Wearable People- I was in Sharper Image the other day and saw the TalkAbout walkie talkies which are rather nice. What especially appealed to me about them was the speaker-microphone headset. You know, the ones that look like walkman headsets, but with a microphone that swivels out in front of your mouth. This one was very nicely designed to be black and lightweight. It was monaural, but this is nice, because I often like to have an ear tuned to the real (i.e. immediate) world. I have been thinking about one of these things for some time as I explore videoconferencing and distance teaching/consulting. This leads me to a three questions: one is a specific problem I have, the other two are broader questions. Problem. I bought the headset, figuring I could hook the 1/16" microphone output to a pre-amp and input it to my Mac PB1400 sound input port (which require line-voltage input, hence the pre-amp). In addition, the 1/16" plug needed a size adapter to bring it up to the 1/8" miniplug standard. Maybe I have the output design wrong. The headset has two jacks out, both embedded into a plastic plug holder which keeps them a fixed distance (about 1/2 inch) apart. One is the standard miniplug (1/8 inch) and the other is a micro-mini plug (1/16 inch and about 3/4 length of the standard miniplug). The big one is for the earphone, and I assume the little one is for the microphone. However, I can't get any sound from the microphone into the computer. Strangely, if I send the earphone jack (this one is 1/8") through the pre-amp and into the computer, I can talk into the earphone and get the sort of sound from that I wanted from the microphone, but the mic itself doesn't give me anything. I've checked connections, and I've checked the headset with the TalkAbouts in the store, there are no broken circuits as far as I can tell. Could it be that the microphone needs juice put in from somewhere? Has anyone else made these conversions or know how the Motorola model 50226 works? (I know that Radio Shack makes one of these things for computers, but God the thing is ugly... don't want to do videoconferencing with that if I can help it). Now the other questions: who out there has bought an earphone/microphone headset, what brand, did you like it, and did you think it expensive. Secondly, wouldn't it be nice to have a wireless headset, so you weren't tied to your computer by a wire. I'm sure this product exists, I've just never seen or heard of one. Tips? Thanks, Bruce -- Bruce P. Chadwick Columbia University Please remove "nospam." from my address to reply by email. I do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial email.
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