Playing music on your PC via your home stereo

I always thought this was a difficult task, however recently I have discovered that you can connect a PC that does not have stereo jacks in the sound card to your home stereo system with a mp3 adapter.  This is is a wire with a 1/8" or mini-stereo jack on one end and stereo jacks on the other.  They cost around $15, depending on the size you get.  Simply plug the 1/8" end into the earphone jack on your laptop or PC.  Then plug the other end into the input jacks on your stereo.  Play your favorite tunes with iTunes or whatever music program you use and it sounds awesome coming out of your stereo.  You could probably make it sound even better by investing in a good sound card but this works!

Since discovering this, I have taken my entire CD collection and imported it into iTunes.  Now I have any song that I ever owned at my fingertips.  No searching for CDs, etc.  I just pull up iTunes and I can find a song, album or artist easily with the search feature in seconds.

Cheap way of storing data or backing up your computer

If you have a large amount of data to store like pictures and movies, or you just need a way to backup your computer, the best way to go is to invest in a Go Drive.  The Go Drive is an external hard drive that plugs into your computer via USB port.  It is made by Seagate and is relatively inexpensive for the amount of storage you get.  You can buy a 500 GB drive for about $100.  Yes, thats FIVE HUNDRED GIGABYTES!  You can store pictures until the cows come home.


If you intend to use Go Drive as a regular hard drive everyday, then I would recommend purchasing a second one so that you can periodically backup the first one.  Why?  Because all hard drives can fail at some point.  If you are using it regularly, it needs to be backed up.