Tag: Logitech

Why is buying a mouse so goddamn hard?

For awhile now I’ve been using a Logitech G9 mouse which has more or less been a bad experience. It is not comfortable to hold, the two “shells” that they have given me have both become worn and the plastic coating over them has been peeling, and all in all it has been a miserable waste of $100 for this “gaming” mouse.

I’ve written before about how much I dislike this product (although in all fairness I did have to retract my statement about the mouse wheel). As I travel a lot, I decided to try to get more wireless as I hate having wires running all over my desk. I recently purchased the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 which has both a wireless version of the keyboard I already use as well as a mouse. Luckily I managed to get it for half the cost on eBay.

The problem is the mouse is horrible. It makes you hold your hand in a weird sideways position. With a regular mouse, your hand sits on top. With this mouse, it is kind of on top and kind of on the side. Imagine grabbing a bottle of water. Your hand is twisted so that you grab the bottle when it is upright. This is more or less you have to move the mouse. So, if you slide the water bottle around on a table and like how that feels, then more power to you. Controlling a mouse with precision is nearly impossible to do this way when you have used the other variety for 20 years. More importantly though, it just isn’t comfortable. It forced my pinky to slide on my desk every time I moved my mouse.

So, last night I went to Staples to pick up the Logitech Performance MX mouse. I’m giving Logitech a final try as this mouse is the most comfortable for my hands, it has all the buttons and features I need, it is wireless and can be recharged by simply plugging in a cord (great idea to plug in overnight, or if you forgot, you can still use the mouse but just have to deal with the cord while it charges), and I couldn’t find anything from Microsoft or any other company that matches it. Plus, it has gotten some great reviews from some power users so far, so I figured it was worth a shot as Logitech products had not failed me up until recently.

Today I come into the office and begin to install all the software, plug the mouse in to begin charging, and try to set it up. I plug the receiving into my computer, it recognizes the device, and I start to move the mouse.

And the mouse doesn’t move on the screen.

The red “I’m out of power” light continues to blink even though I have it plugged in. I tried both the AC adapter as well as charging right from the USB in my computer. At this point, I go to turn the mouse over to try to see if the battery is not placed inside correctly, and I hear a rattle.

Fuck.

So now I get to go back to my apartment, gather the box and everything, head back to Staples, and have them exchange it before I can even try this mouse. In the meantime, I am once again stuck with the G9. It seems like I keep getting my hopes up that I can get away from this thing only to have them dashed every time. I would just be done with this mouse totally, but it is too nice to use (I have just rolled it around the table a bit to get a feel for it, and I loved it) to be done with it before I even get to really try it when I work or play games. It could simply be a fluke too, although this once again is another notch against Logitech in the durability department.

Besides, it’s kind of comical that I could go buy a $10 piece of crap mouse with 2 buttons and a scroll wheel, and it will last me a year, but I keep buying $100 mice that break and wear out within days (or, in this case, day) or months.

A retraction and more

A month ago I ripped into Logitech because of a few reasons, one being that I thought my mousewheel was broken. Turns out I hit the button on the bottom that takes away the resistance so you can do ‘infinite’ scrolling. This was useful once for one blog I read, where the comments section has 25 comments at a time and only “Next” and “Previous” on the bottom of the pages to navigate. Luckily, once I hit the second page, if I just type ’99′ in the URL where it has the page number, it jumps to the last page with comments, and thus I reverted my mouse back. This however does not change the cord still being frayed after I had to cut the fabric loose when it was kinking up the cord, and also the clear plastic grip that is over the mouse is still peeling away like someone who has had sunburn for a few days. It doesn’t change my opinion of this crappy mouse, but I’m at least not fully done with Logitech devices now I guess.

So lately I have been doing a whole lot of nothing. I purchased Guitar Hero World Tour last weekend with the full band kit and have been going through that on drums now. During the week I had to leave it here as my wife’s nieces are visiting from New Jersey for a month and they wanted to play, though I may bring that to play a night or two this week. I also brought Fable II which did not impress me for the first hour or so that I played, though I haven’t had much time to play since again I didn’t have the 360 with me during the week.

I have reached obsession level listening to “MUSE” lately. I don’t think I’ve played anything besides their songs for over a month, and heavy rotation for at least 3 now. I’m like a giddy 14-year-old Jonas Brothers fan waiting in anticipation of their new CD coming out in September. They are opening for U2 in October here in Houston, I’m considering going just to watch them play an hour and leave.

I have been trying to read more lately. Currently in the middle of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. After getting through only about 5 chapters, it already has made me think about commercials in a new way.

A few quick comments about current events:

• Obama’s remarks about Officer Crowley “acting stupidly” were completely out line, especially when he “didn’t have all the facts.” Officer Crowley was completely in the right. Gates was trying to act tough to “the man” and got burned. He is lucky he wasn’t charged with a few more crimes for not giving his ID over at first as well as resisting arrest, according to the police report.
• Obama’s health care reform is a joke. We need a single payment system completely run by the government and nothing less. Health care should not be profitable for rich investors in insurance companies. These are peoples’ lives, not to mention that our system is inefficient, wasteful, costs people more money, they are not diagnosed as fast, and people wind up paying more in the end compared to other countries with real state-run health care systems like Canada and England. This is a no-brainer, Americans are too greedy if they are rich and stupid if they are poor to keep more of our necessary industries out of government control. Quite honestly, we let the idea of capitalism run too far, and at this point I support Obama’s “socialist” ideas simply because America has proven it is too stupid to run itself without the government having a great amount of control.
• Get upset that I’m OK with a lot of the socialist reforms? Then read this. Yeah, a man told a senator to keep the government’s hands off his Medicare. The problem is, this isn’t an isolated incident: Simply put, most Americans are too stupid. It isn’t necessarily their fault either. Our society encourages this kind of idiocy. We make Paris Hilton a star just because she is rich and dumb, and little girls look up to her and emulate her by saying the same things and wanting to spend hundreds on clothes and purses.
• None of this really matters anyway, because the Republicans and Democrats are at ends so much that nothing is getting done anyway, just so one side can prove they are right rather than actually let a law pass that might help Americans.

psych starts again on Friday! I’ll finally have something to look forward to watching again. Hell’s Kitchen already started, and is really the only prime time TV I watch. I’m still addicted to HGTV. David Bromstad from Color Splash has some awesome ideas.

Sadly, this is the best I could do to talk about things going on in my life right now.

It’s time to take a serious look at Microsoft again

Today was the nail in the coffin for my refusal to purchase anymore Logitech accessories unless they have something unique that no other brand makes. For over 10 years I’ve tried to exclusively use Logitech products because I found them to be mostly superior in quality. Recently, within the past year or two, that hasn’t been the case.

First, I bought a mini mouse for my laptop awhile ago that broke within 3 months. I switched over to a Microsoft one that is still running strong.

As far as keyboards go, I gave up an original blue Logitech G15 (got too wide and I wasn’t gaming, it is now the G11 although they removed the LCD screen on the G11) for a new orange G15. The new G15 wasn’t necessarily a bad keyboard, just a little more than I need and my wrists began to hurt. Honestly I would have stayed with the G15 if I didn’t want to switch to an ergo keyboard, but I wound up buying the Microsoft Ergonomic Natural 4000 keyboard because it was hands down better than any ergo offering from Logitech, and had the best reviews. The experience on this keyboard has been bliss, it took a few days to fall back into using an ergo keyboard (I have used them off and on for years), but it is far easier to use than any Logitech keyboard I’ve had, and the zoom key right in the middle is GREAT in Photoshop where I was constantly hitting Control and +/- to zoom in or out.

Now though, my G9 mouse that I bought only 6 months ago I’m ready to throw out the window. Within a month or two of owning it, I had to cut part of the fabric covering the cord because when I would fold up the cord for travel, it got to a point where the fabric was stretched in such a way that it was causing a permanent kink in the cord. Now I have 2 frayed ends in the middle of my mouse cord, and it looks like crap. My mouse looks like it is peeling dead skin, the clear covering on the grip I’m using is peeling. The scroll wheel has no resistance, so I can scroll really fast with my finger just once and the wheel will keep spinning for at least 10 seconds. I’m used to resistance to know I’m flying down a page pretty fast when I work on certain things like Excel documents that are nearly 500 pages, so having it zoom by all of them because there is no resistance is ridiculous, and it makes micro-scrolling (just a few lines) very difficult with no actual ‘click.’ The software seems to be getting a little faulty, sometimes my back and forward thumb buttons don’t work.

This isn’t just a bash Logitech post, though they have driven me away with their crappy products as of late. I didn’t mind paying a premium when I thought I was getting something that was made with quality, was comfortable to use, and would last for a long time, but Microsoft’s products have been very well designed and I have had no problems lately with them.

What is even more interesting is that Microsoft is really making an amazing comeback and many geeks like myself are taking notice.

Windows 7 is hands-down a hit. I love Windows 7. Apple fan boys and Linux nerds need to take another look at what Microsoft is putting out rather than the same old “LOL M$ IS GARBAGE!!!” While the latest version of Ubuntu is nice, Linux simply isn’t there yet for easy every day use (Can I sync my iPhone? No. I rest my case), and the updates from Leopard to Snow Leopard have to actually be a little embarrassing in the wake of the massive overhaul with Windows 7. Truthfully, the taskbar is awesome, and I hate OSX’s menu bar across the top that changes depending what program you have on top. It isn’t convenient and sometimes it can be annoying when you realize the program you thought you were reaching for with the menu isn’t actually the one you had clicked. The menu should be within the program window in my opinion, every time.

Microsoft Security Essentials seems to be a great lightweight and free anti-virus. An AV that doesn’t charge you through the roof every year to suck up all your system resources and cause you headaches with a million popups? I’m in.

IE8 is making strides, but it still is way behind Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome. No points awarded here, just an honorable mention to say “Keep trying, guys.”

I heard Bing had 17% of the search share in it’s opening week somewhere. That’s pretty incredible.

The XBox 360 is an awesome machine, XBox Live is a great service, and Project Natal looks revolutionary if it manages to actually pull of what it advertises.

Although the HD Zune won’t be in my pocket over my iPhone, it seems to be a very impressive device for all that it does.

Of course, the productivity software they have is still pretty standard. OpenOffice isn’t bad for basic word processing and spreadsheet work, but the MS Office Suite is king for a reason.

And lastly, I love the new commercials. Finally, Microsoft is attacking the fact that Apple makes their computers ridiculously expensive. I cannot see any justification for the computers to cost that much, single-piece of aluminum or not, aside from the fact that you can usually pimp a Macbook Pro out way further for high-end use than a Dell or HP (Macbook Pro lets you have up to 8 gigs of RAM, HP and Dell stop at 4 for similar models, though I found an awesome Vaio that you can go to 8 with).

I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I went through my phase of disliking Microsoft for all the buggy products and almost non-existent innovation in their products years ago, when they simply said “I’m sorry, who are you? Yeah, we’re Microsoft, everyone uses our stuff, so fuck off.” They are finally starting to listen to users about what they want. I think it is time that anyone who still blindly dislikes Microsoft because of all their past mistakes (and there were a great many, indeed) to take another look at this company. They still show a few signs of the old Microsoft, especially with this ridiculous comparison chart (truthfully, I can’t believe they left this page up with the massive backlash they took over it), but overall they are really coming around.