I am very confident that voice control is the way to go when it comes to controlling my home theatre setup into the future, because I am currently using it and benefiting from the huge advantages it offers. I believe a reliable voice control system will be the best way to control any electrical appliance, and that voice control is likely to be in our lives indefinitely. There are huge cultural and environmental problems which need to be addressed for it to work reliably, but the technology that interprets what we say works very well.

After setting up voice control on my home theatre PC, I realised that there needed to be an instant way to trigger the voice control so it would start listening to me. I needed a way to avoid using a traditional Universal remote, or my gadget. I needed a button that is ultra convenient. This means installing a button right next to my hand that will trigger the voice control. The only way of achieving this is by installing a button into my lounge. This may seem a bit excessive, but once it is done, the benefits we receive from it will last us well into the future. I believe all home theatre seating or lounge suites will eventually have the option to add a button into the arm.

There are many different types of buttons on the market, but I have only seen one that I know will be able to last the lifetime of the lounge. It’s going to take a beating, so I needed a button that was strong and reliable. Arcade machine buttons have proven themselves over the years as being ultra reliable. Fortunately for me, they are also cheap.

The end result is a button sitting immediately next to my hand which can activate and control my whole entertainment system using my voice. It’s not going to get much better than this. I expect this configuration to last the life of the couch, and it is likely to be considerably cheaper than having these factory installed. The only DIY work needed to be done for most lounges will be to drill a hole to install the button, and to click the pieces together. My scripts are not perfect yet, but I hope you will agree that it is pretty exciting stuff.

This article will show you how to install an arcade controller board, and a button into your lounge to trigger voice control of your entertainment.

There are probably many ways to achieve the same result, but this solution is cheap enough for me to run with. I purchased a set of 20 buttons for $20 and a BYO arcade encoder board for $50 from X-Arcade. Soon after I received them and started testing them out, it was clear I had made a wise choice. I quickly purchased another two upgrade boards, so that I could install one in each chair. I am going to use them elsewhere in the house now as I have figured out that it would be easy to daisy chain the chairs by running wires from the one board.

This kit comes with almost everything required to install a button in up to 20 seats so long as you are willing to solder some wires to reach from chair to chair, and possibly some plug sockets of some type, to tidy up the wire connections. If you are not comfortable with soldering, you could use an additional separate USB PCB Upgrade kit in each chair at an additional cost of $30 per chair. There may well be cheaper ways of achieving the same result, but a starting cost of around $70 if you are willing to solder from the one controller board, I am not fussed about searching for a cheaper option. The only other costs are a USB hub and possibly an active USB cable used to connect the controller boards to the computer.

This arcade controller board simulates a computer keyboard, so it’s just a case of either connecting the correct wires to a button so that the 0 or [ are the active buttons, or by wiring up your own selected button and changing the AutoHotkey script to respond to that button. It’s all fairly straight forward. The circuitry looks complicated, and there do appear to be a lot of wires, but all we need to care about is that one end has the USB plug that connects to the computer, and the other end is a button. The rest of it we can ignore as it will do it’s job out of the box. A little bit of trial and error in notepad will show you what each button does. I have only come across two minor problems with using this board, though they have little impact on how reliably the system functions. If I set the script to use a keyboard letter, every time I use that letter on the keyboard, the relevant script will run rather than showing the letter on the screen. I need to make sure that I am only using rarely used buttons (such as [ and 0) instead of general letters. Also, this board will not bring the system out of standby, though putting the system into standby is not desirable as it will also stop the media centre from recording and processing TV shows. There are ways around it though, which I will explain in future articles.

Installation Guide

Please read through the entire process before making alterations to your lounge. If you are not careful, it would be easy to do a poor job and effectively destroy the appearance of your expensive lounge suite.

Ensure you do have access to the inside of your lounge. If your arm wont fit in the arm cavity, installation will be near impossible.

Components: This image is of the components that make up an arcade button. There is the button itself, the locking screw and the micro switch. They clip or screw together easily.
Connect the button to your PC: Plug in the button to your computer and wait for it to install. Open up notepad and see what button registers on the screen. There are lots of buttons you can plug into, but [ is plugged into the board, one down on the left side.
Drill a hole: You will need to make a hole in the arm of the chair. Be careful when drilling because the cushioning of the chair may get caught up in the drill as it did for me. A way around this is to cut a suitable hole with a box cutter into the fabric before drilling. A 20mm hole is required, and once achieved, the button should slip in easily. You could choose to install a panel in the side of the chair, and attach the button (and other things) to that panel.
Screw the button in: The button will fit tightly in your lounge when you screw on the locking device.
Attach the micro switch:  Clip in the micro switch and if necessary reattach the wires.
Attach board to couch: I used the holes in the board to put in some self tapping screws. The other end I couldn’t reach was attached with double sided tape. You could probably just use double sided tape if you want, but the hold would obviously not be as strong as using screws.
Connect it to your computer: Either daisy chain some powered USB hubs together or use an active USB cable. This will get the signal from the back of the room, to the computer.

You should now be able to test it out. If the script is running and you have wired up the correct button, it should work straight away for you.

Some lounge suite designs may not be appropriate for installing your buttons. You will need to sit in your chair to feel if there is a suitable position for your button on the outside of the lounge where your hand can naturally reach to. You will also need access to this place from beneath the chair. Depending on how you mount it, you may need to make sure you can fit your arm into the arm cavity of the chair. As my arm would not fit, my wife needed to help me attach the button. The chair in the video is a chair my wife bought for $20 from an op shop. This was so that I could practice on it, without ruining the family lounge suite. I recommend going through this same process, doing some thorough research before attempting this on your expensive lounge. Saying that, it is ridiculously easy to install.

My final purchase was $130 plus shipping as I purchased the 20 buttons, the BYO arcade encoder, and 2 USB upgrade kits. Though as explained above, I don’t plan on using the Upgrade kits for this project, so that brings it down to around $70.

Resources:

Pack of 20 buttons: $20
X-Arcade BYO arcade encoder: $50 – Includes wires to attach buttons though these could be made
USB PCB Upgrade Kit: $30 – Same as above without cables

I have no affiliation with X-Arcade. I just found their site and purchased from them by chance, and I found their service and products to be good.

Once I was able to voice control my home theatre PC, I still needed to use my remote control to turn on the TV and receiver. I wanted to rid my lounge room of remotes altogether, so I needed to find a way to get my computer to control the rest of my audio visual gear. I wanted to be able to control everything in the lounge room with just my gadget and my voice.

It was logical to use Infra Red (IR) technology for this, because that is the only way we can control most AV gear currently. Often the buttons on a device (such as a TV set) don’t offer as many options as its remote control unit.

The USB-UIRT is a magic device that can send and receive IR signals. It connects to a USB port on our computer and enables us to send IR commands from our computer to our peripheral AV gear. It sits at the back of the room and has good range and reliability. This device removes the need for remote controls in our TV room altogether as we can tag a voice command to tell the USB-UIRT which IR signal or signals we want it to send.

The result is that we can walk into the room, press the trigger button and say “TV on”. This will turn the TV and stereo on. When we say “I’m finished”, the TV and stereo will turn off. 

It gets really impressive when we start controlling our VCR, BluRay or cable box with voice. I have added some extra scripting which will enable just this. When I put a video into the video player, I can say “Video Player” and the TV will change the channel to AV, to show the VCR. I can then use the usual play/pause/stop/rewind/fast forward voice commands to navigate through the video. When I return to the media centre, the tape will stop, rewind and 3 minutes later, eject the tape and turn off. This is while all the other media centre voice commands are working as per normal.

This article will show you how to setup the USB-UIRT to control your audio visual gear to control everything in your lounge room/home theatre by voice. The scripts need to be installed, and IR signals learnt, which is thankfully quite easy with to do with EventGhost. The speech macros have also been updated to simplify the commands to their shortest abbreviation. I have also included another speech macro which enables the “Play artist/genre/track” commands. It’s a bit harder for the computer to pick up the new commands, though they do work. The old commands still work and are worth learning because the computer is much more likely to recognise them. The commands will be progressively tweaked until each command is as simple as we can make them. It’s not far off as simple as it can get now.

How it works:

These scripts let us use voice commands to trigger EventGhost commands. When we say “Room on” the keyboard shortcut is sent to EventGhost which in turn sends the series of IR codes to make the TV and stereo turn to the correct channel.

Additionally, we use the command “Video Player”, the script changes modes so that instead of sending keyboard shortcuts to navigate around Windows Media Center, it starts sending IR signals based on our commands, via EventGhost. When we return back to the “Media Center”, the original commands are used.

This could easily be expanded to allow for multiple external devices. It is written in autohotkey, so it’s about as simple as coding can get if you want to tinker around yourself. You will just need to make another componentmode for each device you want to control, and add to your EventGhost tree. I will update the coding myself if there is enough demand or my needs change.

Hardware:

USB-UIRT: This device is what makes it possible to use voice commands to control our AV gear. It sends IR signals to our AV components so that the component will do what we want. With the right scripting, this device can control just about everything in our TV room. The USB-UIRT is $50 plus shipping and is available from the USB-UIRT Website. I am very excited by the things this device makes possible, both currently and into the future. This needs to be placed in your room so it has clear sight of your devices. In my case, this means having it at the back of the room.

Software:

Voice Control.zip: This file contains all of my speech macros and scripts that make the system work. These scripts have been considerably updated to allow for these extra functions, but can still be used if limited functionality is desired while training takes place.

Eventghost: This automation software lets us control the USB-UIRT based on the voice commands we give. I have included my EventGhost Tree in Voice Control.zip so that all you need to do is teach Eventghost what IR commands to use.

Installation:

There are various components that need to be installed for all of this to work correctly. It follows on from my earlier article on How to: Voice control Windows Media Center, which goes into detail on how to install the voice recognition control script, as well as the speech macros. Please refer to that article for assistance on how to install the various components.

Unzip Voice Control.zip into your Speech Macros folder within your Documents folder.

There are only two new components in Voice Control.zip, and the first is the EventGhost tree, and I will show you how to load it and configure it for your needs. There is no way to bypass the training as each device uses different commands, but luckily it is fairly straight forward. The second component is Video Player WSR Macro which will need to be installed if you want to operate any external AV component, i.e Video Player.

Install EventGhost: The scripts are designed to launch EventGhost from it’s default location. If you change the location, you will need to update a whole bunch of the macros and scripts, though it is not difficult.

1. Click File > Open
2. Navigate to your speech Macros folder
3. Select  “My Gadget – USBUIRT Eventghost Tree.xml”
4. Click Open

On the left of the screen, we can see a log of what triggers and actions have been acted on by EventGhost. On the right side is a list of all the macros I have setup for my system.

The macro title is the same as what the macro does. Below that is the trigger event. In all cases, these are currently keyboard shortcuts i.e. how the script calls each action to be performed. Normally, the triggers will be able to be left as is, but if you choose to change the trigger keyboard shortcuts, you will also need to change the scripts.

Below that is the transmitted IR code, and these are the codes we need to change to match your system. There are quite a few things you are going to need to change, but most are simple. It is worth saving frequently while working through this. I frequently got the “not responding” warning, and it usually rectified itself given enough time, but sometimes it would crash. I haven’t had the same crashing when running it.

We will start off with one of the easy ones. Right click on the command USB-UIRT: Pause Video and select configure.

Click on Learn an IR Code…

Follow the instructions on screen.

In this example, press the pause button your video players remote control unit.

Once a valid signal has been taken, the screen will return to Action Item Settings.

You can test the code to see if it performs the same command you trained it with.

Repeat the training for all the other commands.

There are a few special commands which perform more than one action. These turn the TV on and change video inputs etc. You will need to figure out what buttons you press on your remote and replicate the procedure in EventGhost. You may need to put in some delays as I have.

Once you have set it up, you won’t need to change it until you buy another TV or other AV component. Ensure you save the tree with your own filename to ensure future Voice Control.zip files don’t overwrite your altered file.

Honourable Mention: The USBIRToy may soon be a suitable device to use for this task. It is much cheaper, but currently lacks the power required to get results we want.

Conclusion:

I am very happy with the results this is getting for me. I have found the USB-UIRT to be very reliable. This is a key feature that makes voice control truly valuable. By combining my voice with this device, the whole lounge room is controlled with just one button.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and found it useful. Please stick around and check out some of my other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

Around a year ago, I was on the search for a PC Infra-Red remote to control Windows Media Center. The remote I acquired with my TV tuner card was somewhat inadequate. I was unable to find a remote sold on it’s own for a sensible price, so I purchased another tuner card solely so that I could use the extra buttons of the new remote. If only I had been able to find this remote while I was on my search.

This remote features just about any button you could ever want, and then some. It can be used to control just about any media player software you currently have on your computer. You can even use the remote to move your mouse cursor around the screen, and click on items. This feature works surprisingly well. What this means you can use the remote for extra stuff like a clicker for PowerPoint presentations.

There aren’t any drivers required for this remote, meaning there is no need to configure anything for it to work. While this may seem a little limiting, there are some hotkeys that can be set if you choose. There is not much this remote can’t control on your computer. It is built solid and even has an 18 metre range making it ideal for most environments.

There is only one annoyance I have with this remote and that is the NumLock. Each of the buttons towards the bottom of the remote has a number assigned to it for changing channels etc, but each button also serves another useful task such as navigation. It is a hassle to press the Numlock, and there is no indicator on the remote, or the computer informing you of if the Numlock is on or off. A small gripe for an otherwise worthwhile product.

PC Remote Controller is available from BudgetGadgets.com for $16 including shipping. You will need to fork out for a couple of AAA batteries before you can use it. Overall, I give this remote a big thumbs up with my main factors being the price, features and the overall simplicity of it. BudgetGadgets has quite a few other PC remotes, starting from just a few dollars.

Exclusive for Inspect My Gadget readers: Use the following coupon code for a 5% discount on any product you purchase from the entire BudgetGadgets website: CM5OFF7

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 didn’t expect to come across any problems but it turned into a nightmare trying to do it for free, as there is no free software available, and this feature is not built into Windows Mobile 5 phones. There are some commercial/shareware applications which will let you print but I like free stuff.

This article will show you what I have been able to find on this topic. I hope that it will help you find a solution that is practical for your situation. You will also find it helpful if you decide to start your own search for an answer, as I have put together all of my research into this single article.

An important question to ask yourself before continuing is “Why do I need to print from my device?” I am sure you have your reasons and that is why you are reading this article. Consider if it is just as practical to email the document to a colleague or print it out when you get back to your computer. There are also fax solutions which allow you to send and receive faxes from your Pocket PC. This may be more suitable for what you are trying to do.

If you are in a commercial situation where you do need to print things out on site for customers, your best bet is by far to get an infra red or Bluetooth printer in which you can beam files to. I have not played around with this from a Windows Mobile Device, but there are products available which are designed exactly for this purpose.

Currently on my device:

HP image zone has a print function, but when you set something up to print, it will only print when you reconnect your device to your desktop.

Acrobat Reader 2.0 also has a greyed out print option, as you need the HP Mobile Printing SDK installed for this to work, hence a Windows Mobile 2002/2003 device.

That is all the printing functionality I can find on my device currently. This is of no use to me personally.

The Past:

I used to love using HP’s mobile printing solution. It worked really well and I never came across any problems with it. Their website has a message saying that the software has been discontinued from October 2005.

From the HP website…

“Since 1992, HP has been committed to delivering a high-quality, complete printing experience for customers using mobile devices. Because customers can use similar mobile printing software offerings (see list, below) that are compatible with Pocket PC and Windows Mobile OS platforms, HP has decided to focus on other areas of its mobile printing and imaging strategy where solutions may not be so readily available. As a result, HP will discontinue HP Mobile Printing for Pocket PC and HP Mobile Printing SDK for Pocket PC, effective October 1, 2005. Any current customers / developers may receive basic phone support for six months thereafter, with all support for these products ending on April 1, 2006.”

So that leaves us going up the creek without a boat, legs or arms. They offer us some links to a couple of commercial packages which you will find later in this article. Thanks HP!

The software is still available but does not run on Windows Mobile 5 or 6 Devices. Try the following link for HP Mobile Printing. This should still work if you are using Windows Mobile 2002/2003.

http://www.yse-uk.com/download/details.php?file=37

The Future:

As I was trying to find a way to print on Monday (the whole day), I came across an article at NY Times saying that HP was introducing a new system to print from Mobile devices which would allow you to send the document you want to print to one of HP’s servers. Then when you get to a printer, you can put in your code and retrieve the file. This may be ok for some people but I wouldn’t trust placing my confidential documents on a server I have no control over.

Read the full article at the New York Times website (18/08/2007).

I am not fussed about printing full colour formatted documents, just the ability to print text documents would be great for me. The main problem with making all this work is that WM5 devices don’t have print drivers in them as our desktops do. There is a need for a unified driver which will work with most printers (or a particular brands printer range) to print out the majority of filetypes.

Commercial Solutions:

The best bet for you is to find a commercial solution for yourself. I try to stay away from commercial solutions as much as possible at Inspect My Gadget, but they do solve the problem and do it alright. They all have a trial period so you can try out the program and if you don’t like them, they won’t cost you money.

I would normally place a work-around solution above the commercial options in an article, but for once I don’t think the work-arounds are the way to go.

Bachmann Software – Printboy

FieldSoftware – Smartphoneprint 

Westtek – Jetcet print

All of these packages look like they will do the trick for printing on the run. Give them a try and see what you think. They are all much cheaper than buying a hardware solution, but then again, why would you want to print from your Pocket PC to a networked or desktop printer?

Work-arounds:

Solution 1: Wait until you get back to the office.

Solution 2: With HP having just announced their server based printing, it got me thinking. There is no reason why you can’t use an online storage system to upload your files to while you are on the run. Even things like G-mail would do the trick. If you upload the file, you will then be able to print it once you get to the office, or you could ask a colleague to access the data store and print it out for you. You could also email the document directly to your colleague.

Solution 3: There is a patent out suggesting that you will be able to email a document to a printer, which will then print it out. I have a brief recollection of this being possible already on some larger multi function devices. If you have a large multi function printer in your workplace, check to see if it has this function.

Solution 4: Use a Terminal Services Client or VNC to access your desktop over WiFi. These programs will allow you to see your computers desktop completely, allowing you to print documents. You are able to map drives on both your Windows mobile device and your desktop, so you will be able to transfer files between them. You can then open the application in you full blown office suite and print the document with all of its glorious formatting and pictures.

I hope that this article has been insightful for you and has answered some of your questions. If you have any better solutions, I would love to see them in the comments area below. Please stick around and check out some of the other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

If you have a dual screen setup, and you would like to connect multiple computers up to your monitors, people will tell you to spend a large amount of money to get a KVM switch which will handle this. 

For a dual screen KVM switch which you can connect 4 computers, you are looking at spending around $500 and you are also likely to have to spend additional money on the cables, and these can cost more than the switch itself. It is almost worth purchasing extra monitors and peripherals to control your computers, instead of buying one of the really fancy switches.

This article will show you a cheaper option to achieve the same result. Halving the cost comes with the most minor of drawbacks:

• Switching can no longer be done through the keyboard (still works for one screen).
• To switch computers, you will need to press two buttons instead of one.

Instead of spending $500 on a dual monitor KVM switch, I bought two single monitor KVM switches for $100 each. Another bonus is that four port, single monitor KVM switches often include the cables meaning you do not have to purchase them separately. They are available in USB and PS/2 variations, with both costing similar amounts.

From a major electronics retailer, I purchased a 4 port PS/2 KVM switch and a USB KVM switch for $AU100 each and they both came with all the cables I needed. If you look around online or in smaller computer shops, you can probably get them for much cheaper. The point is, you can get the same results for less than $200 as opposed to the $500 do-it-all KVM switch.

I am currently running a Windows XP computer and a Windows Vista computer. I am using one wireless keyboard and one wireless mouse, each with their own receiver. Both of the computers output their display to the same two monitors. I switch between the computers by pressing 2 buttons. I sometimes have computers that I am fixing attached to the KVM switch also, allowing me to do all my work in the one place.

In my case, the KVM switches do not have their own power source. They are supplied power through either the USB or the PS/2 ports. I was disappointed when I bought my USB KVM switch to find that it had PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard inputs, and USB was only used for the connection to the computers.

I have connected one monitor, keyboard and mouse to the PS/2 KVM switch. Only a monitor and USB connections are connected to the USB KVM switch making it solely a monitor switcher. A picture says a thousand words.

As you can see, drawing is not my strong point, but this picture does show the connections that need to be made. Luckily, KVM cables contain either Video and USB connections or Video and PS/2 connections. Some also contain audio cables. Either way, there are a fair few cables involved for any KVM setup.

The USB KVM switch would not allow for me to enter the BIOS on machine startup as the computers did not recognise the keyboard at this stage of the boot up. Once I was in Windows, everything worked fine for me. That is why I used the PS/2 KVM for keyboard and mouse input. You are able to use two USB KVM switches only, but you may come across the same problem. It may have been something to do with the keyboard I was using.

With this setup, pressing “PC 1” on both KVM switches will bring up Windows XP, and “PC 2” on both KVM switches will bring up Windows Vista.

If you are very handy and technically savvy, there is no reason why you could not build your own box to store both KVM switches, and even re-wire them so you only need to press one button. This is too complicated for me to try but it is bound to be possible. I prefer pressing the two buttons because I know it works.

If you have any questions about this article, please post your query in the comments section, and you should receive a response within two days.

I hope that you have found this article useful. Please stick around and check out some of the other tips at Inspect My Gadget.

Logitechs range of Harmony Universal remotes is growing larger, allowing you to find a remote which suits your needs and your budget.

There are many Universal remotes available on the market, ranging in price from a few dollars, into the thousands. Logitechs range is very good value for money and suitable for the regular home user or home theatre enthusiast.

Harmony remotes let you control all of your devices individually, which is alright, though any universal remote will let you do this. What makes Harmony remotes different from some of the cheaper options, is the ability to set up activities which let you press one button to do a task. For example, if you want to watch a DVD, you can program the remote to turn on your TV, AV receiver and DVD player, set them all to the right input sources and play the DVD.

To update the information on the remote we used to use a web interface which was slow and cumbersome. The community requested an easier way to update the remotes. Logitech has answered the call by releasing desktop software to do the job, making updating these remotes much quicker and easier. The software still accesses the web, but it is a huge improvement. 

I cleared my remote and started creating all of the devices and activities again yesterday and it took around 4 hours to get the remote working right. This was mostly due to the way my television selects input sources. For most equipment, the process will take only a couple of hours as the remotes support a huge range of home entertainment appliances. You may have to teach it some commands from the original remotes but this is a simple process.

Once your remote is setup, you will rarely need to make changes to it. It is worth storing your user name and password somewhere safe, as you may not need it again for a couple of years.

Get the software from the Logitech website. If your remote is not listed, download the software of the closest matching remote. I.e. I downloaded the 785 software for my 880 remote and the software identified my remote correctly.

I did not know the full power of my device when I first got it. My old Pocket PC was stolen and did not incorporate a phone so when insurance time came around, it was nice to be updated with a Ipaq rw6828.

This device has allowed me to experience Windows Mobile to its full potential and really find out what it can do for me in day to day life.

I have put together a list of features that you are able to use on your device. Many you already know about but it is nice to have them in one place and encourage non Windows Mobile users to make the leap, showing why Windows Mobile devices have advantages over other phone operating systems.

I am going to make a bad assumption, that everyone has a Windows Mobile device which incorporates a phone and bluetooth.

10. Record phone calls, meetings and well anything – With our devices having a microphone installed, we are able to record anything we want onto our devices for playback at a later time. While you aren’t going to get a great quality of sound recording a rock concert, the quality if fine for most other tasks. I always like to record meetings, so that I can remember what took place. Meeting minutes rarely cover the meeting as well as an audio recording. This is something our Windows Mobile devices do comfortably.

9. GPS – With a decent screen, a bluetooth GPS receiver and the right software we are able to keep the map in the glovebox, keeping the stress levels down for our partners who fail to read the map as well as the driver would like. The GPS tells us exactly where to go and corrects itself quickly if we decide not to follow its path. What more could you ask for. With the costs of GPS systems being so expensive, it is best to buy a Windows Mobile device and reap all the benefits of a GPS unit and that can do all this other stuff.

8. Play games – The range of Windows Mobile games is large and expanding daily. The standard of the games is increasing and this allows your device to be quite a powerful portable gaming unit. Kevtris on Windows Mobile is much more fun and playable than the Gameboy version ever was. If you dabble in a bit of emulation and SCUMMVM, you can have a lot of fun.

7. Remote control your computer – This is a nice feature that can be done many ways. We are able to use VNC or the Terminal services client to see our computer screen from anywhere in the world, as long as we have a network connection. I was at my parents house and we were talking about what’s on TV. We weren’t going to watch what I wanted so I connected to my home computer and set it to record the show. When I told them what I had done, they thought I was joking. Anyway, I left early and watched the show in my own comfortable house. This is just one example of how this could be useful but there are many uses for this.

6. Remote control your home stereo – Many Windows Mobile devices have an infra red port in them. We can use this for a number of things. There is a lot of remote control software available for free. Once this is installed, we are able to control all aspects of your home entertainment system. It is also nice to know that we can control televisions at the local club.

5. Personal Media Player – Gone are the days of the walkman. Our Windows Mobile devices can play music, videos and view pictures. Some devices even offer us the ability to listen to radio. We are able to store many more songs on a storage card than we can on a cassette, or even a CD, especially if we convert our music to Mp3 or Ogg files.

4. Internet – With windows mobile devices, we have the Internet in the palm of our hands anywhere we go. As long as there is phone reception or wifi, we are able to connect up and get information immediately such as maps or our email. If you have set up your device to control your stereo, it is nice to have a TV guide site in your favourites. This will let you be lazy and do everything from the couch.

3. Camera – This is thrown into most devices these days. The quality is not great but works well enough for most happy snaps. I love having a camera on hand for Kodak moments. It sure beats carrying around a separate camera. These are particularly useful if you are in a car crash or you witness a crime. You are able to pull out your phone and snap away quickly at whatever your target is, releaving you from memorising the information which is generally forgotten in high stress situations.

2. Mobile Office – Windows mobile devices have mobile versions Excel, Word and Powerpoint which allow us to make changes to documents on the run. While it is not an ideal format for working on office documents, it is more than what other phone operating systems offer. These programs become quite usable when we attach a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. With a connection to the Internet, you can receive your email and calendar appointments, meaning you will always know where you have to be, at what time, with the right information on hand.

1. Make phone calls, send text and video messages – This is the obvious one but it is often the reason why we buy the device in the first place. With either the keypad or on screen keyboard, sending text messages is much easier to do on a Windows Mobile device than most other phone systems.

I hope that this will encourage you to choose a Windows Mobile device next time you purchase a phone. As you can see, they are very powerful and I doubt you will find any other devices that can do all that is listed above.

Please have a look around Inspect My Gadget for more useful ways you can use your device or tweaks to get it just the way you like it.

The hype surrounding Windows Vista was too much for me so I headed out to the shop and bought a new system capable of running Vista. I did not have much of an idea of what Vista would be like. I had read the occasional article and seen a few screen shots but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I took it home and hooked it all up and pressed the power button. The computer came to life and there was no login required to get to the desktop. I was greeted by the Welcome Center which showed me the specs of my new computer. There were a few shortcuts to look after various tasks such as transferring data from my old computer and to add/modify user accounts. I closed this window down and had a look around.

This is a brief article explaining my first few days with Vista. I have had good look around and found many nice features. It is likely that we will all come across Vista sometime in the future and this article will prepare you for your first touch of Vista. So far I love it though it is like a Rolls Royce without a gearbox; in that it looks very nice but you can’t do much with it yet. In general, current games do not work with it and you will probably do best sticking with XP unless you only want to run Microsoft Office apps which it does well. I look forward to seeing what it is capable of as the weeks and months roll on but at this stage, it doesn’t offer a great deal.

(Update – 10 Days in: Vista is running very well and stable. I have tried to get some of my games up and running in Vista and I have had great success. Please read my article “Vista Gaming: Will your games work under Vista?” for a complete rundown of my experience with gaming in Vista.)

A detailed list of what software has been tested and is known to work under Vista is at iexbeta.com.

There are many more new features than what is listed in this article and I am sure I will find many more nice surprises as I continue using Vista. These are a few of the highlights that struck me as I started my appreciation of Vista.

Interface:

There is a new taskbar which has the same functionality as the old one with a few nice additions such as preview windows for open applications which change in real time to what that screen is doing, so things like the visualisations in Media Player show up in these preview windows.

There is a new sidebar showing RSS feeds and an analog clock. As there is a clock already on the front of my computer as well as a clock in the task bar, I closed the sidebar as I don’t see it as being much use to me yet. I am sure worthwhile additions to this will be available in the near future.

A big change to the layout is the Start Menu. Your frequently used programs are still shown and on the right hand side of the new start menu is your music, pictures, videos etc. They have removed the “My” from the front of each of them. Everything is much tidier and easier to navigate around. I then went into the all programs section. This I did not like as it is more like an explorer window, where you click on a folder to show the programs in it, unlike previous versions of windows where the contents pop up. I can see this as getting nasty as more programs go onto the computer. The space for the list was not large enough and I have still not installed any extra applications.

There is also a search function where you can search for files or get to a website. There is no need to go into run as you can run files from this box.

It is all familiar and easy to use and there should be no dramas using this if you are used to the modern menu in XP(as opposed to classic).

All Windows have transparent features by default and it is a big improvement over XP. I won’t go too much into the visuals as screenshots won’t do the experience justice. It is very nice.

I have seen many reports on the web that Vista has copied a lot of Mac OS features. When something is good, you would adapt it. I am sure Mac OS used many XP features when it came out. It’s like a car company adding airbags. It is a good feature so other companies are bound to pick it up and add this feature.

All the icons have been recreated as you would expect with this major release. I really like the network connectivity icon in the task tray. It shows if you have access to local network or the internet. The single icon shows you so much. This is the same for many icons but this one stood out for me.

A lot of the new desktop effects just look nice and don’t offer anything to help you do things faster. Looking good is fine with me. I guess this desktop will look boring in 2 years time but I am sure that there will be some fairly fancy themes released in the future to get even better effects on your desktop.

File Locations:

Vista is much neater in the way it stores your files. It is all now in plain English and you don’t need to navigate so deep to get to where you need to get to from what I have seen so far. I am sure Microsoft still has some hidden files somewhere but I have not needed to get to them yet which is very comforting.

As well as the expected Program Files and Windows folder, each user has their own folder. There is no longer a need to go into “Documents and Settings” to reach this. Each user has a heap of folders associated with their profile. There is Documents, Music, Pictures, Video as well as things like saved games.

Also in Explorer there is no more “My Network Places”. This is replaced by “Network” which gives you everything you need to get around the other computers on your network.

I really liked that if I hooked up my camera or PDA, the memory cards show up in the listing of available drives, allowing you to easily copy your pictures off the drives. It even shows up how much space is available and used in the drive graphically under the icon.

These are all great improvements which make Vista nice to use over XP. I am looking forward to getting more familiar with it.

Sync Center:

While Windows XP did have a similar feature to see what was syncing, even combining task scheduler and SyncToy, the Sync Center offers so much more. It allows you to see all the items you have requested to sync and it allows you to schedule them.

Sync Center also reports your Pocket PC sync. It is so much nicer than what was possible in XP. It was never all that obvious that all this was possible in XP but now it has been brought out in the open as a big feature of Vista.

I am looking forward to writing articles about this and how to get the most out of it. While we could achieve much of this in XP, it was much messier as you will see from some of the articles already at Inspect My Gadget. This makes it all clean and easily recoverable.

Backup and Restore:

While XP had backup and Restore, Vista goes that 20 steps forward and allows you to restore individual folders. If you make a bad change or delete files, you can now easily get them back.

 All you need to do is right click on the folder and select “Restore previous versions”. You then get a a dialog as is the one on the left. It offers me to go back to any previous restore points which it has created automatically. As you can see from the times, it offers an update very frequently.

I am not sure how it is determined when a restore point will be made but from the picture, it looks like every change creates a new restore point. Time will tell.

There is also a new “Backup and Restore Center” in the control panel which looks much more user friendly than the backup and restore options in XP. I might even start using it.

Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) :

This is not a feature of Vista but I am very excited about it. It is a free download from Microsoft. It does basically the same thing as ActiveSync, it just does it better. WMDC has a much nicer interface with less options to confuse users.

You have the same options to install and uninstall programs, view files on the device and setup partnerships. There are a few nice added features such as tools to extract pictures and place them in your “Pictures” folder, and the same options with music to keep your music player ready with the tracks you want.

This is a big step up from Activesync which had many updates over the time XP was available, with each update not offering anything new. Whilst all the tools in WMDC were available before, it was not as easy to get these tasks to happen. It would normally take many more steps and involve tools outside of ActiveSync.

Conclusion:

As you can see, there are many nice improvements over XP in all of the above sections. There is bound to be many other improvements that I have not found yet. My Windows XP directory (excluding program files) takes up 5.8GB of my hard drive and my Vista directory (excluding program files but with years of excess drivers) is 8.6GB (fresh install) and I don’t think that much of it would be pictures, but rather new features.

It is not time to buy Vista yet for most people unless all you want to run is Office applications, as there is not much software that will run on it, especially for gaming. I am very happy I kept my XP machine connected. I take comfort in the fact that it is a major operating system by Microsoft so I can rest assured that software and hardware companies will embrace Vista and release new products for it. I like to think Vista is too advanced for the software we used in XP and that the software which will work on Vista will utilise all the new features making our computers something very special and enjoyable.

(Update – 10 Days in: Vista is running very well and stable. I have tried to get some of my games up and running in Vista and I have had great success. Please read my article “Vista Gaming: Will your games work under Vista?” for a complete rundown of my experience with gaming in Vista.

I will continue to say that for most people, it is not time to get Vista for gaming yet as many games require a few extra steps to get running, generally being more complicated than simply installing and running. If you are comfortable with computers and updating patches, drivers and doing a few tweaks, You can probably enjoy your gaming experience in Vista now. It won’t be long before all your games will work under Vista. Maybe buy your family a new Vista computer for Christmas.)

I am really excited about exploring these new features and letting you know about them and how to use them as they were meant to be used, or as they can be used. Check back to inspectmygadget.com to see what I come across. For now though if you do get Vista, sit back and enjoy the great Texas Hold ’em Poker which is an Ultimate extra or check out the new effects in the updated solitaire.

I have had Engin VOIP as the main line in my house for a year now. I got married and moved out of home. The new house already had a cable internet connection so I decided to stick with it. Signing up to the Engin VOIP service meant I would not have to rent a phone line for phone or internet services. This seemed like the ideal solution, embracing new technology to save myself money.

This article will explain my experience with the Engin service in Australia and show you the positives and negatives of using VOIP services.

I do not have experience with other VOIP services. All I have used is Engin, other companies may be better or worse. I am based in Australia so this article is relevant to Australians. There is a good chance that in other countries, companies have invested more money into VOIP.

I am using Engin Voice Box Series 1. Other VOIP products may offer a better quality call. Ensure to include the cost of the voice box into your decision to go with VOIP.

Reasons: There are many reasons why I wanted to give Engin a go. It was a risk as it was fairly new but they offered so much more than a regular phone company for the price. I have listed some of them below.

• Extremely cheap local calls
• Extremely cheap national calls
• No land-line cost
• Free extra services such as called ID which regular Tel-cos charge extra for
• New technology, I always like to tinker
• Engin was being advertised on radio and TV
• Cable would provide plenty of bandwidth to allow for voice calls.

Installation: Installation was quick and easy. All I had to do was connect the voice box up to my router and my phone system. I also bought a set of Uniden WDECT phones and placed them around my house so there is cordless phone in each room of my house and attached it to the Engin Box.

I rang Engin with my details and registered myself with the service. The whole process was quick and easy and the next day it was up and running.

The first week was a bit shaky. The phone would continually drop out and the call quality was not great. Each morning I would have to check the phone for a dial tone to ensure I could still receive calls. After the first week, things settled down and the phone would rarely disconnect itself. To reconnect the voice-box again I would have to disconnect and reconnect power to both the router and the voice box.

The Bills: These are great. I pay $9.95 a month to access the service and 10c for each local and national call. Calling mobiles is also cheaper. Our household makes around 30 local/national calls a month, costing us $3. We also make around 10 mobile calls a month which costs us around $10 for 30 minutes of talk time.

All up, that’s around $25 for us monthly. We would have to pay around the $60 mark with a regular Tel-co.

Day to day use: At the start there was a minor noticeable sound delay in many of the phone calls and the call quality was not all that good. I could make sense of what the other person was saying, but it was nowhere near the call quality of a fixed line.

I was not happy with people at the other end saying that the phone line was crap, or saying they heard an echo. I wanted do something about this so I signed up as a Voiper user. This allowed me to play around with the settings inside the voice box. There was a cost to this as I would no longer get the same support offered to regular users. I had used their support prior to this but they were unable to help me get the quality of calls to where I wanted it to be so I felt like I had no support anyway. I was left to my own devices from now on and had to use web forums to learn what to change to get the most out of the system.

I changed the voice codec, testing each one to see what sounded better. I played with a few other settings also but the codec was the main one. The codec is the converter which changes your voice to a digital signal the computer world can understand.

The results were a little better after these changes. The dropouts still occured every so often and my wife and family were getting quite frustrated by it all. After 6 months I was borderline as to if we should get a proper phone line installed. The cost (approximately an extra $40 a month) helped me stick with Engin. This was a very bad time for Engin as calls were dropping out all over the shop.

I continued on with it, trying a different codec every couple of weeks. I don’t think the codec change is what has helped make it better though. I think the company itself has done some upgrades at its end. The phone line is now quite usable and it very rarely drops out. I asked my wife what she thought of it and she said “I suppose it’s alright”.

It is still not quite up to what a standard Tel-co company offers. When I started off using Engin, it was like calling overseas around 20 years ago. Now it is the equivalent to calling overseas 10 years ago.

Conclusion: I am using Engin as the only phone line to and from my house, we can also communicate through our mobile phones. For us, the money saved through using VOIP makes it worth sticking with the service. It is a trade off. The quality isn’t fantastic but it is usable and it should only get better with time.

Running a company and using your VOIP line as your only phone line may lose you customers. If the phone disconnects or isn’t of great quality, the customer may become frustrated and go somewhere else.

If you already have a regular Tel-co land-line, you may want to consider installing VOIP also as the cost of sending a fax through the system is cheap. The cost of calling national is cheap. With many of their voice boxes, you are able to send your current phone line into the box so that you can choose which system you send your calls out on. This is especially useful for calling emergency phone numbers.

If you have a power outage and you use VOIP, you will need to use your mobile phone as VOIP will not work.

I hope that this has given you a worthwhile understanding of what VOIP will be like for you. There is no doubt that VOIP is the future, but currently you will have to decide if the future is ready for you.

Please check out some of the other articles at inspectmygadget.com