I have recently just spent a weekend at my parents house where I was engaged as an IT consultant as I usually am when visiting friends and family. So I was presently surprised to find that they had recently invested in a nice new wireless mouse. It so happens that as part of my project to reduce the number of wires hanging around my desktop I am in the market for a wireless mouse, and I was able to get a good test drive of the Logitech MX revolution.

Easy to drive

First of all I was impressed by how nicely it fits into the hand and how easy it was to use. There is the now standard thumb wheel and just above that that are very handy forward and back buttons for browsing. Other buttons included an interesting search button which enables you to select a word or text and press the button to instantly search the Internet using Yahoo or Google.

No Batteries

One of the best things about this mouse is that it comes with a charging stand so no more running out of batteries just when you need it most, one of the things that normally really bugs me about wireless mice. The only problem with this of course is that this adds a new wire, but I think the value of the charger makes it worth it.

So if you are in the market for new wireless mouse then you could do worse than take the Logitech MX revolution for a spin!

I don’t know about you but my family and I now seem to have collected a vast array of gadgets and computer equipment that all require some sort of USB connection. USB drives, external hard drives, printers, MP3 players, mobile phones, digital cameras etc. The list seems almost endless and there never seems to be enough USB ports available, so some members of the family always end up annoying other members when trying to borrow access time to USB ports on people’s laptops.

I have been looking at actually organising and designing the computer system at home, rather than continue with the rather organic and haphazard growth pattern that presently exists. One idea that I am looking at it to centralise a number of the key aspects, such as storage, and access to printing. One other aspect that may well be worth applying this approach  to is the provision of centralised access to USB ports. This would enable anyone who wanted access to MP3 files to transfer to their player or mobile phone could just use a USB hub that was somewhere publicly available and did not require entering the forbidden zone of someone else’s bedroom!

The Belkin Network USB Hub looks like just the sort of thing that could do the job on my WiFi network, allowing 5 USB devices to be connected at one time.

How do you solve your USB port access problem?

Do you remember when you bought your first home computer? I can. Although I had used mainframe terminals, Unix workstations and PC’s for many years at work, I finally bought my first home PC in 1996. Today the specs seem to be completely laughable, it was a 75hz Pentium, with something like 8 Mb of memory and a huge 1GB hard drive! It was badged as a multimedia workstation which meant I got a CD drive, a microphone and a set of speakers bundled in. Over the years I upgraded it as much as possible and it was only finally retired a couple of years ago, so I got my moneys worth out of it. I was also still using those speakers, or least until recently.  While sorting out my cable night mare at home I realised that only one of the two speaker unit was working!

New speakers required

So now I am on the look out for a new set of speakers. My main requirement is, as always, the best possible performance for the best price. So I have been having a good look at what is out there, and a couple of speakers sets have caught my eye. First off, is this Altec Lansing VS4121 2.1 Speaker System, pictured left, which has a lot of great reviews, looks OK and comes at a very reasonable price. An alternative which I am considering is the Philips MMS321 Multimedia Stereo Speakers pictured above, which because there is no sub woofer use less real estate. These also look great, and have great reviews. Decisions, decisions!

Any recommendations for speaker systems?

As I was sitting at my desk the other day procrastinating over starting some filing that needed to be done, I was contemplating the huge morass of wires and power cables required just to power all the elements of my computer setup. I have a power cable for the printer, the monitor, the docking station for my laptop, the speakers, the docking cradle for my MP3 player, the table lamp, a shredder. Then I have wires for the mouse, keyboard, the docking cradle for my mp3 player, for the speakers, etc. Wires everywhere! The only wire I seemed to have removed the need for is a network cable, as I have a home WiFi network and all the cables for the access point are thankfully in a separate room.

So as I sat there, still avoiding doing any of the filing that I should be doing,  trying to think of ways I could at least reduce the cable spaghetti that I have under the table. To be honest there is not a lot I could do with the power cables, except perhaps I could remove the docking cradle for the MP3 player, as I normally use the USB cable for recharging anyway. So I I just untangled the mess, and bunched the cables neatly together where I could with cable ties. I have put the docking cradle away in a drawer, in case it turns out I do need it.

The next step was to look at the cables on the desktop. The obvious solution here is to get rid of the mouse and keyboard cables by going wireless. So I have researched this and have found some nice solutions. For instance how about this nice looking wireless keyboard and mouse from Microsoft. While this combination set from Targus provides a neat alternative to the feature rich Microsoft set. So what would you choose? Any advice? How do you deal with your own cable nightmare?

Everyone knows about and has almost certainly experienced the effects of Murphy’s Law or to give it other name Sod’s Law. You know, the law that states that something will probably happen just when you least want it to and are the least prepared for it. I have often wondered whether Murphy was a wise man, or just someone to whom the effects of this law seemed to always apply, so much so that others named the law after him.

Anyhow, however it was named, it managed to strike our household last night. Picture the scene. It is the last night before my son has to hand in some GSCE coursework. He has completed his work, checked everything and all is ready. The only thing that remains is to print off his work for the final time, put into his school bag ready to take to school in the morning.

So what happens? Well of course one of the colour cartridges of our otherwise excellent home printer decides at that specific moment to run out. That is OK I think to myself, we have spares, but no, of course the colour required is not amongst our spare cartridges. It turns out that we had only recently replaced that colour, and it had run out again. Fortunately we have a large Hypermarket nearby that remains open to midnight, and I was able to make a quick trip and buy a replacement cartridge at the last minute.

This brings me to my main points. Firstly the cost of replacing printing ink cartridges seems way too high. OK so after my last post, perhaps now I am guilty of “stating the bleeding obvious”, but in this case I think it needs to be stated.  Another thing is that they don’t last long especially it seems certain colours. The cartridges themselves don’t seem to be very big, so one way to reduce costs might be to produce much bigger cartridges. This would reduce the cost of the cartridges themselves, which could be past on to us the consumer and make them last longer into the bargain.

Of course will the printer manufactures see this as a benefit to them? I doubt it, so perhaps we are stuck with high price printing. What do you think?

Some of the big news this week has been that the battle for the next generation DVD format has been won by Sony’s Blu-Ray format, with Toshiba announcing that they would stop future product of their rival HD DVD format.

This is of course is an echo of the old VHS versus Betamax video cassette format war that Sony as makers of the Betamax lost. This time Sony have come out as winners on the back of decisions by a number of film studios to focus solely on the Blu-Ray format, and of course through the viral effect of all those Playstation 3’s already sitting in the front room of many houses. I think Toshiba could see through their sales figures the writing was on the wall and have decided to cut their loses and focus on other things.

This is a good result for us the consumer, as it ends the confusion of have two competing technologies, which is going to boost the uptake of the new technology, as many people were holding of buying. This allows those of us who have been waiting for things to be clarified, can now buy something like the highly rated Sony BDP-S300B Blu-Ray/DVD Player, without worrying we are buying a dead format. Expect more laptops to start featuring the new format also.

Digital information, we have it, we all collect it and in fact we are collecting more and more of it all the time. As I have mentioned before everyone these days is likely to be experiencing their very own digital data explosion. Almost on a daily basis we are all creating or downloading more and more digital content, in the form of documents, digital images, mp3 files etc. This means we really have to start thinking about things like large disks to hold all of that data and ensuring we are making regular backups to ensure that data remains available.

Now if you have more than one computer in your household, and lets face it these days just about everyone does, you are multiplying this need for disk space and having to perform multiply backups. One solution to this problem is to centralise all your storage to a server, and by doing that mean that a backup only needs to be done once to protect the whole household’s data.

A potentially nice idea, but apart from setting up a separate computer configured as a server, there isn’t too many options on the market. Probably the only on is the HP MediaSmart Server. This admittedly expensive bit of kit which runs Microsoft Windows home Server provides centralised storage and can serve data securely to all users on a network, backing up their computers as required. If you are thinking about this sort of thing then the MediaSmart server is worth a look. I predict that we will see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future.

One thing that I have learned over the years as a computer user is that a good set of interface tools is a very important to ensure a pleasant, comfortable and even safe computer experience. This can be especially true if you, like me, are on the road a lot and trying to minimize the additional clutter you have to carry with you.

One example of a user interface device that can cause problems on road is the standard laptop trackpad. A lot of people who use laptops have never really become comfortable with using a trackpad on a full time basis. I actually prefer using the now very much out of fashion pointing stick that used to be standard on the old IBM ThinkPads. This is one reason why I like the Dell Latitude models such as the Latitude D630 which come with a choice of both a trackpad and a stick, but I digress.

As a result of this discomfort with a trackpad, a lot of people take to carrying around a mouse to use when on the road with their laptop. I used to be one of them, but got really fed up with carrying one around, and forced myself to use the onboard tools. However these days there are a lot of very neat small sized mice available on the market. Take the NB Optical Mouse from Targus, it has a neatly managed cable and is small enough to fit in most people’s bags, without being so small that it is uncomfortable to use.

I have one now, and as well as being a great tool for long periods of laptop use, it is of course far superior to a trackpad for the odd game of Civilization!

Last week we looked at all in one computers, but the one thing an all in one computer generally does not include is a printer, at least not yet anyway, that is maybe something for the future. So in the meantime we need to find ourselves a good printer that will fulfill our needs. Of course if you combine the fact that one persons needs are not the same as the next persons, and the fact that there is a bewildering number of printers for sale, actually finding that one printer that is just right for you is not always as easy you might think. Obviously there is no one right answer so where to start?

A good way, is to ask yourself a number of questions. The first question I would ask myself is whether I just want a printer or would I like to combine printing with other features like scanning, copying or even faxing. If you have already got a perfectly good scanner and you never send faxes, then a stand alone printer is probably all you need. If on the other hand you are like me and decide that scanning and copying are always a useful function to have, then you will probably want to look at some of the very good all-in-one computers available on the market.

The next question you should probably ask is whether you want to have the printer on a network, and hence be available to all computers in the house, or just be local to a specific computer. If it is the first then a printer with a network capability is required. Another question you will want to ask yourself is whether you are going to mainly print photographs or documents or a bit of both.

At this point you have probably narrowed down the requirements enough to start looking for suitable printers and matching them against your budget. In my case when I was recently in the market for a printer, I wanted and all-in-one that was wireless network capable, that would print good photos when required, and if it could read my media cards so much the better.

In my case a printer like the HP Photosmart C7180 All-in-One Inkjet Printer would fit the bill nicely, albeit for a price. Good luck in your hunt for the right printer for you.