My last employers were kind enough to give me a cheque upon leaving. This makes a nice change – normally there’s guessing involved and it’s all rather inconvenient. What’s more, the company topped up the sum donated by my kind colleagues – an example more should follow. So, money to spend in London. Whatever to do?
What I ended up doing was what any self-respecting geek would do: I bought a new keyboard and mouse. My old keyboard was a Natural Keyboard Pro, one of the best of the group, but getting a touch noisy having just reached 6 and a half years of abuse. I had held off replacing it due to the industry’s current avoidance of split keyboard – Logitech only produces the Cordless Comfort Desktop set (which Polly has) and Microsoft recently revamped their line with the appalling Comfort Curve – what’s the point of that? Conveniently, they soon followed it up with the excellent Natural Keyboard 4000.
The 4000 has a couple of nice enhancements. Firstly, the keys are not just split but nicely curved for the hands. Secondly, it comes with a stand to raise the front, thus keeping your hands flat while typing. It looks a touch odd, but is very comfortable. Add the faux-leather wrist rest and the dirt-hiding black colour and it’s well worth the £35 odd quid from PC World (cheaper than Amazon even). Even Polly is impressed with it.
I also invested in a new mouse. My Renaissance mouse was snapped during the flight to Heathrow and was thus working due only to the tape covering the break. I did consider a G7 (wireless, but batteries need to be changed every day or two) and the G5 (laser with silly weighting system) but in the end went for last-generations corded spectacular – the MX518. Changeable DPI, buttons galore and a stylish cover – what more could one want? The only catch is it suffers from Logitech’s current fad of only shipping Windows drivers, hence I’ll need USB Overdrive to change the rest.
Even better, to polish the day off, England’s football game meant that even with ‘Severe Delays’ the Misery Line was half empty and reasonably quick. Made a change from being unable to stand up this morning, anyway. So, for the first time in my life, I say let there be more football! (or more tube trains…)
