Altec Lansing Orbit MP3 speaker<\/a> at the Apple Store, and took a chance on it.<\/p>\nIt’s about the size of a doughnut, and comes in a cute carrying case with a carabiner, so easy to travel with. \u00a0The short cord curls up under the bottom and the 1\/8″ stereo mini plug snaps into place to hold it in. \u00a0The bottom also has little rubbery feet, which is nice. \u00a0The overall build quality feels very good. \u00a0It’s not lightweight for its size, but it’s also not made of cheap materials.<\/p>\n
It’s an omnidirectional speaker, so you can place it on your desktop with the speaker pointing up, and the sound will fill the room. \u00a0The speaker takes 3 AAA batteries (included), and only works when powered. \u00a0My old speaker would produce a tiny bit of sound when unpowered, which was handy for listening without batteries to devices that don’t have their own speakers, such as older iPods and CD players. \u00a0But that’s really not something that has been an issue for me too often, so I don’t really mind losing it. \u00a0I haven’t had it long enough to get an idea of the battery life, but the power button supposedly also indicates when the battery is low. \u00a0There is no volume control on the speaker, so you must use the built-in volume on your computer or music device.<\/p>\n
For basic tasks of making computer sound audible to a larger room, or having better sound while watching video or listening to music, I find it works very well. \u00a0I think at $40 it’s a fair price for the features, and the accessories are of surprisingly good quality.<\/p>\n
There’s also a USB version, which is good because it doesn’t need batteries, but it’s not as flexible because it can only be used with a computer. It’s also $10 more.<\/p>\n
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This week we had a Skype conference scheduled between our cast and the NY office. \u00a0Nick and my reaction to this was kind of like, “um… uh… OK,” cause we’re not really set up to have video conferences with 14 people on our end. \u00a0But being the technological type, we set our computers up, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,13],"tags":[99,149],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1506,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/1506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/headsetchatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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This week we had a Skype conference scheduled between our cast and the NY office. \u00a0Nick and my reaction to this was kind of like, “um… uh… OK,” cause we’re not really set up to have video conferences with 14 people on our end. \u00a0But being the technological type, we set our computers up, and reserved a good room to have the call in. \u00a0But we knew our laptop speakers would not be loud enough to let a room full of people hear well. \u00a0I travel with a cheap external speaker, but it’s barely louder than the laptop’s own, and I’ve been looking for a while for other options that are small enough to tour with.<\/p>\n