On my Dell desktop I use a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer. I’ve used this mouse for years because it is reliable and comfortable. It takes me a long time to find a mouse that I’m comfortable with. I like to play games like Diablo1 and 2, Quake 2, 3, Arena, Jedi Knight 1 and 2, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I use the mouse a lot and if it’s not comfortable, my hand will cramp and I won’t be happy using the PC.
After I purchased my Sager NP8690, I was using a Dell Bluetooth mouse. The mouse is ergonomic and functions well, but its not comfortable. It has too much height in the back and doesn’t feel right.
So over the last week or so I researched at Newegg.com, Staples.com, BestBuy.com, and Amazon.com several models buy Microsoft, Logitech, HP, and Kensington. I read reviews about why one mouse was better than another, which one seems to have more problems than others, and the latest technology.
I finally decided on the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX. Its very comfortable and as you can see from the pictures it is very cool looking too. One of the best features is the scroll wheel. It normally has the “click” when you scroll up or down. When you press the mouse wheel the free wheel is running. This is great if you have a long webpage or multi-page document. While some have complained about missing the third mouse click, I like this new feature. Also, when I click on the button behind the scroll wheel, You are presented with an exploded view of what programs are open.
This mouse also works great in Linux Mint 8. No drivers to install, just start Linux and your ready to roll. In Linux Mint 8, the button behind the scroll wheel enables the Desktop Spinning Cube (as long as you have it enabled).
I guess the most technology advanced piece is the Dark Field laser. There is a PDF in the Box.net plug-in on the right side of this blog. They say the table needs to be at least 4mm thick for it to work. I might try the bedroom mirror to see how well it works.
I always enjoyed reading his books when I was a kid, and I enjoy reading them to my children today. This week the daycare my daughter attends is celebrating Dr. Seuss all week. Yesterday’s story was Green Eggs and Ham. I wonder what stories will be covered this week.
Yesterday the Cub Scouts from our Den toured radio station WSTW 97.3 FM in Wilmington, Delaware. The scouts were very excited about visiting a radio station. Our tour guide Natalie was very knowledgeable of the operations of the radio station. The scouts recorded in the studio, then edit out all the dead space, and played it back for us. We met several of the on-air personalities “radio jocks” and witnessed late breaking news of a serious accident in Smyrna, Delaware.
The building also houses sister station WDEL 1150 AM and GraffitiRadio.com which plays alternative rock on HD radios and the Internet.
I guess it was back in 2008 CompUSA closed all or almost all of it’s retail stores. Yesterday I drove by and stopped in one of their new locations in Delaware. The store I was in use to be an Office Max for many years. Office Max was a huge store and never too busy. Usually you can get in and out within 5 minutes if you knew what you were looking for. With CompUSA in there, it was the same experience – not too busy.
Sure the door just opened within the last week or two, they even have a large sign “Grand Opening.” So I stopped in to see what they have. It was nice to be noticed as soon as I came in. I told the store greeter I’m just looking and if I need help I’ll ask. Just like the old store there were plenty of items to purchase. Display cases full of Intel core i5 chips, motherboards, CPU cases, flat screen monitors, cables with all kinds of adapters. Of course they had televisions, camera, and other items.
During my visit I was asked if I needed assistance four times. Each time I said, “no I’m just looking.” I understand the store was slow and the sales people are doing their job, but please pay attention to your environment. If you see several sales people talking to the same customer and leaving, maybe that person is just looking and does not need assistance. Maybe you could stand near by and be ready to help me if I ask.
I will admit they had a good price on a Logitech mouse I was interested in. However I found the same mouse at Amazon.com for a better price with a $15.00 post-purchase rebate and free shipping. Since I have good luck with Amazon and Logitech rebates in the past, I’ll most likely purchase the mouse this weekend.
I will say good-luck to CompUSA at their new location. I use to shop there when I lived in Pittsburgh and always recommended them to my friends. I’m not sure I want to purchase a television from them, but I will them when I do comparison shopping.
Tonight I dropped off my son to religious education. Classes are about 1 hour 30 minutes long. With drive time to and from the church to Starbucks, I have about an hour to kill. Usually I stop in Best Buy and hangout playing Wii games or shopping for new toys. And since my purchases are getting a little too much, I figured I would go to Starbucks with my notebook computer and have a cup of coffee.
So after purchasing a “Tall” Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte (forgot how expensive they are) I started up my notebook to read some e-mail and catch up on a few things. I figured this will be like the time I went to Matt Slap Subaru. Free Internet, have a cup of coffee and get out of the house. Well that didn’t work.
First they counter girl misunderstood my order and realized that I wanted the latte, and not some weird coffee they stop brewing at 5:00PM. Really?? Your a coffee house. Brew some coffee. Whatever. After booting my computer, the barista told me my vanilla skinny latte was up. Before I could say anything the girl who took my order corrected her. Then she said, “Whatever latte is up.” Excellent customer service skills!! If you don’t like your job, find a new one.
To top it off, that expensive latte doesn’t get you access to the Internet. AT&T want me to pay a fee to get on-line with their hotspot. The fee is good for 2 hours. But I am only here for an hour at most. All I wanted to do was catch up on some e-mail, enjoy a cup of coffee and wait for my son to finish school. Maybe I’m just complaining for no reason, but come one… it’s 2010. Offer free Wi-Fi to keep people coming back. You can lock it down like your competitors. Next time I think I’ll go to Brew HaHa or Panera Bread. I’m almost positive they have free Wi-Fi.
So now I want to smack the groundhog into next winter. Six more weeks of winter, and then well over 15 inches of snow. As of the time I’m writing this, it’s been snowing almost 20 hours. I spent about three hours outside with my awesome snowblower on my driveway, sidewalks, helping some of the neighbors, and playing with one of my kids. The oldest one is sick. I also got to enjoy a large hot cup of Donut House Collection coffee brewed from the Keurig machine.
Today we were suppose to go to a basketball game at UDEL with the Cub Scouts today but rescheduled for Sunday February 7th. What?? Do they really think anyone will be there? Do they think the roads will be clear? Hopefully they will allow us to go to another game with the ticket we purchased.
UPDATE:
The National Weather Service reported 25 inches of snow fell at New Castle County Delaware airport.
Happy Groundhog Day everybody! Today Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow which means six more weeks of winter. The festivities on Groundhog Day is a huge event at Gobblers Knob. Enjoy the winter!
Well I finally received my new notebook on Tuesday January 26. I wanted to use my bootable BartPE USB jump drive to image the HDD before starting the first boot into Windows 7. Unfortunately I didn’t have the correct drivers in the BartPE image for the NIC or the AHCI controller. Even with this small issue, I enjoyed the nice color contrast on the 15.6″ widescreen at 1920×1080 with the glossy display. I’ve seen displays exactly like mine at retail stores. Usually the displays are all gunked up with fingerprints and grime from shoppers.
I like the simple look of the case – flat black all around except for the small silver Sager logo centered on the lid. There are only 2 stickers by the keyboard (HDMI and Intel Corei7) which does not give the computer a junked up look. The chiclet keyboard, which has a number pad on the right) took no time to get use to. Also there is little give in the center with normal pressure.
I booted into Windows 7 Ultimate and completed the mini setup wizard. I am happy to report no bloatware installed. Just the following applications:
Microsoft Office 2007 Standard 25 day trial (removed since I already own a copy of Office 2007 Professional)
Fingerprint reader
Blue-Ray player
Windows 7 recognized my wireless network and I installed the 64bit drivers for my HP 2605dn Color Laserjet network printer. Test pages printed without problems so now it was time to customize the screen by installing the Star Wars and Pittsburgh Steelers Desktop Themes I made awhile ago.
On Wednesday I installed Ubuntu 9.10 64bit – removing Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Ubuntu recognized everything except for the Nvidia card, but the Hardware Detection manager found the correct drivers for me and suggested which one to install. Desktop effects and Compiz were enabled and finally have the cool 3D spinning cube, wobble windows, and all the special effects I could want on my notebook. To finish up I installed the latest codecs for my multimedia files, Flash for Firefox and Virtualbox OSE. But soon I started to have some problems.
VirtualBox OSE installed correctly. I created a vm, installed Windows 7 and rebooted the vm as needed. The performance was extremely slow. WHAT?? This is a Core i7 with 6GB of 1333MHz RAM and a high-end Nvidia card with 1GB of dedicated RAM. After shutting down the vm I verified I had my settings correct and tried agin. Booting into the vm was extremely painful. I do not have this issue at work on my Intel P4 3.4GHz with 2GB of RAM. Since it was late I went to sleep to figure out what to do tomorrow. When I got home from work the next day I booted the system and logged into Facebook to catch up with some friends. While I was playing Farmville the session rebooted. That was strange. So I logged in again and went back to Facebook and the session rebooted again. After logging in a third time I googled for a reason Ubuntu 9.10 64bit would randomly reboot the session. Within three minutes it rebooted my session again.
Now I am extreamly upset with the system. I fired off an e-mail to a buddy of mine, reinstalled my Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit CD and rebooted. I spent the next several hours rebulding my PC. Windows 7 installed within 20 minutes, spent the next 30 minutes running the drivers CD (the user interface was awesome – good job to the folks who designed it), and the rest of the time spent installing Office 2007 Professional, Thunderbird 3 (with all the addons I like), Firefox 3.6, Filezilla 3.3.1, Quicktime, VLC, Google Earth, Picasa, Skype, Trillian 4.1, and a few other applications.
I really wanted to run Ubuntu on my new notebook, but the 64bit seems too unstable. Maybe I should have installed the 32bit version instead. Either way, I am happy now with Windows 7. I might at a later date install Ubuntu 10.04 or Linux Mint 9 on a second partition and have a dual-boot system.
I purchased Star Trek on Blu-Ray over the weekend and enjoyed watching the movie. The picture looked great but the sound from the computer speakers was difficult to hear with the fans running. I was able to connect the computer to my HDMI input for the TV, but the audio was not available. I might be missing a setting for HDMI.
I have two issues with this notebook – battery and bluetooth. For the battery you will get one hour out of it. You will not be playing games, watching a movie, or reading at the local coffee shop unless you have p power outlet near by. A two-hour battery should be the bare minimum for any notebook in my opinion. Everytime the computer sleeps or reboots the bluetooth is off. There is no option to leave it on in the Phoenix BIOS. I don’t think any notebook PC I’ve ever used from HP, IBM, or Dell had bluetooth off with each boot.
I also purchased a Swiss Gear IBEX backpack to carry the computer and other stuff. The bag is made of good materials and holds everything well. I did read about a few people having problems with the zippers. Out of the two bags at the store, only one had zippers that moved easily.
Besides these few issues with the hardware (battery life and bluetooth), I really like this computer. It is fast, Windows 7 works great, Ubuntu 9.10 64bit worked well the first day (maybe a different distro for me in the future), cool options available, and a sweet screen as well.
Sager NP8690Screen raisedChiclet keyboardDVI, e-sata, USB, audio input/output and express cardPower, HDMI, GB NIC, 2 USB, lockDVD / Blu-Ray, card reader, 1394 firewire, USB, and modemScreen closed with power supply
Drahusz 