Today's technology is moving at lightning speed and it's an expensive prospect to keep up and keep all of your own personal technology up to par. For instance, you may love taking digital photos with your camera, but do you have a computer or laptop that is compatible? Do you have a digital camcorder and you want to play around with digital video editing or that you'd like to hook up to your TV at home? Maybe you love your webcam, but your computer doesn't have sufficient memory to keep up?

Here is a quick guide to using various components and accessories with your used laptop computer!

Using Your Camcorder with Your Used Laptop

You can if you have an S-Video connector. S-Video-In allows you to connect laptops to a television or camcorder or VCR to transmit their signal and be able to view them on the laptop's display. S-Video inputs use a four-pin jack to receive video signals from camcorders, gaming consoles, TV, or any device that has an S-Video out port. The S in S-Video stands for separate: S-Video connections transmit the chrominance (color) and luminance (brightness) portions of a video signal along different paths, allowing them to be processed separately. This is a common way to display content from a digital camcorder or any device that has an S-Video Out port.

S-Video Out: Connects a plasma or newer TV to your notebook to display video content streaming from the notebook. The most common way to connect a TV to a notebook, S-Video Out uses a four-pin jack to send signals from your notebook to your TV or anything that accepts S-Video In.

This feature is not standard to all laptops, so you need to check the feature list to make sure it is included if this is something you whish to do.

Using Your Used Laptop and a Web Cam

If you want to use your laptop and a webcam to talk to relatives or friends across the country it is best to have the same camera on both sides of the connection to be able use all the features of the cameras.

You can talk by using cell phones or telephones or can use instant messaging or even send e-mails back and forth. Using the webcam will allow you to see each other to add another dimension to the phone call.

You will need the following:

· A computer.
· An Internet connection (the faster the better).
· A connection from the laptop to the webcam (most common is the USB, others include Serial, Parallel, etc).
· Two cameras.
· Software (from the webcam vendor or from others).

If you already own the webcam then check the systems requirements to determine what you need in the way of a laptop, should you not already own one.

So now you know how to use a refurbished laptop and how to buy a used laptop that can help you use exciting accessories like your WebCam or your camcorder! The possibilities are endless and so are the savings!

 By David Perlmutter

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