full_entry: October 2007 Archives

As I mentioned previously, I forgot to bring a mouse with me on my travels this trip. This is a relatively minor inconvenience with a MacBook, as it has a large and very nice built in trackpad with two-fingered scrolling and right-clicking, but sometimes you just want a mouse. It's a better pointing tool than the finger on the trackpad is.

So I went out into the city centre of Brisbane today to pick up a cheap mouse. You know, a generic USB mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel, which you can pick up for HKD50 (or maybe HKD 70 for a nice one), but which has an odd Chinese brand name. Not a Logitech (have one at home), Microsoft (have one at home for gaming) or Apple (don't like the mighty mouse).

Could I find one? Nope. Not even in BigW (think WalMart) was there a simple USB mouse for less than AUD 20 (about HKD140 now!), and the prices of the brand-name items was shocking.

The Apple Mighty-Mouse was AUD 99, which is about USD 90. It retails in the US for UDS 69!

I realise that the currently strong AU dollar is bringing prices up, but there just doesn't seem to be the range of cheaper tech stuff available at all!

Tired of bending down to type on your laptop? Make a Laptop Stand!

Take the top from a box of printer paper, remove the front (long) edge and trim the sides to make a wedge. Cut some strips from the front wedge to make a lip and staple it to the lowest edge.

Congrats, you now have a wedge shaped piece of card, er, a high tech, recyclable, earth-conscious, stand for your laptop, which will elevate the screen to a better height for reading from.

The keyboard's going to be at a steeper angle than before, but an external keyboard will work around that.

I wouldn't recommend leaving a laptop on it in an unattended fashion, though - it'll get reasonable hot (depending on your laptop model) and there is a slight risk of FLAMES REACHING THE CEILING, FIRE! PEOPLE RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING! and your laptop being a melted pile of slag in your melted pile of slag office. I take no responsibility for any damage to your laptop, desk, place you put your laptop or anything related to this post. Also, people RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING AIEEEE! are your problem too.