Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 11:35:50AM +1300, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
> 
> These are the scanned maps, right?  I assume they
> were scanned at a higher resolution than 800x600.
> You may get greater clarity by scanning them at
> 800x600.

Some I scanned, some I downloaded from the 'net, while others are screenshots 
of google maps. So, a whole mix. I'll 
consider what you've said about scanning at that resolution but, as I've 
said, I'm pretty happy with my results at 
1152x864 so far.

> Have you tried looking at them from the back of 
> the room?  I would be surprise if someone sitting
> at the rear of your audience could tell the 
> difference.

I do expect those sitting farther away to loose some of the detail. But when 
I thought about it, I decided that 
projecting ca. 5 foot by 6 foot maps on the wall is a _huge_ improvement 
visially over the free-standing maps currently 
availabe to me, which are 2 feet by 3 feet at best. The ideal solution of 
course is to use an auditorium-type room with 
a 10 foot square screen at the front onto which very high resolution images 
can be projected. But this sort of 
arrangement is not available to me now and I really don't expect it ever will 
be where I'm working. So, as I said, 
projecting maps at about 5 feet by 6 feet at 1152x864 resolution is a big 
improvement over anything else I have at my 
disposal here.

> Then you probably should dump MagicPoint as well.  
> If you are going to use up-to-date hardware, then 
> you might as well use PowerPoint.  It will give 
> you lots more multi-media bells and whistles.
> I think it also has a wizard to write your 
> presentations for you.  

I would go with Impress (part of the OpenOffice suite) on my newest laptop if 
I were going to get that fancy. But I 
think I've come up with a pretty adequate arrangement on an older machine 
using BL3 and magicpoint now. Took some 
experimentation, but I'm getting acceptable results now.

> > Finally, on video memory: how crucial will it be to 
> > magicpoint's speed to have more than 1MB of video 
> > memory?  
> 
> I don't know which is more important:  CPU speed, RAM
> or video RAM.  

My latest recipe, which is giving me perfectly acceptable results, is as 
follows: AMD K6-2 300 with 160 MB RAM a 1 GB 
hard drive and a 2 MB Tseng video card. magicpoint and BL 3 on this machine, 
which will be dedicated to doing 
presentations (it's portable), looks like it's going to meet my needs. Thanks 
for pointing out and providing it.

James