes after a service-pack installation. Dr. Dave asks for the exact error rather than guessing, recognizes that airtime is ending and arranges to call Bob privately so they can work through the difficult problem properly.
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Dr. Dave accepts a listener’s criticism that Windows XP did not fully exploit dual-core processors, then weighs Linux flexibility, Mac reliability and Windows compatibility without pretending any platform is perfect. His conclusion is that enthusiasts overlook their own platform’s weaknesses while Computer Talk confronts Windows problems every week.
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After a caller discovers that an Internet camera sounds simpler than expected, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve offer a deliberately pessimistic preparation rule: assume everything will be hard so a truly simple result becomes a happy surprise. Dr. Dave adds that real use can expose complications and missing features that a package description never reveals.
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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.
