Shadowing Practice: The Wall Outlet Computer - Learn English Speaking with Video

So this isn't your average -looking computer.

In fact, it looks more like a standard North American wall outlet.

But that is by design, because this is the Jack PC, a tiny computer that you could mount on a wall and get running with only a single Ethernet cable.

Except for the fact that you needed a little bit more than that, because as you've probably guessed, this is a thin client.

So you were really meant to use remote access tools to

connect this to a server running a full -fledged copy of Windows.

However, there is a pre -installed copy of Windows CE on here, and that got me thinking.

Why don't we try and use this thing offline for a little bit and see what it can do?

And then later on, we'll connect it up to another PC and use it the way you were really supposed to.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another video.

So I got to give a huge thanks to Case for donating this to the channel a while back.

Some of you may know that he's made a few videos possible over the years.

He also sent out that Alienware laptop and that Sylvania Windows CE netbook thing.

And this time around, he's given us this odd -looking computer from Chip PC Technologies.

This is a company that specializes in thin clients and other small form -factor computers, one of them being the Jack PC,

that was first released in early 2006 for around $300.

And this is a really neat and kind of bizarre form -factor for a computer

that I think makes a lot of sense, unless you're in a situation where it doesn't.

Because the idea here is basically, let's free up some desk space by not having an ugly

box sitting on top with a bunch of cables running all over the place, and instead move all of that into the wall, at least as much of it as we can.

Because, yeah, you were going to have cables running out of the front here for your display and your mouse and keyboard, any other USB devices, your headphone and microphone,

and maybe the power cable.

But ideally, you would have this thing powered by a PoE -injected Ethernet cable, which would be hidden in the wall, making it to where you didn't need to use this power port.

And this provides a couple of very notable advantages.

For one, it makes it basically impossible for the user to accidentally disconnect this from the network.

It also made it a lot harder for someone to steal, since it's not just a box you can grab and quickly walk away with.

And like I alluded to earlier, it does provide a much cleaner looking setup.

But that's where we get into the disadvantages, because with the way this thing is designed, you can't move it around very easily once it's installed.

And that might not be a big deal at all.

But if there was any question about having to relocate these things at some point down the road,

maybe if you were going to knock down a wall in an office to add more desks or relocate to another building, you were probably going to want to find something else to use.

It also makes installation a little bit more involving.

Now, from what I've read in the manual, it seems that ChipPC intended these units to replace existing Ethernet jacks already on the wall, which isn't very difficult to do at all.

But if you were installing these in a building that was older and not wired for Ethernet, yeah, you were going to have to cut a bunch of holes in the drywall, run a bunch of cable,

and just spend a lot more time than

if you were to run a single Ethernet jack and connect all the clients to it with a network switch.

Now, to be fair, you could totally mount these things on the top of computer desks, which basically gets around having to run a bunch of separate Ethernet cables in the wall.

But the point is, these things were really meant to be a permanent solution.

And regardless of what setup that you might have purchased this for, this is what you would have received.

And the Jack PC is comprised of three main parts.

There is the mounting hardware here on the back.

There is the wall plate.

And then the little cube here is the Jack PC itself.

There's also these little silicone covers that come off, and that's where these screw holes are to properly secure this thing.

Now, this wall plate is the standard size for what we use here in North America, but they also had this size available as well if you were over in Europe, for example.

So I feel like whatever region that you were buying this in would determine what size wall plate that you got.

But regardless, the Jack PC itself was exactly the same.

However, there is one piece that we're missing, unfortunately, and that is the termination block

that you connect to the back of the Jack PC here to terminate an Ethernet cable onto and, you know, get this thing wired into the network.

But in the words of Technology Connections, through the magic of having two of them,

I was able to acquire another Jack PC unit that came with the mounting hardware that had the termination block on it.

So this is it right here.

I've already terminated an Ethernet cable onto it, so we're all set to go.

And we will be using this power over ethernet injector to power it that way.

So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and get this one set up and we'll see what it can do.

All right, so here we are booting up the Jack PC.

And if you were wondering, this is what it looks like when you've got it installed in a piece of drywall.

I had just a scrap piece lying around that I used for this.

So yeah, obviously it looks very flush quite nice.

And I don't have this plugged into the network right now, so that's why it's coming up with this DHCP error.

So we're just going to click on continue to bypass it for now, because like I mentioned, I did kind of want to use this offline a little bit just to see, you know, what it comes installed with.

I've also got a flash drive here with the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows CE on it

that we're going to be checking out as well.

I thought that would be pretty cool.

But yeah, in terms of the operating system, this is just standard Windows CE.

It's version 4 .2 to be specific.

I did go into here to modify the display settings to lower this resolution

so everything would show up a little bit better.

And I saw that, yeah, it is 4 .20 professional.

And you see we have a bunch of configuration options in here for input, display, dual screen printers, USB printers.

We got networking stuff, authentication.

I mean, it goes on and on and on here.

In terms of applications, there's not really a whole lot of stuff, at least in the start menu.

You literally just have my connections, all the settings, networking stuff, which you just have the network manager in there, and then the shutdown options.

But we do have this icon on the desktop.

This is a saved remote desktop session that, of course, it's not going to be able to connect to.

But, you know, this had, like, the IP address and everything saved, so you could just double -click on that and log into the remote computer,

wherever that might be and remote desktop is just one of the like network connections

that that you could use with this thing to reach a remote computer

and this icon was probably here so

that you know the person would turn this on double click on this

and then you know get into the remote computer very very quickly

but yeah if we go into my connections manager here

and go to file new you see we've got these three

options here for the connection type we are going to use RDP

but we're gonna like I said we're gonna touch on this a little bit later on

because I do want to see What else we have on here, if there's really anything, I see there is an icon for the Windows CE media player on the desktop.

So we've got that.

And I do have some MP3s on here.

So why don't we plug in this drive and see if we can get some sound playback working.

The one thing that I'm not seeing, which I find kind of interesting, is Windows Explorer.

We don't have a file browser here.

And we can't right -click on the desktop to get to it.

There's no, like, my device on the desktop or, you know, whatever it was called in Windows CE

but of course we can just go in media player to file

and open and click on browse here

and we've got hard disk right here this is definitely the usb drive

so i guess we can you not get access to the like internal storage at all maybe it's hidden

or something and you have to like change that setting

100

but yeah all we've got in here is the usb drive

101

so i think um i've got bet on it uh this is the outro music that I use, so we can just double click on that.

102

Oh, can this play mp3 files?

103

It might not be able to.

104

Nope, it can't open it.

105

Please verify that the path and file name are correct and try again.

106

Okay.

107

Oh, well, I was able to open REST.

108

This is the time -lapse music that I use every so often in my videos.

109

But yeah, I mean, you can hear totally playing back audio just fine.

110

So we've got sound working.

111

That's great.

112

But yeah, I find that interesting about the file browser i want to see

113

if there's a way we can change the like settings to view

114

that do you think it'd be under desktop okay we have different desktop templates

115

so we can hide the icons

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that are already on the desktop we can hide my connections

117

network connections all connection shortcuts we can hide the ce media

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player icon we can map control insert to control delete in

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session set toggling key combination control all up down uh yeah nothing about like hidden files

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or anything we're just going to leave this on none taskbar

121

we can change auto hide settings okay we do want to show the system tray

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but all these other settings are just for hiding things

123

which we don't want to do and auto start options

124

so we could auto start my connections manager or network manager

125

but that's all we have in there so we will restart later

126

because I want to see if there's any other settings

127

that we can modify so that was everything under desktop right yeah We also have Excalibur settings in here.

128

This, I looked it up, is actually specific to ChipPC.

129

And it's if you wanted to connect this client to an Excalibur server farm.

130

And so you've got, you know, settings for that in here and everything.

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That's not something that we're going to be doing.

132

And then we're already in desktop.

133

We've got plugins.

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I wonder if in here...

135

Okay, so yeah, these are just like additional components that they have installed in here.

136

So we could like disable some of this stuff if we wanted to.

137

Customized system screens, yeah, they do change, like, the boot screen and all of that around.

138

So this is, I assume, how they're doing that.

139

And we don't have any licenses installed.

140

Well, I had to force restart the system because when I was browsing around in those menus, the whole thing just froze up.

141

But, yeah, that right there is the boot screen.

142

You can see it's not displayed for very long because this is a pretty quick boot -up process.

143

And then here we are at.. the network connection screen again, which we are of course just going to bypass.

144

While I was waiting for it to unfreeze, which it ultimately didn't do, I also set up the XP computer behind me to allow remote desktop connections.

145

So we will do that in a moment here.

146

But yeah, I find it interesting.

147

They have just like stripped out Windows Explorer from this thing, and we can't even get to like a run command.

148

I mean, Windows key R doesn't do anything.

149

We also can't right click

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and like make a shortcut on the desktop to open up windows explorer i wonder

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if we could modify one of these existing ones no i mean we could just open

152

or delete them

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but yeah i was browsing around in this device settings there's nothing about like re -enabling windows explorer

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so i guess the only file browser we have is literally uh just going in here

155

and clicking on open although i wonder there is this web thing okay we do have internet explorer

156

so can we do

157

no and it's not it's not c colon slash right i mean that's how

158

because we saw in ce media player here

159

when you go to open the root is just slash

160

and then you know hard disk

161

so can we do like slash hard disk well we're getting

162

the hourglass it's thinking we got the little animation over there

163

which you can't really see yeah no that just errors out so we have no way of accessing Windows Explorer.

164

That is rather funny.

165

So yeah, I guess we're not gonna be able to take a look at the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows CE, at least in this video.

166

So we'll save that for another time.

167

But let me go ahead and get this thing plugged into the network.

168

We'll see if we have to restart it and then we'll try

169

and log into the XP system back here over Remote Desktop.

170

So with that plugged in, we're gonna hop into the Connections Manager, make a new one.

171

This is gonna be a Remote Desktop client.

172

We'll just call this XP.

173

The computer is XP PC because I'm so creative.

174

And there is an option for automatic logon where you could just put in whatever username

175

and password you want to go with.

176

We're just going to leave that off for now.

177

And you also have the option to start a program when you connect to the remote computer.

178

So that's kind of neat.

179

We've got our display settings.

180

I think we'll pretty much leave all of these at the defaults.

181

But under performance, we are definitely going to change the connection speed from 56k to LAN.

182

We'll just leave all these settings at the defaults.

183

Remote computer sounds bring to this computer, definitely.

184

Apply Windows key combinations on the local computer, that makes sense.

185

Connect automatically to these local devices when logged onto the remote computer.

186

Yeah, we'll add local storage to that.

187

So there's our new connection.

188

The following local devices will be made available to the remote computer, so it's going to make the the flash drive on here available to the remote computer it's saying

189

that this could be unsafe of course we're just going to ignore it

190

and okay yeah specified remote computer could not be found i'm

191

thinking we probably need to restart um to make this whole thing work since we did just plug it in

192

so let's restart yeah i think it needs to go through this

193

because it has to assign an ip address and all

194

that through dhcp so now it's done that all right

195

so let's try that again we're gonna get

196

that same warning about the disk drive that's fine

197

and there we go

198

so i have made an account just for this purpose it's called remote with our super secure password

199

and yeah we are logging in so we got sound coming through

200

and of course it's going to go through all of the personalization settings for

201

when you first log into an account because this is a brand new account

202

that i've not used before

203

and yeah we've got the like name of the computer you know from remote desktop pinned up here

204

and the you know controls to minimize out of it and close it we're just going to unpin that

205

to kind of get it out of the way

206

but yeah i mean it's literally like i'm sitting in front

207

of the windows xp computer right now i mean i'm sure

208

you all know how remote desktop works this is nothing like super exciting

209

but this is how you were kind of meant to to use this setup

210

so that way you could have just one computer

211

that you know multiple clients would connect to and have different accounts on them and, you know, be able to use a full -fledged install of Windows.

212

This computer has made an appearance in several videos on this channel.

213

I used it in the Zune video.

214

We've got iTunes on here because I did the iTunes phone video with this computer as well.

215

I don't actually have...

216

I really don't have Half -Life installed on here.

217

What am I doing?

218

How have I not installed Half -Life on this computer?

219

I've got it installed on the 98 PC, but you know what?

220

It's an excuse to install Half -Life, so let's install Half -Life.

221

In fact, this gives us a good opportunity to try out something that we saw earlier, and that was that warning message we got saying that like,

222

hey, it's going to share this USB hard drive with the remote computer.

223

First of all, let's see if that's working.

224

We'll go into my computer, and yeah, there it is.

225

So this is the USB drive that I have plugged into the chip PC.

226

So, yeah, hard disk right here.

227

Or, well, this is just like the whole, you know, all of the computer's drives, I guess, is contained in this network share.

228

So, yeah, this is all of that.

229

I thought it would be cool to try and plug in this USB DVD drive and try and install Half -Life,

230

you know, locally here to try and kind of pretend that we don't have access to the remote computer, you know, if it's like in another building or something.

231

We don't want to go over there to install a piece of software on it.

232

So I'm going to plug this in and we'll see

233

if we can do this without needing to like restart the remote session.

234

All right, the drive came on.

235

That's good.

236

We'll eject it and let's put in our Half -Life CD and let's just refresh here.

237

Yeah, I'm hitting F5 here.

238

So it is refreshing, but we're not getting an additional folder

239

so let's maybe go back here try and go back into it now

240

so yeah we might have just to close the session

241

and see first of all let's see if uh

242

if the jack pc here is even recognizing this of course we can't go into a file browser to verify

243

that but we could go into media player

244

and get to it from here we are not all we

245

see is the hard disk really that's interesting let me try to unplug the USB drive.

246

You know, it's probably I don't have this plugged into a USB hub.

247

That's probably what it is.

248

I mean, the CD was spinning up, but let me just get a USB hub going.

249

All right, not looking good.

250

Let's just try to reconnect to the session again.

251

And let me make sure to go into properties here.

252

Let's add maybe serial ports and also don't warn me to connect local devices to the remote computer.

253

Nope.

254

We got nothing.

255

Well, it was worth a try.

256

Let's just go ahead and pop this disk into the other computer.

257

All right.

258

So here we are starting up Half -Life and yeah, we got a little bit of lag going on, don't we?

259

Which is kind of to be expected.

260

So the audio was coming through fine, though I didn't hear the audio from the Valve animation

261

but let's see here can we go into hazard course is it going to perpetually load

262

or will it actually come up with the game okay let's

263

try direct 3d 640 by 480 hit okay go back

264

and let's just hop into the hazard course again okay okay we're getting something of course it is quite laggy

265

and i don't hear any sound coming through the last thing we got is open gl

266

but i mean i really think this is just a network

267

thing I mean we are we're trying to play this game

268

over remote desktop like that's not an ideal setup at all

269

but let's just try OpenGL just for the heck of it we'll do 640 by 480 on

270

that as well selected OpenGL mode is not supported by your video card what a surprise now I am curious

271

because there was a setting in uh let's just close out of the of the connection here

272

if I can do

273

that uh can we can we get let's right click disconnect

274

there we go let's just disconnect uh from our session there

275

was in the properties here yeah under performance here we can allow bitmap caching

276

and compression let's do 320 by 240 you know make it as easy as possible for it

277

and just go to the hazard course oh yeah no we got audio here okay

278

so that's that's totally working but I mean yeah this is this is much better

279

but it is still quite laggy I mean you guys can't really tell

280

but there is a fair bit of a mouse delay here

281

I mean maybe you can tell from just me moving the

282

like point around also yeah we have the pointer like it's still just on screen

283

so yeah let me uh let me change this back to

284

640 by 480 I don't think those options actually did anything

285

yeah i mean this is this is about what we had before

286

so yeah you're not gonna have a fun dime bland half -life on this thing that's for sure

287

but i mean it's not like you were meant to to

288

play games over a remote desktop connection this was really meant

289

for you know productivity applications you could open up microsoft word

290

or excel or you know whatever corporate applications that you might have

291

and it would have worked totally fine for uh that purpose But yeah, there you have it, guys.

292

That is a little overview of the ChipPC, JackPC.

293

Very interesting computer.

294

They did make a newer version of this.

295

They had one that came with more modern I .O., so it had DisplayPort instead of DVI.

296

It had a USB -C port.

297

It had a USB -A 3 .0 port.

298

But when I looked on the ChipPC website, they don't have this thing in their current product catalog so it was discontinued at some point.

299

But regardless, it's definitely a neat thing to look back on, and I want to give a huge thank you again to Case for sending this out to me

300

and literally making this video possible.

301

And a huge thank you to all of you guys for watching.

302

If you enjoyed this episode, definitely be sure to give it a thumbs up.

303

Maybe get subscribed if you really enjoyed it and want to see more content like this in the future.

304

But either way, as always, I will see you in the next video.

305

We'll see you next time.

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación se basa en el vídeo “The Wall Outlet Computer”. Las palabras que más se repiten: computer, remote, desktop, windows, connection. Este vídeo tiene 305 frases y 4034 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 20:41. El hablante habla rápido, unas 195 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 85 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
remote adjetivo	/ɹəˈməʊt̞/	remoto
desktop sustantivo	/ˈdɛsktɒp/	escritorio, sobremesa
connect verbo	/kəˈnɛkt/	conectar, empalmar
plug sustantivo	/plʌɡ/	enchufe, clavija
disk sustantivo	/dɪsk/	disco
install verbo	/ɪnˈstɔl/	instalar
explorer sustantivo	/ɛkˈsplɔːɹə(ɹ)/	explorador, exploradora
restart verbo	/ˈɹiːˌstɑɹt/	reiniciar
icon sustantivo	/ˈaɪ.kɑn/	icono, ícono
audio adjetivo	/ˈɔ.di.oʊ/	de sonido, de audio
mount verbo	/maʊnt/	montar, cabalgar
boot sustantivo	/but/	bota
regardless adverbio	/ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/	pese a todo, a pesar de todo
desk sustantivo	/dɛsk/	escritorio, pupitre
hazard sustantivo	/ˈhæzəd/	escollo

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
go ahead verbo	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	venga, adelante
come up with verbo		ingeniar, ingeniarse
go through verbo		atravesar
check out verbo		investigar, chequear
go over verbo		sentar, pasar
knock down verbo		derribar
send out verbo		emitir
show up verbo		comparecer, personarse

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:

We don't have a file browser here.
That's not something that we're going to be doing.
We're just going to leave that off for now.
We've got our display settings.
We'll just leave all these settings at the defaults.

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	were really meant · would be hidden · is designed
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	you've probably guessed · I've read · I've already terminated

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 101 contracciones y formas reducidas, como we're, don't, we'll. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: thin /ˈθɪn/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: flash /flæʃ/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, termination /tɚmɪˈneɪʃən/, refresh /ɹɪˈfɹɛʃ/, installation /ˌɪn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: automobile /ˈɔː.tə.məˌbil/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, termination /tɚmɪˈneɪʃən/, automatic /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: steal /stiːl/, spin /spɪn/, strip /ˈstɹɪp/, scrap /ˈskɹæp/, specify /ˈspɛs.əˌfaɪ/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: server /ˈsɝvɚ/, verify /ˈvɛɹɪfaɪ/, involve /ɪnˈvɑlv/, wherever /(h)wɛɹˈɛvɚ/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: browser /ˈbɹaʊ.zəɹ/, hazard /ˈhæzəd/, browse /bɹaʊz/, freeze /ˈfɹiːz/, bizarre /bɪˈzɑː(ɹ)/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como remote, desktop, connect.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

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