Fun with Networking
I can’t say I’m all that impressed with this wireless networking business as far as using it at home goes. Sure, it’s great to work on the laptop while “doing my business” in the little boy’s room (yea, think twice before touching MY laptop). However, I’ve got about a zillion MP3’s on my basement computer (all mine - own all the CD’s - not shared - nor will they every be shared - so buzz off RIAA!) . I’d love to play them on the laptop while working - which works… sorta. Tends to skip a lot. Probably my own fault for encoding everything at 192bps. Call me an audiophile… actually, don’t. Those people bug me - but’s that for another rant. I suppose having the network secured makes a difference, too - cutting down on the bandwidth and all.
That said, I’m really impressed by these little speakers on this laptop. I had to putz a bit with the EQ settings on Winamp, but they’re very well rounded across the audio spectrum. All I need is to get a portable sub woofer to compensate for the sound below 200Hz. Can’t say that not getting that is all that unexpected - the speaker drivers for these things couldn’t be more than an inch in size (if that), so getting any bass is rather impressive.
I also have a little nugget of info for those folks that buy Dell laptops with the extra wide screens. Our buddies at Dell, in their infinite wisdom, have the DPI settings cranked out the wazoo as a default. So, if you notice your graphics - especially the graphics in IE - are blurry and distorted… go into your “Display” properties (from the desktop - right click anywhere and hit “properties"), go to the “Settings” tab, select “Advanced". From there, there should be a drop-down menu where you can select the DPI settings for the screen. Set it to “Normal". Mine was originally set to 120 DPI. I changed it down to 96 DPI, and things are looking better. Of course, everything got much smaller, but I compensated for that by upping the font size on everything in the “Appearance” section. Funny… you’d think all that would be set up better as a default. Yet another thing to give the Mac folks some fodder.