W3hobbyist

Its been 2 months that I am using wireless keyboard and mouse – Cordless couple from iBall. Here is my detailed review.

Installation:

The installation on XP was very smooth. You just have to insert the micro-receiver into the USB port and the you can get started immediately without any hassles.

On Vista(Home Basic), the driver created some issues because of which my system would crash moments after the micro-receiver was plugged into the USB port. The issue was resolved by updating the drivers. On the mini CD provided with the package, there are driver installation setups for ‘Combo’, ‘Keyboard’ and ‘Mouse’. For some reason, ‘Combo’ did not work for me. Hence I had to install the latest drivers individually for Keyboard and mouse from their website. It worked smoothly thereafter.

Keyboard user experience:

Since this is a wirelss keyboard, let us first speak about dropouts. Dropouts have been rare in the past 2 months, but they do exist. At times, the keyboard just stops working suddenly. You then have to remove the batteries and insert them again.

Apart from the standard keys and numpad, there are 8 multimedia keys mounted over the top border of the keyboard for common functions like ‘Sleep’, ‘My computer’, ‘Calculator’, ‘Search’, ‘Refresh’, ‘Favorites’, ‘Email’, and ‘Home’.

There are 4 “multimedia player” keys arranged vertically over the left border. These keys are quite annoying because it is easy to press them when you are picking up the keyboard or resting your hand over the left border. Does not serve any worthy purpose to have these keys on the left border. Could have been comfortably put on the top border along with the other 8 multimedia keys.

On the right border, there are 3 multi media keys – ‘Mute/Unmute’, ‘Volume +’, ‘Volume -’. The apparent purpose of these keys is to provide quick access to volume functions.  However, being located on the right border, the keys are far-away from the alphabet keys. If one is typing a document and wants to suddenly mute the volume, his hand to travel a lot of distance to the right. Instead, it would have been much easier to have these keys along the upper border. The upper border is not only closer to the alphabet keyboard, but also within the ’scope of vision’ or eyesight. This would provide much quicker access to the volume functions.

The multimedia keys on the left and right border are nothing more than an desperate attempt or over-indulgence to provide ’something different’ from the common keyboards available in the markets. Rather than providing better utility, these keys only make matters annoying. Also, the “Open favorite multimedia player application” key(top most key on left border) does not work with Windows Vista, though it works on Windows XP.

One of the most irritating aspects of the design on this keyboard is that there are no indicator lights(LEDs) for ‘Caps lock’ and ‘Num lock’. The only way to find out whether caps lock or num lock is ON/OFF is to type an alphabet/number and see whether it comes out in CAPITAL/small. How could such a basic function be ignored by the designers. The designers must have been smoking weed when designing this model. The indicator space has instead been occupied by a small strip of receiver. It also contains a indicator light for battery power.

The imprints on the keys look of cheap quality. The imprint of “I” on the red-colored “I” key of the alphabet keys has already vanished. Others keys have retained their imprints.

The keyboard is not a durable and sturdy one I would say. I had once dropped this keyboard on the floor(from a height of 1.5 ft or 40 cms), and some of the keys have started behaving in a weird manner, especially the broader ones like ‘Shift’, ‘Enter’. These keys remain in the ‘pressed’ state sometimes.

Mouse user experience:

There were no dropouts unlike the keyboard.

The mouse is decent unlike the keyboard which is over-the-board. The middle-button-cum-wheel can scroll vertically as well as horizontally. There is a toggle button on the top of the mouse which allows you to switch between two pre-determined sensitivity levels. Over the left upper edge of the body, there are Back-Forward buttons which can be used while using internet browser or windows explorer.

The location of these two buttons in highly uncomfortable. They are located quite behind the pad of your thumb. The ‘Back’ button is more difficult to access than the ‘Forward’ one. It almost strains and pains while using that button. If you want to use these buttons, you will have to adjust your hand a lot so that you can press the buttons comfortably. Instead of adjusting your hand to use these buttons, it is much easier to hover the mouse and click the ‘Back/Forward’ buttons on your browser. This feature is also annoying like the ones in keyboards.

The left surface of the mouse is depressed to allow a better grip with your thumb. However, this makes it impossible for left-handed people to use this mouse. Only people who use mouse with right hand will be able to use it.

The mouse has a small secure compartment at its bottom to store the tiny micro-receiver when not in use or unplugged from the USB port.

Overall:

The only apparent advantage is that it relieves you from the clutter of wires. Remember that it will also occupy an USB port full-time. The keyboard is below average because of the annoyances caused by its design. A plain keyboard without any of those multimedia keys and essential features like caps/num lock indicator would have left me much more happy. The mouse is slightly better than the average decent ones available in the market.

I would be happy if the company replaces my keyboard with a one thats more like a ‘normal’ and has basic functions rather than this outlandish one that does serves neither basic, nor advanced ones properly.

Will never recommend anyone to buy iBall cordless couple for the horrible keyboard that comes with it.

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I just purchased a Nokia E 63 yesterday. Its an impressive phone given its smart features and price tag(11.6 K in Thane). As I was exploring it, I noticed that the headphones won’t work with the music player, though the headphones work with FM radio. The music player would play only through the loudspeaker and the volume too was quite low.

Here is the solution:

Menu > Tools > Settings > General > Enhancement > Scroll down to ‘Text phone‘ and set it as default.

Now plugin in your headphones into the 3.5 mm jack and enjoy the music on headphones.

Let me know if it solves or not your problem.

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I am looking to buy a new Nokia phone and I went doing a price-check of the Nokia E63 in the popular gadget stores in Thane. All of them(Pragon, Mango, Nokia Priority dealer) quoted about Rs.12,000 however the Planet M mobile store quoted around Rs. 13400. That Rs. 1400 or 11.6% above the market rate. When I exclaimed that it was a bit too much, the salesman did some “checking” on their computer and blankly told me “Sir, the price has changed now. New price is 12,200.”. Also it is my experience that for many other gadgets, the price is on the higher side as compared to other stores.

Moral of the post: Be careful with Next Electronics and Planet M mobiles. You may be the “Next” in line to be overcharged.

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Web developers working with Indian devanagari language may face some issues while pulling out strings from the MySQL database. If not done correctly, one will get a series of question marks instead of the devanagari.

Solution:

Set the ‘collation’ of the database, table and column to ‘utf8_unicode_ci‘. Now, whenever you want to retrieve the unicode string, simply run the below given query before running the actual query to retrieve the unicode string.

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");//run this query first
$resource=mysql_query('SELECT book_title FROM hindi_marathi_books');

Thats it! Now use PHP to parse the strings as you like!

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Its almost 6 months that I have been using a Set Top Box (STB) from InDigital. My top-line cable operator is Incablenet (Hinduja TMT). CAS as such has not been implemented in my area(Thane East)–so I get almost 200 channels for Rs. 280 monthly. It used the MPEG-2 technology.

Installation-

The installation was easy and was done my my cable operator. There is no ‘dish antenna’ to be installed on the terrace or near the window. The STB can be placed just besides your TV. The input connection is the same co-axial that was earlier used to be plugged directly into the back of your TV. With STB, this cable input is fed into the STB. The output is drawn through 3 cables – 2 audio(L and R) and one for video–all of which are fed into the ‘AV input’  of your TV. The TV should be set to ‘AV’ mode. The STB required a ‘CAS card’ — its size is of a credit-card and functions like the mobile phone SIM card. Total time for installation is under 5 minutes.

Remote control-

The remote control is lean and decent in looks, unlike those fat and ugly remote controls I have seen with Reliance Big TV. Few buttons on the remote control are redundant. The keys could be confusing at times.

Switching on the STB-

After switching on, it takes around 10-15 seconds to ‘actually’ switch on. During this gestation duration, it just flashes the Incablenet logo. Then, it switches to the first channel no–101[Channels start from 101 as opposed to 1]. In some models, it switches to the last channel or the most viewed channel. Its seems that the STB keeps on learning your preferences(some models only).

Picture and sound quality-

The picture quality is remarkably better. The sound is crisp-clear. The co-axial cable needs to be well maintained-esp the pin that feeds the signal from co-axial into the STB. If this pin this rusted or loose-connected, the picture and sound may be scrambled[like a CD when it is scratched]. This caused a lot of annoyance initially until I replaced the pin.

Changing the channels-

Changing the channels is not so smooth. Every time you change to a new channel, it shows a black screen for some time(1 – 2 secs) and then the actual picture and audio can be seen. It is thus a pain and not user-friendly. There is a blue bar shown at the bottom of every channel which shows current time, the now running serial/movie name and that of next serial/movie. In some models, . These details in the blue bar do not get updated automatically. You need to escape that bar(ESC or OK button) and bring it up again to update again. This is another drawback.

Changing the volume-

This functions against your intuitions. The volume is relative to the main volume control of your TV set. The volume is set on per-channel basis. This means that though you may adjust the volume of one channel, you may need to re-adjust it when you change to another channel. Though once set for a particular channel, it remains at that level until you switch off the STB.

Channel listing and surfing-

Channels can be listed alphabetically or serially. When listed serially, the channels are grouped by their genre–i.e.–All music channels together, all finance channels together, etc. This genre grouping makes it easy to find closely related channels.

Radio-

Though many radio-stations are available, there are mainly regional and Govt.-run stations. Radio-stations from all over India are available. There is no FM/SW1/SW2/MW/AM/etc. switch. Stations from these frequencies are available under one-roof — serially one after the other.

Other utilities-

The only other utility I see is games. But I think these require a subscription in addition to my monthly cable Tv charges. There was no way I could use them so no review about it.

Miscellaneous:

The error codes are descriptive and understandable by the lay man. There is facility to lock channels, bookmark/favourite them. “Service messages” can be sent by the service providers(I have received 0 in the past 6 months) and there is an option for firmware upgrade.

[.::Screenshots coming soon::.]

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