Review: Logitech EX100 Cordless Mouse and Keyboard

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I got this keyboard and mouse today from my local Curry’s store as I accidentally broke my old wireless mouse. I’ve been trying to cope with using VNC to access my computer without a mouse, but my patience didn’t last long so I decided I had to go and get a new mouse/keyboard.

I paid just under £20 for the mouse and keyboard, so I was relatively pleased as that isn’t too bad at today’s standard.

In terms of quality and performance, I’m really happy. Set up was really quick and easy. I simply connected the receiver to the computer via USB, placed the batteries in the keyboard and mouse, and off I went. I installed the optional software to provide the function keys on the keyboard, although this isn’t vital and quite a lot of people probably wouldn’t bother.

The keyboard has a really nice comfortable feel which makes it a pleasure to type on. It’s feedback to your fingers is really good – it’s not too hard to press the keys that it becomes tiring to type with, yet not to easy to press the keys that you start double-pressing keys by mistake. Compared to my previous Advent keyboard, it’s really good (my old Advent keyboard was just too hard to type with – made you tired of typing very quickly).

The keyboard’s function keys are handy. It has all the obvious keys you’d expect – Internet, Email, Music player, Skip Track etc. However, the keys are built in to the keyboard itself rather than using separate buttons which makes the keyboard very compact. It makes the keyboard very useful if you are using it on a small desk.

The mouse is also very good. It’s a fairly big mouse which I prefer (I’m not a fan of the mini mice!). It has the usual 3 buttons – left mouse button, right mouse button, and a scroll wheel in the middle with a clicker. The mouse has a really comfortable feel which I would be happy to use for several hours continuously.

The included software is pretty good. Not only does it let you handle which function buttons do what, but it also lets you handle things like “gaming mode”. I actually like the idea of this (I am aware that this is probably not unique to this keyboard). How many times have you been in the middle of a full screen game and then accidentally hit the Windows start key, and the whole game minimises and your start menu appears – arghh! Well that’s solved with this keyboard, as you can have the keyboard’s software detect that you’re in a game and disable the start key. That is a lifesaver.

On top of that, the software also alerts you if either the keyboard or mouse battery is running low, which is helpful. That neatly brings me on to the only downside I can really think of for this keyboard – it doesn’t have a mouse charging cable or dock. Instead, it just uses simple standard AA batteries. Of course, you could just use rechargeable batteries and charge them externally, but this can become annoying when you need the computer and the mouse batteries are on charge. But then for £20, it’s not going to be perfect.

Overall, I’m very happy with the keyboard and mouse. If you’re in need of a good cordless mouse and keyboard set on a budget, this one is a good idea.

PRS reduces streaming music fee

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Ever thought that the streaming music you hear for free on sites like last.fm and Spotify costs? You’d be right in thinking so. Somebody has to pay a royalty for that music you don’t pay a penny for. That’s why music streaming sites have to place advertisements to fund the costs of music streaming fees.

Yesterday, the Performing Right Society altered the royalties owed on streaming music tracks. The fee for each streamed track is now 0.085p, compared to the previous 0.22p.

It is rumoured that this change has been made in order to persuade sites like Youtube and Pandora to start allowing streamed music. Youtube stopped allowing music videos in the UK earlier this year due to a failure of agreement with the PRS, so hopefully this new low cost royalty will encourage Youtube to start streaming music again.

It would be nice to see some official bands back on Youtube again. Although last.fm and Spotify are great for free music streaming, Youtube became well known for watching music videos online.

We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks – Youtube may well start allowing music again, but I personally think that it’ll take quite a lot of persuasion. Youtube is currently the 3rd most popular site on the internet (and has been for some time), so Google (the owner of Youtube) may decide that it is not worth paying music streaming fees again. Youtube doesn’t seem to have lost many visitors since it stopped streaming music videos.

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Server 2008 rolls out!

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Just a quick message to let you all know that Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has rolled out.

You can grab it free for both 32 bit Windows (348MB) and 64 bit Windows (577MB) at the respective links.

I’ve got my copy on download now, so I’ll post a review up for it in the coming days (hopefully by the end of the week).

Enjoy!

Why is Vista’s disk defragmentation system so bad?

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Ever since Microsoft released Windows Vista in 2007, I’ve absolutely hated the Disk Defragmenter in the operating system. It was fine in 98, 2000, and XP, but in Vista it is absolutely stupid.

For some reason, it automatically decides that you want to defragment all of your disk drives by default – and most of the time this is not the case for me. It spends absolutely ages “analysing” drives – to the point when I just give up and cancel it before it’s even started defragmenting.

It’s just such a failure – what happened Microsoft?

A lot of people say defragmentation is a total waste of time, but I think it does work now and then and it can improve hard disk performance (even if it’s just a little).

If you agree with me that defragmentation is a good idea, I’ve found a solution to the Vista defragmentation issues. It’s a little freeware program called Auslogics Disk Defrag. It works in all versions of Windows from 2000 up, so if you like it you can run it on some of your older systems too.

It’s much better than Vista’s defragmentation system because:

  • It let’s you choose which drives you want to defrag.
  • It doesn’t waste your time by trying to defragment files that don’t need to be defragmented.
  • You can set it to clear temporary files before defragmenting so you don’t waste time defragmenting files that are about to be deleted.
  • It shows you a graph of what’s being defragmented (this was in earlier versions of Windows and it was really helpful so why did Microsoft scrap it?)
  • It’s relatively quick.

So yes, if you do think defragging is good but you hate Vista’s system, this is the answer.

Microsoft planning to announce Windows 7 pricing as early as next month

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It has been mentioned on a few sites that Microsoft is apparently going to be giving the prices for the upcoming Windows 7 release as early as next month.

However, there are rumours going round that Windows 7 might even be more expensive than its predecessors, which is a very worrying thought – especially in this economical climate. Not to mention the fact that Windows Vista (as much as I may love it) was overall rather a failure for Microsoft. Increasing the prices now may well put people off what is hopefully going to be a massive improvement on Vista. The last thing Microsoft want is to kill customers off now, surely.

There isn’t really enough information on the internet yet to make any predictions for what the pricing of Windows 7 is going to look like, but I’d say it would be a good idea to start saving up now just in case it is a little more than you expected.