Wireless Music System - Fun & Flexible

We love the wireless Sonos S5 Digital Music System (www.sonos.com) that we’ve just installed at home. Now we can play music from our computer, any audio source, Pandora or Internet radio anywhere in our home, wirelessly.

The system has integrated wireless units called S5 Zone Players incorporating amplifiers and speakers, and comes with PC or Mac software, including an on-screen controller. Installation was super easy: install the software, power up the Zone Player and plug in the network cable.

Sonos uses its own wireless network that’s secure, matrixed and able to interact with all Zone Players. The Controller provides flexibility and wireless coverage anywhere in your home. Plug a unit into a wall outlet, push the button, and the ZonePlayer automatically connects to the Network.
 

 

Control your music system from your computer, iPhone, Android or iPad, or buy the wireless hand-held Controller. We love the flexibility: Play single songs saved in our computer or play iPod or Sonos playlists. Control zones individually. Play the same selection in a single zone, linked zones or in all zones. Play one selection in one zone(s) and a different selection for another zone(s) or mix and match music from Pandora, Internet radio stations or an auxiliary input.

Independently control volume and equalizations; if you mute a zone, unmuting ramps the volume up rather than suddenly blaring on. One of many nice touches we like. The hand-held Controller(s) and the PC control program display information (including album art) about the selection being played.

We’re enjoying the sound quality, convenience and the compact package that makes up the Sonos S5 Digital Music System.

Easy/Fun Print Projects

One of the fun, useful and often money-saving ways we’ve used our computer is to create print projects. We make greeting cards, calendars, posters, and much more. Some print projects are part of word processing programs, but we like the creative freedom of PagePlus X5 (www.serif.com), a desktop publishing program that lets us make professional-looking stuff - and it’s easy and quick to do.

 
PagePlus X5 has nearly 1,000 templates we can customize, but you can also create your own projects from scratch. We make all our greeting cards with the templates. Just substitute our text, color and font–and Voila! A personalized, colorful card in minutes.

There are lots of projects (flyers, invitations, banners and more), and the color schemes option lets you preview projects with different combinations of colors for text, background, graphics and borders.

Those of you who are more creative will also find plenty of features to make projects from scratch. Place text on a curve, use it in any place or shape, add graphics and photos (sized, shaped and/or altered if you want), or put inside one of the many included shapes. Go wild at will.

Tool tips, onscreen help and video tutorials are there to help, or order the 300-page printed User Guide. PagePlus X5 has dozens of simple, easy projects, but the many advanced features (OK, they’ll take some time to learn) will let you creative types shine big time.

Just Dance 2

Taking advantage of technology makes life easier and more productive, and it can also be a lot of fun too. Case in point: 

Just Dance 2 for Nintendo’s Wii combines music, dance and a bit of competition and uses the hand-held remote controllers to track and score your dance moves as you mimic the on-screen dancer’s moves. Music ranges from today’s hits to yesterday’s favorites, with the artist’s original recordings coupled with choreographed fun dance routines and on-screen lyrics if you want to sing along. Choose from Rihanna S.O.S., Vampire Weekend A-Punk, Kesha Tik Tok, our favorites, Cher The Shoop Shoop Song, Ike & Tina Turner Proud Mary or any of the 40+ included songs. Others available to purchase.

Select Just Dance, Dance Battle or Just Sweat, depending on what you’d like to do. We usually Just Dance--great for exercise and lots of fun, especially when shared with up to four “dancers.” We’re definitely hooked.