Archive for August, 2008
I finally got my first mp3 player. I probably was one of the few without one, or so it seems. I guess you could count my old PocketPC as a mp3 player, but that’s another story. However, what ultimately influenced my decision to buy a new mp3 player was my new truck. It has an aux jack just for mp3 players. So I decided I could have a bunch of CD-ROMS laying around OR I could just have one tiny little fit in the palm of my hand mp3 player.
There are a ton on the market to choose from. I went with the Creative Zen. Why? Price and features. Far less than an ipod or a zune, the Zen is perfect for what I need. It can play videos, music, record a voice for dictation, display photos and even has an expansion slot for more storage space. And it’s tiny and fairly light weight.
The software it came with couldn’t be any easier to use. I ripped a few CD’s straight to the mp3 player at the press of a button. And everything worked liked a charm.
I even just made a playlist of about 60 songs and plugged in my mp3 to my truck. But, I did need to buy a male to male plug to go from the headphone jack of the mp3 player to the aux jack of my trucks stereo system. The result, crystal clear digital music. The only thing I’d like to see is a bit more volume on the Zen or from my trucks stereo system. It’s perfectly loud, but just in case I wanted to go louder I would like to have that option.
Amazon, itunes, Yahoo music, Audible, these are all places where you can buy mp3s to use in the mp3 player. I am sure there are other ‘free’ places to ‘borrow’ music, but I don’t mind supporting the artists and the industry. I believe in commerce and enterprise.
Anyway, it’s great to listen to what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. No commercials, no talk, just high quality, great sounding music.
August 30th, 2008
I don’t have a TV in my office, just my desktop PC. So watching TV is something of a luxury. I had an old TV tuner on my old desktop, but haven’t risked plugging it into my new one and VISTA. Everything is working just fine now and I am not interested in spending hours to fix it. Plus you have to split the cable (one side for the internet, the other for the TV).
So instead, I go without. And if you’ll see my last post I hooked up my laptop to my HDTV in my living room, so I have some of the angles covered.
However, NBCOlympics.com makes it dead simple to watch TV online. I went to the site, plugged in the Microsoft Silverlight Plugin and I did have problems with the intro video pausing. But then I switched to a channel, for example, now I am watching tennis, Raphael Nadal even, and here’s a screen shot of how it looks.
So far it’s been running smoothly and this way I can work on my main monitor and watch/listen to the video on the other monitor. Obviously, I have dual monitors setup. Which I highly recommend. The video also is opens up in a new window, so you can move it around put it wherever you want.
There is also a commentary text button which allows you keep up to date with the announcers. It’s kinda interesting watching a match and not hearing Dick Enberg or Johnny Mac rattle on about various things. Just the players and the stadium noise.
So if you get a chance and want to keep up with the olympics, maybe you’re at work or something, you can just tune in and run it in a different window and it shouldn’t affect your work too much 
August 11th, 2008
I decided to hook up my laptop to my big screen LCD HD TV. Now I have an HP Duo 2 Core laptop and an HDMI jack so connecting my laptop to my TV was actually easy. Just not cheap. The HDMI cable is about $45 for a 6 foot cable. And Sony Bravia 46″ LCD HDTV has 3 inputs for HDMI. And all three are being used now. One for my HD DVR (digital video recorder/HD cable box), one for my PS3/Bluray DVD player and now one for my laptop.
So in order to hook up your laptop, you need to see what kind of ports you have. IF you have HDMI for your computer and for your HDTV, then it’s a one cable deal.. Just plug in to the laptop and TV and you are good to go.
Otherwise, you’ll probably need to hook it up via an external monitor cable to the RGB connectors on the TV OR the external monitor DVI cable to the TV, if possible. Read your TV manual to see what kind of connections you have as well as look at the side of your laptop to see what kind of ports there are. Generally there is an external monitor port and you can plug that with the provided cable into most modern TV’s.
For me, it was simple, HDMI all the way. Then on the TV I just have to switch to the right HDMI connection. This is done through the input button on my remote control. The sound comes through the speakers of the laptop or through the TV. Depends on how you want to do it. I can’t watch TV and use the HDMI connection at the same time. I can listen to the TV, but not watch it. I tried PIP (picture in picture) but no luck, doesn’t work with 2 HDMI’s.
THe major challenge with hooking up your laptop to the TV is that my recliner is about 10 - 12 feet away and sometimes the text is hard to read. I also had to reformat the graphics display on the laptop. I turned off the laptop display and told it to use the external monitor only. And then I made the fonts large or xlarge. I also changed the resolution to a lower resolution which made the screen coverage larger as well. Now, this way, I can read most of the text. I am running 1280 x 720 on the big screen/laptop.
But I didn’t stop there. I also bought a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse. A Microsoft laser 6000 keyboard to be exact. That way there are no cables. This was easy, but not cheap either. Probably another $80 or so. However, it works perfectly. There was a little antenna to plugin to a USB port on the computer to receive the signal from the wireless keyboard and the mouse. Has a range of 10 - 15 feet and it works flawlessly so far.
Ok, so getting the picture? I now an kicking back in my recliner, surfing the web from my wireless keyboard and mouse. Just one more problem though. No room for the keyboard and the mouse. I thought a TV stand or one of those laptop stands, but I went first class on this last improvement. I bought an Airdesk. It was about $200 for the desk. Arrived in 2 days. It’s basically 2 metal poles put together, one vertically into a heavy metal base and the other connecting horizontally with an acrylic shelf attached to it. The shelves can pivot and rotate to accommodate pretty much any setting you want. I also have 2 other shelves I stuck on the air desk. The result? The airdesk works very well for my recliner/HDTV setup. You can easily customize each shelf height, distance and everything.
Now I have a place next to my recliner for my mouse, my remotes, my yerba mate (a drink from South America), cordless phone and my keyboard. Thanks to the sturdy airdesk shelves which conveniently rotate away from my when I need to get up. And it looks pretty cool too. A modern touch to my living room. The airdesk and my lazy boy recliner completes the ultimate setup for the laptop / TV connection.
Occasionally it’s hard to read the text. But there is a magnification button on my wireless keyboard. And a lot of sites allow for it. It makes zooming in on text and images easy and more readable.
So that’s my pimped out setup for having a laptop connected to a TV. I still use my other PC, because it’s still faster than my laptop and I have dual monitors and do a lot of graphics design and video processing. But for surfing the web, checking email (using ZImbra) and reading different feeds it works great! I even wrote this blog post on it…
August 3rd, 2008