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By JEREMY BOWERS
Published February 4, 2005
This week, in the second of my four-week series on alternative uses for your old PC, I'll show you how to build a home jukebox using free software, inexpensive hardware and an afternoon of your time.
Thankfully, music doesn't require nearly as much storage space as video. Any half-decent old hard drive in the 10- to 20-gigabyte range will hold scores of music. My 12-gigabyte music collection is composed of 3,654 tracks that would play for more than 284 hours. Considering a typical CD holds about 50 minutes of music, with 10 gigabytes you could hold more than 240 albums. For those audiophiles with 1,000-album collections, grab an 80-gigabyte hard drive; it will hold more than 1,900 albums.
This week's budget is $50, and we want to spend less than 2 hours with our sleeves rolled up.
Hardware
1. Your old desktop PC. Since ripping audio doesn't require much, you'll only need a 300-megahertz or faster processor, and about 64 megabytes of memory. Make sure you've got enough hard-drive space to store your music.
Running total: $0
2. A decent quality sound card. The Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! 5.1 PCI card is perfect for desktops; it has a processor to handle music playback, which compensates for older hardware. As a bonus, it will run on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP, as well as your linux of choice. (If you're a linux user, why are you reading this?) I found one at newegg.com for a pittance.
Running total: $35
3. A good CD-ROM drive. This might sound odd, but we want a high-speed drive that can rip audio quickly. While even a 52x drive won't really rip audio tracks at full speed, it will be much quicker than the 24x drive that came with your 1999 model desktop. Hop over to computergeeks.com and grab a 52x model for $8 or $9.
Running total: $44
Software and Instructions
1. Turn your PC off and install the sound card and CD-ROM drive. The easiest way to make sure you've got the drive hooked up correctly is to replace the existing CD-ROM that came in the computer. As always, follow the instructions and you'll be fine.
2. Turn on your PC and install the driver for your sound card.
3. For Windows XP, I recommend Windows Media Player 10. This five-minute download on a broadband connection is free from windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and gives XP users peerless control over their music. It will rip your audio to the Windows Media Audio format which is preferred by some nerds because of its tiny file sizes and great sound.
Time invested: 17 minutes to download and install, about 5 minutes per CD to rip tracks.
4. For Windows 2000, ME, 98 or 95, I recommend FreeRIP, available from www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml . This tiny-yet-fully-featured audio ripper takes very little system resources to run. I actually prefer this product to Windows Media Player since it produces pure MP3 files, but it won't download album art like Media Player and it requires more legwork to organize your collection. Warning: This software asks to install a non-spyware toolbar. You must uncheck the box that says "Install the MySearch toolbar" before the software installs. It's not tricky; the choice is right in the middle of the installer page but could be missed if you're not careful.
Time invested: 11 minutes to download and install, about 4 minutes and 30 seconds per CD to rip tracks, with an additional 1 minute per CD to organize.
5. If you're not using Windows Media Player, you'll need a way to listen to those killer MP3s you're ripping. I prefer Winamp, an incredibly useful music player that's not being produced anymore. You can still download it from www.winamp.com/player/lite.php and get great themes for it called skins from the same Web site.
Now, sit back and enjoy your music.
Next week: Turn an older laptop into a kitchen recipe and e-mailing station.
- Mr. Right Click is Jeremy Bowers, who is a bona fide member of the Best Buy Geek Squad. You can e-mail him at jeremyjbowers@gmail.com
[Last modified February 2, 2005, 13:29:09]
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