playford

A number of callers are beginning to use laptops with powered speakers to provide recorded music for dancing. This page is intended to suggest and share ideas on making this work well.

In the OECDC we have tried 4 systems, but two are very similar and will be lumped together.

• Asus Eee PCs: We have tried the model 701 and model 900. These are very small, light PCs, weighing less than a kilogram. The 701 has a 7“ screen, while the 900 has a 9” screen. Both run Xandros Linux (there are other choices, but I did not try them).

• An old HP ze4540ca laptop (256MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, no wireless networking, DVD ROM/CDRW combo drive). This machine was purchased in Dec. 2003 and is old enough that I felt comfortable letting it be lugged around to the dances. It is quite heavy (

• As at 2009-12-14, we have acquired a new Acer 5534 laptop. The link below tells how the software was set up.

All laptops are general-purpose machines. That is their strength and downfall. I have tried to configure a system with minimal controls.

See Laptop software setup

We also want to be able to easily update the content from the macnash playford site to the laptops. That is, we want to be able to play new tunes!

See Easy_download Unfortunately, not fully working yet, but close. (091214)