I just got back from Circuit City, and am still on my lunch break. I decided to get a new mouse for my computer at work. The mouse issue has been a bit frustrating. Honestly though, I’m not complaining because I could have far worse problems at work. Anyway, the frustration lies first in that I’m using a Mac. Macs come standard with only one button on them, and no scroll wheel. Being a PC guy, I have been using two, three, four, and five button mice for years, so having only one button is wierd to say the least, but frustrating in most cases. I talked to the guy who takes care of the Macs back when I started working about getting another mouse, and he said he’d order one for me but never did. About that same time, I brought in a crappy HP two button scroll mouse that I got free after rebate. I bought it for my laptop, which rarely gets used, so a crappy mouse was no big deal. Now I was having trouble with the thing snagging on the mouse pad and decided I had enough. I mentioned to a coworker that I was going to go buy a new mouse and he suggested talking to my boss about getting the company to buy me one. He didn’t go for it. I would have asked him to buy a Logitech that costs $30. Since I had to buy my own, I got a Microsoft that cost me $20. It’s good enough though. It’s optical, so it won’t snag, and has two buttons and a wheel. It’s much nicer than the HP I had been using until today.
That all reminds me, I can’t understand when people go out and buy new computers, and skimp on things like mice and keyboards. I’m speaking of people’s personal computers. You use them to interact with the machine you just spent hundreds of dollars on, get nice ones, it makes the experience of using your computer much more pleasant. I also recommend a nice monitor and good sound. They’re how your computer interacts with you. I understand hesitation with them though, a nice monitor can be very expensive. The upside is that if you get a nice enough monitor, you can use it long after you toss out your computer for a nice upgrade. Monitor prices are much more consistent than are the prices for the computer itself. The most frustrating thing for me is friends that like to play on their computers as much as I do and have some 10-year-old 12″ piece of junk monitor that they picked up on a dumpster dive and has colors missing and the picture is out of focus. You can pick up a pretty nice 17″ monitor brand new for about $150.