Test Driving our Road Trip Setup

fred@fredjean.net (Frederic Jean) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:19:06 +0000

Mollie's sister is getting married in August, and we are planning to drive up to Seattle with the rest of Mollie's family a few days before the wedding. It's going to be a 2 day drive from Grand Junction, so we were looking for ways for the passengers to be entertained. We were considering buying a portable DVD player when I realized that we could easily use my PowerBook to play DVDs. I already had a power inverter, so we don't have to worry about keeping the laptop charged.

Mollie, one of her friends and I had to go over to Glenwood Springs over the weekend, so we took the opportunity to test the setup out. Before leaving, I plugged everything in, turned the volume as high as it could go and let the passengers get comfortable. We did discover pretty quickly that we didn't have a good place for the PowerBook, so Mollie and her friend took turns holding it. The PB also had a hard time competing with the road noise.

So I came up with the following lesson learned:

We need to find something to hold the powerbook as we drive.
We need a way to pipe the sound to the car's sound system. This way, it will be much easier to compete with the road noise (although it may be a little distracting for the driver...). Headphones may also help.

The end result was positive. I think that once we resolve these two issues that we will be ready for the drive to Seattle. The ladies were entertained and I was able to go a little bit faster that I could have had otherwise ;).

Out of my mind...: Test Driving our Road Trip Setup

Test Driving our Road Trip Setup