by Andy Masters
25. October 2011 20:22
I went to the .net User's group meeting today, where the discussion was about MVC.
Afterwards I had a chat with a few folks about how Microsoft was doing with Windows 8 (after trying the developer preview).
My thoughts:
- There seems to be a disconnect between Metro style apps and 'Standard' Windows
- Why do they need to be 'baked' into the OS - couldn't we get something just as rich over the web?
- MS is betting heavily on the future of PC input being "Touch".
Now the "Touch" interface thing got us talking about how we could see it working in the future:
You could have 2 screens (they are getting cheaper all the time):
- one for (horizontal) for navigation/display/input (replacing keyboard and mouse)
- another (vertical) for display.
The idea being that it's a lot less strain to drive things horizontallly. Additionally, with 2 screens, your hands aren't going to constantly be obscuring the areas of interest.
A really cool thing would be if the input screen was flexible. This would mean when keyboard input was required, a keyboard imprint could be raised from behind the screen, to create a keyboard with tactile feedback from the screen.
Another similar idea exists for the eBook format. Here you could have a book shaped device with 2 screens, one each side. To go to the next page, you turn it around, (right edge first). Previous page, turn around (left edge first). The 'next' page could be pre-rendered as soon as you turn (effectively double-buffering), this means the page turn speed is a quick as you can turn the device. I think this would be quite a natural way of reading, with NO buttons or pressing of anything.
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by Andy Masters
7. October 2011 19:14
I've got Cambridge Sound works analog speakers (DT2200) 5.1 system from about 2001 still going strong (about the only thing about my PC that hasn't changed). The mini speakers and subwoofer are really great, I use 3 of them L,R,C and don't bother with rear speakers as it's quite a lot of wires.
Anyway, just now the sound stopped working. I've just spent an hour trying to workout why. I went through all the obvious stuff like
- do the speakers have power
- are all the cables plugged in
- check the volume isn't muted
- check the volume settings aren't too low
Then I tried a few more esoteric solutions:
- Windows 7: Troubleshoot audio playback wizard
- Updating my Realtek Audio drivers
- Swapping out audio cables and speakers
No luck. Just as I was about to give up, I realised:
The volume control dial on my speakers also has an adjustment for Front/Rear speaker balance. A certain small child had obviously 'played' with this while I was away, and adjusted it so that the balance was 100% rear speakers (which aren't plugged in).
So my suggestion to Microsoft is they add a step to their troubleshooting wizard:
- Have you checked that small children haven't fiddled with the front/rear speaker balance setting
Anyway, I thought I'd post this in case it helps anyone else with the same problem.
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Tags: sound
Ideas
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