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[Kellemora]

We even have semi-smart water meters now. All they have to do is drive by and it records our water usage.
But the electric sends the info over the power lines.
We don't have gas here.

I used enough added electricity, they came and checked me out. But I just had normal garden and houseplants.

I'm still using the speakers that came with an E-Machine, and a Compaq, hi hi.
Plus I do have a super old bought pair, but I rarely have sound on that I would need nice speakers for.

[yogi]

One of my motives for buying Logitech speakers has to do with the first set I purchased around the era of Windows Vista. The computer I bought back then had 5.1 audio output jacks so that I simply got speakers to match. Those Logitech speakers, all six of them, were about the same price as what I paid recently for the new 2 channel stereo ones. I was going for the surround sound effect and they were marvelous at creating thunderous sounds in some of the games I played. Unfortunately, I could only play those floor shaking games when wife was out of the house. LOL

That 5.1 set of speakers is sitting in boxes in my basement here in O'Fallon. A few of them were dropped from 6 foot heights and their stands/enclosures were damaged slightly. Amazingly the speakers still worked but are not free standing anymore. I suppose I could patch them up if I really wanted to, but the current computer system does not have the 5.1 ports, neither on the motherboard nor on the Nvidia card. So, anyways, since I had such great sound with those old speakers I was not hesitant to get them again from Logitech. The studio speakers were originally for an AM/FM tuner I purchased along with them. That all worked fine in Chicago, but here in Missouri out in the boondocks there are no FM nor TV signals in free air. Those that do exist are not listening quality. Perhaps an FM antenna on a tower would help, but it's much easier to just stream Chicago stations on the computer. Now that I think about it, I could attach those speakers to the laptop and use that as an FM receiver.

[Kellemora]

I had a surround sound system at my old house back home. It didn't get used much, so it went in the auction with everything else.

I used to buy Logitech almost exclusively, they used to make some really great stuff.
However, the last couple of things I got from them, I consider cheap design and poor quality.
They quit making and selling the better quality stuff quite a while ago now.

[yogi]

I agree with you 100% regarding the quality of Logitech products. I have had the same experience where recent purchases were obviously not of the same quality as the devices I purchased from them last century. The sad truth is it should not be a surprise for Logitech, and many others, to downgrade the quality of their products. Pay more for less is the standard business model these days.

Well, to continue the speaker saga I will tell you that the desktop speakers died out yet again today. In a way I'm glad they did because that helped me decide what to do with the Logitech speakers I recently purchased. I was going to open the box and install them, but I discovered that these are wireless only speakers. My clever phone and my laptop have Bluetooth, but the desktop tower does not. I need a replacement for the desktop speakers so that the Logitech ones will be going back to Walmart.

I did a search for wired speakers and found the exact replacement for the speakers I currently have. They are even being sold by the same company from which the originals came. The decor on the box is slightly different but everything else about them is identical, but for one small item. These replacement speakers have Bluetooth as an option. I was able to download the manual for the speakers and there are charts and diagrams showing how to wire them up. Then they show how to use them with Bluetooth. This is a unexpected turn of events and I now look forward to listening to my clever phone over studio quality speakers.

[Kellemora]

As much as it costs to design and have a new mold made for making the plastic parts.
It doesn't even make sense for them to change the design, when they had a perfect one to start with.
It could not be because they needed more room for the electronics, as the new one is smaller in both height and width, both ways. I really don't like this new mouse of theirs. Awkward to use, and too many design flaws.

I don't know WHY they want to make everything wireless these days. It is never as good as hard wired devices.
I hope you find some speakers that are made the way you want them to be!

[yogi]

I'm not sure what you are referring to but I use one of those small sized wireless Logitech mouses. I've been using it for many years with the laptop computers I've owned. I can't speak for other Logitech products but this particular mouse has lasted me a long time. Close to a dozen years I would say. The small size is ideal for laptops and any other portable device where space is at a premium. It fits well into the computer case when I travel. It's not the mouse I would use all day long and it's certainly not suitable for fast action gaming. I have a wired mouse that is about 50% larger for the desktop and that is the one I use most of all. It's not a Logitech mouse either.

There was a time when wireless peripherals were a liability. Now and days with modern fast USB ports that are available the wireless mouses are preferred by some gamer type individuals. If I can send my clever phone audio to wireless speakers, I have a feeling I can also rig it up with wireless keyboard and mouses. While that sounds nice, it really defeats the purpose of a device being portable. Nonetheless, the technology is there.

[Kellemora]

The meeces I've used for over 20 years now are all Thumball Mice by Logitech, and hardwired.
They fit my hand perfectly, and seem to last for over a decade each.
The left button eventually starts double-clicking.

The new wireless Thumball from Logitech is slightly smaller and lower.
It has many problems. The scroll wheel is set way to high and is too touchy, compared to the hardwired meeces.
They added two useless buttons to the top left, very delicate also, and easy to accidentally hit.
They made the left and right buttons smaller to accommodate these useless buttons.
Makes accidentally hitting them a several times daily occurrence!
Most annoying to use mouse I ever had, and also it was not PS2 compatible, so I have to use a workaround with it.

I don't agree with them being easier to use, because they go to sleep between usages.
So, if you are waiting for more than 5 seconds to click on something, it won't click the first time.
So I don't see how they could be used by gamers who need that instant click on cue.

Also, as I mentioned before, using a ham radio with a computer to tune into the keyboard, it can display what keys were pressed on the keyboard, encrypted or not, it doesn't matter, you can still see which keys were pressed.
Then it is just a matter of making a chart to show the number of the key and which character it belongs to, and even this can be done with a simple program on the computer.
Same with the mouse, you can pick-up which button was pressed.

[yogi]

You certainly have some interesting experiences with mouses and keyboards. The wireless mouse I use on the laptops is old technology. As mentioned above it's at least a dozen years old. I've never noticed that it goes to sleep. In fact I just tested it by letting it sit idle for ten seconds and the first click on the left button opened a document immediately. Then again, this is a mouse and not a track ball.

One of the beautiful things about high priced gamer keyboards and mouses is that they are programmable. Some are more programmable than others, but they all have some basics included. For example I can program the cpi (counts per inch) to adjust the sensitivity of the mouse movement across the mouse pad. There is even a manual switch that allows me to change it on the fly. There are many other parameters that I never knew a mouse could have, and they are also programmable. Of course you can save different profiles for different purposes.

The desktop mouse, by SteelSeries, also has a few extra buttons that can be programmed with macros, or disabled. I tried calling up commonly used programs with those buttons but ran into the same problem you did. I frequently pressed the extra button when I did not want to. So now they are all programmed to be nonfunctional. LOL The keyboard is the same way with many different parameters that can be programmed for specific needs. As you can imagine these devices are not cheap, but they do exactly, and I do mean exactly, what I want them to do. Both the gaming mouse and the keyboard are USB wired and will work on any computer that has a USB connector.

I'll admit that it was a pain in the patoozie to figure out how to do all this programming. Their software sucks big time. But it does work well once you can figure it out.

You are right about all the keys and mouse buttons having assigned codes to identify them. That's how the CPU knows what to do with them. It's also great information for a ne'er do well hacker to capture. LOL

[Kellemora]

On my Logitech wireless, if it has sat for only a few seconds, it goes to sleep, and the first time I hit a button, a green light shows me it came on, but it doesn't register that click at all.
Now the little normal meeces don't seem to turn themselves off at all.

Eons ago, I had a five-button mouse, this was five-buttons more than the left, right, scroll, and scroll touch.
On the front of the left and right buttons was another button, then along the left side of the mouse were three more buttons.
All of these extra buttons could be programmed to do various things. Been so long ago now though, I don't remember what I set them to do anymore. I probably had it set up for a game I was playing way back then, hi hi.

I have an auto-clicker program, that allows me to have several instances of the same program running at the same time.
I have different things set up for it to do depending on which F-key I press. But a couple of things I use it for, it has over 200 lines of code to accomplish. But it does save one heck of a lot of work by hand!

People think those keyboards only transmit about 3 or 4 feet. I guess to that little pick-up unit used with them. But if you have huge hi-gain antenna's outside, often you can pick up two or more neighbors using wireless keyboards and meeces.

I heard through the grapevine, some guy got arrested for sending signals to a police cars monitor to drive the cop nuts, hi hi.
Probably just a hoax started by a cop to keep folks from trying it themselves, hi hi.

[yogi]

I want to clarify what I told you in my last reply regarding the small wireless Logitech mouse that I use with my laptops. It does all I said it does, but it also does go into a sleep mode in order to preserve the battery. This is also one of the few mouses I have owned that has an off/on switch to disable the power to the mouse. It's all pretty effective because the single cell battery lasts many months. The sleep mode takes more than ten seconds to engage and a green light does indeed flash to show it has awaken. That same LED turns red when the battery needs to be replaced. The reason I never noticed a problem with the sleeping mouse is because the laptop itself also goes into a sleep mode. Thus when I move the mouse to waken the laptop, the mouse is also coming to life. I never notice a delay pressing the buttons because the lappie takes a lot longer to stabilize than does the mouse.

I used some of those extra buttons to call up routine programs, but serious gamers use them for other purposes. There often are complex moves of the mouse and possibly some keystrokes on the keyboard required to accomplish something in a game. If you can get all that movement into a single button closure you are ahead of the game. I suppose you can get those extra buttons to post common text into editing boxes such as the one we use here. If you didn't feel like typing "hi hi" all the time, for example, you could program a mouse button to do it for you. That might come in handy for data entry where some content is repetitive. In any event, I follow the KISS principle. I like the fancy lights but don't need no stinkin' macros.

And just an FYI, my new speakers arrived today and fixed the problem. Apparently some, very little actually, of my hearing problems were due to the speakers dying a slow death. They came in a day earlier than promised which is a good thing. Yesterday the old ones stopped working and could not be revived. The headphones connection to the speaker box worked well, so I dunno what the problem actually is.

[Kellemora]

The little mouse I bought for the Netbook was wireless and it worked great. It also had a switch to turn it off. One thing I like about it was the receiver was stored inside the mouse until needed. That too was a great feature.

I'm glad you like your new speakers!

[yogi]

You and I must have the same model of mouse. Mine too has a slot for storing the receiver when it's not in use.

The new speakers go by the exact same model number as did the old ones, but the new ones have some subtle differences. For one, the volume control of the old unit illuminated green to match the trim work on the cabinet. The lights went out when power was turned off. The trim was just green pin striping around the two front facing speakers. The new unit has the same green pin stripes but around the outer edge of the box instead of around the speakers. The big difference is an added button used to enable Bluetooth. That button glows white instead of the cute green on the old system. I have yet to test out the Bluetooth with my clever phone, or with my laptop. I simply have to turn it on in the mobile devices first, but have not felt compelled to do so just yet. LOL That might be a cool feature for the clever phone because the audio in it is designed specifically for voice and not very good with music. I seldom listen to music on the phone which is why I'm in no hurry to see how it works. I should do it soon just to be certain they system is working as advertised.

[Kellemora]

You should turn on your Bluetooth and try some music from you phone to your speakers.
I think you will be surprised! Debi has done that and it sounds better than the Echo devices we have.