Logitech mk300 - bad - bad mouse …… 有辦法！

Whether I needed or not a keyboard is a whole other question, but there are some things for which a mouse is indispensable. I often feel that I cannot live without the trackpoint, but the proximity to the screen using the laptop normally is maybe a little too much!

Nevertheless, I find that the time that I was spending looking around for alternatives to locally available (and expensive) Bluetooth mouse, was ridiculous, so I went out and got the Logitech MK300 keyboard and mouse. The 1200 dpi is was what got my attention.
(Sorry for the distraction, but am I writing on the Thinkpad T61p keyboard which is still much better than the Logitech! A little louder, but the response and the key height is more comfortable.)

As for the mouse there were a few things that I did not like :
click on the wheel
bounce in the air feeling of the buttons

Noise problem

1. Open the mouse by pulling off the cover which faces you to access the batteries.
2. Remove the batteries
3. Use a screw driver to remove the screw clearly visible
4. Pull the cover up and towards you.
5. Apply a small piece of foam or felt in the areas shown above.

Click of the wheel
The wheel will never have the weight or inertia of higher end models, but removing the click is still an improvement.

1. On the button cover, look for a screw in the centre ( located underneath, really towards the centre of the mouse )
2. Once the wheel mount is separated from the button fixture, the wheel can be pushed out of the sockets.
3. Remove the spring.
4. Reassemble.

Had I something around, a lining weight would have been nice, but I am not sure how that it would affect the sensors. A slight interference would maybe make the wheel unusable.

Regarding the MK300 keyboard, I would also change the Fn key which replaces the context menu, given I make a lot of errors, so now I have to hit two keys when correcting typos. )

Turning the BCK-08 into a remote audio receiver

Last year I was one of the many who thought that using Bluetooth is a symbol of consumer success. I am not sure if there is such a thing, but getting a wireless link with my phone was a “thrill”, ok just a waste of time.

Nevertheless, there is a way that the stereo Bluetooth receiver can be used with Windows 7 as an inexpensive wireless speaker system. A dongle goes for about a dollar, and the BCK-08 Bluetooth Stereo headset costs about 10$. I had the other parts lying around, so it felt good to get them out the way!

Here is the data sheet. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/f49978afdd3383c4bb4cd2f8.html
Unfortunately, my technical Chinese is quite limited. I don't think I ever spoke about electronics other than LEDs when living in Taiwan. English one here (a little more recent).
You may want to investigate a little further about the ISSC iS1621N Stereo bluetooth IC. I wonder how the engineers and others who develop these technologies feel. Making a very inexpensive product is not bad, but it sure must not feel like you are designing a Maserati or Porsche!




Here are some instructions to make use of your bluetooth headset :


Parts
a) Bluetooth dongle
b) Bluetooth headset
c) 5V DC power supply (100mA is more than enough, but any adapter will do) – a cell phone charger will be fine.
d) 1 or 2 diodes or NPN or PNP transistors ( I could not find diodes) (average .7V drop per diode)
e) 100µF capacitor 6V

Instructions
1. Using a multi-tester, determine the polarity of the power supply. You will also find out what the voltage. Mine was 5.2V so I needed 2 diodes to bring it close to 3.7 as possible.

2. Put the diodes in series to and solder to one end of the power supply lead.
3. Plug in the power supply. Measure the voltage. It should be between 3.7V and 4.3V. If it is too low, you will get low power warning from the BCK-08. If it is too high, you may damage it. I assume however that there is some tolerance up to 5.1V as it uses a USB as a charge source and a voltage regulator on board. You can then put the capacitor across the leads to ensure that the device will have avoid having dips in power or any noise.
4. Unplug the Power supply. It will look better if you put the diode and capacitor in the power supply/AC adapter if there is room. Appearance is a very important part of the functionality of a device.
5. Use shrink tubing on the diode and power supply leads.
6. Open the BCK-08 by removing the white stickers.

7. Remove the battery, and connect the power supply leads to the terminals of the battery.
8. Plug in power supply and verify that the BCK-08 turns on.
9. Test the BCK-08 with your computer, phone, MP3 Player or whatever uses Bluetooth.

10. Setup speakers with BCK-08 up to 10 meters away.


I found that the Intel Bluetooth in my Thinkpad worked much better than a dongle. A full length straight antenna is probably the reason which explains better performance.

Annoyance using Logitech Access Keyboard with F-Lock - Default ON solution

I still really like my old Access Keyboard. I must have written hundreds of pages on it, but the F-Lock function has been quite a pain to deal with. I found a simple solution. Mine is PS/2, but it should probably work with the USB version.

1. Turn your computer off .
2. Hold the F-Lock button.
3. Boot up your computer.

If the state changes, that is the LED lights up, you can guess what needs to be done.I stuffed a piece of paper in the edges of the button and put a pieces of tape over it to disable the button permanently.

4. Enter windows, uninstall the Logitech Access software ( memory usage, slower boot etc.)
5. Reboot to make sure it is fine!

Codecs and Windows 7 - not working so well...

Why is Windows 7 so useless?

Actually, I did feel that there are some improvement in Windows 7 like the Programs Uninstall, maybe even the set folders- documents, pictures, videos and music. However, I just do not get why something as simple as playing a video works perfectly fine, in XP 32-bit, but is a nightmare in Windows 7 64-bit.

Using the same piece of software, updated drivers in both cases, I cannot get a 1080p video with subs (MKV AVC FLAC) to play properly in Windows 7. The times that I could, the CPU usage was almost double than that in Win XP 32-bit.

Who is to blame ? Nvidia? Microsoft? Codec developers?

I know that machines from 2003 -2004 are capable of playing most 720p video, can go up to 2GB of RAM and really have no need to be replaced with the new quad core machines. It is true that more data through-output is making the requirements of modern machines higher and higher, but really 95% of users will never need or ever use their computer's full capacity.
Rare exceptions would be gaming or 1080p video, if you have a screen to display that quality.

My point in all this :

Increased storage has little benefits unless you are doing a lot of video or photography. Tons of musics which you haven't paid for is passé
Faster CPUs will not improve the performance or productivity when an operating system gets bogged down with peripheral crap
Talk about protecting the environment also means reusing, maintaining older technology. Had the 486 DX-2 100MHz ( or something like that) been the limit until recently, I am sure programmers, and users would have continued to develop within their limits. Some new CPUs and Video cards take tremendous amounts of energy, 200W and more, making me think how much the technological exhibitionism has moved from weapons to cars to computers. Now the exhibitionism is on disposable devices like mobile telephones.
Airplanes, boats, computers etc have all been developed with CAD before the late 1990s with very good results. Faster systems mean more elaborate designs, but from my experience, the tools cannot substitute good design which is most often done on paper.

Looks like I will go back to Windows XP until Windows 7 is out of on the market beta...

Excel 2010 - useless importing feature

Have you ever tried importing a OpenOffice Spreadsheet? Quite a few problems :

- no formulas are imported
- graphics are lost

Essentially you just get the calculated data that was visible when the ODS was saved.

Another problem with Excel 2010, if you paste raw data, either separated by commas or tabs, it will just insert everything into the first column of cells.

At least in OpenOffice, it asks about the formatting when pasting a block of data (from Notepad or Acrobat Reader)

I know OpenOffice is not perfect, sometimes requiring the use of a mouse, or little things here and there that I have to use help to figure out, but at least the interface is labelled in a standard way. It imports Microsoft xlsx quite well, retaining formulas and graphics.

As a personal user, working with technical and financial data, other than legacy, I still cannot understand why Excel is used.

Élégance vs Beauté - Thinkpads vs others

A few months ago, I bought a 3 year old laptop. For over 650$, it sounds insane thinking of how the cost of machines have been dropping constantly. The fads of netbooks, a new interest in the tablet, as brought around by the infamous iPad, have contributed to the change in prices, but newer, faster, more efficient processors and video cards are all part of the picture.

Nevertheless, I am writing this on a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p. It is an elegant black boxy machine which pack most features found on current computers with the exception of HDMI and eSATA, but those option will take time before they replace a VGA or USB connector. Come to think of it, I have never seen anybody do a multimedia presentation and connect the projector to the HDMI. eSATA drives do offer faster transfer, but unless working with HD video, huge amounts of data being processed rapidly, there is no benefit over USB 2.0.

As for the video performance, Bluray 1080p is fine using DXVA. I can watch MKV with AVC video and FLAC audio with just under 15% CPU usage( it jumps around a little). (7% when watching video with no subs!)
(Make sure install the K-lite Codec Pack with Media Player Classic Home Theatre)

I have tried some modern games, playing maxed out at 1920 x 1200 is not an option, but using defaults, adding a little anti-aliasing and ansitropic filtering, does not affect http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifperformance much and over 30fps is not a problem. It seems that shadows are little difficult to process for the Quadro in games like Forsaken World.

As for the option of a newer machine with i5 or i7, I can barely think it would be worth it. My screen resolution is really pleasant, the computer is very silent, which is essential when writing, reading or in any creative process like CAD. Oh, yes the keyboard is really, really nice. Actually still better than most that I have came across.

Should I work for a company, or get another computer because this one gets damaged or stolen, It will definitely be another Lenovo ThinkPad.

(I have seen some Dells which have the same aesthetic, that is sleek black with a track point, and they may very well be suitable - noise, screen resolution and keyboard must be considered).

Acanac VoIP + torrent transfer - All is Well!

I have been speaking on the phone through VoIP and download at 500kb/s and maintained perfect quality! I was only running 5 torrents, but it counts as a stress test of just about all of the bandwidth of the 5M ADSL connection.

I finally managed to get the correct QoS settings on my router. You need three rules when using the Linksys PAP2 for UDP, from and to, as well as for RTP. Here they are the rules :
Rule 1

Rule 2

Rule 3