O hail all ye wireless keyboards and mice! (08/09/06)

My long faithful keyboard today broke. Well, last night broke... as I spilt tea all over it... yeah. So today (being payday) I decided to treat myself to a nice new keyboard... so I pulled out the Argos, turned to page 1017 and realised it was only Microsoft keyboards... fuck that. Last time I had a Nazisoft keyboard it lasted until I plugged it in. The mouse was pretty decent, I suppose, but it wasn't offering a mouse.

I decided to turn to page 1GB and have a look-see at the other keyboards... but these keyboards were duelled with mice! So I decided to get one for £19.99 and claim I was rich... but to my horror I realised that it said: "Wireless!"... my heart sank. Before this adventure I'd never used a wireless keyboard or mouse... or anything, really, but now I was about to make the change from wired to wireless... what a day this would turn out to be.

I figured that I made the switch from a ball mouse to an optical mouse... and that was incredible, one of the best feelings I ever had... especially when I finally won a round on Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror. So maybe... just maybe I'd enjoy this experience too? After all it had a free 800dpi optical mouse with it!

Anyway, I bought it, I brought it back home, I hooked it all up and inserted batteries! I shrugged off the feeling of how strange it was to be putting batteries into something I have come to consider electrical equipment, and once the computer had found the receiver port I was up and running!

Oh wait, no, no I wasn't. The receiver can't be within 8 inches of electrical equipment... IE: Monitor.

Great. My computer table was made with wires in mind... it has a keyboard drawer... the only place it can go is on the keyboard drawer. Well, this sucks... I'm going to constantly get interference from the monitor. Wireless equipment - 1; Thump - 0. I finally decided to stop thinking negatively and just get the hell on with it... which I did! And failed... then tried again! But then I failed miserably, began crying, fapped, cried some more, had a smoke, had a cup of tea, tried once more and won!

Anyway, I'd like to point something out here and now. When the little piece of paper said "Place away from electrical objects"? It wasn't lying. At all. In fact, it said it for a very good reason. My phone went off and my mouse immediately spazzed out. For somebody who gets a lot of text messages? This is a bad thing. Then I began to transcribe an interview for (Hyperlink to Metal Rocks)... guess what? Even my iPod spazzed the mouse out. Wasn't that bad until I realised that the keyboard wouldn't work unless the iPod was asleep.

The thing what really annoys me is that this mystical 800dpi mouse that came with it? Well, my other Logitech optical mouse (which cost me £15 from Game) actually works better! And I'm pretty sure it's 800dpi too. I'm too lazy to dig the box out from under my bed... that and I'm scared to go under my bed. I swear I heard something scuttling around under there the other night... maybe my penis escaped me again?

I decided to leave it for a while and play some Broken Sword... well, it turns out that my mouse is absolute shit for anything which is considered a game... if it struggled to run Broken Sword (It didn't actually move. I had a bit of trouble getting the game on because my keyboard refused to acknowledge the fact that it was right next to the receiver port and didn't respond at all...) I figured I would be condemned to playing solitaire for the rest of my gaming life.

Eventually I went out to meet my girlfriend and came back... now the damned thing is working perfectly! What the hell is up with these things? People say that wireless is better than wired? Where?! The only good thing I can see from this is that the keyboard (when it works) is responsive as hell. Even though every time I press Caps Lock or Num Lock or Scroll Lock (Like I know what the hell that is supposed to be used for...) a little window pops up saying: "CapsLock on" or "CapsLock off" etc. It's annoying.

However! The keyboard is built for media! Media is good! Music! Yay music! Still... this doesn't mean I don't have a problem with it. Apparently those bastards at Labtec absolutely despise Winamp! Which just so happens to be my main media player... out of the 800 on my computer. See, Winamp slightly differs in design compared to the other media players. Winamp has a separate pause button whereas most have a play button which turns into a pause button when media is activated... this plays holy hell with my keyboard.

See, I have the following keys on here. Play/Pause, Stop, Volume up, Volume down, Mute, Previous track, Next track. That's great, I like that... but the problem is that I keep pressing the 'play' button to pause my music and it restarts the fucking song. When I'm transcribing it's absolutely infuriating. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to kill the designer of this keyboard. Though I admit, it's nice, the keys are nice and low into the casing which increases the sensitivity of the keys and they make very little noise! Unless I really erratically type and hit the keys as hard as I can.

Other than that it's so quiet, I can hear myself fap.

All in all? If you actually say that wireless is better than wired, I'm going to hunt you down and tear your balls off or rip your womb out. Through your fucking belly button you fucking inbred retards. Now, another problem with these things is that I paid £19.99 for a mouse and a keyboard, which I would consider a pretty fair price. I've no beef wit' 'dat. 'Dat kewl 2 m3 homee... but I have to take into consideration how much I'm going to be paying out for batteries in the next couple of months alone. I think I might keep a running tally, that'd be amusing.

Now some of these wireless mice (not sure about keyboards) come with a docking system which charges it as opposed to being ran on crappy batteries from Thailand. I could always buy rechargeable batteries but then I'd have to buy a battery charger and I don't have the money/can't be bothered. So! Something I haven't done in a while... I shall end with a plan!

I'll get a car battery! I'll do something involving getting rid of my mouse drawer... like putting a steel drawer in instead of a wooden one! Then I'll rig the car battery up to touch the steel drawer and then I'll put some wire wool onto the battery connections and then... well, then they should brush against the steel drawer and conduct electricity! ...but wire wool will burn... a bit too easily... alright, I'll get some metal bristles! I'll solder it to the connections and then it shall brush against the steel drawer and conduct electricity! YEAH!

Or I could just keep buying batteries... whichever is easier.

Update: Both the keyboard and the mouse died about a month after this post was made. R.I.P crappy electronics.

Update 2: I have recently discovered that somebody has stolen my idea for the long-life-battery-for-the-wireless-mouse-otron. Before I even published this blog! What telepathic arsehole did this? For your life shall be cut very short.