Lyle Schofield's Technical Journal

Manufacturer: Logitech
Product: Wireless (RF 27MHz) Multi-Function Mouse
Model: MX 1000
Product Web Site: Here
Purchased At: CompUSA
Cost: Around $59 USD (normal 79, $10 instant rebate, $10 mail-in rebate)

The iMac recently purchased came with the normal Apple 1-button mouse. While the 1-button thing is an adjustment in itself, the size of the Apple mouse is tiny. We purchased the Apple wireless (Bluetooth) mouse with the unit, but this is the same size as the corded one. I’m not quite sure the perfect way to use the Apple mouse – I spend a lot of time pushing it with just my fingertips – but it’s been a little less than satisfactory. It does track wonderfully, however.

To make the adjustment easier we plugged in a Microsoft “Wireless Optical Mouse Blue”, which is a non-Bluetooth wireless mouse that requires a little “base station” plugged into a USB port. This mouse fits in your hand a little better, although its too small and its tracking on the Mac was spotty. So, we’ve been looking around for a better mouse.

CompUSA had on sale the new Logitech “Laser” mouse. This is a similar to the Microsoft product – non-Bluetooth RF connection to a USB connected base. However, there are a couple of interesting features. First, it has rechargable batteries built in which it charges from the base station (works like a Palm Pilot dock), so no scrambling for AAA alkalines in the middle of the night. Two, it is a physically larger unit that fits better in your hand, although a right-hander’s hand only (asymetical shape to it). Three, it has about 8 buttons on it – scroll wheel including side to side, 4 way button on the side of the scroll wheel (like a ring outside it), three buttons under your thumb, then the normal 2 buttons under your fingers. Finally, the optical technology is laser based and not the normal red/blue LED found in other optical tracking devices.

The laser technology is definately a step up from the normal optical technology. The tracking is dead on – never a skip or a lag. The tracking also works whether the surface is reflective or not. The documentation states that it is tracking “20 times” higher resolution than normal optical technology, which allows for finer, more accurate tracking. The laser seems to be outside visible light, so one down side is no cool glow from the mouse.

The number of buttons on the mouse would obviously make Apple nuts. The mouse comes with a control panel which allows sensitivity adjustments as well as changing the action for the various buttons. The pre-set configuration normally has them for scrolling, zooming, “forward” and “back” in a web page, and to step through applications like an alt-tab keystroke. Don’t see a need to change them now, although gaming would obviously change that desire.  (Follow up – multiple buttons are an absolute need for Halo)

The installation was easy. The only unusual part is the need to charge the device prior to using it. Took about an hour. There is a tiny wall wart (real tiny, doesn’t block other outlets) which plugs into the base, plus the USB connection. Worked immediately without the software install.

LEDs on the top (3) tell you the charge status on the batteries. The mouse seems to conserve power pretty quickly with no motion.

The Good: Tracking and usage is amazing. No sponginess like some cordless mice, and it tracks the same whether I have it on the mouse pad or the desk. This desk is a semi-gloss wood finish which normally causes some tracking annoyances with the other optical mice.

The Bad: None.

The Annoyances: None.

So far, only used it a few hours, but its an impressive device if you can get it for the same price I did.

Overall: Function A+, Value B+

It’s best to avoid reading about upcoming computer products after you made a purchase… Think Secret – Revealed: New Power Mac G5, iMac G5, eMac Specs

Speaking of talking to a friend, I’m sitting here working on my computer and Skype woke up with my first phone call. And worked remarkably well!

I was using my corporate issue, utterly devoid of style (see 6th paragraph), Dell Cinderblock 9000 laptop, which apparently has a built in microphone. While compensating for the tinniness of tiny little built in speakers, the connection was remarkably clear. I was receiving a giant MP3 file, we were sharing links, all the while talking on a speakerphone connection.

While I know there is competition in this space, I can say my first experience with Skype was a very pleasant surprise.

Talked with a friend tonight who is up on Verizon’s Fios service. So, it does exist!

He’s very happy, it’s very cheap. As you surf around you’ll find out that this cheap, high-speed services does not provide a fixed IP. You can get one, but then it’s a $100 service (according to Internet hearsay), so, no longer cheap. Although cheaper and faster than a T1 line to your house…

Possibly DynDNS could deal with this, and maybe the IP doesn’t shift often. Don’t know — seems risky for running a web or Email server. Would be fine for a Half Life server, of course.

Was able to get phpMyAdmin working with little trouble. The configuration file is pretty easy to go through, and the documentation is very good.

Most of the time is spent with Apache config making sure the HTML source is only accessible on the local host. Not much of an issue since the machine isn’t accessible from the Internet, but it might get moved at some point.

Kudos to the developers: http://www.phpmyadmin.net.

Well, how exciting is this! Apparently, Microsoft is forming the MIIS Alliance (more). It’s nice to see some interest from a major IT player in older 16-bit interpreted programming languages. Maybe we should fire up the ol’ MV10000?

First, helps to set the wp-content “themes” directory to allow writing.  Duh.

Not too bad.  I’m starting from a template from Mike Little that is clean with both sides having a column.  I think by the time I’m done its doing to have little in common with the original outside of the CSS layout information.

Some more details…

This site (and some others here) are powered by the wonderful WordPress “blog” content management tools.  The site is currently powered by Red Hat-Apache-PHP-MySQL (the “LAMP” approach), and WordPress is an obvious selection with this framework.  I’ve tried a bunch, and even use Blogger and some other things, but I want to spend less time coding and more time typing.

As I’m learning PHP, this also seems like a nice way to get into it, since the Theme and Plug In approach allow a high degree of tinkering or taking advantage of others’ tinkers.

I have multiple installations set up on this server.  This is achieved by defining multiple MySQL databases and directories before the WordPress install script is run.  The only down side is the multiple theme instances you need to define as they are in a subdirectory to the installation, but over time I think I can probably work with this.

This refers to the “ver.2″ model of this product.

Manufacturer: Belkin
Product: Bluetooth USB Adapter, 10 Meter
Product Model: F8T003 version 2
Product Web Site: Here
Purchased At: CompUSA
Cost: Around $40 USD

If you want the wireless keyboard with an Apple iMac product there are a few ways to go. When ordering directly from Apple you can request the Bluetooth option. This component is welded right onto the motherboard and is not installable later.

You can also purchase a USB adapter for your iMac, and Apple directly sells a D-Link unit. Both the built in and the D-Link unit are directly supported by Apple.

Of course, any old USB adapter will do, and the CompUSA sales person recommended this Belkin unit.

Installation is a snap, as you just plug it into the USB port, OS X recognizes it, and away you go. I did no configuration of the unit, the wireless keyboard and mouse worked without any attention, outside the mouse control panel to adjust tracking speed, etc.

The good: affordable, painless installation. Works without attention.

The bad: there are some down sides to using this after-market product. OS X clearly does not support this as well as the built-in and D-Link products. When the computer goes to “sleep” you cannot wake it up by pressing a key, which the documentation for the operating system and keyboard clearly indicate you should be able to do. This is most likely due to some secret handshaking going on between the OS and bluetooth products that is a little outside the normal supported features, in my opinion. It’s not that big a deal since a little push on the power switch will wake it up, but it might be an annoyance. Also, there is a longer than expected delay between the time the machine is restored and when you can actually use the keyboard and mouse. The small Bluetooth icon on the top of the screen indicates “connection lost”, and it can take a surprising about of time for it to some back up (pressing keys helps this along). Note that the OS X patch to 10.3.8 seems to have elimited this issue, although you still can’t wake the machine up by pressing a key.

The annoyances: There’s a little blue LED on the unit which indicates activity. It’s mighty bright, particularly in a dark room. It flashes every two seconds when the computer is sleeping, and can light up a dark room. Between the LED blinking the the pulsating power light on the front of the iMac it might be difficult to sleep when the computer is.

Oh, and it takes up one of the three USB ports on the back. I was surprised how quickly I filled this up. Bluetooth, Palm docking station, Microsoft Wireless Mouse (more on that later), Compact Flash card reader, and my USB memory thing and I’m already playing musical chairs with the USB ports.

Overall: Function B-, Value B

Description: Blister pack with 2 256 M DDR RAM modules packaged for Apple after market upgrades. Purchased at CompUSA for $130 with iMac G5.

In researching the recent Apple computer purchase I asked around about whether the installed 256 M RAM was enough for the computer. The rationale was wanting to make sure the computer would be usable for 4 or 5 years, as we seem to get a lot of life out of the “main” computer in the house. The biggest disappointment with the Dell Dimension 8100 was the 256M RAM which originally seemed like a lot seemed like too little over time.

The opinions I got ran all over the map. Some thought the pre installed RAM was fine, some though any machine should have about 1 G. Some thought that you can’t compare the Apple’s to Windows machines for rules of thumbs since the Unix kernel of the machine makes much better use of memory than Windows. More RAM is needed for some apps, most commonly mentioned was Garage Band and Virtual PC. Since Garage Band is of interest, we decided to get some more with the computer from the beginning.

I kind of wanted to get the 1G upgrade, but the cost would have been around $320, which was steep on top of the unit already. The 512M upgrade was relatively afforable, and the PNY product was recommended by the sales person. I knew that the iMac had 2 slots, with one filled with a 256 module. I thought the PNY package would have had a single 512 unit bringing me up to 768M. However, I found out that you need to add them in matched pairs, which doesn’t make sense to me since there’s a single SIMM in the machine originally.

However, I thought I could change it easy enough later, and extra RAM modules are easily sold or reused later. So, no big deal.

Putting the modules in, of course, is a separate adventure. Before the iMac was plugged in for the first time, we added the RAM to the unit. I was a little worried about this since I had never seen the inside of one of these before, but the Apple saleperson assured me that if I was comfortable putting them in a PC I would be OK with this.

Opening the iMac is quite different from Intel cases, as to be expected. We placed a towel down on the desk to protect the iMac, not wanting to blemish that work of art. You lie the iMac screen down on the desk, with the bottom of the unit facing you (there is a grill across the bottom for air intake and speaker output. Three Philips Head screws are visible, one on each end and on in the middle. You unscrew them, and they stay attached to the case. Once all three are loosened, you can lift up the bottom of the back and rotate up as it clips into the top. The “foot” which holds up the iMac makes a convenient handle to grab this by. Set it out of the way.

On the 20 inch iMac the SIMM slots were on the right. They work like any other, you pop open the clips on the side which pries out any installed ones, and you press in the new ones until they seat in the slot and the clips pull back in and hold them. All seemed to work fine, and the back is placed on the unit top first, then set the bottom in and tighten the screws. Not too tight, of course.

During the boot up, we checked the “about this computer” panel and all the RAM was seen. There’s also a utility to perform diagnostics on the whole system, and the RAM test ran fine. So, simple to do and worked without a hitch.

Of course, I’m not able to compare the performance before and after, because there was no “before”. I also don’t have enough experience with the iMac to know whether its running smooth or not, but all the app launching, switching, and rendering sems to go fine, so I guess its running great. We’ll continue to monitor this and see if RAM ever becomes a problem.

Overall: Features: A, Value: B (probably could have found it cheaper, and I have this spare SIMM to figure out).