A Tale of Two Mice

For a couple of years now, I have used a Logitech V470 mouse. It is a laser mouse that uses bluetooth. I've used it with a black MacBook and two MacBook Pros and it has always worked perfectly. The only negative I could ever give it is that it is a little small for my hand (but I have large hands, I wear x-large gloves.) However, years of heavy use have taken their toll on the mouse, and I decided it was time to replace it.

This picture shows the V470 in the front, and its replacement a Targus AMB09US which they call "Comfort Laser Mouse." Why did I pick the Targus? Well it is also a laser mouse that uses bluetooth. I read many a rave review, so I figured it was just as good of a mouse as my V470. It is a bigger mouse, as manufacturers have started realizing that just because I want a bluetooth mouse does not mean that I want a "travel" (small) mouse. However, after several weeks of use, here is what my desk looks like:

Yep, the old V470 is back, despite being chipped and have plastic peeling off of it. The Targus mouse is just not as good for several reasons. Its interaction with my MacBook Pro is buggy. Often the cursor on the screen does not change as it should (imagine web pages where you don't get the little hand to indicate a link). The sensitivity of its sensitivity is way too high. What I mean is that a slight adjustment in sensitivity has huge effects. It is either sluggish or spastic. I've tried adding a mousepad to the mix, but it only helped a little. Finally, it does weird things when interacting with OSX. I hide my Dock on the left of the screen. If I put the cursor over there, then the Dock appears as it should. However, if I roll over items in the Dock, they are not magnified as they should be. I can still click on them, but this messes with me and makes me think too much when I just want to launch something from the Dock. Also, I actually missed horizontal scrolling with the V470. Its wheel could move left/right to allow for horizontal scrolling. The Targus mouse does not have this feature, and I didn't think I'd miss it. However, I did not realize how often I actually used this, especially in Aperture and OmniGraffle.

Now I know that many/most of these problems may have as much to do with OSX as with the Targus mouse. But I don't care. I'm not going to switch operating systems. Instead I will switch mice. I'd really like to get a larger version of the V470, which is why I have not just bought a new V470 and continue to use my old beat-up one. At some point I will probably give in and just buy a new V470.

Cable Modems, Routers, and Connection Speed

Comcast is our ISP. We have a cable modem from them, and we also get cable TV from them. Lately our connection speed started to stink. So I called Comcast and complained. The service rep told me "indeed I see some packet loss from your modem, we'll send out a technician." He then added that if for some reason the problem was being caused by non-Comcast equipment then we would be charged some outrageous fee. Whatever.

Two technicians actually came out and we were very nice and helpful. They confirmed our connection stunk. They put in a "line filter" (whatever that is) and they switched out modems. They then tested the connection and it was once again blazing fast, like it used to be. Everybody was happy. Way to go Comcast!

Crystal pointed out that there was also the possibility that some of our other equipment could be slowing down our connection. Our topology is: cable modem -> Vonage modem -> wireless router -> computers. Our home built desktop system has a wired connection to the router, even though it actually has a wireless PCI card in it as well. My MacBook uses the wireless of course. Just to be sure that the other stuff was not causing any problems, I did some experimentation.

I did speed tests with various configurations. First I tested with the cable modem connected directly to the desktop computer. I used this as a baseline. I got 600K down and 550K up.

Next I put the Vonage modem in between the cable modem and the desktop computer. This had no significant effect on the speed. It was actually slightly faster down and slightly slower up. No difference. I was happy to see this.

Finally I set up my usual setup. Now I found a dip in speed. I was only getting 500K down and 475K up. It was a pretty consistent 15-20% drop in speed.

Now 500K down is still plenty fast. It's certainly fast enough to support Vonage and "heavy" internet use like streaming video. I suppose some loss because of the router (a D-link DI-60 80211g that includes a hardware based firewall) should be expected, but 15-20%? I really don't know if that's a really bad amount or just par for the course. Do I need a new router?

The Wow Starts Now

Yesterday I completed the upgrades to my computer and including installing Windows Vista. I spread the upgrades out over about a month's time. Here they are.

1. Upgrade video card. My old Nvidia GeForce4 4400Ti had been really good to me. It was the second highest card from Nvidia (topped only by the 4600Ti) when I bought it in 2002, and it was a good investment. It lasted five years. I upgraded it to an ATI Radeon 9550. That's very much an economy card compared to the old Nvidia, though still a nice upgrade. I don't game anymore, so it didn't make any $ense to through a lot of money at a gaming card. The Radeon is passively cooled, so it really made my system a lot quieter. Price $70.
2. Upgrade memory. This was the biggest upgrade, in terms of both performance and price. I had two sticks of PNY 256 MB PC2700 DDR2 RAM in my old system. I replaced that with two sticks of GSkeil 1GB PC3200 DD2 RAM. So not only is 4x the amount of memory, it's faster memory to boot. It's pretty high quality 2.5 latency RAM with nice heat spreaders, too. Price $180.
3. Upgrade hard drive. With the video card and memory upgrade, I had more than enough horsepower to run Vista. However, I wanted to do a clean install of Vista, while not losing any old data, and keeping XP around just in case Vista had issues with my hardware (though I seriously doubted this.) My old HD was a 180 GB IBM Desktar IDE drive. It's a nice drive, 7200 RPM with 8 MB of cache. My motherboard supported both IDE and SATA hard drives, so I decided it was time to go SATA. I bought a 200 GB SATA2 Western Digital Caviar SE. My motherboard only supported to SATA (1.5 MB/s) not SATA2 (3.0 MB/s) so this was the trickiest part of the install. I had to user the jumpers on the drive to tell the HD to only server 1.5 MB/s of data. That worked great though. Price $60 (OEM on Newegg) + $10 (SATA cable from Fry's = $70.
4. Upgrade Windows. I decided to go with Vista Home Premium. I got it for $120 OEM on Newegg. I installed on the new HD. It was very quick and painless. It recognized XP sitting on the old drive and gave me this as a boot up option. Install time was under 30 minutes. Price $120.

So there are my upgrades. I've had no driver problems so far. Vista boots up and shuts down really quickly. I will try out more of my peripherals soon, like my SD card reader, iPod, and printer.