I’m a huge believer in technology – you know, a boy and his toys and all. For the last four years I’ve had a wireless keyboard and mouse set, the Microsoft Desktop Elite. It was great. I could place the wireless mouse anywhere on my desk or on my lapboard without worrying about tangled cables and the mouse would still work. Having a wireless keyboard was also a good thing. I play Microsoft Flight Simulator – a lot and being able to move the keyboard out of the way without being tethered to a cable has always been a big advantage.
But one thing, they don’t tell you about is that all of these wireless devices consumed batteries like a starving man at a buffet table because the device is always on even when your computer is off. And when a battery goes out – it just goes, you get very little warning. Well, that’s not quite true. The change battery notice on the MS Desktop Elite is kind of like an car airbag. When it goes off, it’s already too late to prevent the crash. So, after being surprised by batteries failing on these devices, I invested in rechargeable batteries and a good battery charger. And for the last couple of years this partnership of rechargeable batteries has worked pretty well – that is until yesterday.
Yesterday, I got an on-screen notification from my wireless keyboard that the batteries were critical and were about to fail. Having played this game with the wireless keyboard and mouse for the last couple of years, I’ve learned to have charged batteries on standby ready to go. It was after I changed the batteries, I got an interesting re-education on these devices. When you remove the battery from one of these wireless devices, the keyboard and mouse has to find the wireless receiver again and connect to it. Normally, it’s a matter of pressing a button at the bottom of the keyboard and pressing a button on the receiver on the wireless receiver. If all is well, the devices connect within a few seconds. Yesterday after 30 seconds of continuous searching and scanning, the keyboard, with its new batteries could not find the receiver and the receiver could not find the keyboard. It’s a good thing that my most significant other is visiting family in Atlanta because the scream I let out at that point would have surely been interpreted as a death howl.
I love technology. I said that in the opening paragraph of this essay. But I love it better when it works and in this case it failed me. So yesterday I went out and bought a wired keyboard and a wired mouse and hook them both up to the PS/2 slots on my computer and hoped. Turns out, it didn’t take much hope. It took Windows Vista about a minute to find the new keyboard and mouse and with a reboot, I was off and rolling.
I’m all about technology and when it works, a wireless desktop is great, but when it can’t find the receiver, it becomes a brick. No more bricks for me. I’m wired from this point on.