Re Midland 300 streaming: Yes, WIN 7 ok. I use a tower, not a laptop, however, but have run it on laptop experimentally with no particular problems. Here's some experience and assumptions I've picked up over the last 4 years:
Quality: #1 secret is good static-free reception.
#1a is the
change the mono output to 2 channels.... getcha self appropriate Y-cable adapters (
eg: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=y-splitter+cable ) and split the mono to stereo channels.
This seems to work better than setting edcast to mono.
Now you can leave edcast at MP3/16kbs/22050hz/Stereo.
Edcast Source should be 'line in' not mic/stereo mix or 'speaker. (even though you may have plugged into something labeled 'mic/line'). Make sure you
turn off any other Edcast encoders other than the one.
My volume out of M300 is about 30%, edcast Master Volume about 75%, watch peak meter, going to 0dB
Check
Laptop power settings make sure stuff isn't set to power down, or standby, or go low power, battery save, whatever.
Edcast probably is not what's crashing pc. It may be memory, cpu heat, some other process... . Try setting it to run as administrator????
You can also try this:
If you're using Win7, stick a flash drive in a usb port, ( I happened to have 2GB handy) and set it for
"Rapid Boost"... (unloads the hard drive a bit, etc, speeds some processes up.)
Cheers
Mike