I speak at seminars and workshops a lot and lately I've had laptop envy.
I use my own aging laptop computer for presentations and I've gotten by. But I recently spoke to the Rotary Club next to a guy who lugged in a Toshiba laptop that had a built-in sound card, stereo speakers, a CD-ROM drive and a huge color screen.Apollo 13 wouldn't have had any trouble if they'd have had one of these babies on board.
Tossing my 486SX doesn't make sense. But adding the Axonix Pro Media Player does.
This is an all-in-one upgrade for laptops that adds a double-speed CD-ROM, a 16-bit sound card, a 4-watt sound system and stereo speakers. All of these components are combined in a modular unit that weighs less than three pounds.
I thought I would be in for an installation nightmare because the player connects via a card in the laptop's PC Card slot. I already had software installed to control that slot for my PC Card modem. I could not imagine the two software packs would get along and sure enough, when I ran the installation routine, it said there was a conflict. But lo and behold, Axonix offered an alternative installation routine. I did it and everything worked.
Now my laptop can compete with the big boys. The CD-ROM showed up as Drive D and the sound from the speakers is excellent, and loud enough for presentations. My only beef is the manual, which is a little skimpy on instructions if one runs into trouble.
The Pro Media Player lists for $499; call 1-800-866-9797 for information.
- If you need an all-in-one graphics suite, take a look at Ulead Systems' MediaStudio Pro 2.0 for Windows.
It's aimed at multimedia developers and visual designers and includes some pretty neat tools I am only beginning to learn how to use.
Anything you want to do with video, audio, image files and even morphing (merging one image into another) is supported in this package.
Thanks to a tour included on the CD-ROM, I was up and running the package in about 15 minutes. I don't know enough about video editing to fiddle with that portion much, but I spent a little time there playing with the demos supplied.
I use the package's multimedia converter every day. This module is the "Swiss Army Knife" on your desktop. It will take any type of multimedia file format (video, audio, graphic or animation) and convert it to another. It even supports batch files, so I can select 50 GIF files and convert them all to JPG in the background.
Also, the Album feature lets you make scrapbooks of images, video clips or whatever. What good is having all those files if you don't know where they are or what they are called?
List price is $349 and street price varies; call 1-800-858-5323 for info.
- CALL OF THE WEEK - I have 138 unsolicited America Online diskettes now. CompuServe has mailed me three in the last week, so maybe they are catching up. Those who have e-mailed say they are either reformatting them and reusing them or using them for coasters, cat toys, shims or, my favorite, a guy from Wisconsin using 52 for playing cards.
- NEWSGROUP PICK: "alt.consumers.free-stuff" a newsgroup full of free offers and consumer tips.
- WEB PAGE OF THE WEEK: "http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/" for why chemistry majors should not be allowed to light charcoal grills. (Do NOT try this at home, kids.)