Posture

Recently I've started to suffer from using a laptop as my primary work machine, namely stiff neck, sore back, etc. So I went shopping and purchased a PS/2 to USB cable, and an iCurve. I did toy with other laptop stands but they were either expensive, or incredibly ugly (think huge sheets of grey steel). The iCurve on the other hand is invisible...

My Desk

Here my unsed desktop's mouse and keyboard are plugged into the USB dongle, which through the magic of the kernel 2.6 input layer Just Works without any action at all.

When I want to use the desktop -- a monthly event generally -- I can just whip the USB adaptor from the laptop and plug it into the desktop. Then I can watch Windows XP fail miserably to handle hardware changing between reboots. It appears that although Windows managed to handle the keyboard moving from PS/2 to USB, it refused to acknowledge that the mouse wasn't plugged into the PS/2 port still.. I had to figure out the keyboard navigation for the login screen and then remove/insert the mouse again. Not a great pain, but I bet that will catch out some normal users.

Anyway, the iCurve totally rocks and is a great example of design via simplicity: it's just a curved piece of plastic but the laptop sits firmly on it. I recommend it to everyone who uses a laptop all day.

20:00 Thursday, 27 Oct 2005 [#] [life] (10 comments)

Posted by Jaramir at Thu Oct 27 22:39:45 2005:
oh coolnes, the same mouse that i've got!
i feel more hacky now that i know :-)
Posted by Jaramir at Thu Oct 27 22:43:20 2005:
not so recent photo, the laptop is changed but the mouse is still the same: http://jaramir.slack.it/foto/varie/blindfaith.jpg
Posted by Chris at Thu Oct 27 23:30:32 2005:
Did you try disabling the ps/2 stuffs in the bios?
Posted by Robert at Thu Oct 27 23:58:25 2005:
I had that mouse. I loved it. After I'd repaired it twice it finally gave up on me earlier this year.

Reasonably happy now with a Logitech MX510.
Posted by Ross at Fri Oct 28 09:22:16 2005:
This mouse is giving up on me at the moment, it's getting very jumpy.  I'm looking at getting a new Logitech mouse soon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002FRWQI

Any comments on this?
Posted by James at Fri Oct 28 14:18:25 2005:
Instead of manually swapping your USB keyboard & mouse... check out Synergy.  I use it in my home office between a Windows XP machine (primary) and my  Linux workstation (secondary).  Its a really cool project which surprisingly doesn't get that much hype.
Posted by kaz at Sun Oct 30 15:37:06 2005:
Poor monkey.

what did he do to deserve being crushed like that

R.I.P monkey
Posted by kaz at Sun Oct 30 15:38:06 2005:
Not even going to mention poor Homer and penguin!

oops. just did!
Posted by Vincent at Mon Oct 31 22:17:39 2005:
I haven't seen monkey for ages. I still remember Rob torturing him in the office. =)
Posted by Dan at Wed Nov 2 09:05:02 2005:
That keyboard is still alive?  I remember stomping on that back in uni days.

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