Hi. I'm Richard. Love my music, play guitar....and I also write the odd ciao review!
Hi. I'm Richard. Love my music, play guitar....and I also write the odd ciao review!
Member since:15.05.2003
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The Infocus Lite Pro 425 is a LCD projector designed to displaycomputer images onto a screen or wall. Its compact size shows that it has been built with portability in mind.
This projector was purchased about 3 years ago by the company I work for. The projector cost about £1400 and at the time and it was a pretty high specification machine.
The projector can display a maximum computer resolution of 800x600 and this is in 24bit colour. Although this is still acceptable, the resolution is perhaps a little low by today’s standards.
For those who are unsure of what an LCD projector does, here’s a brief explanation of what we use it for. The LCD projector is designed to be used with a laptop or desktop computer and is best
used to display images onto a white screen. If you are familiar with overhead projectors, (like the ones most of us remember from those boring school and college lectures), then the LCD projector is really just an update of this sort of machine. It mainly gets used in my office for displaying presentations put together in Microsoft PowerPoint.
In Use The LP425 projector is provided with a padded bag that the machine sits snugly in. When removed from the bag the projector needs to be set up at desk height in order to be in the best place to project the computer image. In the pocket of the padded bag are a power lead, connection leads and a remote control unit.
There are two main leads used to connect the projector to the computer. The first lead is quite chunky and substantial and this plugs into the monitor output of the computer at one end, and then into the socket at the back of the projector at its other end. Another lead is supplied for connecting from the sound card output into the projector and this allows computer sounds to be played through the projector’s built in speaker.
Once the power lead has been plugged into the projector, it’s time to turn the LP425 on. The bulb in the projector takes a couple of minutes to warm itself up, and once this is done the LP425 starts to configure the image that is being sent from the computer. Once this image is on screen you can use the focus wheel that surrounds the bulb to set the size and focus of the image on the screen.
On the bottom of the projector an adjustable foot is located, and this allows the height of the projector to be set. This is handy for moving the projected image further up the screen if the desk it is sitting on is a little low.
The remote control unit gives options to adjust the picture settings, including brightness, contrast and sharpness of the image. The remote control also has two buttons that will control the mouse functions of the computer. This is handy for when working with PowerPoint presentations as you can use the remote control to move slides forward, rather than having to stand next to the computer at all times. A word of warning with the remote control, it is rather flimsy! Ours has now conked out after being dropped by a careless member of staff! I do wish that they would build these units a bit more substantially as they must realise that a remote control will take some punishment in the line of duty!
Once you have set the LP425 up and used it a few times then operation can be considered quite straightforward. The projector will do most of the hard work for you, so it is really just a case of knowing which leads plug in where!
Having used this unit for over 3 years now I can certainly say that it has proved to be very reliable. I have encountered no faults with the operation of this unit so far. In fact the only major thing that can go wrong with these projectors is a fault with the bulb, or when the bulb finally runs out of life. These bulbs are usually good for at least five years and ours has been used fairly sparingly, so I expect it to last for a little while yet.
One problem that we are starting to encounter with this projector is that people are coming into the office with laptops set to resolutions of over 800x600, and are finding the projector image to be very blocky. This is because the projector is unable to support high resolutions and this is perhaps a case of the unit starting to show its age. Most laptops are now being fitted with quite decent graphics cards so this problem is not going to go away. The only way around it is to set the laptop down to 800x600 and then the picture quality is fine because the projector can support this resolution.
Conclusion This projector has proved to be a useful and reliable addition to our IT equipment! It has performed its function for the last 3 years without any problems and the only thing to have gone wrong is the remote control refusing to work after being dropped.
This LP425 projector has now been replaced by more modern Infocus versions that can support higher computer resolutions and are of a more compact size. At one point we will probably upgrade to one of these newer units, but I can’t see this being for a while yet as this projector is still going strong. I would recommend the Infocus brand of projectors as they seem to provide reliable projector equipment at competitive prices.
Thanks for reading!
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