.
The model I got was the PXC300, around $200, and I have to tell you,
they work great. Sitting here at my desk, I have a computer that sounds
like it was from a wind tunnel and now I can barely hear it at all. What
a great change.
The headphones are a collapsible type in that they fold up quite
compactly for traveling and one of the nice features is the very rigid
case that comes with them. Quick straps inside to hold the adapters for
airline plugs and for the mini to RCA plug in case you still happen to
have one of those old stereos hanging around. Great case for traveling
as it actually protects the headphones inside.
What surprised me is that these phones are not the complete cover
your ear type that I had with the Targus model and others I have seen
but it doesn’t matter as the adjustable headband has a set of nubs
inside that really hold it in place when you adjust it.
One complaint I have about it (and all the others I have looked at)
is that there is no easy way to get rid of the excess cords when you
don’t need them. For instance, when I travel, often I don’t bother to
listen to music, same when I do things like mow the lawn for which these
headsets are great for cutting back on the noise. The battery
holder/active noise generator has a very handy clip on it for clipping
it to your shirt, or a pocket and it adjusts if you want to hook it to
your belt.
The way it works is that the headphones are connected through an
active noise cancellation technology called NoiseGard™. What it does is
through a separate set of microphones, detects the ambient noise around
you (including things like the constant hum of computer fans, jet
engines, and so on), and then creates a sound wave that is just opposite
of the noise you hear to cancel them out. To do all this on this and
most other units require two AAA batteries. Really strange technology
but it works great and is the same technology used by aircraft pilots
for which Sennheiser makes a number of them. The cool part is that if
you plug your MP3 player into the unit, you don’t hear any difference in
the music.
For specifications, this is one of the first I have seen that give
you an indication of what it can do for you. When you wear the
headphones without activating the noise cancellation circuitry, you are
in what they call "passive noise reduction mode". Put on any headphones
and they cut out the outside noise some but these will do it to the tune
of about 26 decibels. Hit the switch and it is good for another 15
decibels.
I like how they fold nearly flat for traveling and the case protects
them very well. Keep a spare pair of AAA batteries handy and you will be
good to go for many hours of use. Can’t wait to take them on my next
trip to China.
Windows Vista
Microsoft, as you know, is gearing up for the next generation of
Windows and they call it Vista. It will be a new step up they tell us
and is not an upgrade but a change in lifestyle like it was when we
upgraded to Windows XP. It has been long coming, there will be zillions
of comments and pundits telling you what to look at, when to buy it, and
when not to. So, I took the plunge and downloaded my copy of Vista. All
3.5 Gigabytes of it but you know, with a cable modem speed, it went
pretty quickly. There are several different versions of Vista coming and
what I got was the "Ultimate" edition and of course, since it is a beta
copy, you should expect to see some bumps in the road and I have.
While it is not really at all like Windows XP, you will find enough
in it that work the same to be comfortable using it. This by no means is
an upgrade, it is a replacement for Windows as I said like XP was a
replacement for Windows 98/ME. Some things look the same, much doesn’t,
but it works very well and the more I use it the more I like it.
I decided to install it on my new laptop. The first thing you do is
to make sure it us up to snuff. Microsoft has an advisor page and
program that you can run to see if your machine meets all of the
requirements. The only snag to running this is that you have to have the
Microsoft .net framework program also installed on your computer. The
advisor is pretty straight forward in that you answer some questions as
to what you will need to be doing with your computer. Things relating to
graphics, video, television, and so on and it then tells you what you
need to do about the computer. Plan on having a Pentium IV with a
minimum of 1 gigabyte memory and at least 40 gig of free space.
Since this is a beta copy, that means that things might go wrong so
my first piece of advise is to make sure that you are using this on a
computer that you don’t mind blowing away and starting from scratch
again. What that means is that it is a great time to make sure you have
all the software and drivers for that computer handy so when you will
need to restore and reset, you should be able to. If you were smart to
have kept everything in one single place, you should be able to land
your hands on that stuff pretty quickly. One reason is that you may need
to give Vista the drivers for exotic hardware like your video card,
sound card, network card and the like. On my laptop, it ended up needing
the video, modem, network (wireless though it found the wired connection
just fine), and maybe even the USB ports.
Vista will give you pretty much the installation options you had with
Windows XP if you every bothered to install it. Most people get XP on a
new computer and never have to worry about installing it and that is a
nice feeling. Since Vista uses the same file structure, NTFS, as Windows
XP, you can take the upgrade option and just install it over your
current system. I wanted to really see how things worked from the
beginning so I took the DVD (and if you don’t have a DVD drive on that
computer you were thinking of using, forget it), and started the
computer with the disc so it would boot from it. In my case, when the
system started, I needed to have Vista install in advanced mode because
I wanted to change the disk partitioning on the hard drive back to a
single drive and Vista took care of that just fine for me.
As I said, I like the looks and feel of it. There is a welcome center
that comes up to help you get started. I suspect once you are
comfortable with things, you will probably shut it off and just come up
to your new desktop. Like XP, you can have icons all over the place if
you like
One snag I found is trying to play DVD movies. It would crash, give
me a "Cannot Play Program" message, and then hang there. But what is
nice is that the "Ctrl"+"Alt"+"Del" still works to bring up the quick
menu so you can get to the task manager and still have control over
everything. More than likely, my computer needed a DVD decoder to play
movies and I hadn’t installed one yet. It would be nice to have it
automatically built into Windows Media Player but we shall see when it
comes out.
Like any new copy of software, you need to activate it before you can
keep going for long. Usual internet activation process and it went
smoothly. Interesting thing though was it still kept telling me I needed
to active in 15 days. Beta software… but then again, once I shut it down
and restarted the computer; it now tells me I am ok.
The Welcome screen I mentioned has lots of day to day information for
you to check. Upper half tells you what it thinks your computer is as
far as processor and memory, the computer name, manufacturer, and the
video adapter.
Of course, most of us really spend nearly all of our time using our
applications and that is where the next round of testing comes in. To
load software that I will be using on a regular basis like my Norton
Anti Virus, Zone Labs Firewall, Webroot Spysweeper, and then the stuff
that I really use like Microsoft Office, Nero Burning Rom, Skype,
Quicken, and Paint Shop Pro. It really is a matter of how these programs
work that will determine how soon to switch over to the new operating
system. I remember from other experiences that every once in a while you
run into software that looks for certain operating systems and just
won’t run at all so this will be something else to look for as I go
along.
I know that for new computer users, you might not have much of a
choice but I do remember that when Windows XP came out, you could still
get copies of Windows ME, 98, and 2000 installed on a computer depending
on who you bought it from.
As I said, you will hear much more about Vista in the months to come
as while I sit here the first of July, Microsoft is not projecting its
appearance till the into 2007.
More News for the Traveler
One thing I will be doing as the traveling season comes on is to take
my Vista capable notebook and connect to the web as I travel. That means
finding out hot spots and seeing if I can connect for free and that gets
to be difficult. You might already know that when you hit a Starbucks
you have to connect with their provider. But there is a lot of
information out there. Three web sites here will tell you where to find
a hot spot:
