From deke@dekethegeek.com Wed Sep 04 15:25:54 2002
Subject:RE: A Better Clone? - In praise of the B4

>Do you know anything about the SoundBlaster Extigy?

The specs don't look as good as the Quattro, but you do get a nifty lil'
remote control... hehe. Seriously, I'm sure it sounds good and all, but
there is no mention of whether there are ASIO drivers available for it or
not. I would assume that since it's a selling point, the corporate types
would make sure it's mentioned in the literature, but who knows? Maybe I'll
have to go to Fry's and buy one (30 day return policy) to test with.

I am going straight to Mars after work and picking up that Quattro if that
is the best thing for the job... I'll try it out and let you guys know.

Also, concerning the use of a thin client box for the PC portion of the
rig... I spoke with the engineers, and they said the only problem (and
really the only reason I want a thin client instead of a laptop or a PC) is
the hard drive. Specifically, they use an IDE flash device to hold their OS,
and with XPe, we have flash devices of 256 MB in size... for my application,
they estimate they would need a 512 MB IDE flash device, costing somewhere
around $700... bringing my grand total for the whole rig to around $800, not
counting the beer payment to the developers... a little pricey. I am still
thinking of a way to do this, maybe with a very stripped down win98 OS or
something that will fit nicely onto a 256 MB flash size. It would just be
really cool to walk up with a MIDI controller under one arm, and a thin
client box under the other.

As far as the monitor is concerned, I am toodling with a 10-12" LCD here at
work, which only goes up to 800x600 resolution (perfect in my book). I think
I can find these from old copier machines or something for around $50
apiece, and these things are tiny but functional.

Deke The Geek
-machines are our friends-