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I changed the layout my computer desk the other day by adjoining a desk from another room to the table that I had been using. Now I have legroom—legroom! Still, I cross my legs in a near-lotus position as though I continue to have none. Years of denial have made my legs wary of exploring this new and mysterious area.
With this rearrangement, my keyboard and mouse cables no longer wanted to reach all away to the back of my computer. The mouse was the second USB replacement for my long-faithful right-hand man mouse that tragically became a casualty of a text-loss incident in December. The first newcomer was in the "whatever is lying around because I need a mouse" category, and it failed to impress because it was beacon of light when the room was dark, and this is not an attractive quality for an input device. Also, it was optical, and I have had a long-held prejudice against optical mice. The second replacement, at a hefty $5, scored points for not glowing like some sort of magical stone, but its precision was far too poor for post-processing photos. When you're dragging a slider, you want to be able to move in one-pixel increments; four or five pixel jumps leaps are the things of extravagance.
When I did a budget upgrade on my computer in January, I found that my new motherboard had only one PS2 port, giving me the final push into this USB future of yours. When replacing my keyboard and mouse, the mouse purchase gave no problems. Something like $35 to Logitech left me with an optical mouse that hasn't given me trouble yet. I was always encouraged to embrace the blind mice and "see how they run", but this trackball-less thing is doing well on its probation.
The keyboard was another story. I am a little ashamed to admit this, but I am one of those people who actually like multimedia buttons! It started with my last keyboard. I discovered that having dedicated music-playing buttons above the function keys on my keyboard was really handy, especially mute and the like, which are not otherwise readily accessible. Then I got addicted to using the calculator button. You press that button and the Calculator program loads, ready for your simple arithmetic! Want two calculators? Press it twice! There's almost no limit to how many calculators it will summon for you!
Finding a non-wireless, USB, multimedia keyboard proved to be much more difficult than I expected. Pretty much everything was wireless. Having tried that previously, I recalled that having one's keyboard run out of batteries is an exasperating experience. I settled on an "ergonomic" Microsoft keyboard that also set me back about $35 dollars. The nomos (laws) of ergon (work) visited an increased workload on me, as the smirk-shaped curve of the keyboard rows made typing in the dark a considerable chore. (I am starting to sound as though I will only use the computer in a dark room.) Also, the keyboard was on a sliding drawer in the new set up, and it would slide back and forth, sprinkling additional mistakes into every paragraph.
I bought a replacement for the replacement keyboard. I would have liked to return the ergonomic smirker to the store, but there was not anything technically wrong with it. I bought an OfficeOne keyboard for $20 when I had finally found another that fit my criteria, and that had worse problems. Keys 1–4 and 7–0 did not work. I could still manage the digits with the number pad, but can you imagine how much this sapped my ability to express myself? It was a world without exclamation marks, parentheses, and ampersands. (Ampersands are a vital component of cutting an em dash. I love em dashes, but I try to limit myself to one per paragraph—unless they're a pair. It was though I'd rationed them so carefully, and yet I still ran out!)
I took that junk back. I got a replacement, bravely choosing the same model. It worked for a day before developing a similar problem. The same digits and most of the bottom row of letters refused to participate. I have to wonder why the 5 and 6 keys were spared. I took that junk back too and got a full refund. Now I'm back to the ergonomic smirker. I moved the keyboard to the desk surface, which is slightly higher than the keyboard shelf, and I'm trying to come to terms with its quirks. I'm giving it more than a week this time. One thing that it has over the OfficeOne junk, besides having a full set of functional keys, is that typing takes place at a reasonable volume. Typing on the OfficeOne junk was reminiscent of pecking at a typewriter, with the space bar making an audible clunk akin to forcefully slapping the carriage return.
Fun times.
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