Hectic schedules the past couple of weeks have thrown our upload schedule into a sort of chaos, however all is beginning to look good again.

We’re currently editing the shows that have been missed and are uploading them to the site!

On this show, we’ll tell you all about them and even go in-depth with this whole 3D thing that’s making people drool right now.

And while most of our news is from CES, we do have the odd item that isn’t, plus a plethora of ridiculously useless gadgets that you’ll want to hear about. Like the Star Trek wetsuit.

All that and more on this episode!

Here at The Gadget Grill, we aim to provide you with an entertaining show packed with great music. Our playlist for this show is below so if you liked the tracks, support the artists and buy their stuff!

1. Mark Boulle and the Haba Dudes - Fee Fi Fo Fi Fum (from “Music Will Make You Go Insane”)
2. Bertie Blackman - Smoking Gun (from “Black”)
3. Alice Russell featuring Nostalgia 77 - Seven Nation Army (from “Tru Thoughts Covers”)
4. Cady Groves - A Town Like This (from “A Month Of Sundays”)
5. Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer (from “Night Dreamer”)

See you next week on The Gadget Grill!

On this show, we’re talking about the future of downloading on the web. Between FTP, torrent, and the new file-sharing networks like RapidShare, we’ll look at what the future of downloading files.

Plus we take a look at a new Blu-ray player and big-screen TV from Sony.

And there’s news on the credit card reader for your iPhone, training wheels for snow… sort of, a music copyright battle worth watching, and a bunch more!

Our first show of the year had some great music in it. If you liked any of the tracks you heard but wanted to know who performed & recorded them, check them out below!

1. Katie Noonan - Eleanor Rigby (from “Blackbird”)
2. As Tall As Lions - Is This Tomorrow? (from “You Can’t Take It With You”)
3. Imogen Heap - Headlock (from “Speak For Yourself”)
4. Emiliana Torrini - To Be Free (from “Love In The Time Of Science”)
5. The Oscar Peterson Trio - Soft Winds (from “Live At Zardi’s”)

Next week, we’ll be bringing you the best of the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 in Las Vegas. Catch you then!

What will they be? Will there be an iPhone? Or a useless gadget? Find out.

Plus some debate over the millennium, a cure for tinnitus, will there be no electronics on flights?, new OLPC designs, and more. Check it out…

Sadly, this is our last playlist for the year. Fortunately, we’ll be back with new playlists next year!

Here’s what we played on this show:

1. Jeff Beck featuring Imogen Heap - Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (from “You Had It Coming”)
2. Emiliana Torrini - Easy (Tore Johansson Mix) (from “Easy”)
3. Willy Porter - Angry Words (from “Kink Live Five”)
4. The Black Atlantic - Reverence For Fallen Trees (from “Reverence For Fallen Trees”)
5. Jack McDuff - Time’s Marchin’ On (from “Brotherly Love”)

We’ll see you in the new year on the next Gadget Grill!

On this episode of The Gadget Grill, we’ll be talking about ideas you can grab from the tech & game world that work as last minute gift ideas. Stay tuned for some great tips on how to best spend your bucks!

We’re also road-testing a new mobile internet device from Virgin & Huawei that lets you connect to the web while on the go and connect more people to your connection.

Plus a whole new waterworld, your privacy rights at work, issues with LED traffic lights, the reinvention of the wheel, the gold-plated super expensive Nintendo Wii, plus a whole bunch more. This could only be The Gadget Grill!

Being a few days before Christmas, we made sure all the songs on this show were in the Christmas spirit… though they’re the Christmas song you’ve probably never heard before. Take a peek below at our Christmas playlist:

1. Jenny Owen Youngs - Things We Don’t Need Anymore (from “Things We Don’t Need Anymore”)
2. Barenaked Ladies - Carol Of The Bells (from “Barenaked For The Holidays”)
3. Winterbloom - The Riddle (Tumbalalaika) (from “Winterbloom: Traditionals Rearranged”)
4. Aimee Mann - Calling On Mary (from “One More Drifter In The Snow”)
5. Kermit Ruffins - Crazy Cool Christmas (from “Havy A Crazy Cool Christmas”)

Next week is our last episode of the year so we’ll be taking a look back at the best tech of the year. See you then!

While the term and its practices may still be in its infancy, on this show we’re talking with some of the people that made sure Obama could literally reach out and connect with his people while he was on the campaign trail.

We’ve also got two new devices to show you from Viewsonic. One’s a very small computer and the other plays movie in a fairly big screen. We’ll tell you about both in this episode.

All of that plus voice to text finds another home, how Australian minimum broadband speeds are changing, more Apple tablet rumours, how much gadgets cost to make, and a whole ton more!

We may be a technology show, but we play a lot of music. If you’d like to hear what we played on this episode, check the info below:

1. Emiliana Torrini - Tuna Fish (from “Dead Things”)
2. Barenaked Ladies - One Week / I Have A Little Dreidel (from “Snacktime! Live At Massey Hall 12/07/08″)
3. Jenny Owen Youngs - Hot In Herre (from “The Take Off All Your Clothes EP”)
4. Snow Patrol - Workwear Shop (from “One Night Is Not Enough”)
5. Christian Scott - Katrina’s Eyes (from “Anthem”)

Next week, we’ll don our Santa hats and be all semi Christmas-y for you in the second last Gadget Grill of the year… see you then!

And what are we broadcasting from this ridiculous place?

We’re talking about online shopping and what you need to be on the lookout for this holiday season. Hackers & scammers are out in full-force this year so we’re talking to Symantec’s David Hall to hear how you can protect yourself when you’re online and shopping.

We’ll also get Snoop Doggy Dogg to guide our cars, find out how to make an invisibility cloak a complete and utter waste of money, and interrupt Facebook with our own wedding tweets.

All that and more on this episode of The Gadget Grill!

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If any of the music took your fancy in this episode of The Gadget Grill… speak now. Or don’t. Maybe you could just read this playlist instead…

1. Elana Stone - New Life (from “Your Anniversary”)
2. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (from “The Swell Season”)
3. Juliana Hatfield - Just Lust (from “How To Walk Away”)
4. The Beatles - I Me Mine (from “Let It Be”)
5. Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five (from “Park Avenue South”)

From MySpace to Facebook to Twitter and more, it’s certain that the new area that lets the public communicate with the media is here to stay, a corporations are beginning to jump in and learn all about it so on this show, you will too.

We’ll be talking to John Kembal from RightNow Technologies about what social media is and how it’s affecting businesses online.

Plus we’ve got news on USB 3, a man who was arrested for not Tweeting, a cheap HDTV coming soon that could run on solar energy, the sound of an electric car to a blind person, a bunch more. Check it out in The Gadget Grill!

Like what you heard on this episode of The Grill? We mean the music, because of course you love how we speak.

Our playlist is below. If you loved the tracks, feel free to check them out on iTunes or your local CD store and support the artist.

1. Boy & Bear - Mexican Mavis (from “Demo”, found at “Who The Bloody Hell Are They?“)
2. Janet Jackson featuring Q-Tip & Joni Mitchell - Got ‘Till It’s Gone
   (from “The Velvet Rope”)
3. Dave Carroll - United Breaks Guitars (from “United Breaks Guitars”)
4. Joe Henderson - Lazy Afternoon (from “Power To The People”)
5. Dexter Gordon - Cheese Cake (from “Go”)

Join us next week for more chaos, danger, mayhem and madness… well… maybe the madness bit… probably not the other three… but join us next week for more madness here on The Gadget Grill!

Olympus also make a couple of adapters for this camera, those being one that lets you use your standard four thirds format glass on the Pen, and another that lets you use any vintage OM compatible glass that you might be able to get your hands on.

Olympus were kind enough to supply The Gadget Grill with a Pen, both lenses, and an OM adapter for review. As you may already know, we here at the Grill have a long involvement in photography, and we were keen to see if the new Pen could recreate some of the magic that the original Pen was revered for.

First, let’s look at a couple of background issues, so that we can fully understand where this camera sits in the market place.

I’ve certainly been underwhelmed at the market position of the whole four thirds DSLR situation. It has but a few players, and, although those players make products of a very high standard, the DSLR market place continues to be dominated by the products of Canon and Nikon. The four thirds presence in this market is merely a thimble in an ocean, so to speak.

So, what of the new Micro Four Thirds format then? For starters, it’s not a new format; it’s a variation on the existing four thirds format, using the same underlying design parameters, but with the removal of some basic camera features that a DSLR user takes for granted. In nutshell, those features are all embodied in the DSLR’s mirror box assembly, and this mirror-box-ectomy results in a camera that is smaller and lighter, but lacks an optical viewfinder. Thus, the camera cannot properly be caller any sort of “reflex” camera. I’ve seen the format referred to as “EVIL” (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens), but that truly does this camera a disservice.

Olympus have a long history of making great cameras and glass, and the original Pen (and its derivatives) was one of several of their cameras that could be regarded as truly collectible. This was a half frame 35mm film camera, meaning that on a normal roll of film, you were shooting just a half of a normal 35mm frame for each image that you made. On a 36 exposure roll of film you could get 72 exposures, and the quality of the glass still meant that you were getting very good quality images.

The concept of the new Pen, with the micro four thirds format, echoes the original Pen’s place in the market, and to my mind, resurrecting the old name is very clever marketing on the part of Olympus.

So, how does the Pen fare in the company of modern day cameras? Is it mightier than the swords proffered by Nikon and Canon? Does it stand on its own merits, as a viable camera for you to use?

To answer that last question first, yes, undoubtedly. It is a very fine camera, and one of the first things that impressed us was the feel of the camera. Metal body, small but very solid, almost brick-like in its feel in the hand. This feels as if it can be a workhorse camera, whereas many of the other cameras in this (and several other) market place feel too light and plasticky. This camera feels very good in the hand.

The main command dial reminds me of some old cigarette lighters, and falls directly under a path that your thumb passes by when needing to change stuff. Follow that path to the right for the control dial; or towards the left for pretty well most of the rest of the controls that live to the right of the nice 3″ LCD.

Controls seem logical and well placed, with most of them grouped together on the camera back, to the right hand side of the LCD. Mostly, this control placement makes the camera very easy to handle, but for my heavy fat fingers, the control dial directly to the right of the display was a little too sensitive, and this affected my ability to properly control some of the camera’s functions. I’m still undecided as to whether this is a “me” problem - for which I need to adjust my use of the camera - or whether it’s something inherent in the camera.

In a related vein, the on/off switch is a push button, on the camera’s top plate, right next to the shutter release button. Smaller, with a slightly raised illuminated (when the camera is turned on) ring surrounding it, but otherwise flush with the top plate. The shutter release is raised so there’s some differentiation, but I don’t like this sort of on/off switch design. I suspect that it might be confusing for users, who might inadvertently switch the camera off when trying to make an image, or when trying to adjust EV compensation, for which there’s a similar button on the opposite side of the shutter button. I would prefer some sort of a two position switch, perhaps in a collar surrounding the shutter switch. I will add that Olympus are not alone in their use of this sort of design, and I have seen it in a number of other cameras.

The only controls that are outside of this region are the shooting mode dial, which is under your left thumb, and the aforementioned EV compensation button, located on the extreme top right of the top plate.

The Pen seems to me to have a good implementation of live view. I think Nikon have taken the CLS approach and way over-complicated how Live View works, whereas on cameras like their old CoolPix 5000, it was very simple. Slow, but simple. As such, I’ve yet to be able to master live view on the high end Nikons in a manner that’s truly practical from a usability sense, and in fact I have yet to understand a need for the manner in which it’s been implemented. The Olympus implementation seems to me to be way better than Nikon’s efforts.

AF speed seems reasonable, and in use we could see facial recognition focus indicators popping up on the screen to help you achieve a sharp image. We did however observe one very unusual reaction from the facial recognition system in that it seemed to recognise my rear end as a face at one point. One wonders what the camera was trying to tell me here.

In good light, focus speed is acceptable, and the camera is a very usable tool, and if you leave the camera to its own devices and let it run with the iAuto setting, you will see quite good results.

In lower light, focus speed might suffer, but in really low light, it’s the image quality that suffers most of all. As you use the cameras high ISO settings, image quality can be significantly degraded.

One surprisingly useful and elegant feature came into play when using manual focus mode: when the camera senses that you are manually focusing your proposed image, the display switched into a digital zoomed-in mode, permitting you to easily focus upon some of the finer details in your subject.

In-camera black and white is quite nice, with good levels of contrast available. And you have a variety of shooting formats available to you as well. You can even shoot square format, in the camera. Interestingly, Olympus call this 6×6, but of course, for those of familiar with shooting on 6cm x 6cm medium format cameras, this is a long way from 6×6.

Which brings me to the sensor size. The four thirds format uses a crop sensor, with a crop factor of roughly 2x. This provides you with an angle of view approximately equivalent to half that expected from a given lens when compared with what you would see on a 35mm film camera. For sports photography, this can be a very useful feature, as it provides you with the effective equivalent of a focal length double that of the lens that you’re using. Conversely, if you want to shoot using wider angles, you need to go to extreme wide angle focal lengths in order to achieve some element of a wide angle view.

For instance, my favourite focal length when shooting 35mm film stock was always 24mm. With the two kit lenses available for the E-P1, the 17mm translates to 34mm (only moderately wide) and while the 14-42 comes in wider at a 28mm equivalency (at the wide end), that is still somewhat short of the sandpit I like to play in.

So, a lens with a wider field of view is, I think, desirable for this camera.

Ok, so we’ve decided that this is a very nice camera. But it’s not perfect, and the most obvious problem is it’s outdoors usability.

Because the camera doesn’t have a built in optical viewfinder, then you need to rely upon the display on the rear of the camera. This is certainly adequate for shooting indoors, but if you take the camera outside on a sunny day, then shooting becomes something of a hit and miss affair. Fortunately, we’re shooting with cameras, so there’s little chance of causing any critical damage in the case of a miss.

If you’re using the 17mm you should attach the accessory optical viewfinder to the hotshoe, but if you’re using any other lens, then shooting outdoors in bright conditions may prove problematic for you, and this should be borne in mind if you are considering purchasing this camera.

Which brings to the most important point of all: would I buy one of these? Absolutely. This is definitely a camera I could live with, as an adjunct to my bigger and heavier DSLRs. It’s small and light and almost pocketable, and very capable of helping me to produce images of a very high quality. For me, this would make an excellent walk-around or travel camera.

I should note that the camera also has quite acceptable and easy to use video capabilities, but in my personal use of this camera I did not have an opportunity to really give this facility a serious trial.

We’ve done enough of these things to know that this show is just as important as the others because today we have two experts talking to us about what’s happening in security.

Plus we’ve got news about converting crap to energy (oh yes, it really is what it sounds like), NASA create an almost Star Trek-like tricorder for the iPhone, water on the moon, Windows Mobile Marketplace hacked just as the iPhone was with its own little virus.

All of that and… IT’S LEIGH’S (the host of The Gadget Grill) BIRTHDAY… and you can guess he’s not going to let this recording go by without some cake. Lots of cake. Be there for the cake. Listen for the cake… and the radio show. That’s good too.

The music on this show was a mix of New Orleans and a couple of other bits. If you likes any of it, we’ve got the playlist down below:

1. Frou Frou - Close Up (from “Breathe In”)
2. Crowded House - Fall At Your Feet (from “Woodface”)
3. Dumpstaphunk - Meanwhile… (from “Listen Hear”)
4. Los Hombres Calientes - Latin Tinge II (from “Vol. 5: Carnival”)
5. Christian Scott - Died In Love (from “Live At Newport”)

Next week, we’re all about making computers easier for the older generation. Join us next week if you’ve ever wanted to set your grandma or grandpa up with a computer!

Until now.

The basic concept is that from Windows Explorer, you want to map a networked drive, and retain that mapped network drive so that it is persistent through multiple reboots and logins to that system. The problem is that the default installation of Windows 7 appears to support this feature (as happens quite seamlessly in XP), but in fact it doesn’t.

When you log on to a network volume and assign it as a mapped drive, there is a “Remember my credentials” checkbox on the login dialog. One would expect that this should add the login credentials to the Credentials Manager, so that the details are retained and you can automatically log in to that mapped drive the next (and every subsequent) time that you restart the Windows 7 system.

Entering credentials

Why else would you want to check the “Remember my credentials” checkbox, right?

Unfortunately, that isn’t how it happened for me, and every time I rebooted the system, I would see a message balloon pop up in the taskbar, and the mapped drive would contain a red X through it, indicating that the drive mapping could not be re-established.

Mapped drive is not connected

When I mapped the drive, this process had created a record in the Windows 7 Credential Manager, but this showed that the persistence of the login to the networked drive was just for the current session. This did not seem to me to be correct. Manually creating a record in the Credentials Manager also failed to rectify the problem.

After quite a good deal of research, I discovered that the actual source of the problem has nothing to do with the Credentials Manager, but instead relates to how the default group policies for SMB shares are set up when Windows 7 is installed. The default value is that the relevant policy is left unset, and that creates this problem when you wish to automatically log in to some SMB shares. This of course is how OS X drives are seen by Windows when they are set as mapped drives within your system, and that is why this problem seems to occur.

Fixing the problem requires editing the group policies. Not a difficult task, but it does entail changing some registry settings. If you are not comfortable with doing getting your hands dirty in the registry, stop now, or find someone who can do this. And be sure that you back up your registry before you start. If you screw up your registry, you might not be able to restart and use your system, so consider yourself warned.

To edit the Group Policies, we need to run the Group Policy Editor program. Press the Windows and R keys together to bring up the Run Program dialog, and then, in the Run dialog, enter gpedit.msc and press the OK button.

After a few moments the Group Policies Editor will open.

In the Group Policies Editor, open each of the following items in turn:

Computer Configuration
Windows Settings
Security Settings
Local Policies
Security Options

Now, right-click on the “Network security: LAN Manager authentication level” policy item, and then, from the context (pop-up) menu, select “Properties”.

Now select the “Local Security Settings” tab, and then, in the dropdown box, locate and select “Send LM & NTLM - user NTLMv2 session security if negotiated”.

Now click the OK button, and then finally, you may close the Group Policies Editor window.

The problem should now be fixed, and your mapped drive logins should now be persistent through multiple reboots of the system.

In starting to teach her how to use the computer, I noticed that the concept of double-clicking was not something that she was comfortable with, and so I looked for alternative solutions, the obvious one being that of just single-clicking on desktop icons.

While this was very easy to enable in XP, and it is also very easy to enable in Windows 7, the means for doing this is not immediately obvious. So, here is how you do it.

Start by opening Windows Explorer.  If the traditional menu bar (File, Edit, etc) is not visible, press the Alt key on your keyboard.

From the menu bar, select Tools, and then Folder options.

Windows Explorer Tools Menu

You should now be looking at the General tab on the Folder Options Dialog. In the second group, “Click items as follows”, you need to now select the first option, “Single click to select”.

Press the OK button to dismiss the dialog, and you’re done.

As an aside, for those with touch enabled system, you may wish to consider enabling this option on your systems. In my opinion, this greatly enhances the touch experience, eliminating the need for a double-touch, which I don’t believe works as well as a double click. Just touch momentarily - a bit longer than a click - and your applications open up for your pleasure.

Plus you can learn what a boffin is (and the associated news about the baby translator software they’ve made), the importance of radio compared to mp3s, and digital movies not on an optical media.

And we’re obsessed with Bumblebee this week. Or Leigh is anyway. Lots of buzzing in this episode and a whole lot more!

Like the music we played? Here’s what it was…

1. Yoko Kanno & Tim Jenson - GET9 (Naked) (from “GET9″)
2. Dot Allison - Colour Me (from “Afterglow”)
3. Under The Influence Of Giants - Mama’s Room (from “Under The Influence Of Giants”)
4. Alison Krauss - The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn (from “New Favourite”)
5. Joey DeFrancesco - My Foolish Heart (from “Organic Vibes”)

Next week, we’re delving back into the world of security. See you then on The Gadget Grill!

On this show, we’ll be talking about how one game spurred research into how many Australians use their imaginations and why. You’ll also hear about the game itself and just how it goes about getting your imagination up and running again.

Plus we’ve got a big monitor in the studio… which was stupid because we could have just left it at home and talked about it. Regardless, we’ll be talking about the new Dell U2410 monitor which displays over one billion colours. Let’s see your laptop screen match that.

All of that plus online shopping by a dog, online shopping by people, the death of the n-gage, useless shirts, and a whole heap more. Check it out below or on iTunes!

As usual, our playlist is a blend of stuff on top of things with the occasional dash of sound and volume. Here’s what all of that meant for this show:

1. End Of Fashion - Lock Up Your Daughters (from “End Of Fashion”)
2. Bird - Bad Connection (from “Girl And A Cello”)
3. John Mayer Trio - Another Kind Of Green (from “Try!”)
4. Galactic featuring Trombone Shorty - Tuff Love (from “From The Corner To The Block”)
5. Ray Brown Trio & Herb Ellis - Blues For Junior (from “Some Of My Best Friends Are… Guitarists”)

Join us next week for more gadgets, games, and absolute lunacy here on The Gadget Grill!

The follow-up to Microsoft’s Windows Vista - which doesn’t exactly have the best reputation - was launched this week and we were on hand to talk to Microsoft’s Jeff Putt about what’s changed in this new & important release. Plus, we’ll do what no other journalist dare would and ask about Clippy!

We’re also taking a new camera out for a spin. It’s got a touchscreen on the back and an extra screen on the front to make sure you always get those self portraits. Sadly, we can’t guarantee you’ll look like the people in the picture above, but we can give you our thoughts on the new Samsung ST550!

All of that plus celebrity tweeting, new multitouch monitors, electric motorbikes, e-book readers, and more. Oh and laughter. Lots of laughter.

Like music? It’s ok if you say no. We’ve even met some people who were like that. Regardless, if you liked the music we played on this show, the playlist is below to make it easy for you to find the tracks!

1. My Chemical Romance - Dead! (from “The Black Parade”)
2. Bluejuice - Broken Leg (from “Head Of The Hawk”)
3. Charles Mingus - Cryin’ Blues (from “The Complete Atlantic Recordings 1956-1961″)
4. Jonny Lang - Lie To Me (from “Lie To Me”)
5. Herbert - The Audience (from “Bodily Functions”)

Next week there’ll be more mayhem so join us then on The Gadget Grill… see you then!

So on this show, we’ll be talking to Janice Chaffin from Symantec (the people who make Norton) about some of the ways you can protect yourself as well as what’s going on in the world of Identity Fraud & Theft.

A new gadget has made its appearance in the studio this week with the Flip Mino HD, a pocket video camera that’s arriving just in time for Christmas. We’ll be talking about this great little thing that we don’t want to give back in the show.

We’ve also got lots of news including a possible sighting of the lost city of Atlantis off the coast of Greece, the new Olympic medals, and copyright fees for ringtones. All that plus the host going barking mad and more this week on The Gadget Grill. Woof.

We play lots of music on the Gadget Grill, but sadly can’t include it all in our podcast. But if you liked any of what you heard in our show, here’s the listing of what it all was…

1. Nelly Furtado - Try (from “Folklore”)
2. Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode (from “Johnny B. Goode”)
3. Monsieur Camembert - Kiss Of Fire (from “Absynthe”)
4. Memory Tapes - Green Knight (from “Seek Music”)
5. Roland Kirk with Jack McDuff - Skater’s Waltz (from “Kirk’s Work”)

Next week, we’ll have more mania, madness, and mayhem here at The Gadget Grill so join us then!

But what are the costs for Australians buying books in the digital format? We found it out before anyone else last week so we’ll report to you about what you’ll currently have to pay for a digital book, and why that’s different from Americans.

We’ll also give you our opinion on the Wacom Bamboo with touch capability… because we’ve been putting our greasy hamburger-ridden fingers all over it because, well, that’s what we’re supposed to do!

All of that plus news about mobile problems,when Rupert met Google, new types of clouds, and even news on Windows 8  just as Windows 7 prepares to launch!

Like the sound of any of the songs we played? Here they are…

• Colour - Those Things That Mean So Much (I’ve Had Enough) (from “The Grey EP”)
• Mayer Hawthorne - Shiny & News (from “A Strange Arrangement”)
• Thelonious Monk - Round Lights (from “Alone In San Francisco”)
• Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Along Came Betty (from “Moanin’”)
• Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave. - Orleans and Claiborne (from “5 Songs Live EP “)

Next week, there’s more random gadgety goodness so join us then… same gadget time (9pm), same gadget channel (Radio 2RDJ)… The Gadget Grill!

For applications such as Skype and Adobe Audition, or just about any other application where real-time, live sound is a requirement, this made Windows 7 totally unusable. Seriously.

You simply could not talk and listen within that environment, without those delays affecting your input and output, and consequently, anything that I needed to that invloved live sound required me to reboot my system back into Windows XP in order to be able to perform these functions.

I am pleased to report that within the last week or so, Realtek have released a new set of drivers for their hardware, and these seem to mostly address these issues.

You do need to disable the “Listen to” feature, as that creates an even worse situation, but otherwise, I think I can now use Audition and Skype on Windows 7 without my work being reduced to a babbling piece of gibberish.

Well, no moreso than is normally the case.

Go to the Realtek website for the fix.

On this episode of The Gadget Grill, we’ll talk to Elgato, makers of the EyeTV software & hardware for Apple computers to hear about how software infringement as well as intellectual property is handled from the perspective of a company on the frontlines fighting it.

Plus we’ve got these… weird… tripod like things in the studio… taking us over and making it seem like there are aliens among us… shining light at us. We’re looking at the Gorillapod Focus and the Gorillatorch in this show… or they’re looking at us. One of them. We’re not really sure.

All that plus ways to recycle your phone, the new training wheel, random Apple news including multi-touch gestures, and a hell of a lot more. Plus an insane amount of disturbing things happening behind the microphone. It’s just one of those shows.

Tonight’s playlist:

1. The Portland Cello Project - Beat (Health, Life and Fire) (from “The Thao and Justin Power Sessions”)
2. Big Brother & The Holding Company - Turtle Blues (from “Cheap Thrills”)
3. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Leave My Girl Alone (from “In Step”)
4. Andre Previn - Something’s Coming (from “West Side Story”)
5. Dave Brubeck - Blue Shadows In The Street (from “Time Further Out”)

Next week, we’re talking about how to protect yourself online from all the baddies out there! See you then!

In this show, you’ll hear about s new gadget that can bring the power of “touch” to any computer that has a USB port.

Plus we’ve got a new camera in the studio for the old school camera nuts who love them built like a tank and made out of solid stuff. Full review on site later on, until then listen to our thoughts on the new Olympus EP-1.

All that as well as news about new chips from AMD, a cheaper Palm Pre, hope for blind people, and a whole heap more. Take a listen to hear that heap more!

Did you like the music on the show tonight? Did ya, did ya, did ya?

Well you’re in luck, because the playlist is below:

Next week, we’ll be talking to one developer about a problem they - as well as a whole bunch of other developers - are facing these days. We’ll see you then!

In this demo, we’ll look at the Wacom Bamboo Dock, drawing in Twitter, and how this new tablet runs with Adobe Photoshop, Audition, and even Notepad inside of Windows 7.

And of course, we felt a need to upgrade at least a couple of these to the all new, bright and shiny Windows 7, and so this has now been accomplished… but not without a little bit of pain.

Both of the systems that we wanted to upgrade are based upon Intel P35 chipsets running on Gigabyte motherboards, and my personal desktop system - a GA-P35-DS3R - proved to be a particularly troublesome install.

This was quite puzzling, as I’d experienced no issues when installing any of the Win7 betas that had been on offer, nor had I experienced any issues in running those betas.

By way of contrast, the Windows 7 RTM installation was particularly ugly: it would simply die mid-process, often (on repeated attempts) at what appeared to be a set of consistent points. While I would be able to struggle through and get what appeared to be completed installation - with, I think, four restarts after crashes along the way - the resulting system was anything but stable. Like the installation process, it too would just die. No blue screen, just a loss of video, along with a constant series of attempts to access one of the optical drives in the system.

Alternatively, the system might start issuing a high-ish pitch buzzing sound, which we couldn’t really track to any particular component.

Removing and swapping out memory sticks yielded no result, nor did removing and swapping out different HHDs. Changing the video card fared no better, and no matter what I Googled, no answer was forthcoming.

Turning to the Microsoft Upgrade Adviser, it suggested that I needed an upgrade to the drivers for the controller chips on the board, and while it seemed to offer a link to a source for those upgraded drivers, that was effectively just a circular link back to the same page. After some further Googling, I found what seemed to be the drivers I needed, but alas, they proved no more effective than any other solution I’d tried.

By now I was becoming quite frustrated: this should not be so hard, and surely this is just some sort of basic issue that is easily solved?

As it transpired, it is a very easy issue to resolve, once I’d found the solution, but of course that’s always the case.

Bottom line is that if you’re getting stuck with problems trying to install Windows 7 on a Gigabyte P35 motherboard, go into your BIOS settings and check your values for ‘C1E’ and ‘EIST’. These both need to be disabled, thus locking your CPU core speed, and this seems to address the problems I experienced. The solution was buried in a 6 page thread on sevenforums.com, and I thank that source for its resources.

Hopefully this post will be a little easier, or at least provide another reference to this problem, and most importantly, its resolution.

And yes, I’ve been using this new Windows 7 installation all day, just installing and setting up things, and I can honestly say that it truly is quite a pleasure to use.

Sadly in Australia, we lack a fair ratings system. While movies can be classified in an age bracket like R18+ X, games cannot. So with EA’s new game “Left 4 Dead 2″ being banned this week, we thought it was high time that we got out The Gadget Grill certified skillet and throw the issue well and truly in the fire.

We’ll also take a look at a new portable sound device from Altec Lansing. A warning, however, as not even one of the Gadget Grill chefs was ready for the surprising amount of volume this little sucker puts out.

All that plus cool new dual CPU motherboards, how blind people soon will be able to read SMS’s just like the rest of us, the Apple vs. Google divide widens, and a whole heap more.

Fancy something that we played as part of our music on The Grill this week? Well, it’s all below waiting for you to… you know… Google it. And stuff.

1. As Tall As Lions - In Case Of Rapture (from “You Can’t Take It With You”)
2. Jimi Hendrix - Little Wind (from “Experience Hendrix”)
3. Blue Mitchell - Soul Village (from “Blue Mitchell”)
4. Dianne Reeves - One For My Baby (from “Good Night, And Good Luck”)
5. Dave Matthews Band - All Along The Watchtower (from “Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95″)

See you next week in The Gadget Grill!

Where was I?

Oh yes. Windows Vista is about to be gone. So with Windows Vista getting out of dodge, that means Microsoft’s new crowning achievement Windows 7 is here… and while it’s not out until October, we have the final version in our hands, installed on our PC’s, and we’ll tell you what we think about it tonight.

We’ll also take some bouncy Samsung Bluetooth headphones for a spin to see what audio is like when we cut the cables.

Plus we’ve got news about the Commodore 64 revival, the ho-hum Apple gadget release *yawwwwwnnnn*, carrier pigeon versus real internet speeds, and more.

Oh, and it’s also the strip edition of The Gadget Grill so look out for joysticks of all sizes (but specifically the well-endowed ones)!

Every week on The Gadget Grill, we play music! Yes, how many technology shows actually play music? (We’re actually asking. We have no idea.)

Anyway, to see what we played in this show, read on below!

1. Owen - Good Friends, Bad Habits (from “New Leaves”)
2. The Beatles - Help! (from “Help!”)
3. Diana Krall - Devil May Care (from “Live In Paris”)
4. God Help The Girl - I’m In Love With The City (from “Stills EP”)
5. Ed Harrison - Footprint (from “NeoTokyo”)

See you next week on a slightly more clothed edition of The Gadget Grill!

But some people actually go out and invent things, and on this show we’re talking to the creator of a new gadget that could help make shooting movies just that much easier & better. Fresh from his appearance on The New Inventors, we’ll be talking to the creator of the “Robocam Pro” Christopher Robin Collins.

…and on the flipside of useful inventions, we have a banana that charges batteries. Yes, it’s the return of our Useless Gadgets section in the most fitting show we could find.

All of that plus news about the web on your Wii, how Amazon have now gone and apologised, addicted to the web? perhaps you need to play the World of Rehab (so to speak), Microsoft’s new Zunes, Logitech’s new Squeezeboxes, and a whole heap more.

1. Little Brazil - Separated (from “Son”)
2. Jamie Cullum - 7 Days To Change Your Life (from “Catching Tales”)
3. Ben Folds - You’ve Got To Learn To Live With What You Are (from “Sunny 16″)
4. Bertie Blackman - Fast Bitch (from “Black”)
5. Bobo Stenson, Anders Jormin, Paul Motian - There Comes A Time (from “Goodbye”)

Next week, more rivalry between the only father-son tech team in Sydney… see you then!