| Think of Lola as
a friendly gadget that wants to pull you away from
the computer. With the Lola wireless music system,
you can play tunes stored on your Windows PC
through a stereo or television set.
X10 makes two wireless
models. The Wireless TV Video system costs $70 and
requires a PC with a TV video output, while the
Wireless VGA System costs $100 and requires a
Windows PC with a VGA video output. Both require
that the PCs they're connected to have at least 64
megabytes of memory and a 266-megahertz processor.
For this review, we tried the VGA system.
Setting up Lola was simple,
but time consuming. You first must download and
install the Lola software from the company's Web
site because no disk is provided. On a dial-up
connection, this takes about 20 minutes. Once the
software is installed, Lola can scan your computer
for music. Be sure to increase the default
settings for file size when searching for tunes or
Lola also will categorize your computer's startup
and alert sounds.
Next, you'll need to connect
the system's 2.4-gigahertz wireless transmitter to
an electrical outlet and to a Universal Serial Bus
port, audio jack and video output on the PC.
Finally, you'll have to connect the receiver,
which requires an electrical outlet of its own,
into the video and audio jacks on a TV set. (You
also can plug it into the audio jacks on a
stereo.) X10 says the range of the transmitter is
about 100 feet, so choose a television or stereo
in a room that's relatively close to the computer.
Once everything is
connected, the Lola menu displayed on your
computer monitor also will appear on your TV set,
and the music that's playing on your computer will
be played through your television or stereo.
With Lola's universal remote
control, you can control the system using either
the television or the computer. You can select the
tracks you want to hear, repeat a favorite tune,
pause the music or close Lola. You also can
control Lola using the computer's keyboard and
mouse, but this mode of operation isn't intuitive.
For example, if you want to close Lola with the
mouse, you have to right-click and then choose the
"close" command. It would make more
sense to include a "close" command as
part of the on-screen display.
During testing, the computer
consistently transmitted sound and video to a
television located in an adjacent room. The music
coming through the TV set sounded sharp but the
video images appeared fuzzy, making it difficult
to read text on the screen. But if you can live
with some squinting, Lola is a decent device for
sharing digital tunes throughout the home.
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