From the Mailbag

MARTIN has hundreds of old LPs that he wants to convert to MP3. What is a good turntable that can handle that?

I never owned LPs or a turntable. By the time I came along, cassette tapes and CDs were commonplace. My friend Danny owns a bunch of LPs though. He says takes a look at ION Audio's turntables. The reviews on them are very good and most offer the ability to rip straight to a computer and/or a USB flash drive.

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JEN has a long daily commute and wants to play her audio books and podcasts over the car stereo. Her existing stereo sounds great but does not offer a way to play MP3s. She is looking for a new stereo recommendation.

Unfortunately, I know nothing about car stereos. However, I looked up the one you have and it does offer Bluetooth 4.0. That means you do not actually need a new stereo! All you have to do is pair your phone with the existing one and then stream the audio from your phone. Since you have an Android phone, give doubleTwist a try. I have been using it for almost a year now. It is free and works very well for this.

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DIETER has a desktop computer that is giving him errors about his hard drive. Sometimes he has to try 3-4 times before it will start up properly. What do I recommend?

This is a perfect example of what I do every day. It is too bad that you are in Oklahoma. If you were local, I would come out and take care of this for you.

Those errors mean the hard drive is about to die. The next time you turn it off, it may not come back on. Do not turn the computer off again until you have that hard drive completely backed up!

STEP # 1

Download/Install EaseUS Todo Backup. They offer a 7 day free trial. Use that to clone your computer's hard drive to the 1TB USB hard drive you bought.

STEP # 2

Order a new solid state drive (SSD) from Crucial. Use their upgrade selector to find a compatible SSD and then follow their directions to install it.

STEP # 3

Use Todo Backup to restore your drive image onto the SSD.

Given the nature of the errors, I STRONGLY recommend that you hurry. Have Crucial overnight that SSD to you and get it installed ASAP. Good luck!

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Keep the questions coming!

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