Are We There Yet?

I've had a Series 2 TiVo for several years now and have enjoyed every minute of it. From the moment I first tried the TiVo in my parents' DirecTV satellite unit, I knew I wanted one. Now, a hundred episodes of Good Eats later, I haven't regretted the purchase. It's probably one of the few electronic devices in our home that my wife gets more use out of than me.

But there are still some terrible annoyances to my TiVo that drive me nuts.

As soon as I could, I added my TiVo to my home network via a wireless adapter. A networked TiVo adds TiVoToGo support (so recorded shows can be streamed to other networked devices), allows the device to receive scheduled recordings through the Web more frequently, and more recently allows usage of the Amazon Unbox service (something I'm looking forward to trying out soon).

However, getting my TiVo networked took longer than I would have hoped since TiVo was pretty slow to add 802.11g support to their unit and I wasn't going to buy an obsolete wireless adapter. Since then however, every TiVo service update is a roller coaster ride of compatibly cross your fingers. Will this update break my network settings or won't it?

A couple years ago, I was in need of a new set of speakers for my computer. The Cambridge Soundworks speakers I was using (purchased well before their assimilation by Creative Labs) had been going strong for many years. However, they had required a repair the year before (blown capacitor in the subwoofer) and the volume control was becoming a touchy beast. If the control was bumped, it could cause all sound to be lost in one of the channels. Thus began a frustrating exercise of tapping the control with one finger until full stereo sound was once again achieved.

At the recommendation of several people whose opinions I value, I looked in to the Klipsch line of computer speakers. I narrowed the choices down to the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 and the ProMedia GMX A-2.1. The price was the same for both units. Not being much of an audiophile myself, the difference in specifications between the two models meant very little. Therefore, I settled on the ProMedia 2.1's for two reasons: 1) more aesthetically pleasing - the industrial look of the GMX's was a little much for me, and 2) I couldn't find the GMX speakers anywhere in a store to listen to them, whereas the ProMedia 2.1's were everywhere.

The ProMedia 2.1 speakers have been a great investment. The bass is solid, strong, and deep. The highs are crisp and sound natural to my amateur ears. But like most things technological, they are not without their gripes either.