Sights and Sounds of Multimedia
By George Harding
Saitek’s DME Products …
DME stands for digital media entertainment, in Saitek’s language. This company has come out with three products that fall into that category, a portable speaker system, a wireless speaker system and wireless headphones. I received the wireless speaker system for review.
When you think of high-fidelity speakers, you probably think of large boxes that boom. What you don’t think of are the wires connecting the speakers to the amplifier, record player, boom box or whatever. If you have a home theater, you undoubtedly have four or five speakers, each attached to its home by a wire. Not only are the wires unsightly, they can be a hazard to feet and, worst of all, they are not looked on with favor by your wife (or you, perhaps).
Saitek’s wireless speaker is not intended to be part of a home theater system, although it could be. Instead, it’s a way to untether your hi-fi speaker from its source. There are two parts to Saitek’s system, the transmitter and the receiver.
The transmitter is a disk about two inches in diameter with a blue button in the center, which connects with your PC or notebook by USB. It works with both Windows 2000 and XP. The operating system recognizes it with no need for extra drivers and switches your media player device from Windows (or whatever you have) to the Saitek device. You turn it on by pushing the blue button for 3 seconds.
The receiver is a stylish black object which contains not only the receiver, but also two small speakers and one low frequency speaker. It has several buttons to remotely control the media device on your computer. You have On/Off, louder/softer and three buttons which allow previous/next/pause control of the media player. The unit requires 4 AA batteries (not included). Saitek says the batteries last 20 hours.
The system worked perfectly on my notebook. I plugged in the transmitter and it was recognized immediately. I turned on the receiver and it started playing my music immediately. I carried the unit around to various places in the house to see how transmission would be affected. I did not find anyplace that it didn’t play. The system uses Bluetooth technology, which Saitek says affords 300 foot reception line-of-sight or 100 feet through walls.
I had difficulties when I tried it on my desktop computer. It didn’t work at all, although it seemed to be operating normally. Not only that, when I disconnected the Saitek system, I could not play music on my regular sound system and still can’t! Saitek has referred me to technical support, but I have not contacted them yet.
You need not connect the system to a computer nor must you use batteries. The receiver has a plug for an AC adaptor (included) and also has a 3.5mm jack for use with a MP3 player. These options free you from the confines of your computer and the use of batteries.
The Saitek wireless speaker system is an innovative idea and produces wonderful sound anyplace. I enjoyed having my speakers with me wherever I moved. The system is priced at $129 retail.
Saitek Wireless Speaker System www.saitek.com
Data Guard Thumbdrive …
Have you ever worried about data you have stored on a thumb drive? If you’re like me, you use a thumb drive to transport data from one computer to another. The transport distance might be quite a long way, or just to the other side of the room. What if you misplaced/lost that drive and someone else used your info? Bad!
Digital Innovations has come up with a solution to guard your data on a thumb drive. The device fits securely over the business end of a thumb drive. It has a three digit combination which you set with numbered wheels, like a combination lock.
A red button allows you to set your three-digit combination, then spin the wheels to lock that combination. When you want to lock a drive, you set the combination in the dials, press the red button, then insert the thumb drive into the end of the lock until it clicks. Then release the button and spin the dials. It’s locked. You would have to damage the drive to get it out of the device and the data probably wouldn’t be readable then.
What happens if you forget the combination? The only solution is to try all 1,000 possible combinations and with luck you’ll get the right one early! Otherwise, you’re out of luck! It’s wise to use a three digit combination that you will have no trouble remembering. You can record that combination somewhere, but not on the device itself, of course.
The device comes with a leaflet which reprints the FTC’s Identity Theft booklet. It tells how your identity can be stolen, what can happen as a result, how to prevent the theft, and what to do if your identity is stolen. This is a good document to store so you have it available if you are one of the unlucky ones.
I had no trouble working the combination and securing my thumb drive to the device. It’s locked now and I feel better!
Thumbdrive Lock by Digital Innovations www.digitalinnovations.com
Price about $15
System Mechanic 6 …
This software is like the mechanic for your car – it’s trained to do a number of jobs. The list that SM6 is trained for is Accelerate, Repair, Clean up, Defend and Maintain.
Accelerate optimizes system settings and tries to eliminate bottlenecks in performance, especially those affecting Internet times.
Repair diagnoses and fixes problems with hard drives, system components, registry errors and installed software.
Clean up removes clutter and junk that consumes hard drive space.
Defend finds and repairs security flaws of various sorts.
This software program promises to do a lot of things and does. I found it to be not particularly fast and to be somewhat redundant. I have not noticed any increase in speed, either locally or with Internet-related tasks, but I did not time any of the functions which SM6 deals with.
It was clear that SM6 clears out a lot of stuff that is just sitting around like temporary files and IE history. I’m not sure how valuable it is to save 250 MB of hard disk space, when you have a 40 GB drive!
One frustrating problem was that when I would run the Speed Optimizer, which involves defragmenting the hard drives each and every time, coming back to the central panel of SM6 would show that the health of Speed is unknown. This is immediately after performing the optimization. I’d have to do the analysis again (which I had done just before the Optimizer) to get a reading.
SM6 is not memory resident, but rather only when you run it, just like most other applications. Once started, you then have to run the overall analysis to see what needs to be fixed. When I’d do this, the Speed invariably came out as only Fair and recommended that a brief optimization be done. I’d do that, come back to the Panel, do the analysis again, only to find that Speed was still only Fair.
The central Panel of SM6 is easy to understand, with two large dials showing overall Health and overall Security. Sometimes there will be messages at the bottom which recommend running one or more of the Optimizers. There are two forms of optimization, Brief and Deep. The Brief doesn’t take as long as the Deep, but is presumably not as thorough.
Many of the tools in Windows will do the same job as SM6, but you must know where they are and how to run them. SM6 gives you advantage of having everything in one handy place. SM6 is available in computer stores as well as at the web site below. A fully functional trial copy can be downloaded for free.
System Mechanic 6 by Iolo Technologies www.iolo.com Price about $50
Requires: WIN 98 or above, 64 MB RAM, 20 MB hard disk space
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