gf-tech.com

I'd read about dropbox a while ago and didn't think too much of it. There are getting to be more and more services that will allow you to use their disk space, and synchronize it to all the computers you specify. Dropbox didn't seem to offer as much as Windows Live Mesh but I gave it a shot anyway.

My first reaction was that the Dropbox synch was way faster than Mesh. Dropbox also keeps a history of what has happened, and shows you what is happening at any given time. Mesh does not. In fact, the only thing Mesh can give you is remote desktop access to any other computer in your mesh, which is interesting and helpful.

I was getting ready to uninstall both Mesh and Dropbox, then I read Joel's post on password management. I've been using my thumbdrive and a portable version of Keepass to store my passwords. As Joel suggested, I could keep my password file in my dropbox and use the installed version of Keepass. This way I add a new password, and I can access it from home too.

I then took things a step further and copied the Keepass exe to my dropbox. Now I don't need to install anything except the dropbox program and I have instant access to all my password from all my computers. Very cool. I essentially turned my 2 GB dopbox space into a 2GB thumbdrive that I don't have to carry with me.

A while ago while I was in Langley recently I visited Future Shop and found they had the Logitech MX Revolution mouse on sale for $80. I picked one up because I am looking for a good mouse for work, and this one seemed like it would be a good fit for my hand, and for my penchant for customizing my computing experience.

The scroll wheel is a great idea in that it had two modes, quick scroll, and normal click scroll. There is also a thumb rocker switch that can be customized for use.

From all descriptions I had read it sounded pretty customizable. Perfect.

Out of the box the mouse is pretty comfortable, and glides nicely across the desktop. I installed the software from the included disc, and immediately noticed some peculiarities with it.

The thumb rocker switch had only one setting for use, and not one for flipping up versus flipping down. That switch could only ever do one thing regardless of which direction you move it.

I also found the software didn't always remember its settings. I would change the configuration click save, exit the configuration software and discover the changes hadn't been applied. Opening the software again I would inevitably find the changes I made hadn't been saved.

The clicking scrolling wheel was too pronounced and I could feel the clicks reverberate through my finger. It didn't bother me for the first few days, but it soon got annoying and distracting. I even found that this clicking bothered my finger so I had to turn it off.

The scroll wheel had a feature where it will switch from clicking to free wheel. The configuration software allows you to determine how much force was needed to indicate when to switch over. What happens internally is when the wheel spins fast enough the clicking mechanism is moved away from the wheel and it spins freely. Unfortunately this switching to smooth scrolling is very finicky. I tried all sorts of setting to find the sweet spot, but I never got it dialed in so I had to disable it, and just let it live in free spin mode.

When the free spin comes to an end, the mouse automatically switches back to click mode. I could physically feel the wheel click into spot. This quite often causes the active application to scroll a couple lines one way or another. Imagine this scenario happening 20-30 times a day. You flick the scroll wheel, it changes to free spin mode, and when you get to the right place in the file you stop the spinning. Then the screen you are looking at jumps up or down a few lines after a slight pause. Dam annoying.

Another option was to click the scroll wheel to get it to change from click mode to free spin mode. It seems like a good idea but in my experience it was an odd feeling that I couldn't shake no matter how many times I tried it.

In the end I configured the mouse to always be in free spin mode for the three reason mentioned above (clicking bothering my finger, finicky switch to free spin, and the jumpy screen when coming out of free spin mode).

The worst thing that I experience with this mouse was that quite often I couldn't scroll down when Visual Studio 2005 was the active application. I could scroll up just fine, but scrolling down would often fail. This only happened in Visual Studio, and only happened when trying to scroll down. A product killer if most of your day is spent in this application.

Battery life seemed very good. I could work a whole week and by Friday afternoon the batter warning was starting to blink. The batteries aren't user replaceable though. How long they will last is a question that is on my mind.

This mouse features quite an ergonomic design, and at first it seemed comfortable. Too soon though I found I was getting a claw hand. You know, my hand would cramp up after using the mouse for a few hours, and when I let go of the mouse, my hand is stuck in the claw shape? Not good. I also found that using this mouse inflamed my tendinitis, so I would have to abandon it for a few days to rest my hand. Whats the point of using this mouse if I can't use it all the time?

One thing about this mouse that I loved was the thumb rest, but I wished there was something similar for my pinky and ring fingers..

I've since stopped using the mouse and switched back to a basic Dell supplied cheap mouse. It fits my hand much better. The Revolution was just a tad too small and that is what caused my claw hand and discomfort. Soon I am going to sell it to try and recoup some of the cost. Good sounding mouse, but just not right for me.