Which technology expert do you think gives better advice overall?
I think they both have their pluses. I have listened to Leo for over 20 years. I think he’s more entertaining than Kim. And he has great guests. Like the TV guy, the Space guy. The car guy, yes cars are tech now! But Kim is prettier!
I didn’t know radio show personalities had time to be technology experts.
I was an avid listener to the Kim Commando Show on broadcast radio from the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Kim’s background was in technology. She worked in mainframe computer sales for IBM and Unisys in the 90’s and got into broadcasting in the nineties.
Unlike many later talk-show technophiles who’s technical expertise is typically application based, Kim was an older-school tech-talker who understood how hardware, peripherals, software layers, communications and database operations worked together to solve different kinds of problems.
Being an old-school technophile myself, I could relate better with Kim than I could with experts without experience in the basics of computer systems who discuss technology at a level of specific applications and don’t seem to have a good grasp of the fundamentals.
THat was my first thought when I saw this thread
Leo is just a few years older than me. He started as a radio DJ in California in the 80’s. He was very interested in computers and tech and soon had an early tech radio show. Then in the mid 90’s an obscure channel called ZDTV called him and asked him if he would like to host some tech tv shows on this channel. ZDTV changed their name to TechTV. Two of the shows were “Screensavers” and “Call for Help”. These were the days of the VCR and I taped all those shows. The TV business being what it is, the ratings weren’t what they wanted and TechTV changed hands and then withered away. The Call for Help show was so popular in Canada that a Toronto TV channel continued the show. They flew Leo up once in a while to continue the show for a few more years.
Then Leo started his own radio shows out of CA. He retired from the radio just a couple years ago and made his show a Podcast which I watch to this day “The Tech Guy”. More than you ever wanted to know about Leo!
2 Likes
I like both of them. Kim has more specific advice whereas Leo’s guest panelists focus more on talking about technology in general and its implications. Both have their places. I really appreciate Clark taking Kim’s most recent top tip and putting into his newsletter. Both them are credible which means more today with so much garbage content out there.
2 Likes
I also was a computer analyst for 25 years. Glad to know someone else recognizes that many reviewers and 'data analysts do not have enough background to write great reviews. It drives me nuts when e.g. someone does a survey monkey questionaire and then thinks they are a data analyst. Software companies tell people that ‘anyone can be an analyst’. They do this constantly whenever a new trend starts. Even if you e.g. use data analyst tool correctly, it’s usually not useful. To do data analysis that is meaningful, there is lots of actions that need to be done correctly. How you pick the items to be included and how you interrogate them, database design and queries, how you program data matching if you have multiple data sources and much more. I see lots of 1:1 data analysis which is usually not useful. A lot of e.g. race and rate of imprisonment. It is probably true that a larger percent of Blacks are imprisoned. But class (i.e. poverty), neighborhood, how racist the local police force is and much more gives a better picture. When I was programming, trying to match on race for 2+ data sets was difficult because different data sets often didn’t have the same criteria for a data field. Race can be done many ways and it is done differently often. The counties with the highest poverty rates are in Appalachia. The sad thing is, the rich don’t mind dividing people by race. Keep us fighting each other so we don’t look at them. The oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer.
I was in sales and not an expert on the nuts and bolts but had to understand the basics in order to sell the stuff. In the 1990’s I worked for a while on trying to get a common data dictionary* for exchange of K-12 student data between districts and between states. It was a lot harder than it sounds because most school districts had separate systems for basic info, attendance and scholastic performance so the problem involved multiples of multiple data sets.
Note: a data dictionary is a collection of detailed information that helps interpret and route the common information between different system designs and different methods of storing that information. It sorts through the files and pulls information common to all the systems it interfaces with.
My point is simple… these “experts in their field” spend more of their time making YT videos or hosting radio shows how do they have time to service a customer base or maintain their self called expert skills.
Like a lot of the house flippers on a certain cable tv channel. Are they skilled experienced contractors or better at acting?
Kim Komando’s style and content is more like Clark’s than is is like house flippers and Dave Ramsey. I’ve never listened to Laporte.
I prefer Rich on Tech by Rich DeMuro. I stopped listening to Leo because much of his content was too computer-geek oriented, and I got tired of his complaints about Elon Musk.
Kim Komando is alright but too many commercials and advice often seems vague.
1 Like
Kim Komando has a very Apple-centric bias and pushes products every other paragraph. She’s super paranoid about personal information, which is good, but her advice is over the top. Leo is more straight forward and to the point and let’s you decide.
1 Like
Elon Musk is a fascinating human being and for lots of reasons he is an interesting person to study.
I’m about 2/3rds through Elon Musk’s biography written by Walter Isaacson.
I should have specified that in my opinion he complained too much about Elon’s free speech/laissez-faire approach to Twitter/X, and also complained too much as an upper middle-class liberal about the possibility of taxpayer-funded rebates being reduced or eliminated.
But also, when he cut back to one show a week, Rich on Tech is a better choice for me as a non-deep-in-the-weeds tech user.
Daniel
I like Kim for general IT advice that is easily understood by non-technical listeners. I also like Steve Gibson, who has a weekly program ‘Security Now” on Leo’s TWIT network for cybersecurity. Steve is able to take complex issues and make them readily understandable.
1 Like