Where's the "Any" key? New Tech Support Thread

[clare]

How much is internet where you are? The U.S. is by far not a broadband paradise, mostly because the government here is to chickenshit to force the telecoms to upgrade the infrastructure.

http://www.grapevine.com.au/products/broadband/transactplans.aspx

This is my provider, they're OK, but the bloke is always bitching about them. Their download speeds are fictional at best. The other problem, of course is that the straw that crosses the Pacific is not very fat, so it's all pretty bloody slow. Better than it used to be though. In 1995 the bloke and I went to his office at 2 am to watch the video of the dudes at Purdue lighting their barbie with Liquid Oxygen. It took 30+minutes to download and ran for about 10 seconds...

[diesel_powered]

Hmm. See, as far as pricing goes, this chart: http://www.grapevine.com.au/products/broadband/NationalPlans.aspx is most similar for what you get in the U.S. (i.e. certain bandwidth down, significantly less up) but it seems like they're a bit slower, a bit more expensive, and capped at a certain volume of data. I used to pay $52 a month for 6 meg down/512 k up at my old place, but capping internet connection volume has been pretty unpopular in the U.S. and is pretty rare. Although, since nobody wants to upgrade the infrastructure and streaming video is exploding right now, U.S. providers are considering capping connections here.

[clare]

I think the plans on the page I linked to are different becaue the company is based in teh ACT. Capped is all there is here. What that means realistically is that you can have all the internet you can eat at home, because, while it's expensive (and these are only the ISP charges, not the actual supply of broadband infrastructure charges - they're separate) and slow as shit, it's doable, but there is fuck all wireless when you're out and about, so the culture of taking your laptop to the coffeeshop doesn't exist because no-one has free wireless. Not even high end hotels. You have to pay to use the hotel's bb or wireless. Except at Maccas. They're the only providers of free internet that are anything like available. </rant>(apparently I'm grumpy today - actually, I remember why - off to the annoyed thread!)

[diesel_powered]

Wow. Well that sucks. Especially since Australia has 178% of the bandwidth the U.S. has per capita.

[diesel_powered]

(apparently I'm grumpy today - actually, I remember why)

[Greg Nog]

I bought a cable from monoprice.com last night!  It'll hopefully work for connecting my laptop to the HDMI plug on my TV. 

It works!  I'm gonna watch a downloaded copy of the BBC's "Life"!  WOOO FUCK YEAH

[diesel_powered]

Awesome! Everybody with a computer and an HDTV should get one of those cables. Hell, with the right cable you can hook your computer up to a CRT.

[The_Tourist]

anybody use rockbox on their mp3 player?

know how to make it ignore "the" when sorting artists alphabetically?

[Good Intentions]

Crap, the left channel on my headphones has just fizzed out. I love these headphones: they're Sennheiser HD 202 ones I got a bit over two years ago. Since they're pretty entry level (but still embarrassingly better than any headphones that get bundled with anything, and I weep when I think what I'd need to pay for speakers that sound this good) it doesn't look like the cables are replacable. It's certainly the cable, since over the last day the channel has been coming and going depending on how I fiddle with the cable. Crap.

So, of course, I immidiately start looking for what's on the market. I've had two pairs of Sennies and I loved both of them, so I think I'll be sticking with the brand. This is a good chance to upgrade, especially since I'm wearing headphones out and about a lot more often these days and the HD 202s got a little clunky to carry around (mainly the cable). So, if anybody has any recommendations, or perhaps knows some black magic for me fixing the cable short of ripping it open, finding the break in the cable and isolation-taping it all back up again (because I'd rather make use of the excuse to upgrade, you see).

[Andrew_TSKS]

My dad used to cut my headphones open and solder the connections back together. He was a welder back before I was born, so it was easy for him to do. I'm thinking it'd be a lot harder for one of us.

[Good Intentions]

Soldering is dead easy (not that I have any of the equipment handy, but anyway), but I've got 3 meters of cable to check for a break. If I can isolate the break then fixing it is easy, but finding it without ripping open all or a lot of the cable is going to be a schlep.

[C of heartbreak]

It's most likely that the break is where the wire goes into the earpiece--a break in the actual wire is pretty unlikely. So open it up and see what you can do? Though if you have to solder anything, if you don't already own a soldering iron that'll cost you about the same as a decent replacement, right?

[Good Intentions]

Yeah, I'm not buying a soldering iron (I've got one back in New Zealand, anyway). I might know somebody with one (maybe).

It looks like the break is where the wire meets the headphones. There was the possibility that it could be on the cable, though, because the cable is so long and you have a plastic doodad to wrap it around and shorten it. The wrapping, unwrapping and slotting the wire in and out of the thing causes quite a bit of wear on the plastic wrap, and that whole thing has always been my least favourite part of this set and the bit that's worried me the most.

[Good Intentions]

At the moment the Sennie HD 228 ones look inviting: I like closed, supra-aural designs and I definitely dislike noise-cancellation (it introduces artefacts into the sound, which I always find very noticable and distracting). They're about twice what I payed for my HD 202s, but a little higher up the chain. Or maybe I should just make the leap and get some proper high-end ones. It'll probably be worth it: I listen to mine all the time.

[alistarr*]

i think i have 202s for my laptop - i like them, and they really are a bargain. i wouldn't recommend anything too expensive if you're wearing them out and about because no matter how careful you are the chances are they'll get damaged at some point.

cable length is likely to be a problem when you're looking at nice headphones because they're made to be long enough for home/studio use. you could always go crazy and get some custom phones from someone and specify a cable length, but that would go against my "don't spend too much" advice.

[alex]

You got about an hour to help me with this one:

My CD player stopped playing CDs about two weeks ago. Sometimes it wouldn't recognise them at all, other times it would start playing them but suddenly stop a minute later - in any case, there was no way of listening to a whole song, let alone a full album. I kept trying for a few days, then gave up and decided to get it fixed. I made plans of making the journey to the town where I bought it (a one-hour bus ride away), but then I got sick and couldn't do it. New plan was to drop it by today, since I'd be passing through that town on my way home for Christmas.

So I removed the CD player from the other stereo components earlier today, when it suddenly occurred to me that I haven't tried whether it works in about a week. Plugged it back in, and sure enough, it DOES work.

Should I assume that it fixed itself? Should I assume that it's still broken, and will go on strike again soon, but there is no way of proving so to the people at the shop, so that I am better off not bothering to bring it in now? Or should I still bring it and assume that they will be able to figure out what's wrong even though it's currently working okay?

[alex]

Heh, okay, stopped working again the minute after I wrote the above post, so I guess that answers that.

[Good Intentions]

If I were to guess, I'd say that sounds like component fatigue, or whatever you call it. There's a bit in there that's old and tired and doesn't work once it has any workload. If that's the case (and I'm just guessing), the part in question needs to be replaced. Yeah, give it to the shop, they'll probably replace the entire unit.

[elpollodiablo]

I was gonna say, unless it's a really nice CD player it's probably not worth repairing.

[alex]

The CD player is actually less than a year old and therefore still under warranty, so it's definitely worth bringing to the shop. I was just concerned that it would be on its best behaviour when I bring it in and they'd be all "what are you on about, the thing works", but now it looks like it's somewhat reliably fucked-up anyway, so I'll definitely bring it in.

[diesel_powered]

If it's under warranty, you probably will just get a new one. Most CD players are so twitchy and spindly that they rarely can be repaired and are generally designed to be replaced.

[alex]

I got my old CD player fixed quite a bunch of times, actually, so that isn't really my experience. Seems like half of the time it's just a case of cleaning the lens, anyway. Which was, in fact, what the shop assistant assumed it was on the basis of my report. We'll see.

[diesel_powered]

Really? We are total warranty opposites.

[Good Intentions]

So, I got mysekf replacement headphones. After reading around a bit, I decided to make a bit of a plunge and get myself something proper: Grado SR 60i.

The reviews I've read for this thing verge on the orgasmic. It's just arrived, I've plugged them in and are trying them out. Their sound is distractingly clear: I'm trying to type this while listening to Astral Weeks, but every sentence or two I have to give up typing and just listen for a bit. I'll report back, but right now I'm very impressed indeed.

[Good Intentions]

There's one thing I'll say. With my Sennheiser HD202 pair, I frequently said that I weep when I think how much I'd need to pay for a speaker system which sounds as good. But with these, I think I wouldn't be able to replicate the sound with a speaker system. It isn't like with the low-end Sennies I had that sound is happening somewhere, and that somewhere just happened to be next to your ears. There's a directness to this sound, and I can't imagine how a speaker system could recreate it. It's a distinctly headphone type of sound, I think.