I behave with respect when I’m in a room with other people, in a train or on the street. This means that I have my mobile phone set to vibrate only, that I won’t answer it in crowded places, that I won’t use it to listen to music loudly (and without earbuds) and that I turn down the volume of my computer.
I remember that I once forgot to set my phone to vibrate only and that I felt totally embarrassed when I received a call in public. Others do not seem to share the same reservations that I do though. A recent trend is youngsters walking around with what I call the poor man’s car radio; A mobile phone playing loud music on the street.
You can use software on a computer to automatically adjust the volume. Volume Concierge is such a program. It can be used to schedule volume changes on a Windows system.
You could use it to automatically lower the volume to 20% in the evening which is nice if you have kids that go to bed early. Another option is to turn off the volume after the workday and turn it on again in the morning.
The program uses so called volume rules that the user can define. Each rule consists of a day (or all days or weekends), a starting time and a volume level.
You can add as many rules as you want and turn them on or off manually. The program can only be minimized into the Windows system tray. Despite having an option to schedule sound volume changes on the system it does not use the built-in Windows Task Scheduler to run those tasks. This is one of the shortcomings of the program. It would have been better if the program would only need to run on volume changing tasks.
Volume Concierge adds itself to the startup of the operating system. This can be disabled with a right-click on the system tray icon or other autostart editing applications. Removing the tool from autostart however removes all of its functionality from the system unless it is manually started by the user.
The program is free to use but asks you to register it on first run with an email address.
Windows users who want to try Volume Concierge can download the program from the official website.
Alternatives that I have covered before are Auto Mute which can be configured to automatically mute the operating system’s volume and the new Windows 7 volume control options.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: control volume, sound, volume, windows software
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