Steve Price Show, August 27

Thanks for all your questions on the show today – certainly a lot of food for thought. Michael queried me about getting Wi-Fi while travelling overseas. The protocol he will need to use is 80211B, which will be suitable for emails and surfing the web. It should take about 30 seconds for a service to be found, and then you should be up and running.
Roger was wondering if using a PC with Skype on it might be a good way of communicating with his deaf mother because she hangs up the phone the wrong way around or does similar things. I think it would be a great way to communicate, and Barry also had the idea of using a fax – something that is hard to ignore.

Damien was travelling to the US and was wondering if he changed to a local SIM card could he use his iPhone. He can if his phone is unlocked. What this means is that some mobiles are locked to a carrier’s network, such as Telstra, Optus, or in Damien’s case, Vodafone. In the US, AT&T has exclusive rights to the iPhone, so unless your phone is unlocked, you will not be able to use it over there.

Graham was having administration problems with his computer. You can go in via the administrator, but I would advise heavily against doing so because it is one area of your computer a cybercrim would love to get into and they could cause all sorts of damage through spyware and malware. You might also find some answers here.

Mary was wanting a simple, easy-to-use mobile phone with a decent camera on it. Here are a couple that have very good cameras on them:
Sony Ericsson C905;
Samsung Memoir ; and the
Nokia N86

A caller from a couple of weeks ago, Deborah, stated that her son’s Xbox had the horrible red ring of death. I told her that Microsoft would honour the warranty even if it had run out because they agreed a while back to extend warranties for this particular problem. And boy, did the folks and Microsoft come to the party – not only did they repair her son’s Xbox, but they also repaired her other son’s Xbox, who was in no way covered by a warranty, for free! Well done Microsoft.

Finally, I talked about the new Samsung HDICON, which I have already mentioned on my blog. A great little phone that has probably set the standard for all those that are about to follow as far as high-definition video on a mobile phone.