Audio tape to CD ?

[Russethouse]

MOH subscribes to www.bibliophilebooks.co.uk  and this month particularly they have some good audio books on offer but they are in cassette tape format. My main use for these tapes would be to listen to in the car where I only have a CD player - does anyone know if there is a way to convert them ?

Also a very mundane question - whats the best way to clean the keyboard?

[Will]

You need a cable to connect the output from your tape player to the input of your computer's sound card, then software to convert the signal from the audio tape to something that your CD player will handle. This may mean converting your tapes to MP3 or WAV format, then converting that to standard audio CD. It depends on what formats your equipment is capable of reading, and what formats your CD burning software handles. This article might be useful - http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/4757. There are various bits of free software that should do the job.

I'm afraid I use the vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment on my keyboards - the geeks will probably tell me that's totally unacceptable. And when the computer is off, I wipe the keys with screen cleaner (I figure that if you can use it on the screen, it should be safe for keyboards) which is surprisingly good at removing the gunge that seems to stick to the keys.

[Jonzjob]

No problems using a vac on a keyboard.. BUT if I were you I would turn the keyboard upside down and shake and tap it first. That way you will make sure there are no loose key tops. If there are and you vac, well?????   The other way to get the muck out is to buy an airosol can of air, 'onest, and blow the muck out. Don't let it near youngsters though. There was a case in the States of a drugs policeman who used it on his computer. His son got hold of it and decided to try 'sniffing' it. He died. His dad didn't know that the propellent was the same as in the other cans that children sniff and he found him dead in his bedroom!!! It destroyed his dad.

For your copying from the tape deck this is the one I use. I'm transfering my LPs to CD.  http://www.milosoftware.com/cdwave/ . Dead simple to use and a freebe.. You can seperate the tracks with it before you copy them to CD. I use Nero or Real Player to copy to CD from my PC. Once again very simple and quite quick. Got to be simple for me!!