03 September 2010

HP Mini MacBook 311 Accessories : Wireless Mouse



As you know, I've just delivered part of my report for my MA class last Saturday, before I went to the Silent Film Festival (4th Silent Film Fest, that is) and tomorrow, the torture continues. You see, I used the HP Mini 311 to present my report last weekend.

And now you ask, whatever's unusual with that? Well, our MA class, Français 240 :  Traduction des œuvres littéraires is composed of only six students (there were nine of us when the sem started, three ended up dropping the subject). Given the small size of the class, we're lazy enough not to get to the officially designated classroom and have resolved to just camp inside our professor's office at the faculty center. We do have an audio-visual room but, as it is, we're pretty much happy inside the office though it's somewhat cramped even with only the six of us, actually seven including our professor.

You can very well deduce that I didn't get to use any projector for the presentation. Yes, that's seven grown ups peering into the Mini 311's 11.6" screen for some half an hour or so. And of course I had to play operator to transition my keynote slides and reaching out for the arrow buttons effortlessly obscured what little screen real estate was available then to my audience. In short, I wish I had something with which to control the slides without having to draw myself anywhere near the Mini 311 as to block viewing of the tiny screen.*

So today, after going off work, I prepared body, soul, and wallet to get me a new wireless mouse. It's that mouse in the picture above.

It's amazing how simple it is to add peripherals or accessories in Mac OS X whether the machine it's running on is a true-blue Mac or a Mac-wannabe hackintosh like the HP Mini 311. Microsoft's "Plug and play" technology has never been better nor more beautifully demonstrated before!

Performance is good enough: I'd be able to transition those slides three feet away. The sales lady at CDR-King said it should work up to a distance of ten feet. So although I do have qualms about its quirky pointing abilities - it's from CDR-King, what can one possibly expect anyway?? - my overall verdict is still positive: it will serve the purpose I got it for.

Below are some more pics of my new wireless mouse. Too bad; they don't have it in silver and black which would've matched the 311 perfectly. But I guess metallic beige and black is fine. Looks quite good (now that the paint hasn't faded yet).

CDR-King M Series RF wireless (non BT) mouse
Php 480 (approx. $10)
Runs on a single AAA battery. Which reminds me I should get a rechargeable one next week. Or perhaps the mouse itself would meet its death before the new rechargeable battery would even show the first signs of charge capacity loss?
The receiver (which has the word "nano" on it), plugged into one of the USB ports, doesn't get in the way. It also can be tucked away in a slot on the underside of the minuscule mouse which is neat cause it'll lower a bit my chances of losing it forever.
There's also a sliding switch on the underside. It's better to switch the mouse on before plugging in the receiver to the HP Mini 311 or OS X would think you're trying to connect a keyboard instead but that because you're obviously trying to connect a mouse, then this connection attempt would fail. You'd have to do it all over the right way.

*One classmate of mine has a pink Lenovo S10 which she also used to present her slides with during her report. Now that's a 10" screen! @_@

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

dude, rf mice can be detected using no drivers on any system, be it osx, windowze, linux even freebsd. why? they easily identify themselves as simple usb mice and you could use any simple mouse driver to run em. the key of this efficiency is in the hardware's interface archiecture, not on the OS. Sorry to burst yer bubble.
On a side note, i really do admire cdrking for proving you can create an empire starting with dirt cheap pieces of plastic.:)

Anonymous said...

special drivers, i meant.

LeMaurien19 said...

^Forgive my uninformed statement.

But didn't I just plugged it into my MSI Wind w/ Win 7 and then there was this info bubble at the far right end of the tastbar, saying that "Windows is configuring/installing the USB device". And that took about 30 - 45 secs at least to finish.

I'm not sure about you, but the 1-2 sec lag on the mouse cursor after switching on the mouse itself and plugging in the receiver under OS X on the HP Mini 311 is substantial enough a difference for me.

That's 30 - 45 secs between my plugging in the device and actually using it on Win 7 versus 1 - 3 sec under OS X. But perhaps you have a different, better experience and all I can say, how very fortunate of you!

P.S. I'm not a "dude", just so you know ;-)

Unknown said...

Ha Ha, I recently bought a very similar mouse with the same "nano" receiver. It was $10 at Fry's. This one is black with a silver metallic trim. It takes 2 AAA batteries and I will see how long they last. It goes to "sleep" so I don't think it has to be switched off. It works great and for the price you can't beat it. I haven't taken mine apart yet though!

-MH

LeMaurien19 said...

@machosehead
Black and silver - cool!
Now that I'm using my wireless mouse with the 311 a lot, sometimes I think the 311's chassis has started to resemble that of my mouse...haha

Unknown said...

A build up of these types of substances will surely damage your keyboard, which is one of the most valuable parts of your MacBook.
Macbook Cases