I’ve described my use of the Alto Professional Presenter twice before. My typical use case is straightforward. I need a podium & PA for the regular public meetings of our civic association that are typically held in a nearby church. Given that I abandoned the included gooseneck microphone, it works quite well.
Recently, I’ve used it in a couple of different ways.
In mid-September we spent a week in Canada visiting with family. This picture is one of the docks at Birchland Cottages, a small resort run by my brother, near Iron Bridge, Ontario. It’s a beautiful spot, with dock for each cottage.
Now, that’s a dock. Note how each boat is tied right to the dock. Secured. That’s as it should be.
I’ve worked from my home office in Houston since May of 2001. Technically, it’s the apartment that’s part of our detached garage. When we bought this place it was equipped with a hefty through-the-wall heat pump that roared like a locomotive. It wasn’t long before that noisy old beast failed.
Since then we’ve had three different ductless mini-split systems installed. And learned a bit about them along the way. Some lessons take some time to really sink in. That makes them worth sharing.
I don’t get out much these days. At least not compared to years ago, when I was almost constantly travelling to and from various broadcast facilities. Nonetheless, based upon that past experience, in 2019 when I last ordered a laptop, I opted to get the 4G LTE wireless radio built in. It’s effectively the third person on our Mint Mobile family plan.
Truth is, I don’t use the service very much. But the carrying cost on Mint Mobile is so low that I keep it active. There have been times when we had internet or power outages lasting a few hours. In those cases, 4G embedded in the laptop has been genuinely handy.
Over the past year, I’ve also used it when going to offsite meetings related to my involvement with our local civic association. Such was the case last week. I was attending a meeting of Super Neighborhood 15 at the Historic Fire House on 12th Street. They might have Wi-Fi there. I don’t know. It has never even occurred to me to ask. As is my habit, I just power up and turn on the 4G.
Last weekend I ventured out to our local Micro Center. I hadn’t been there for several years. It was an interesting and enjoyable experience, even if I didn’t buy anything on this occasion. In some fashion, it was a grounding experience.
I have a long relationship with The Micro Center. When I first moved here from Toronto in 1998 it was an eye-opening place. That was before Amazon.com, when computer stores were still a thing, and software was bought on floppy disk or CD-ROM. The Micro Center was a place I could go and lay hands on things before making a purchase. As a lark, one day I was there with Stella and I hugged a fancy new computer. Thereafter, she started to call it “The Michael Center.”
On Sunday, August 10th, 2025 The Micro Center in Houston was busy! It had not occurred to me that this was the last weekend before kids started back to school. It was also a tax-free weekend for back to school supplies. The place was fully of families getting things their kids would need for school.
I was there just to look around the place, but I really wanted to lay hands on a Lenovo T14 laptop. It’s one model in the running to replace my 2019 X1 Carbon and my aged desktop. I found a T14 there on display along side a T16. This was enough to convince me that 16” is just too big a laptop for my tastes. I wish I’d brought my X1 Carbon with me. The T14 is markedly heavier, but had a built-in Ethernet port and is vastly more upgradable over time.
I came away from the Lenovo display wanting to get hands on their P14 model, which is a mobile workstation. Sadly, such was not available at The Micro Center.
It’s really difficult to move away from the X1 Carbon. It’s basically ideal for mobile applications. However, soldered in memory means that the only upgrade opportunity is the NVMe drive.
Late last year I detailed my quest to find a small public address system for use by our local civic association. I settled upon the Alto Professional Presenter, which is a portable, battery operated PA in the form of a podium. What follows are some notes about how I’ve used it over the past nine months, and some recent tweaks to the setup that have made me irrationally happy.
While I was initially quite enthusiastic about the product, that proved to be substantially unwarranted. Out-of-the-box it’s actually quite terrible. It’s a nice idea, poorly executed.
The major problem is the included gooseneck microphone. You can’t turn the device up loud enough to be useful without generating feedback. As a practical matter, the position of the microphone is fixed relative to the front-facing speakers. Also, I suspect the microphone suffered from being physically connected to the podium. The physical connection increases the likelihood of feedback, as vibration was passed directly to the gooseneck.