Hump Day Hardware: Mice

I've talked about two of the major tools for interacting with your computer, graphics tablets and keyboards. Today we're going to talk about mice.

Those of you who read the post on tablets will know that I rarely use a mouse. If you have joined us to CorelDRAW Unleashed Boot Camp, you've never seen me pick up a mouse. While I rarely use one, it is something that is a requirement on a computer. If there is a driver problem with your tablet, you need a way to point long enough to get things working again. Some of you may even prefer to work with a mouse, though I find it hard to understand. I guess you just haven't spent much time with a tablet.

One problem I've always had with mice is that they tend to wear out too quickly. Part of the problem was the old mice with the ball in them would get dirty or would mechanically break down. Most of the newer mice have a laser in them for tracking movement so there is nothing to mechanically wear out or get gunked up.

A pet name that I've given to mice over the years is "soap on a rope" or "brick on a string". I can't even use those names any more since many of the mice are cordless. I do recommend you keep a corded mouse handy in case the cordless mouse stops working! It can stay in a closet, but make sure you have one somewhere as you'll never know when it might come in handy.

Since I'm not a big mouse user, I did some research to try and figure out the best mouse available. This research led to the Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse. It lists for $99.99 and sells for $84 on Amazon. If you want to save even more, Amazon sells a refurbished version for under $60. You'll find that it fits your hand nicely and has a ton of buttons, wheels and other useful features. If you need one for a laptop, look to the Logitech VX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks.

I still believe you should be using a Wacom tablet the majority of the time when you are creating graphics. But for those times when you must have a mouse, the Logitech listed here is a darned good one.

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Hump Day Hardware: Keyboards Revisited

About a month ago I covered keyboards in my Hump Day Hardware blog posting. One of the keyboards I featured was the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000. After writing about it, I got more and more intrigued by the features it offers. My old Microsoft keyboard was a few years old and the new one only cost $32. That's right, I had to get one for myself.

I've been using it the last couple of days now and I really am impressed. Little things like padding on the wrist rest, the calculator key, the back and forward keys and the other programmable keys. I also thought it was cool that the common function of a letter key is written on the front of it. Like Ctrl + C is Copy, right? That means the C key has the word copy of the front of it as a little reminder. Best of all is the zoom slider in the middle of the keyboard. I don't use a mouse and that means I don't have a scroll wheel. The zoom slider gives me something very close to that scroll wheel.

Think about how much you use your keyboard. This is a small price to pay for a replacement that gives you a lot of bang for the buck.

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Hump Day Hardware: Keyboards

For the CorelDRAW Unleashed User Conference, we ordered several new computers from Dell. Everything was great about the computers except for one thing. As I was preparing them, I found it next to impossible to type on the supplied keyboards.

They looked great and they had a very small footprint. But the functionality was absolutely awful. This reminded me just how important it is to have a good quality keyboard. Of course Dell doesn't mention their keyboard anywhere and I couldn't find a picture of one to show you.

I've been using an ergonomic keyboard for at least ten years. That was probably part of the reason I struggled so much to use the Dell keyboards. I am a big believer in the ergo keyboards and my favorite is definitely the ones from Microsoft. Their latest and greatest is the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000 and it sells for under $40. If you are spending your day interfacing with a computer, it is important to have a tool that works with you instead of against you. Those of you who have never used an ergonomic keyboard may take a day or two to adjust, but after a short period of time you'll absolutely love it. Another version of the keyboard is available packaged together with a mouse in the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000. Since I rarely use a mouse, it isn't really the right package for me. I'm a fan of Wacom tablets and we'll talk about that in a future post.

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