Gadget Accessories: Ground Loop Isolator
In my last job, I had a new car with 3.5” jack input into the stereo. This was so I could plug in my PDA/Music player/GPS into the stereo. It worked great until I needed to put the phone on charge.
As I put my foot down, I would hear noise come out of the stereo, increasing as I accelerated harder. It wasn’t a terrible noise, but enough for me to ask others about it. It was very frustrating to me and I had no idea what could be causing it.
A colleague told me about Ground Loop Isolators which would fix the problem. I don’t really know how they work, but it grounded my device when on charge, and killed the noise entirely.
They are a little frustrating to use as you often need to convert from jack to RCA and back again in stereo, but with a few adaptors and somewhere to store all the cables, this is what you need. They are available from just a few dollars and up. The one I got was cheap, and did the job well.
I used to print documents directly from my Ipaq rx3715 to a networked printer. I took the ability to print from this Windows Mobile 2003 device for granted as it came with HP’s Mobile Printing Solution. My need to print since dwindled and I have only started looking at it again over the last couple of days.
I have been a user of a Harmony 880 as pictured on the right for around a year now and it has made life for my wife(important!) and I much easier. No longer did I need to have 9 remotes on the coffee table to control my components, as this remote can do it all.
There are a number of things that Windows Mobile devices are good for. I see a lot of people carrying around many devices with them such as iPods, cameras, GPS receivers and phones. Why bother when we can have all these devices packed into one neat unit that fits inside your pocket, allowing you to do more than all of the above gadgets combined.