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The Wax

December 02, 2004

Back Up Your Hardware.

With my recent trials and tribulations due to a rotten airport card, I discovered a problem innate to a world of wireless wonderment.

When I purchased my new hotness, I opted for the bluetooth mouse and keyboard. The Problem is problems.

Running Apple's hardware tool kit requires you to boot off the CD drive. This is the same for Norton, Drive10 and Tech Tools etc. All these products run of a rudimentary system on the disk. None of those systems will recognize your bluetooth paring.

So in an effort to reduce my desktop wireage, I had increase my closet junkage. I need to have a backup USB keyboard and a backup mouse. While these don't take up a lot of space, I still think it sucks. Especially because my old keyboard doesn't have a recognized key layout with the new system (even though the keyboard it's an Apple), so I needed to run out and buy a new usb keyboard.

The other interesting problem is that if your mouse/keyboard starts running low on batteries, it starts to do craaaazy things. Like moving randomly or not recognizing a released key. Very Poltergeist.


Posted by davidissimo  ::  Permalink  ::  Comments [3]  ::  

Comments Section

I, too, was enraptured with the wireless keyboard/mouse idea, but the honeymoon only lasted a week or two. FWIW, I was using the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and MacMice's new The Mouse BT, and I was pairing them with my Powerbook (which, of course, has a built-in keyboard and trackpad, so I never had the set-up problems you had).

The keyboard was fine, honestly, but the mouse... oy. The mouse just plain didn't track well. It was jumpy and erratic, and there's nothing like erratic mouse tracking to drive you f'kn' crazy. I actually bought two of them, one for me and one for Jess, and she had the same problems with hers. After looking into MacMice's support FAQ, I've decided that the mouse is probably 100% functional, but that, at least right now, there are inherent problems with Bluetooth mice in general.

Hense, back to the USB keyboard and new Kensington Turbo Mouse trackball. Way way better. It even comes in a wireless version! :)

Moral: A clutter-less desktop is nice, but functional high-performance hardware is ten times nicer, and one hundred times less likely to make me want to through the mouse out the window and then leap out after it. I'm looking forward to the next Bluetooth standard and the gadgets designed for it, but for now, I'm sticking with the clutter.

Posted by: alex at December 2, 2004 12:35 PM

I use a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse (which talk to a Gateway) here at the office and they work fine, except that the mouse require frequent battery changes.

Posted by: tom at December 2, 2004 01:35 PM

I encountered a similar problem while build a friend a windows box. The new, space age mothter board came with a serial ATA (wicked fast) hard drive interface . But the hightech windows installer disc does not contain universal dirivers for that tech so i had to go and and buy a good old '80 floppy drive to load a custom drivers for my 2004 hardware tech.

fun stuff

Posted by: chris watts at December 2, 2004 02:32 PM

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