Mr. Hahn

I have audio going from my laptop to my surround sound through optical. My problem is that whenever there's audio silence, the optical light signal essentially turns itself off when not in use. Whenever something starts playing again, it takes 2-3 seconds for the sound to actually make it from the laptop to coming out of the speakers. This isn't a problem most of the time, like when playing a movie, game, etc. because the audio feed is kept constant. But if I start a music playlist or a short video clip on some website like youtube, a few seconds is chopped off of the front of the first song or video.

Is there an option to toggle or some way of making the audio feed constant so nothing gets chopped off when the signal starts up again? I know the PS3 does it because I've never had the problem with it before. If it's on, it's feeding an audio signal even when there's no actual audio coming through the wire.

Thanks.

This is kind of an odd-ball topic for a broadband community, but I thought someone here might have a similar setup.

I have to move around quite a bit with my job, so I've decided to streamline a bit. I'm ditching the whole computer desk with monitor, tower, etc., and gone with a laptop that I'll keep hooked into my big screen through hdmi most of the time. I'll be using a wireless mouse and keyboard, which brings me to my question. Anyone have an idea of what I could use as a sort of "desktop" replacement for when I want to game? Meaning I need a place to put mouse and keyboard in front of me while on the couch. The keyboard I'm getting is pretty nice and has a touch pad on it, which will probably do fine for most things. It obviously won't cut the gravy for gaming though.

I've thought about maybe using one of those lift-top coffee tables that has a mechanism in it that folds the whole table-top up and at you, but that's just something else heavy and big I'd have to move. I was hoping to find an end table version of something like it, but haven't come across anything.

I need ideas!

(PS. no TV trays)

I currently have my computer/network set up so I can remotely wake the system after it has been shutdown or put into standby/hibernate. I know it's set up correctly because I use it all the time and remotely use my computer from my iPhone with WinAdmin. The only exception is it won't wake if the computer completely loses power then regains it (ie. the power goes out and comes back on, or if one take the power cable out of the PSU and reinserts it). Now I would understand if the WOL only worked if the computer was in standby because the session info. is saved in memory and would thus be wiped at loss of power. But I can wake it after being shutdown as well, so I'm puzzled as to what changes between it's shutdown state before and after loss and regain of power. The ethernet adapter LEDs are lit up after power is regained, so what is stopping the "magic packet" from triggering it to wake?

I mainly want to know because it's especially useful when I'm out of town, and I can't use it if the above-mentioned scenarios happen.

Thanks.

I'm upgrading from a Belkin N wireless router to a Linksys WRT54GL because I wanted the custom firmware so I could have features such as DHCP reservations, wake-on-lan packets being allowed through the router, etc. Well, the new router got here today from newegg. I disconnect the Belkin, connect the Linksys, and no connection. * eyebrow raises* So I figure I'll try a direct connection. RJ-45 from the modem directly to the computer. Still nothing.

At this point I just assume my cable company is having issues and decide to wait a little while. After no luck for a while I get to thinking that maybe some of the configuring I did to get wake-on-lan "magic" packets accepted by my network card, including setting up an account with DynDNS for a mock-static IP had something to do with it. I hook the old router back up and viola. Internetz!

So, any of you guys know what to do? Is it something with DynDNS or something else? I'm really clueless. I'll keep sniffing around in hopes of stumbling upon something. I thought a direct connection to the modem always worked!

edit:

Just a little additional info. Whenever the modem is directly connected to the computer, all the modem lights show it as connected, and the network card eventually goes through the motions and says it's "connected". But as soon as I go to actually use the connection, the card gets stuck on "renewing your IP address" and the gives me the limited or no connectivity bubble, which in this case is no connectivity.

Do you guys know if there's such thing as an adapter that converts a SCSI drive into SATA? All of the 15k drives seem to be SCSI, and my mobo doesn't seem to support it. I noticed quite a few adapters that do the exact opposite in my google-ing, but none that do this.