I picked up a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T61 a fortnight ago, with a view to capturing a fairly robust ‘net-box capable of lifting the ceaseless strain [At LAST, Atlas !] from the ravaged, savaged, older shoulders of my utterly ADORED (but terribly tired and now marginally doddery) five-and-a-half-year-old Toshiba Satellite.
Key selling points of the new arrival (who’s not a rival) were 1 its Windows XP Pro operating system (I’m NOT interested in the bloat, strain and incompatability associated with Vista), 2 its sensible (nigh-on staid) NON-REFLECTIVE, easy (i.e. zero) maintenance matt-finish screen and 3 its comfy keyboard.
It fully triumphed meeting that trio of prioritised promises…….
Good, good…..and good.
SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM ?
Hmm. The problem is one that was, to me, both unforeseen and unheard of : Hence my
<<< SOUND WARNING >>>
to any of you who may be in the market for a new computer and expecting your fresh purchase to function AT LEAST AS WELL as whatever you’ve most recently been depending on.
“It seems a small ask”
but you need to
(ask)
make sure that you do
and that the I.T.-”it” will do…
…ALL that you want it to.
The Lenovo T61 will NOT do all that I took it for granted that it would do. (I didn’t ask, I didn’t know it was necessary to do so (: so “what a “to do !” (and WHAT can be DONE ??!))). It is supplied with a Soundmax HD Audio “solution”. The sole recording option available is “Microphone“. Absent and currently UNOBTAINABLE is any variant of “Stereo Mix“, “Wav” or “What U Hear” meaning that it is impossible to record ANY sound source that is playing on the machine – regardless of the origins of those noises.
I suspect this means I would not be able to use Cool Edit Pro to record live vocals piped through MorphVox Pro. <SIGH>. I’ll have to dig out a Screaming Bee FAQ. In the meantime, I’m going to log a couple of Internet Forums discussing (and disgustedly cussing) the issue here :
