cjsimmons.net

For the past 9 years I have been using my good old trusty Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical and have found it to be a great mouse. Unfortunatly the scroll wheel has started to not work, and it’s currently unable to scroll up, and has difficulties scrolling down.

I spent a few days shopping around, try a few different ones out, and reading reviews online. I was originally going to go with the Logitech MX Revoluion, but discovered that it has been replaced with the Performance Mouse M950, though it is a bit out of my price range with an RRP of AU$199 and not yet available everywhere.

Eventually I came across the MX1100 which is a slight revision of the MX Revolution, but not as crazy of a mouse. I must say that at AU$89 this has been a great buy. It is by far the most comfortable mouse I’ve ever used. The precision, comfort, and everyday use is amazing.

The other nifty feature is that being a wireless mouse, I can unplug it from my desktop and use it with my notebook. Finally a way to ditch that crappy trakpad.

It’s been an odd day for technology in my household. Firstly my wife’s iPhone decided that it wanted to be connected to iTunes which resulted in having to perform a restore, which I did and somehow got into a loop and wanted to keep being restored. In the end I decided to call Optus iPhone Support, and they advised to go into my local Optus Shop and get them to check it out. Turned out that it just needed to be activated, but they guy at the shop couldn’t explain why it wouldn’t activate for me at home.

Finally, my HP notebook decided to call it quits last night. The strange thing about it was that I used it about 30 minutes earlier, then wanted to use it again, and it would not wake up. I powered it down, and rebooted, but nothing would happen. All the lights came on, but no boot sequence.

I got on to a HP technician and he walked me through some steps, and concluded that it needs to be sent in for repair. Well, I figured that much. Luckily we purchased an extended warranty, so the claim has been submitted, and now I just have to arrange to have it picked up from my home. Now that is good service, don’t have to pay for a thing. Now, hopefully they don’t take forever to send it back.

Today I made the step from CRT to LCD. Yes, finally after all these years I have a LCD monitor for my PC. I got myself a Samsung 2333SW, and I must say that it’s a very nice monitor. The colours are nice and crisp, and the screen real estate is awesome. Full HD and 1920×1080 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio is great!!

I was wanting to get a 24″ screen, but decided on getting a 23″ instead as a) it was cheaper, and b) they look as good, if not better then a 24″. All I have to do now is connect up my Xbox360, and it will be pure bliss.

have just spent the best part of about 4 hours installing ndiswrapper and a Netgear WG311v3 to a new PC running Ubuntu 8.10 x64 bit. All the turorials that I seemed to fine all mentioned the same way of going about to get this card up and running, but it wasn’t until not I came across a post somewhere saying to check ‘dsmeg’ and see what it say. There I found that it was saying that I’m running a 64 bit kernel, and the driver is only 32 bit, and that it was “bad magic”, lol!! Anyway, James Wilson has made some 64 bit drivers for this particular wifi card.

Many thanks to James for these drivers. I was starting to go nuts trying to get this card working. I have put this post up to help spread the word about these drivers, and show people that there is success on the horizon regarding this wifi card.

I’ve been having some issues with my DrayTek Vigor2600G lately. Mainly with the wireless part, and I haven’t really been using it for the last month or so. I’ve had my notebook connected via ethernet, but that darn blue cable can get rather annoying. So today I went out and brought the Netgear WNDR3300. It’s a RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router which is pretty sweet, and so far it’s been great. The coverage is awesome, though my Nokia N95 8GB is having some issues finding the wireless network, but for now, I’m not to worried about that.

Later on down the track I’m looking at getting a Netgear WNHDE111 to hook up to my Xbox360 resulting in getting rid of the 15m ethernet cable and my wife Lisa will be a happy woman.

I’m a frequent Microsoft Outlook (currently using 2007) user and have been for many years. I just can’t see to get away from it, and I’m yet to find anything that comes close to it. One thing that keeps me is that I can sync my phone with it, which in turns syncs with my Google Calendar.

Up until today, I’ve always looked at the little phone button on the toolbar and wondered how that works. Well, it’s a lot simpler then I though. I just had to plug a modem in to the phone line, and hit the button and it makes a call. How awesome is that!?!?! Now I can call anyone in my contact list with the hit of a button, instead of reading it and then keying it into my phone, then pick up my phone. Oh, and the best part about it is that this works over my VoIP line. Free calls and lazy dialing!!

How cool is this? This is running Crysis at a resolution of 2880×900!! It’s on display at CES2008. More info over at Engadget. I’ll have one thanks.