h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I appreciated your help on the Windows Vista thread, but I didn't want to carry on there as I was no longer talking about Vista.

I had a couple of questions about the sound card thing you mentioned. It turns out that the highest volume possible on the new laptop speakers is barely audible. Is there a way of adjusting this? I've checked out the control panel options and put everything UP TO MAX but it's still not very loud.

I'm not actually interested in listening to music on the laptop and if I want to watch a film I'll plug in some speakers. But I just thought the internal speakers would get a bit louder than they do. I do like listening to BBC4 online sometimes and also some youtube stuff.

Here are a couple of photos of my new 'sexy beast'.
http://azahar.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/sexy-beast-ii/


az

Looks good, I like the copper top.

You say you maxed everything in the Control Panel, but the volume control is normally accessed in the accessory programs. So it would be:

Start/All Programs/Accessories/Entertainment/Volume Control

That gives a box with sliders, the one on the left is "Play Control" which is the master, and the next one right (usually) is "Wave" which is any digital sound on the hard disk. A CD in the disk drive has its own slider, and there are several others, but if you set the Master and the Wave sliders all the way up, that's all the volume available. It should be louder than "barely audible", but with such small speakers, it will never bother the neighbors.

Note - the volume control can also be accessed from an icon in the Toolbar if its set up like that. A single click gives the master and a double click gives the whole set of sliders.

Let me know if that helps.

Steve K.

I thought yours also had a copper top. Yes, I have to admit that was one of its selling features, along with the 17" widescreen. And the price, of course.

One of my blog entries tells the whole saga of bringing the new sexy beast home only to find a bendy bit between the mouse and the keyboard ... finally took it back for an unbendy one even though it meant cleaning out and reinstalling every dang thing again. But I think it was worth it.

Anyhow, have got everything possible maxed now and it's still not as loud as Nog's laptop gets. Hmmm...

az

Nope, just a plain gray top ... I'm an engineer, so I don't even look at the machine or pictures, just the spec listing.

I'm out of ideas about the speaker volume, altho I admit I almost never use mine. With the Audigy 2 Notebook sound card, its usually got speakers hooked up. If I'm travelling, I use headphones.

Sounds like you're enjoying it in any case ... me, too.

- Steve K.

Yeah, can't get much sound out of the notebook speakers ... oh well!

If you don't mind, one more question. What do you use to clean the screen? Is yours that rather shiny looking type screen like mine?

az

Yes, the screen is very shiny, different from my earlier laptops. I haven't noticed it getting too dirty since I keep it closed when not in use. If I see dust, I use a compressed air can. For a smudge, the best thing is probably a very soft cloth like the one I got from my eye doctor for my eyeglass lenses (it says "Zeiss" on it, pretty impressive, huh? ). He also gave me a little spray bottle with lens cleaner, seems to work OK on the screen. The glasses are coated (UV, etc.) so he says don't use kleenex or similar, since those are abrasive. So the cloth/cleaner are probably OK for the laptop.

As a related caution, be careful when closing the screen that there is nothing on the keyboard. Someone in my house left the little plastic cover for a flash drive on a laptop keyboard ... not a happy story.

A compressed air can? I just use a fluffy duster thingy.

For smudges, so far I've just been using a soft damp cloth. I think I'd feel nervous using any sort of 'cleaning product' on it. Being a rather tidy person the screen doesn't get too dirty, though I reckon the keyboard will be full of cat hair before too long ...

When I'm sitting at my desk I plug in a normal usb keyboard and mouse, which seem to take the brunt of 'everyday use'.

You know, when I bought the 'sexy beast' I thought it was a bit of a frivolous purchase because my old desktop seemed to be working okay. But now that I'm using SB, whenever I have to turn on the old one I'm amazed at how slow and frustrating it is. Weird because the HD isn't even half-full. I wonder what's slowing it down so much.

az

The big computer chains (Micro Center, Fry's) sell the large compressed air cans something like 3 for $10, sort of a "get 'em in the store" item. So its pretty cheap and it lets me get into the "cracks" like the keyboard. I also have a LOT of musical electronics like (piano) style keyboards, so it works there also.

The "slowdown" of your old machine may be malware, stuff that installs itself without telling you, and runs in background all the time. This bogs down the CPU (the hard disk should not enter into slow operation except for loading and saving items). If you use the Ctrl-Alt-Del utility, then select "Task Manager", you can look at the "Processes", "Applications", and "Performance" to see if anything looks suspicious. The CPU usage under "Performance" should only be a few percent if you don't have any major applications running (like for me, a 3D Animation Render which runs the CPU usage to 100%).

Ther are free utilities that search for malware, I use AdAware from Lavasoft, and some folks also use SpyBot.

Of course your old machine may just be ... uhh ... sort of ... slow.

I've always run both Adaware and Spybot on a weekly basis. As well as the weekly antivirus scan thingy.

And the old Jag is only 4 years old. I think I'd just got used to her running slower and slower ... it was only when I started using SB that I realised just how SLOW it had become. Yikes.

az