I picked up a small toy the other day and like it enough to comment about it. The toy is a Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer. This mouse embodies the latest in mouse technology (oh, come on, stop laughing!). First of all, it is fairly tall, so it supports the palm of your hand better. Other mouse manufacturers, such as Logitech, have been using this form factor for a while, but MS finally caught on. There is also a deep notch for your thumb, which makes holding and moving the mouse much easier. The drawback is that it is very definitely a right hand mouse - I am not sure if they make a left-handed version.
This mouse has no mouse ball. I always was annoyed at having to regularly clean off the ball (and rollers) in my mouse as they get dirty and when they do the mouse just doesn't roll right. The new mouse uses an infrared detector to read movement over any surface - you can even use it on your other hand or arm. It's real smooth.
Microsoft added two buttons just above the thumb notch. You can program these buttons, but I chose the main one to be "Back". This makes going back to previous web pages easy. I set the smaller button for "Home" - this will take you to the top of your current web page.
Of course, the mouse also has the (now standard) scroll wheel between the two buttons.
But the primary feature is that the mouse is wireless. There is no mouse tail cord - you just put a USB attached base anywhere on your desk and the mouse will communicate with its base wirelessly. The overall package is pretty slick.
Now as to WHY I bought the mouse, that is another story. I was in Wilmington with my wife, who is generally as conservative with her money as I am. Yet, she almost insisted that I buy this toy - which was about $60 at Sam's Club. I later found out why as we happened to wander into one of the local furniture stores, and we just happened to end up ordering about $2100 worth of furniture. She probably thinks the $60 was money well spent, husband psychology-wise!
On another topic, I received some news from one of my clients that I thought was worth publishing. Now, I usually don't take sides in the broadband access arena; I don't recommend DSL over Road Runner or vice-versa. But I found out that if you install DSL on your (single) phone line, you have to put filters on all the other phones in the house. They supply the filters (a small box with a phone cord on one end and a socket on the other), but these cannot be connected easily if you have a wall phone because there is no place to put the little box. This is something to consider in making your choice.
Today's final topic is the default printer. I am getting feedback from many of my clients that this is not well understood. In MS Windows, you can define more than one printer. Any application that prints will give you the option to select which printer to print that document to in the Print dialog. Just to make things easy, Windows lets you select one printer as the Default Printer. There is nothing special about this; it's just the default printer to use if you don't manually select a printer.
But if you don't initially set the default printer, it may point to something that is not what you want, or perhaps not even a printer at all. Many new PCs come with faxing software included with the modem. The fax software looks like a printer, but is not. This is the default printer that comes from the computer manufacturer, because there is no other printer attached. You then add your own printer, but forget to set the new printer as the default. Then, when you attempt to print without selecting the printer, it uses the default and your print just ends up sitting in the fax queue and nothing prints. So, remember to set your default printer and remember to select the proper printer if you have more than one.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).