Kensington Slimblade Trackball Expert Mouse USB 2.0 for PC and Mac, K72327US

The Slimblade Trackball is really a missed opportunity for Kensington. This device has so much potential but the software limitations make this device just barely usable.

The two major components of the Slimblade Trackball are the hardware design and the software affordances. Let's start with the good.

THE HARDWARE

In order to understand what is amazing about the Kensington Slimblade Trackball, one should be aware of the last redesign of the Expert Mouse. That design is quite horrendous. The steep angle of the plastic housing strained the wrist tendons so badly that the device shipped with a faux leather pad that attached to the trackball to elevate the wrist. Besides being ugly, the pad kludge didn't work very well. Strained wrists are a common symptom among users of the Expert Mouse Trackball.

The Slimblade Trackball rectifies this situation. Big Time.

The low profile of the trackball housing is not only aesthetically pleasing, it also allows users to interact with the device with the hand and wrist only moderately angled. The ball rolls smoothly (though it is an ugly color) and the buttons are very sleek as they are cut out of the housing. Clicks are unfortunately hollow-sounding, but the tactile response is superb, the buttons requiring a firm but shallow press for activation. The new device is a pleasure to handle physically.

The engineering of the trackball well is clever. Plastic bearings similar to those in the Expert Mouse Trackball keep the ball gliding smoothly, with the difference that these bearings are sealed in their sockets with only a portion of the bearing visible. The holes which contain the electronics that register ball movement do not appear to emit light. When the ball is rotated around its Y-axis (running through the top and bottom of the device), the electronics make an audible clicking noise. Think iPod scrollwheel sound. The faint sound could be a problem in quiet office environments, especially for users who do quite a bit of scrolling or zooming.

In all, the hardware of the device is excellent. The thought and care which went into the engineering shows, and if look and feel were all that mattered, Kensington would have produced a pointing device worthy of admiration and celebration.

Unfortunately for Kensington, there's also the bad and the ugly. Namely . . .

THE SOFTWARE

(I'm testing the Slimblade Trackball software on a PowerMac G5 2 x 2.5 GHz running Mac OS X v. 10.5.6. Windows users may have an experience different than mine.)

First off, I want to say that the software seems also to have received quite a bit of attention from the designers at Kensington. Unfortunately, what those designers produced seems to be the victim of poor market analysis.

Some Slimblade Trackball users have forgiven Kensington for omitting the ability to program the buttons. I am not one of these users. The inability to reprogram the buttons is arrogance at its worst. When Steve Jobs and Jon Ives give users an extra-strength dose of designerly arrogance, they often succeed in curing ailments users didn't even realize they had (hockey puck mouse excepted). I'm here to assure you that the software designers at Kensington are neither Steve Jobs nor Jon Ives.

At all.

First, the drivers for the Slimblade Trackball do not have any user-accessible interface. Period. OK, that's not entirely true. The installer places a pointer-shaped item in the menubar. Clicking on that item reveals two items. 1) A dimmed line reporting that the Kensington Slimblade Trackball is active, and 2) a link to Kensington's online tutorial. As we all know (as of 5 March 2009), that online tutorial is not yet available. So, the link sends users to the promotional microsite for the Slimblade Trackball as if advertising will convince them that nothing's wrong. I suppose one can navigate one's way to the sparse FAQ which contains 8 items as of this writing.

If you can't read the sign that says Things are Not Good(tm) then look over yonder. Yup. That's the milestone for Here Comes Ugly(tm)

UGLY LIKE KENSINGTON'S MAMA

Users not only cannot program the device's buttons, but they also cannot customize the speed and acceleration of the device outside of the operating system software provided by Apple or a piece of third-party software.* This is a problem of gargantuan proportions.

I have a 23" Cinema Display and a 17" Studio Display hooked together in a single extended desktop. I need my pointing device tracking to be set high. Setting the mouse tracking to high is possible with Apple's "Keyboard & Mouse" System Preference. The problem comes when moving the device slowly, as one might do when selecting text. The differences in slow and fast cursor tracking in Apple's Keyboard & Mouse System Preference settings render the Slimblade trackball practically unusable on medium-to-large desktops.

By removing the ability of users to customize slow and fast tracking speed--something that the Expert Mouse Trackball software does provide--Kensington has effectively turned what should have been a magnificent product into something only a mother could love, or at least a committee of marketroids who got their way over the tearful objections of old-skool Kensington software devs. Don't worry devs, having bought this device I feel your pain and then some.

At present, Kensington has no plans to offer programmable buttons for this device. One can only hope future software releases will enable users to customize the acceleration settings for the Slimblade Trackball just as users of the Expert Mouse Trackball are able to customize their settings.

CONCLUSION

The hardware engineers at Kensington deserve raises and your first-born. This is a beautiful device.

The managers of the software design team should have their computers confiscated and be forced into a pit full of snakes. Barefoot. They should also have all their hair shorn. From around their belly buttons and other really awful things like getting raisins for dessert.

The Kensington Slimblade Trackball is like a gorgeous date who has a nothing personality. You don't mind a night or two but you know something better will come some day.

* My limited testing of USB Overdrive as a third-party driver has been unable to access the media buttons at all, suggesting to me that the Slimblade Trackball are not normal mouse buttons.Buy Kensington Slimblade Trackball Expert Mouse USB 2.0 for PC and Mac, K72327US!

Garmin nüvi 855 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

I sold my nuvi 750 to purchase the nuvi 855.
Garmin changed the on/off switch from something you could use to something you have to fumble to turn on and off.
I didn't think they would dump the SD memory card, so I didn't give it a thought when I bought the 855.
Garmin switched to a Micro SD memory.
The volume on the 855 is lower than the nuvi 750, even on max.
Garmin told me that the nuvi 855 included life time maps. NOT TRUE. You have to pay another $119.00.
I think Tom Tom would have been a better choice.
Good luck.
Buy Garmin nüvi 855 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator!

Olympus Stylus 6000 10MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Wide Angle Optical Dual Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Blue)

I was always a cannon girl but after my kids destroyed my last two cameras I was looking for something more durable! I have had this camera for a month now and have been nothing but satisified with the picture quality indoors and out! You have to change the settings for indoor lighting to get the best quality but it has many options for that. I also like the high speed shooting option, wonderful for sport shots and two little boys on the run! Buy Olympus Stylus 6000 10MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Wide Angle Optical Dual Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Blue)!

Transcend T.sonic 840 2 GB Video MP3 Player (White)

The T.sonic (the 8GB, black version) is my 12 yr. old's first MP3 player and, so far, he is happy with it. I would say that this little player is worth about what I paid for at one of Amazon's one-hour specials.

I will first summarize what I got for my money and then I will have some closing thoughts where I will explain my rating.

- The contents -
The little box includes the player itself with a rechargeable battery (up to 22 hours of music playback or radio play on a full charge claimed) inside, a protective silicone skin, neck lanyard, a multi-lingual manual with the English section being 6 or 7 very small pages, the headphones, a USB cable and a mini disk that has an extended version of the manual plus a video file conversion utility, a slide show maker and some utility that is supposed to password-protect files that one would save on the device.

There is NO charger. The expectation is that the person who owns the player will use a computer to charge it through the USB cable. For those of us who don't carry a charged laptop next to their MP3 player, I found that a Blackberry charger works. I suspect that other independent USB chargers work as well.

- Design, ergonomics -
The player itself is not too bad looking. The screen is small but bright.
The interface is basic and anything that's a bit more 'complex', such as organizing a playlist can be difficult to execute.

- Features -
Computer interface:
Any file can be loaded off a computer by simply connecting via the USB port, at which time the player becomes a 'removable drive'. .mp3, .wma, .jpg, .txt and other file types can be simply dropped into the 'drive' and they will be played or displayed as appropriate. Given that the device looks like a drive to the computer, one can create folders to better organize content.

Music player:
Play is adequate but accessing your favorite song once you have hundreds is a different matter. I am repeating myself but the fact is that the interface and ease of use leave a lot of room for improvement.

Photo display:
Pictures are displayed off a separate menu and, like the songs, can be difficult to organize. It can take 5 to 10 seconds to display a 4MB file. I have little doubt that, had I reduced the size/resolution of my photos, they would have been displayed a lot quicker but I didn't feel that the user was 'expected' to convert dozens or hundreds of picture files prior to loading them on the player.

Voice recording:
It works and the 'voice activated' trigger is useful. If one takes the time to meaningfully rename the voice files, they could become meaningful records.

Radio playing:
20 FM stations can be preset on 20 'channels' and one can listen to a preset channel or seek a station not yet saved. The controls are a bit awkward but this is becoming a 'constant' observation already. An interesting feature is its ability to automatically scan the spectrum and assign stations to each of the 20 channels. It's a nice idea but, in my case, the same stations were assigned to 3 or 4 channels and some of the stations 'found' were nothing but static hiss.

Video:
I did not test it yet and it's not something that we are going to use. My son wanted a 'music player'. To play videos we have big screen TV's and laptops that do a much better job. I will enter my impressions here, once I have a chance to test it.

E-book:
Yes, it opens text files but one must be irresponsible to attempt actually reading a book on a postage-stamp size screen. We only have one pair of eyes and they don't get any better.

Clock:
Apparently, this model was not meant to be sold in the US. When setting the clock, you will find that the 'Pacific' time zone is labeled 'United States' and 'Eastern' seems to be called 'Venezuela'. Daylight savings time is available as an option to check but, who knows when that kicks in, since my time zone is 'Venezuela' now.

File storage:
I suppose this is a possibility but, with 8Gb thumb drives available for about $10, it would be a waste of MP3 player to actually attempt to use it as a file storage device.

- Performance, quality -
The player is overall slow. It is slow to respond to commands, slow to display large files, slow to turn itself on or off.

The quality of sound is acceptable and the basic (as in cheap) ear buds could be easily replaced with something better.


To conclude, this is something that my first born is likely to use for a while until he manages to impress me (good grades or some new belt color in Taekwando) into getting him something better. It's also a good way for him to get used with the concept of an MP3/gadget.

This model's several shortcomings would normally earn it a 2-star but the not-so-high price pulls it up into the 3-star territory. I view it as a 'disposable' gadget and, as such, it can be considered a 'good buy'.

To be fair, my little guy would give this 5 stars without hesitation. He is very happy with what he got and, if he's happy, I'm not unhappy either :).Buy Transcend T.sonic 840 2 GB Video MP3 Player (White)!