Are devices like this mouse above about to become extinct? There was an interesting article on the BBC Technology web pages yesterday reporting on how a Gartner analyst was forecasting the death of the computer mouse.  The gist of the analyst’s argument appears to be that, because of all the progress that has been made with new interfaces such as multi-touch and the innovations we are seeing from the gaming world, within 3 or 5 years we will have seen the mouse disappear.

Well I do agree that we are seeing a growth of new and successful ways of interacting with our computers, especially in gaming, the enormous success of the Nintendo Wii is testament to that.  But no one has used a mouse with a games console from the start, and I can’t yet see a 3D mouse being significantly more effective than a standard 2D mouse.  Multi-touch interfaces are now becoming more mainstream and readers of this blog will know that I am a fan of Apple’s touch interface.

Multi-touch makes sense on a consumer devices like a phone which has a flat surface, but on vertical computer screens it actually does not make too much sense. I do not want to be continuously lifting my arms to jab at a computer screen.  I believe that it is not the input devices alone that will have to change it is the computer as a whole that will need to evolve, including screens, input devices and the software.

So my feeling is that a computer mouse will be on yours and my desk for a long while yet.  The Logitech MX Revolution Cordless laser being my favourite at the moment.

What do you think? Is the computer mouse going to become extinct soon?

I have talked before about how useful a mini mouse can be for using with a laptop. especially so when working while traveling. I find that using a mouse rather than the trackpad of a laptop is a much better way of maintaining a good position when working on a laptop for long periods of time.  In other words the sort of thing you often end up doing when working in some faceless hotel in some city or country around the world.

Unfortunately my previous mini mouse suddenly stopped working for reasons unknown. But what I do know is that my younger kids could not help themselves from endlessly playing with the retractable cable holder that is designed to hold the connecting USB cable neatly while the mouse is not in use. They just loved pulling the cable out and back on an almost continuous basis. Now I can not confirm that this caused or even contributed to the demise of my mouse but I thought I would look around for a replacement with out the cable.

After searching around and even trying out various models of wireless mice, I finally settled on the Logitech V450 Laser Cordless Mouse which after using for a couple of days I am really happy with.  I like the design which although slightly bigger than my previous mouse seems to be even more comfortable to hold. I have had absolutely no connection problems with the wireless and even better, the mouse seems to be able to cope with a lot more different surfaces than my old one.  If you are look for a wireless mouse for your laptop than I can certainly recommend this one.

Do you use a mouse with your laptop?

Our last post looked at a gaming keyboard and today I thought I would look at another peripheral for the gaming enthusiast.  When I was quite a bit younger than I am today I was quite keen on the flight sim games, or more specifically space flights sims like the classic Wing Commander. Unfortunately they don’t really make many of these games anymore!

Something that one really had to have to play these games was of course a joystick as playing these games with a mouse was never easy or particularly convenient.  A joystick was perhaps the first accessory that I ever bought for my computer. Joysticks have come a long way since the one I first purchased which just about had the directional control and a couple of firing buttons. They now often come with separate throttle controls, multiple buttons and switches.

A good example of what is available of the market these days is the highly rated Saitek X52 Flight Control System. This beauty comes with a separate throttle control which includes its own set of buttons and can act as a mouse for easy in game control.  The joystick unit has plenty of programmable buttons and two “hat” controls for point of view control.

Do you use a joystick for gaming? Which joystick do you prefer?

We have talked a lot in the previous series of posts about gaming and in particular gaming with laptops. If you read those last posts you will know that my personnel recommendation, if you are looking for a computer system for which the main use will be gaming, is to go for a desktop system. This is because you will get a much better price performance ratio, more bang for the buck.  And the money you save on the key components, CPU, GPU and memory for the desktop system can then be put towards gaming peripherals, like gaming keyboards, mice, joysticks etc.

Good gaming peripherals essential

Now I cannot  profess to having a deep knowledge or experience of gaming, apart from the odd long game of Civilization. But having talked to some gamers and my own sons they tell me that good gaming peripherals can make a big difference.  Take keyboards for instance, they need to be good quality to take all the bashing that a gamer is going to give it, but they also have to be responsive and easy to use.  While the best often provide gaming specials like programmable keys which can be assigned on an as required basis to command macros. These can be extremely useful to the under pressure gamer.

Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard

One really good and rated gaming keyboard is the Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard which has nice big responsive keys,  and a whole array of programmable keys and provides the tools to get the best from these.  If you are looking for a gaming keyboard it may be worth taking a good look.

Have you bought a keyboard specifically to support gaming? Do you want to tell us about it?

One thing about using a laptop with other peripherals such as an external screen,  mouse and keyboard is that it is such a pain to have plug all these external devices into the various slots in your laptop. Once answer used by a lot of corporate workers, especially at work is to have a docking station or port replicator that you can just plug or slot your laptop into and away you go.

Laptop ergonomics

You should be doing this by the way, especially  if you use are essentially using your laptop as a desktop replacement, either at work or at home.  Spending significant amount of time each day using just your laptop without an external screen etc. breaks just about every rule in terms of ergonomics, and could lead to significant health and posture problems later on.

Universal docking station

However the majority of docking stations are proprietary to a specific manufacturer and even to specific models. So what can you do if you are looking for another port replicator at home, and would like one that could handle all makes of laptops?  Well one answer could be the Toshiba USB Dynadock Port Replicator.  We have all heard of the universal remote well this device attempts to be the universal docking station.  It handles the connection to multiple makes and models of laptops by using a single USB connection rather than any proprietary connection slots. You have your monitors, external drives, sound systems, key board etc, permanently connected to the Toshiba USB Dynadock and then when anyone wants to use their laptop they just attach one USB cable (assuming they got the drivers installed).   It is also a very stylish looking device which won’t look at all bad on the desk.

How do you manage docking you laptop with your external devices?

Are you a budding photographer? Or perhaps you are someone that has been taking photographs in a fairly serious fashion for some time? Someone who has just decided to splash out and have moved to their first SLR? Or maybe you got your first digital camera last Christmas and have really caught the bug? However you started in Photography, if you are doing it in anything close to a serious manner you will soon realise that, firstly you are collecting an awful lot of photographs and secondly you’re going to need some way to touch up or manipulate your images.

Photoshop

Most people in this situation will normally will buy image software such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, perhaps starting with the entry level Adobe Photoshop Elements or even one of the free or online image manipulation applications first to see how things go prior to forking out the admittedly large amount of cash required for Photoshop.

Mice or Tablets
Unfortunately when you have used these applications for a while, especially the image manipulation applications, you (well at least I do) begin to find that the mouse gets a bit unwieldy. Have you ever tried drawing any sort of line thats not straight with a mouse and getting the results you wanted? Or delicately touching up the colour in a small area? Doing these things with a mouse can be frustrating to say the least and there has to be a better way. There is, it is called a graphics tablet, and while there is certainly a learning curve to overcome as you retrain yourself off your mouse, a tablet is what the majority of professionals use. If you are finding your mouse a pain it might be worth giving a tablet a go and while they can be expensive there are plenty of good value versions available. The well rated Wacom Bamboo Tablet for instance would be well worth a look. It is supported on both the PC and Macs and often comes with a software bundle as well and shouldn’t break the bank.

Do you use a tablet for your image manipulation?

In the last few posts we have looked at sound cards for both desktops and laptops. All the sound cards and devices we looked at will enhance the quality of the sound you get from your computer, especially so if you are a gamer, a keen listener to music or are into watching movies on your computer. But one think wee didn’t talk about of course was the ability to output your sound in the best way to appreciate the increased quality. There is not much point in spending some money on a new sound card only to have to play the output through the tinny built in speakers on your laptop or monitor!

No to really appreciate the enhanced quality of the sound you are really going to need some good quality speakers. So if you haven’t already got some them, then you should be budgeting for the cost of speakers, or perhaps a decent pair of earphones, when you are looking for a sound card.

If you are looking at some new speakers then here is a huge range in terms of both what is available and cost. As an example of the sort of speakers you might look at in the lower range in terms of cost but still getting 5.1 surround sound have a look at the Logitech X-530 Speakers 5.1/70W RMS. A pretty good system at a low price! You need to shop around, work out the best quality to cost ratio that you can afford and then go for it.

What speaker system do you have to show off your sound card?

In the previous post we looked at the reasons why you might want to upgrade to a specialist sound card rather than stick to using the sound chip provided “on-board” the mother board in your computer. Of course having the sound just come with the computer rather than having to go out and buy a separate sound card is a great time saver and makes things simple if you do not really need a very high quality sound. With a standard desktop however you will always have the option to go out and buy a new card and be able to fit it reasonably easily.

Sound cards for laptops

But what happens if you have just bought a laptop? All laptops these days have sound capabilities, provided “on-board”, but of course because of the nature of the construction you can’t just open it up and install a new sound card. So what to do?

Well there are actually plenty of options for those people who do want to upgrade their laptop sound capability, with products like the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook Sound Card. This is a product that will slot into an Express card slot which you might find on a new laptop, while a product like the Creative AUDIGY 2 ZS notebook card will fit into the PCMCIA slot on an older laptop. A third option would be an external USB connected product like the Trust 510EX USB 5.1 Sound Expert External. Plenty of options so happy listening!

Have you upgraded the sound capability of your laptop?

When I was …, well just a little younger than I am today, I liked to rebuild and upgrade my desktop PC as far as I possibly could until eventually it no longer made any sense to do so. One of my desktops bought in 1995 lasted for about 10 years as a result of upgrades. During the early years it was a very capable games machine with a very good graphics card (for the time), and a superb sound card. During the later years it was my Linux desktop by which time all the components were very well supported in terms of drivers, and was used by my young children to play basic games.

These days there seems to be much less of a reason to upgrade, especially with the general swing towards using laptops. In the “good old” days graphics cards and sound cards where nearly always provided as separate components while today these are usually provided as an “on-board” capability of the mother board.

Sound Cards

For most people the on-board audio provided by the motherboard will be fine, but if you are a big gamer, someone who uses their PC to watch a lot of DVD’s or wants to have the best music experience then upgrading to a decent sound card is going to make all the difference. One of the most recommended cards is the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series. These cards are provided in various modes, for gamers, music lovers etc., are highly regarded and come at a reasonable price. Most people will be amazed at the difference the sound card will make, with either headphones or speakers.

Do you upgraded your sound card? Did it make a difference?

Quite a lot of people these days are running home servers, or at least a central computer that has a large amount of storage. This can be used as central storage for the large amount of digital content that we are now beginning to collect in the average family, or at the very least used as a backup facility for all the family’s laptops and iPods. One of the main reasons for doing backups of your data, is that we now often have an emotional attachment to a lot of this data. Would you be happy about losing all your digital photographs for instance, or the whole of your music collection? I thought not. So if you are not backing this data up already you really should be !

However if you are backing your data up to a central server, you really need to protect that computer with an UPS device. UPS - stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply. By the way a Server is just a fancy name for a piece of software or hardware that performs some service for other software or computers on a network, if it is hardware it may be doing other things as well.

An Uninterruptible Power Supply is one which continues to supply power during a loss or drop of input power, but will also act as a surge suppressor, filter noise and provide protection against power spikes. All these things are potentially dangerous for a computer system and potentially damaging your hard drive. You may think that in the UK we have a very stable power supply which is largely true, but we still get power cuts once or twice a year as a result of storms, lightening etc. There also drops in current which are also an issue, and which may be caused by everyone in the UK switching the kettle on at half time in the FA cup final, for instance!

So I would recommend anyone with a important computer that holds important data, that they look into a UPS system. They are many available at in a huge range of costs, so do your homework, but something like the APC BACK-UPS CS 350 would be a good place to start for a home user.

So just to recap the benefits of an UPS are;

1. It gives you time to shut down your computer properly.
2. Will take the hit from any lightening strike. much cheaper to replace the UPS.
3. Will maintain the proper voltage, even during power spikes and sags.
4. Gives you “peace of mind”.

Do you use an UPS?