KOLD News 13 live, local and late breaking-Saving Those Vinyl Records To Your PC

Saving Those Vinyl Records To Your PC

By: Andy Taylor, KOLD News 13 Live This Morning's Tech Expert

SAVING THOSE VINYL RECORDS TO YOUR PC

I have to say I am surprised at the resilience of the Classic Vinyl Record Album. Over the years we have seen Cassettes, CD's and Digital Media challenge the popularity of the "Licorice Pizza" to have it never quite go away. In the last 6 months many articles have been written on how Warner Records and Amazon have found success with the rebirth of Vinyl. One of the advantages to the vinyl album has included tremendous artwork and liner notes from the artist. On many occasion fans of bands would buy a couple of albums and put one on the wall in a photo box to frame as artwork.

I recently chatted with Loren Scheff who reminded me of the idea of a concept album which told a story from Track 1 through the last track. With the way many of us listen to music these days, we tend to load our collections on Digital Media and select a shuffle process which randomly picks songs thus taking away the concept. There is something special about taking an album from the wrapper, the feel, the sound and then examining the art from front to back. Technology worked its way into our lives but has held on to the memories and romance of the Vinyl.

For those that aren't ordering new vinyl online, some would like to record their collections to digital media for transferring to an MP3 player or storing for playing back during a party with iTunes or a Media Center. We recently took a look at a program that not only makes it easy to record your audio from a stereo system but also can back up your data, create CD's, DVD's and Edit Videos. The Nero 9 Suite came out in September of last year but continues to gain fans with its easy to use interface and installation which doesn't take over your system. We found the program complete with features for completing a variety of task. With the Nero 9 Suite, users can rip music from CD Collections; create CD's from recordings off of vinyl or other sources, backup automatically changes or additions to folders to the hard drive or even backup files to CD's, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

Users can also share photos and videos with an upload to My Nero, MySpace or You Tube accounts. With more consumers looking at integrating the PC into the home entertainment system, users could direct the program with an video capture or tuner card to not only watch but also record and even pause live television similar to what is found on a DVR.

A new feature to Nero 9 is the ability to archive movies in HD Format to the Hard Drive or USB stick or flash memory with a SD Card or Sony Memory Stick. Since video has become a popular format to share, create and distribute, The options for the consumer give them more power over its end product.

The Nero StartSmart command center which is a part of Nero 9 gives users a one click direct access for some of these task features. If you are feeling creative users can create visually appealing slide shows from photos or graphics and add music and narration to them. The completed presentation could then be burned to DVD for sharing or archiving.

The program retails for around $99 for retail boxed copy but also downloaded for $79. For more information on the Nero 9 Product, take a look at http://www.nero.com where a 15 day Fully Functional trial version can also be downloaded and tried out.  

BACKING UP AND PROTECTING WITH NERO

Along with the Nero 9 product I took a look at, I also checked out one of the latest offerings from Nero for Backing up your precious data, Nero BackItUp and Burn. 

This program allows for the backing up of photos, documents, music collections and video files for safe storage to hard drives, DVD, Blu-ray, CD or even offline storage. For those running a small home based business, this inexpensive software can provide many options for storing of spreadsheets, financial records and PDF Documents. Beyond the backup options, users can also recover files that have been accidentally deleted with the Nero Recover program which is a part of BackItUp and Burn.

Backup, Burn, Recover and Restore are the key elements of this software program which offers an easy to use interface for completing the entire task of protecting your data. The package is available for $49 Retail Box and $39 for a Digital Download. A Nero Online Backup Trial is available with 1GB of Data storage free for 3 months with the purchase of the BackItUp and Burn Software. A Trial version is also available from the website at http://www.nero.com  

ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE PASSWORD PROTECTS YOUR DOWNLOADED VIDEOS

One of the companies that creates solutions for those looking to record audio from web, work with video files and convert them to formats for storage, Applian Technologies has unveiled a program this morning for encrypting downloaded video and audio files on your Windows PC. Video Padlock offers fast encryption, even on large files which makes the file unplayable and secure with the decryption of the file.

To use the Video Padlock, users create a master password to lock and play their encrypted files. Encryption is handled as ultra-secure 128 bit ARC4 or Fast Encryption which will only allow playback of the file through the Video Padlock system.

This new software system retails for $19.95 and is available from Applian at http://www.applian.com  

TUNE UP YOUR PC WITH NEW VERSION OF SYSTEM MECHANIC FROM IOLO

Version 9 of System Mechanic from iolo technologies is officially unveiled today and offers features to fine tune and enhance the performance of your computer system while also providing full compatibility with the upcoming Microsoft Windows 7. Using a method the company is calling Tune-up Definitions, System Mechanic 9 offers weekly updates which are based on research from the companies' labs to fine tine the system as issue manifest and evolve in real time. We have seen this idea implemented with Virus and spyware programs but now, the System Mechanic 9 program will look at events and program issues that happen during the installed life of the product. These Tune-Up Definitions are backed with a database of nearly 10,000 definitions to diagnose and resolve PC Performance issues.

If you need your system optimized for a specific task such as gaming, editing or graphic design, with the products new EnergyBooster, non-essential background programs can be temporarily turned off to give your system best scenario performance. Your System Registry can also be revitalized with the Total Registry Revitalizer for backing up, repairing, cleaning and managing your registry.  

Another new feature we like is the Incinerator for Recycle Bin which offers standard file deletion as well as Department of Defense 5220-22M file shredding technique. There are some other features of this new version and the information can be found at http://www.iolo.com

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

I would love to start a weekly Question and Answer here in the KOLD Tech Tuesday column, have a question about a new product? Thinking about purchasing a Computer? Problems with your start up? Email your question to us and we'll feature it on our Column. If we do, you'll win a TechtalkRadio T-shirt! Send it to us at andy@techtalkradio.com or visit our website at http://www.techtalkradio.com

SOME LINKS WORTH CHECKING OUT

• A)      Blizz Con is Coming, Win a Trip from Nvidia
  http://www.nzone.com/wow
  The Largest event for World of Warcraft Lovers - BlizzCon
  
  
• B)      Now that's a Bad I can't sleep in
  http://dornob.com/high-tech-bed-has-built-in-tv-computer-game-systems
  Great design on this High Tech Bed

Thanks for checking out the Tech Tuesday Column. Have a Question? Need to see how something is done? Send it in! andy@techtalkradio.com  Follow his Twitter at techtalkradio.

Andy Taylor, based in Tucson, is host of the TechtalkRadio Show Sundays at 10am till Noon.  He is also a regular guest on Radio shows across the country talking about Technology.