It'll Never Fly

If you’ve been following this blog for several years (may God have mercy on your soul), then you’re aware of my ongoing mission to find the perfect mouse. I’m beginning to think this quest is an impossible task.

If you remember, my last two attempts were a couple of Microsoft mice, with the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000 (what a mouth full) being the weak winner, whose only negative I could find was the loosely scrolling scroll-wheel.

I was out shopping a month or two ago at London Drugs, and picked up a Logitech LX8 Cordless Laser Mouse. I’ve been using it steadily since then, giving it a pretty good work out, playing WoW for a few hours each night and making full use of every feature of the mouse.

First, it’s got the ambidextrous design that I prefer, with comfortable padding that fits my grip perfectly (i.e. no unnecessary lips of plastic you find on the form-fitted, non-ambidextrous mice).

It’s not designed as a notebook mouse, so it’s about 2cm longer than the perfectly-sized MS7000, but it’s size is still within the bounds of reason.

Both the MS7000 and the LX8 use a USB dongle for a proprietary wireless connection, but with my history of Bluetooth mice, I’ve found Bluetooth to not really live up to its promise, and have come to the conclusion that these proprietary dongles work far better.

Unfortunately, like the MS7000, it doesn’t have built-in recharging of any kind. It takes 2 AA’s to the MS7000’s 1 AA, so it’s a little heavier than MS7000 with that extra battery in there, but I suppose that means it probably lasts twice as long between battery replacements.

Whereas the MS7000 uses it’s dongle to snap to the underside of the mouse to accomplish two tasks (shuts off power, and great for travel), the LX8’s dongle has no ability to snap onto the mouse unit. This would’ve been a great feature, even though the LX8 is technically not a notebook mouse (where this snap-on feature predominantly lies), as I’m sure they could’ve added it to the design if they wanted to given the (really tiny) size of the dongle and the larger size of the mouse itself.

However, having said that, the LX8 does have a button underneath, which you press for a full second or so to turn on and off. To save on battery life, I prefer to manually shut off the power of my wireless mice (when docking to a charging base station isn’t an option, of course), and having used the MS7000 for a few months, always plugging and unplugging that dongle was starting to become a bit of a nuisance (remember I’m using this mouse for my desktop, and not a laptop). Thus, I actually like how the LX8 works instead, as I can leave the dongle in 24/7.

My MS7000 has buttons on either side of the mouse, which I became to rely for my WoW keybindings. The LX8 also has buttons on the side, and because of where I grip my mice (between thumb and ring finger at the bottom of the mouse) they’re actually placed perfectly where I can hit them easily, but not accidentally.

The scroll wheel on the LX8 has all the same features as the MS7000, and by that I mean it also has left and right pressing, which is also great for playing WoW. What’s better about the LX8 scroll wheel, though, is that there’s more resistance to any of its movements, so no more accidental clicks or scrolls that happened all the time with the MS7000. For me, this is the best part about the LX8 (and Logitech’s scroll wheels in general).

Lastly, a bit about the software. Ever since the Logitech Control Center (LCC) debacle of Late 2007, I’ve been wary of installing any of Logitech’s drivers of any kind, as they used to piggy-back on something called APE, which was incompatible with Mac OS X Leopard when it first came out, causing a lot of Leopard users to suddenly not be able to start up their Macs after upgrading if they had Logitech mice with the default install (Whoops!). It sounds like Logitech no longer uses APE for its LCC, but I still didn’t bothering installing it. Instead, and for many years now, I use a third-party driver/utility called USB Overdrive which works great and allows you to remap buttons, all without the need to install features that manufacturers don’t understand why we don’t love them. Other options are SteerMouse and ControllerMate, which I haven’t tried, but are still worth mentioning. Of course, if you don’t care about the extra buttons, and just want the left-click, right-click, and scroll wheel (why did you buy it then?), you don’t have to install any drivers, as the built-in OS X mouse driver works just fine (even though Apple doesn’t provide two-button mice themselves) as long as the mouse adheres to published HCI standards (which was probably more of an issue back in the late 90s when USB support was still very much the Wild West).

I’m beginning to think I should buy a few of these just to hoard them in case they ever start to break down (yes, I like the LX8 that much). But out of all the mice I’ve used over the last 25 years, I’ve only had one go bad on me that I can remember, so I don’t think it’s really necessary.

This isn’t going to be a very coherent review. It’s just a few notes I’ve jotted down at different times as I used them.

Microsoft Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000
vs.
Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000

Mobile Memory Mouse
+ Rechargeable (uses a “mag-safe-like” connector between usb dongle and mouse which is removable), so frees a power plug as well
+ Tracking seems a tad better (but could easily be psychological)
+ Mouse wheel button requires little effort to push down
+ Can use included usb dongle, or use bluetooth mode (switch underneath)
- Dongle too fat to plug into side of newer thin Mac keyboards (which kinda defeats the purpose)
- Dongle also doesn’t snap into the base of the mouse when travelling
- I guess because it’s rechargeable so no need to be as concerned about forgetting to turn it off (it has an on/off switch underneath)
- This could be why a little neoprene zippered pouch is included with the mouse… for carrying the stuff around
- Also maybe by design. I doubt the keyboard’s usb ports have enough juice to charge the mouse even if the dongle did fit
- Charge cable feels cheap, like it could break after continued use + switch on bottom of mouse for switching back/forth to bluetooth from proprietary signal
- Just a little bit too small

Notebook Laser 7000
+ Dongle fits into side of mac keyboard
+ Dongle snaps underneath the mouse; dual function:
+ Turns mouse off (remember, not rechargeable)
+ Compact, all-in-one for travel
+ Mouse wheel scrolls silently
- Not rechargable
- Tracking seems slightly worse (again, could be psychological)
- Need the strength of samson to press down middle mouse button
- (Actually it’s not too bad if I press further back, instead of right on top pressing directly down)
- Mouse wheel scrolls too freely (often inadvertently scrolls when I try to push it down)

I’m using, and have been using for several months now, the 7000. The size is perfect, but the “loose” scroll wheel is the only detractor, which is a big deal for me. Thus, I’m still searching…

It was a sad day in Maguire history today. I finally put my Daeowoo 9000N DVD player out to pasture, and by that I mean “took it to the dump.” Had a lot of great memories with that DVD player. I applied a firmware to it that would let me play any region DVD that I wanted (so I could play my DVDs from other parts of the world of content that would never see the light of day here), and also disabled the macrovision (which never really mattered, as I only ever had it hooked up to my TV anyway) and UOPs (which let me skip those ads that some DVDs normally force you to watch. Bad DVDs, bad, naughty naughty…).

But I think I just wore out the poor thing. Mom and I both bought the exact same player, at the exact same time, at the exact same place, and hers still works great, but has never been used to the extent that mine has. Plus hers is situated in a basement which is a cooler environment all year round, while mine is above ground in a cramped bedroom that is always several degrees warmer than anywhere else.

The symptoms it first exhibited were longer load times, stuttered playback, and all round a generally noisier box than normal. At first I was able to workaround it by sometimes tilting the box slightly in one direction or another, but then I had to move it out of my cabinet altogether (thinking it might not be getting proper airflow and overheating), to me finally having to remove the outer case. Then lastly, a couple of days ago I went to go play a move after having not used the player for a few days, and it just wouldn’t play. It would keep spinning up and spinning up, desperately trying to read the disc, making all kinds of racket in the process, always worrying me that it was scratching my discs.

Finally, I got fed up and starting scouring the Web for a decent player from a reputable company that I could buy in town at a decent price and make region free. The one I ended up getting was a Philips DVP5960 from *ewwww* The Source. I don’t know what it is about RadioShack/TheSource and easily hackable DVD players, but that’s also where I bought my Daewoo oh so many years ago.

So far it does everything I could want it to do. The upscaling only works through HDMI, which I have on my TV, but don’t have a cable for (but that wasn’t really a driving factor for me anyway). It also has a USB port (apparently only USB 1) for playing video files of an external drive, but I don’t know if I’ll ever even use that.

As I mentioned last time, the fan on my ATI X800 XT is wearing out, causing all kinds of lovely “derka derka” noises in my otherwise quiet G5. Thank the gods for my MacBook, which has allowed me to keep the times I power up the G5 to a minimum until I can get a suitable replacement fan. As I also mentioned, I ordered a Zalman replacement fan, a VF900-Cu to be exact, which came a few days after my initial post. I went through the whole rigmarole of pulling out the X800 card, swearing upon dropping the screw in the case, disassembling the old fan, cleaning the old goop off, attaching the fancy new thermal heatsinks, applying the new grease, and attaching the new fan, only to find that the handy dandy thumb screws Zalman provides on the underside of the card to tighten everything together, stick out like sore thumbs (pun intended… this is where you laugh), and because of Apple’s custom engineering and intent to waste no space, there’s no room to fit the card back in the only provided AGP slot *and* have those thumb screws on there keeping everything in place (and have the proper power provided, because Apple engineered those out of sight, too), so now I’m back to my jalopy fan (now catch your breath and marvel at how long that sentence was).

So I packed the Zalman back up, and because I’m the wuss I am, have made no attempt to return it back. Who knows? Maybe it’ll come in handy in the years to come. And that’s where things have been for the last few weeks. I’ve just been living off my MacBook, without any of my iTunes being available nor being able to play any video games.

That is, until about an hour ago. After searching high and low, looking for someplace that’ll ship an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 to Canada (or within Canada), finding mostly shitty mom and pop online stores that couldn’t ship themselves out of a paper bag, made even harder by the fact that it seems to be discontinued, I ended turning to eBay. To some of you that might have seemed to be an obvious next step, but I have a strange dislike for eBay, thinking of it more as an exhausting all my other options, snakes on a plane, last resort kind of thing.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, in spite of all the countless fake eBay spam messages I’ve received over the years, my account was still alive and well, patiently awaiting the one day when I would once again return to buy Battle Beasts, Lego®, and D&D™ action figures. To put things in perspective, my current profile rating is a 12, collected during a flurry of activity between April 25th and July 17th, 1999. Yes, 1999. This is pre-Y2K stuff here, people.

But, alas, this evening’s visit was unfortunately not to purchase any assortment of molded plastic chunks of tomfoolery, but to find a replacement fan for my graphics card. And find one I did… in the UK.

We’ll see what happens *this* time.

Oh, and the Kensington mouse is working well. Haven’t really had a whole lot of time to use it, though, seeing as it’s to be used with my G5.