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

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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

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

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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.

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Oh, can this play mp3 files?

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It might not be able to.

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Nope, it can't open it.

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

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Okay.

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Oh, well, I was able to open REST.

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

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

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So we've got sound working.

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That's great.

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

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

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

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so we can hide the icons

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that are already on the desktop we can hide my connections

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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

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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

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

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so we could auto start my connections manager or network manager

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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And then we're already in desktop.

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We've got plugins.

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I wonder if in here...

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

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

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

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

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And we don't have any licenses installed.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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So we will do that in a moment here.

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But yeah, I find it interesting.

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

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

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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

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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

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

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so can we do

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

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because we saw in ce media player here

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when you go to open the root is just slash

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and then you know hard disk

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

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

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

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That is rather funny.

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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.

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So we'll save that for another time.

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

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

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

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

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This is gonna be a Remote Desktop client.

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We'll just call this XP.

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

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

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and password you want to go with.

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

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

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So that's kind of neat.

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We've got our display settings.

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

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

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

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Remote computer sounds bring to this computer, definitely.

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

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

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Yeah, we'll add local storage to that.

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So there's our new connection.

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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

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

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

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

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

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because it has to assign an ip address and all

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

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

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that same warning about the disk drive that's fine

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and there we go

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

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

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

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

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that i've not used before

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

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

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to kind of get it out of the way

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

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

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

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

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so that way you could have just one computer

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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.

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

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I used it in the Zune video.

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

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I don't actually have...

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

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What am I doing?

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

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

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

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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,

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

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

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

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

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So, yeah, hard disk right here.

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

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So, yeah, this is all of that.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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All right, the drive came on.

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That's good.

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

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Yeah, I'm hitting F5 here.

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

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

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so yeah we might have just to close the session

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and see first of all let's see if uh

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

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that but we could go into media player

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and get to it from here we are not all we

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

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

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That's probably what it is.

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

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All right, not looking good.

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

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And let me make sure to go into properties here.

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

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Nope.

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We got nothing.

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Well, it was worth a try.

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

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All right.

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

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Which is kind of to be expected.

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

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

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

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try direct 3d 640 by 480 hit okay go back

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

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

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but i mean i really think this is just a network

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

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

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

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

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

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if I can do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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but there is a fair bit of a mouse delay here

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I mean maybe you can tell from just me moving the

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

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so yeah let me uh let me change this back to

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

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

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

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

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play games over a remote desktop connection this was really meant

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for you know productivity applications you could open up microsoft word

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

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

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That is a little overview of the ChipPC, JackPC.

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Very interesting computer.

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They did make a newer version of this.

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

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It had a USB -C port.

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It had a USB -A 3 .0 port.

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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.

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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

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and literally making this video possible.

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

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

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

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

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We'll see you next time.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “The Wall Outlet Computer”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: computer, remote, desktop, windows, connection. This video has 305 sentences and 4034 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:41. The speaker talks fast, about 195 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
remote adjective	/ɹəˈməʊt̞/	At a distance; disconnected.
desktop noun	/ˈdɛsktɒp/	The top surface of a desk.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
installed verb	/ɪnˈstɔːld/	readied for use
plug noun	/plʌɡ/	A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
disk noun	/dɪsk/	A thin, flat, circular plate or similar object.
install verb	/ɪnˈstɔl/	To connect, set up or prepare something for use
explorer noun	/ɛkˈsplɔːɹə(ɹ)/	One who explores something
restart verb	/ˈɹiːˌstɑɹt/	To start again.
icon noun	/ˈaɪ.kɑn/	An image, symbol, picture, portrait, or other representation, usually as an object of religious devotion.
audio adjective	/ˈɔ.di.oʊ/	Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight.
mount verb	/maʊnt/	To get upon; to ascend; to climb.
boot noun	/but/	A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg.
browser noun	/ˈbɹaʊ.zəɹ/	One who or which browses.
regardless adverb	/ɹɪˈɡɑɹd.lɪs/	Without attention to warnings or indications of bad consequences.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come through verb		To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway.
go ahead verb	/ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/	To proceed with; to begin.
come up with verb		To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
open up verb		To open.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

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.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were really meant · would be hidden · is designed
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've probably guessed · I've read · I've already terminated

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 101 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, don't, we'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thin /ˈθɪn/, thumb /ˈθʌm/, authentication /ɔːˌθɛntɪˈkeɪʃn̩/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: flash /flæʃ/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, termination /tɚmɪˈneɪʃən/, refresh /ɹɪˈfɹɛʃ/, installation /ˌɪn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: automobile /ˈɔː.tə.məˌbil/, animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, termination /tɚmɪˈneɪʃən/, automatic /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like remote, desktop, connect.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?