Newbie who would appreciate any help I can get

[kjbalto]

I've been reading this forum for awhile, enjoying everybody's great ideas and learning as much as I can.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of questions, and I hope some of you guys can help me out.  My work with wood is not good, so I went and bought the mameroom jukebox.  I got one of the 15" touchscreen monitors off ebay and I'm working on putting it all together.  I like the way the Virtual Music Jukebox looks. However, I'm having some problems with it. I made sure my album covers are listed as folder.jpg inside the albums, but the jukebox software doesn't want to pickup a lot of the covers. Sometimes it even grabs the wrong ones. What am I doing wrong?  Also, when playing the songs, every 30 seconds or so, the song skips.  It never plays smoothly.  I'm using a Dell P3 laptop I have with I believe 512mb memory, at least. I'll have to double check.  My other question is that I wanted to get speakers to fit in the bottom of the jukebox. I'm guessing 6" speakers or something. How do I connect them to my laptop, and do I need to get an amp? Sorry if I'm asking obvious questions. I'm totally clueless on this project and I'm excited to hear the answers you guys give me.  Thanks in advance.

[Space Fractal]

I think you should use thier forum for any problems with VMJ. Many users here at BOYAC have swithed to example SK-Jukebox or such, due with support problems under v7 for some years ago. I dosent know about performnemt today, since I dosent use it (I have my own software).

For the speakes, I let other to answear for that one.

[kjbalto]

Thanks for your reply.  Can anybody else comment on the speakers?

[AussieJuke]

You could get a pair of 6.5" 2-way car speakers. Should sound ok. The laptop won't drive them very loud by itself so you'll need one of those little 12V stereo amplifier modules that are used in arcade machines. Cheap as chips too.

[kjbalto]

Do you mean something like this? Or can you send me a link to something better? I appreciate your help.
http://cgi.ebay.com/12v-Stereo-Audio-Amplifier-Amp-MP3-car-bike-BLUE_W0QQitemZ380019604846QQihZ025QQcategoryZ3280QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[AussieJuke]

That would do although it's probably way more power than you need. You'll also need a good power supply for it. If you have the room, use a cheap hi-fi amplifier.