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      Source: Hungry Charlie, Wikimedia

FIGURE 1-14: Two different kinds of DVI-D cables — they work well, but don’t carry audio.

      Futzing with video, sound, and multitudinous media

      Unless you’re using a cheap laptop or a tablet, chances are fairly good that you’re running Windows 10 on a PC with at least a little oomph in the audio department. In the simplest case, you have to be concerned about four specific sound jacks (or groups of sound jacks) because each one does something different. Your machine may not have all four (are you feeling inadequate yet?), or it may look like a patch board at a Slayer concert, but the basics are still the same.

Here’s how the four key jacks are usually marked, although sometimes you must root around in the documentation to find the details (see Figure 1-15):

      Fortunately, PC-savvy 4-channel amplifiers can handle the lime (front speaker) and black (rear speaker) lines, 6-channel amps may be able to handle all but the gray, and 8-channel amps will take all four: lime (front speaker), orange (subwoofer, or center back), black (rear), and gray (side).

      With a sufficiently bottomless budget, you can make your living room sound precisely like the 08R runway at Honolulu International.

      Laptops typically have just two jacks, pink for Mic In and lime for Line Out. If you have a headphone with a mic, that’s the right combination. It’s also common to plug powered external speakers into the lime jack.

      Tablets and smartphones usually have an earphone jack, which works just like a lime green Line Out jack. Many new models have ditched the jack and can connect to external sound devices only through Bluetooth. In theory, no cables is a better approach, right?

      High-end audio systems may support optical connections. Check both the computer end of the connection and the speaker/receiver end to make sure they’ll line up.

      Ultrabooks and convertibles

      While working with Windows 7, I fell in love with an ASUS netbook. Netbooks, which are small laptops, were a popular concept a few years ago, designed to provide the basics people needed from a laptop at an affordable price. Think of them as the precursor to today’s Chromebooks.

      But then along came the iPad, and at least 80 percent of the reason for using a netbook disappeared. Sales of netbooks have not fared well, and I don’t see a comeback any time soon. Tablets blow the doors off netbooks, and 2-in-1s just mopped up the remains.

      Ultrabooks are a slightly different story. Intel coined (and trademarked) the term Ultrabook and set the specs. For a manufacturer to call its piece of iron an Ultrabook, it must be less than 21mm thick, run for five hours on a battery charge, and resume from hibernation in seven seconds or less. In other words, it must work a lot like an iPad.

      Intel threw a $300 million marketing budget at Ultrabooks, but they fizzled. Now the specs seem positively ancient, and the term Ultrabook doesn’t have the wow factor it once enjoyed.

      Right now, I’m having a great time with all the new form factors: I mention the XPS-15, Surface Book 3, and Surface Pro earlier in this chapter. I worked with a trapeze-like machine for a bit, but always worried about snapping the carrier off. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Now, depending on the situation, I’m just as likely to grab my iPad Pro as I head out the door, or curl back with a Chromebook to watch Netflix. I use Android smartphones and iPhones, too, all the time.

      If you’re in the market for a new machine, drop by your favorite hardware store and just look around. You might find something different that strikes your fancy. Or you may decide that you just want to stick with a boring desktop machine with a mechanical keyboard and a wide monitor the size of football fields.

      Guess what I work on.

What’s Wrong with Windows 10?

Microsoft made a lot of mistakes in Windows 10’s first year of existence. Chief among them was the widely despised “Get Windows 10” campaign. Combining the worst of an intrusive approach, forced updates, bad interface design, presumptive implementation, and a simple lack of respect for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers, Get Windows 10 (GWX), to me, represents the lowest point in the history of Windows. Microsoft just didn’t give a hairy rat’s patoutie who they stomped on, as they pushed and pushed and pushed to get everybody on Windows 10. Which is a shame, really, because Windows 10 is a good operating

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