Karaoke Forums

I use the 1/8" to two 1/4" TS connector cable from Hosa, that I get at Guitar Center.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Hosa-Stereo ... gc?source=

UPDATE ON NEW LAPTOP-

Get into work this morning and have an email from DELL offering a 17" laptop with 3gb of ram - ALL THE SAME SPECS as the 14" display - I work up a price and it comes out to be $25.00 more for the 17" laptop with 1gb more memory ...

Called customer service - cancelled the 14" and now have the Inspiron 1720 on order ........  :hi5:

Wow! real happy for you. That's great. I wish I could get another laptop right now. I'll have to just keep using the desktop for now until I can scrape together some more cash. Next laptop for Karaoke will be a 17" for sure. Let us know how you like it.

I see one problem.  If you want to rack mount the laptop a 17" screen, it won't fit.  If you need to use any openings on the sides of the computer.   The wires will interfere.   I have a 17" laptop.   I opted to buy 2- 15" screens instead.  Because of the width issue.

I use a small 13 inch HP note book 2 gig ram 160g storage 300 gb external drive with a 17 inch external monitor. and use Power karaoke  so far I havent had any problems. I was using winamp but started to get hicupps. the external 17 inch is only for lyrics, it works great for my show as well as hosting Karaoke

17" is nice but it won't fit in a 19" rack and have room to use the USB plugs or anything else that has to plug into the sides of the laptop.  I have my 15" screen laptop mounted on a pull out drawer and if it was a 17" it wouldn't pull out.    To many side hookups.   I have USB stuff on one side and a cable lock on the other side.   That makes it (seems like,) 27" wide.

While a laptop seems "The hot ticket", I'm playing around with a "Mini AT" format PC and a LCD screen.

The small format PC fits inside a 19 inch rack quite nicely.. Two desktops of course..
I found a 19" rack keyboard for $20.00 at the computer show..

The PC case holds 2 hard drives, and this solves the external drive crashing when a drunk kicks it over..

Everything fits in a standard rack, no worries..  :wave:

Sata runs faster and hotter. Is more expensive.
Laptops seem to cope better with the extra heat than pc's.
Only need downloadable matrix drivers when setting up.
Karaoke dosnt actually need the extra sata or dual core speed.
USB seems a really good option because if a lappy goes down,
it can attach to another.

How much does it all weight?

The Mini ATX case is right at 3 pounds. Plus the keyboard and flat screen..

Not too much at all..

I bought a new dell laptop about a 2 years ago has duo core and all that, for the first year it was fast, could run many programs at one time, now it is slow, it karaoke only, never been on line, I've done the simple stuff like refrag etc. any ideas...

Kenpat, one thing you can do is to take as much of the music and any other files off the internal HD and put them on an external HD.

How much RAM does it have? Sometimes, depending on what software you're running and how many programs you have running at the same time, more RAM can speed things up, not always though.

It might be a good idea to open the case or have a technician open it up and see if there is a lot of dust in there. If it's clogged up with dust that can affect cooling and excess heat can cause issues.

Make sure to disable background programs like Norton or Mcafee, shut off searching for wireless networks, shut off any other unnecessary background processes.

Uninstall any old programs that you aren't using.

Make sure you have all the most recent XP updates and service packs.

One of the most important things you can do: download a free program called ccleaner and have it clean the registry. If this has never been done you will see a large improvement in speed.

Pentium 4 2.0 ghz or faster processor, 1gb memory, m-audio external mini sound studio, hard disc is not that important, so I recomend an external 500 gb hard disc, (Seagate) and most important WINDOWS XP!!! Of course the software must be from Doblon, since they are ahead of everything karaoke and club dj pro or virtual dj...any questions pm me