deviants 2 : 4 Rangers

Is Super Ally having a laugh at wee chesney? Surely not.

Match Report.

Category:

• Sport
• Football

Logitech VX Nano

Or to give it it's full title a Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks, catchy eh? Anyway, it's another gorgeous little mouse from Logitech which I've just purchased for my Inspiron 1720 laptop.

I have really bad RSI in my right hand at the moment which flared up a few weeks ago after a marathon session of Quadrapop on my mobile phone (achieved a record score so it was (nearly) worth the continuing pain). As a result I've been alternating mouse hands to give it time to repair itself.

Luckily I've no real problems with using a mouse in my left hand but the length of cable belonging to my previous Logitech Mouse for Notebooks meant that ideally I needed to switch USB ports depending on which side I placed the mouse. Obviously the best solution was to look for a wireless model which would free up any problems with cables. Another requirement was for the mouse to be comfortable when used in either hand (i.e. as symmetrical as possible).

The biggest problem with a wireless mouse on a laptop is the size of the Bluetooth or RF receiver (my laptop doesn't have a Bluetooth receiver installed within). I don't want a massive USB dongle hanging off the side of the machine which is easily knocked and therefore damaged. Enter Logitech's "Nano" receiver claiming to be the smallest USB RF receiver available. Allied with my long term preference for Logitech's peripherals I took the plunge and bought one from Amazon.
In the image above you can see how small the "Nano" RF receiver actually is, safely installed in the rear left USB port of my Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop. I chose this port as it is recessed within the case of the laptop meaning nothing poking out which can be easily broken off. For me it's a plug and forget device as I'll not need to remove it when putting the laptop in my bag etc, result.

If you want to use the mouse with a desktop machine there is a USB extender device included for the Nano receiver to ensure perfect signal reception. A nice touch as I know a number of people who prefer a smaller mouse even on a desktop computer. If you do remove the receiver it can be safely stored within the battery compartment of the mouse to prevent loss (it is very small).

The mouse itself is powered by 2xAAA batteries (good quality Duracell's included in the box). Other people report excellent battery usage but as I've only had the mouse a few days I can't really comment. The batteries add a nice feeling of "weight" to the mouse which personally I prefer as it provides a better level of feedback in the hand, not to say it's heavy, just right in my opinion.

To complete the quality package you get a little soft case to keep the mouse nice and safe when rattling around your laptop bag. While my laptop bag has plenty of little compartments for such peripherals it really adds to the feeling of quality of the mouse. I do wonder how much savings could have been made by leaving out the case, USB extender, Duracells and the over the top boxed packaging (which was more suited to some over priced tat from Apple rather than a peripheral for a laptop). But, it does make for a very nice feeling of quality.

In use the mouse is typical of what you expect from Logitech, excellent. The mouse feels perfectly comfortable in either hand (it is symmetrical which is hard to tell in all of the photos I've seen). As usual there are few extra buttons to play with and are fully programmable for your own preferences. I'm not really a big user of such buttons but they are there if you want them. The scroll wheel is fantastic and depending on the speed of the scroll you can whizz through very lengthy documents with the most precision I've ever had from a mouse, very, very nice indeed. The only downside (there's always one) is the scroll wheel is not clickable as a third mouse button. For me this is a big deal as nearly all 3D software such as Blender, SketchUp, ProE, Solidworks etc all make heavy use of the middle mouse button. Never fear though as you can program the extra buttons to add this functionality but it's odd that the wheel isn't clickable (must be to do with the technology behind the frictionless scrolling wheel) but if you use a lot of 3D software (as I do) it needs to be noted. Having said that I tend to use my Spaceball (due to RSI) for all 3D work now as the aforementioned 3D software pacakges all support it.

So there you have it, another gorgeous mouse from Logitech and a thumbs up from me. The biggest plus point is the diminutive size of the Nano receiver and the same feel for left/right hand use, perfect.

Category:

• Logitech
• Mouse

Still Game

Hey, long time no see. I think I've identified the reason for the recent lack of posts (interesting or not) as... Twitter. The urge to blog has been dampened by having the ability to fire off a 140 character snippet and see it published instantly. As near to zero effort as it is possible to get (a target that is close to my heart, zero effort, yeah). Strangely Twitter has been relatively robust since my recent rant about it which only served to underline how useful it can be (when working).

Anyhoo, my adsense earnings have fallen off a cliff and the only person who ever comments on my posts is David (big wave) so I need to do something about that. Now don't get me wrong I don't maintain this blog to earn cash or get comments but it's a good indication as to how many people find the posts on this blog of any use. Looking at the logs the same handful of posts keep coming up as popular and are almost certainly the source of any adsense revenue. Unfortunately they were all made at best months ago (electricity) or years ago (DVB Tuner).

So I need to find the will to put something interesting up or just mothball the blog until the "muse" returns.

Category:

• Personal

Gmail Outage

I twittered about this last night but kept relatively calm. It never crossed my mind that I might never see my mail again, I just sort of trust Google with it. Gmail is THE e-mail application, I use nothing else anymore. The fact it's free and "just" works is accepted, totally.

Glad to see I'm not alone and that Google have held their hands up, described the problem and reiterated they know how important this application is. Still, I hope these rare outages don't become the norm or I may have to look for something else (which will be by Gmail's standard, second best).

PS, The twitching of my arse has now stopped, thought you'd like to know.

Category:

• Google
• Gmail