Going Old School with Address Book 354 Exporting address information from Windows Contacts To export addresses from Windows Contacts, click the Export button from the program’s main screen. This saves information in either CSV or vCard format. (Note that no built-in function directly saves Contacts files in Windows Address Book format; you have to export in one of the supported formats and use the conversion function available as part of Windows XP.) Some third-party programs — commercial as well as freeware — promise to convert files of one type to another. Some programs can import an Excel file. Going Old School with Address Book If you’re still working with Windows XP or earlier editions of the Windows operating system, you will find the similar Address Book available — although hidden a bit deeper. You can open the Windows Address Book several ways, including going to the command line prompt and entering WAB.EXE. For most users, though, an easier route is this: 1. Open Outlook Express. 2. Click Tools ➪ Address Book. Windows Address Book is delivered as a companion piece to Internet Explorer; Windows Contacts comes as part of the Windows Vista operating system. Either way, Windows users are likely to find one or the other on their machine. The Windows Address Book is similar to the newer Windows Contacts utility, although it hues much closer to the concept of a just-the-address book. It lacks some of the features available to Windows Vista users, including recording digital IDs, notes, birthdays, and photo posting. You can add names to the address book manually, or you can automatically record the address of someone who sends you an e-mail. Here’s how to simplify that process: 1. Open an e-mail message from someone you want to add to the Address Book. 2. Right-click the user’s name. 3. Click Add to Address Book. 23 140925-bk04ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:47 PM Page 354 Book IV Chapter 4 Checking Your Calendar Going Old School with Address Book 355 If you have more than one e-mail address for a single individual or organization, you have to identify one as the default address; unless you instruct the e-mail client to use one of the alternate addresses, all outgoing mail goes to the default address. 4. With the book open, click the Name tab. 5. Add any information you choose. You can tell the system to automatically add an e-mail address to your Address Book anytime you reply to a message. This assumes that you con- sider the person or organization worthy of inclusion in your book: 1. Click the Tools menu in Windows. 2. Click Options. 3. Click the Send tab. 4. Select Automatically Put People I Reply to in My Address Book. To send a message to someone in your address book, you have two options: ✦ Start typing in the first few characters of the person’s name. The system attempts to fill in the rest of the address from the book. The more characters you enter, the more specific your instruction can be. ✦ Open Outlook Express (or another e-mail client that works in a similar manner) and, in the To field, click the small icon that looks like an open book. You also can get to addresses for the Cc: and Bcc: fields. Importing contacts into your Windows XP Address Book The standard format for data stored in a Windows Address Book (WAB) is a .wab file. You can export a WAB’s contents on one machine as a .wab file and import it into a WAB on another machine. It’s as easy as it sounds . . . right? You also can bring in data from other programs that use data storage formats that Windows Address Book can convert: ✦ Netscape Communicator ✦ Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book ✦ Eudora Pro ✦ Eudora Light Address Book (through version 3.0) ✦ LDIF-LDAP data interchange format ✦ Any text file saved as a .csv (comma-separated values) file or other similar format 23 140925-bk04ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:47 PM Page 355 Watching It Fly 356 Going the other way, if you’re using a third-party address book program, see if it can export its information to a .wab or .csv format. If so, perform that step, save the file in a particular location, and then import the file into the Windows Address Book. Once Windows Address Book is open, here’s how to import a file: 1. Click File ➪ Import. 2. Click Address Book (WAB) option. This brings in a file saved in that format. Or, click Other Address Book to display a list of alternate formats. 3. Click the name of the address book format you want to import. 4. Click Open. Exporting contacts from your Windows XP Address Book To output a file that can be used by other Windows Address Book programs or by third-party software that can accept data from it, do the following: 1. Open Windows Address Book. 2. Click File ➪ Export. 3. Click Address Book (WAB) option. This saves a copy of a file saved in the .wab format. Or, click Other Address Book to save a copy in either the Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book format or as a .csv text file. 4. Select where you want to store the file. 5. Click Save. Watching It Fly Your laptop’s clock function is one of those things you can pretty much count on working all by itself; it doesn’t need winding, automatically corrects for Daylight Savings Time, and can even be instructed to check its time against the mothership at Microsoft. When you install Windows, or when you configure a new laptop fresh from the store, one of the important questions that even a computer can’t figure out is this: What time zone is it in? (Yes, I’m certain the next generation of 23 140925-bk04ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:47 PM Page 356 Book IV Chapter 4 Checking Your Calendar Watching It Fly 357 laptops will include built-in GPS functions, but for the moment you’ve got to tell the machine where you’ve brought it for activation.) However, once you turn your machine on and install and activate Windows Vista (or Windows XP), it is pretty capable of keeping time. Microsoft has included a function that automatically adjusts for leap year and Daylight Saving Time when appropriate, and if you enable it, your machine can go out onto the Internet and synchronize its clock with a highly accurate reading at a Microsoft facility or an official time-keeping laboratory (such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology). With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft added the ability to have as many as three clocks available for display in the taskbar; configure them by double-clicking the clock in the taskbar and selecting settings for one, two, or three displays. One can be the “normal” time where you laptop usually resides, while a second can be the current time at a branch office anywhere in the world, and the third can be set to be the local time where you are anytime you travel. See Figure 4-5. Figure 4-5: The clock function in Windows Vista has been expanded to permit the display of as many as three different times of day in different parts of the world. 23 140925-bk04ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:47 PM Page 357 Book IV: Using Common Applications 358 23 140925-bk04ch04.qxp 4/8/08 12:47 PM Page 358 Book V Playing with Multimedia 24 140925-pp05.qxp 4/8/08 12:48 PM Page 359 Contents at a Glance Chapter 1: Walking Through Windows Media Player . . . . . . . . . . . .361 Sounding Out Windows Media Player 362 Rip It Good 372 Managing Rights 375 Chapter 2: Feeling the Music, Seeing the Stream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .377 What You See Is What You’ve Got 378 Working Around Audio Insufficiencies 378 Adding Capture Software 380 Plugging into External Speakers and Headphones 381 Poring Over Streaming Media 382 Chapter 3: Hamming It Up for the Webcam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .387 Casting about for Hardware 388 Camera Assistant Software 388 Upgrading Your Laptop to Add a Webcam 392 Chapter 4: Gaming with a Laptop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .395 Stuffing a Wild Laptop 395 24 140925-pp05.qxp 4/8/08 12:48 PM Page 360 Chapter 1: Walking Through Windows Media Player In This Chapter ߜ The master of all media ߜ Playing a CD or DVD ߜ Ripping music from a disc ߜ Managing digital rights T he first personal computer, and the first laptop computers, were about as communicative (to humans) as the beeps and squawks uttered by the famed “Star Wars” robot hero R2D2. My first IBM PC was capable of little more than monotone beeps: You had your short beep, your long beep, and your combination short-long or long-short beeps. The original IBM PC of 1981 was intended as a tool for small business, and the idea of a computer as a musical instrument, a music player, a video recorder, or a video player wasn’t even a pipe dream. The purpose of the tiny speaker in the computer was primarily to give audio cues during the system boot and to provide a few beeps for the primitive early games. Remember (if you can) that even the VCR was a hot new product at the time; Sony first came to market with its Betamax system in 1975 and the competing (and ultimately triumphant) VHS format arrived a year later. It took until about 1988 before computer manufacturers began to consider giving the PC a voice. Early companies in the field included Creative Labs, which continues as a premier device maker; it was only within the past few years that motherboard manufacturers began adding sound circuitry as a basic component. Today nearly every laptop computer comes with a set of chips that can reproduce music, voices, and effects in a range of quality that runs from mediocre to superb. Laptops suffer one significant disadvantage in compari- son to desktop computers: There is little room to install decent-quality speakers in a system where engineers have worked for years to trim every possible inch and ounce out of the box. 25 140925-bk05ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:48 PM Page 361 Sounding Out Windows Media Player 362 Modern laptops have moved past the beeps and boops. Computers can talk to you, reading text or delivering messages. They can play music from a CD. As noted, most laptops today include built-in circuitry to add sound features to the motherboard. A relatively small number of machines have a sound adapter card slot, and there are options for external sound adapters that attach to a USB port or plug into a PC Card or Express Card slot. I discuss a few hardware options later in the chapter, but first I deal with the software side of the equation. And let me begin by introducing an all- encompassing word adopted by Microsoft that seems to apply to all things that aren’t numbers or words: They call it media and it’s the centerpiece of the Windows Media Player. What is media? Today’s definition includes music, sounds, digital images, digital video, and streaming (imported) versions of sound, music, and video that arrive in your laptop over the Internet or through an external device (such as an electronic musical instrument, a video or audio player, a camera, or a microphone). Windows Media Player (WMP) has plenty of alternatives, including Apple’s QuickTime and Real Network’s RealPlayer. All of them work well, and more or less in the same way. In this chapter, I concentrate on Microsoft’s WMP since that software is delivered as a component of Windows XP or Windows Vista. Sounding Out Windows Media Player The essence of Windows Media Player is an electronic control panel to organize and play digital media files. Beyond that it lets you ✦ Burn CDs with copies of music stored on your laptop ✦ Rip music from a CD to store the files on your machine CDs and DVDs to PCs Compact disc technology was introduced a few years after the first PC and it took a while before the technology was adapted to deliver data in a computer. The first DVDs (an acronym for one of two almost-forgotten names: digital video disc or digital versatile disc ) were deliv- ered to home market in the late 1990s, moving over to computers a few years later. 25 140925-bk05ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:48 PM Page 362 Book V Chapter 1 Walking Through Windows Media Player Sounding Out Windows Media Player 363 ✦ Sync (pronounced sink) your digital media files from your laptop to a portable music player like an iPod And you can spend money within the program with a link to online stores. There you can buy digital media content and download it to your laptop. Playing an audio or video file Windows Media Player can play any digital media file stored in one of its accepted file formats; the media can be located in your Player library, elsewhere on your computer, in a folder on a machine on a local area network, on a folder on a machine accessible over the Internet. Is your audio or video file too fast, too slow, or distorted? The first step in troubleshooting quality problems in files processed by Windows Media Player is to determine if your system is using the most appropriate, current drivers for its sound card or sound chips. See the manufacturer’s web site or check for driver updates on the Windows Update web site (www.windows update.microsoft.com). Playing a file from your Library Follow these steps to play a file stored in your WMP Library: 1. Click an icon in the upper-left corner of the WMP window. This chooses a media category. When you click, the icon changes to indicate your selection: • A pair of musical eighth notes for music • A tiny framed image for pictures • A frame of film for video • A small television for recorded TV • A combination of a musical note and a small picture to indicate other media WMP keeps your last selection the next time you return to the program. 2. Click the Library tab at the top of the window. 3. Browse or search for the item you want to play. 4. Click + drag the item(s) to the List pane. You can drag • Individual items (a song, a sound, a video clip) 25 140925-bk05ch01.qxp 4/8/08 12:48 PM Page 363 . your selection: • A pair of musical eighth notes for music • A tiny framed image for pictures • A frame of film for video • A small television for recorded TV • A combination of a musical note. an open book. You also can get to addresses for the Cc: and Bcc: fields. Importing contacts into your Windows XP Address Book The standard format for data stored in a Windows Address Book (WAB). you’re using a third-party address book program, see if it can export its information to a .wab or .csv format. If so, perform that step, save the file in a particular location, and then import the