I'm finally buying them again now that they have dual video outputs on them. That's a huge selling point for me.

The academic deal gets me a Mac mini 2.0GHz 4GB/320GB SuperDrive model for $749. Wooo! (basically, the standard $50 academic discount, but with an extra 2GB of RAM thrown in).

I upgraded both my Mac and my PC to Opera 10, and I really like it. It's nothing like the beta. It's fast, and it lets you have image tabs of all your windows, which is good for me, because I have 22 open now, and seeing images of them is easier identification than reading the first one or two letters of the window titles.

I've been giving a lot of presentations lately, and one of the places provided a mike, which made life easier. Any recs for a bottom end portable one I can wear and use hands free? Battery operated maybe or else a long cord, but either way some sort of harness. Speaking, don't need the quality muscicains require, and not for large crowds - 30 to 50. Large gathering than that will provide microphones normally. What price range am I looking at? Will absolute bottom end work for me, or are there some quality issues I should pay attention to? Advice would be welcome, remember I know nothing about this. Any advice including key words to google to catch stuff I would otherwise miss.

So, i was listening to music on my Mac/iTunes this morning. Then I plugged the computer into our stereo (through the headphones jack) and listened to music that way. Now, I can't hear music or any sound on my computer any more, although it does work if I plug it into the stereo.

When I try to turn the volume up/down on the computer, I get a little circle with a / through it, like there's no internal sound anymore.

I'm wondering if the new iTunes is not happy it doesn't have Snow Leopard or something?

Interesting, especially for those who work in audio-related fields: Laser-Accurate microphone captures 'pure sound'

There are good microphones, and there are bad microphones, but pretty much all of them are limited by the nature of the technology — specifically, the diaphragm that moves in response to air. The structure of that diaphragm will affect the sound that's recorded, even if that influence is minute. There's simply no way around it.

Or is there? David Schwartz at the Rochester Institute of Technology says his Laser-Accurate micorphone is capable of recording "pure sound." Instead of conventional transducers, Schwartz's mike uses lasers to scan an air chamber filled with microscopic particles (read: smoke). When the particles move in response to sound, the laser detects the motion without disturbing the air (at least not in any acoustic way), so the vibration — and thus the recording — should be as close to acoustically perfect as possible. In theory.

The laser mike looks like a promising new technology, but it's clearly in the infant stages. If you check out the second vid through the Continue link below, you can see Schwartz has to shout to get the smoke microphone to get a decent recording. If he can somehow get a working product, though, it would certainly quickly become the go-to mike for the recording industry.

that is neat, but ugggggg his video had the WORST sound. Especially the second video. For an AES guy, you'd think he would have better sound. :: cringes ::

Typo Boy, are you looking for something stand alone? Or something to patch into a sound system? If you want wireless, that will jack the price up a LOT, and make it that much more complex to deal with. Anchor Audio has some interesting products in a few price ranges: [link]

I think most not all of the places I go have sound systems. Wired is fine if wireless is expensive. It must be very portable, so if stand alone is either heavy, then patch in only. It is one of those things that would be nice, but that I should forget if it is expensive.

OK - related question. I guess I thought a microphone would be cheap, because microphones for recording and speakers for playback are so cheap. But it occurs to me: I can record with a cheap mike on my PC now, then play it back loudly. For that Skype and other computer telephony can do the same less loudly with no delay. How hard would it be turn that same hardware into the kind of setup I'm looking for just with software?

Aha - all I need is the receiver? [link]

Or it seems that with the right settings, just a computer, mike and speakers will do it. [link] I note that in this last case no one mentions trying it.