It's surprising how may people who carefully select a computer based on an extensive review of the specifications sometimes pair that computer with substandard peripherals. It's a false economy.
The computer is just a box filled with electronics that you'll probably never touch and may never even see, but you'll be looking at the monitor every minute you're in front of the computer, the keyboard will be in constant use unless you have speech recognition software, and consider how many miles you drag the mouse of the course of a year. These are the things that allow you to interact with the computer.
Technically, in English, the plural of mouse is "mice" when it refers to the fuzzy little critters that cats like to chase and "mouses" when it refers to the pointing device used with computers. I have never been able to come to terms with "mouses" -- it just sounds wrong. So "mice" it is.
Microsoft makes an articulated keyboard that has a detached number pad. You can also obtain a redesigned mouse that's intended to keep the user's arm positioned in a more comfortable way. These products are sold under the "Sculpt" name. I'd been using a Fellowes articulated keyboard with a Logitech mouse for several years; ergonomically, there's not a lot of difference between the keyboards, but the Microsoft Sculpt mouse is more ergonomic than the Logitech mouse.
The Sculpt mouse forces the user's hand to rotate nearly 90 degrees to the right. Instead of the palm being horizontal and resting on top of the mouse, it's more like the position you'd use to shake hands with someone.
The usual buttons are included for left and right click. The wheel scrolls as expected and clicking the wheel can be configured to the user's choice of more than 2 dozen possible actions. Actually, all the buttons may be configured and the settings can apply globally or only when specific applications are running. In other words, after buying a Sculpt mouse, you might want to take some time to customize it for your exact needs.
Semi-hidden on the left side of the mouse is a browser back button. The Logitech mouse had 2 buttons on the left: browser back and browser forward. I missed that forward button on the Microsoft mouse.
There's also a blue Windows button that opens the Start Menu. It's cute, but I don't use it. I'm so used to tapping the Windows key on the keyboard that duplicating the feature on the mouse seemed wasteful. I've configured that button to be my browser forward button, although maybe long term I'll swap the back and forward functions.
When it comes to keyboards, nobody has yet made a perfect one-size-fits-all keyboard. I happen to like articulated (bent) keyboards, but some people dislike them as much as I dislike straight keyboards. The science is clear about the fact that articulated keyboards are better for the user's wrists and they do take a little getting used to.
The Sculpt keyboard has many features that I like, but Microsoft has made what seem to be some dumb decisions.
The function keys, for example: F1 through F12. Most keyboards, and particularly those in notebook computers, have a key labeled "Fn" that allows the user to switch between the standard function key uses that are expected by most applications and the special functions that control screen brightness, audio levels, and such. This is an elegant solution that makes both contexts accessible. The Sculpt keyboard has a switch. Flip it to the left and you get the computer control keys; flip it to the right and you get the standard function keys. That's not intelligent design.
The arrow keys (up, down, left, and right) are also badly designed. Left, down, and right are on one row and up is above the down key. Good design would position these keys in a more logical arrangement.
For me, though, the most annoying decision was the one that placed Scroll Lock (1) just above the Backspace key, where it's easy to press instead of (or in addition to) Backspace. That's bad because Scroll Lock is useful only in applications such as Excel and I detest the Scroll Lock function in Excel. I have never intentionally enabled Scroll Lock when using Excel and suddenly I found that I was doing it all the time.
This image also shows the Function button (2) that should be a key on the keyboard.
The only option that the keyboard manager offers for Scroll Lock is to display or hide its status on the screen. I just want to make Scroll Lock go away!
There are two keys that I never use: Caps Lock and Scroll Lock. I had already disabled Caps Lock with a Registry edit. Now it was time to do the same for Scroll Lock. I'll explain how.
This is a relatively easy Registry edit that works on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10, but it's still a Registry edit and errors in the Registry can cause problems or even keep the computer from booting. If you decide to change keyboard mapping, be careful. (This Registry edit probably also works on Windows XP and Windows Vista, but I cannot confirm that.)
The explanation is for and the images are from Windows 10.
To start, you'll need to open the Registry Editor (regedit). Press the Windows key, type "regedit", and select the "Run Command" option.
Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout. There is also a key called "Keyboard Layouts" (note the plural), which is not the one you want.
Select Keyboard Layout and you may or may not see a key called Scancode Map (REG_BINARY). In this case, I have already edited the Registry to turn off the Caps Lock key and the value looks like this:
00000000 00000000 02000000 00003A00 00000000
If you haven't modified any scan codes, the key won't be present and you'll have to create it. That's easy:
To edit the value, double-click Scancode Map. An edit dialog will open and the value will be 0000. You'll then need to fill in the values shown.
The first 16 characters (all zeros) are there because Microsoft says they have to be there. Don't mess with them.
The next 4 bytes (each byte is 2 characters) specify how many keys you will be remapping, but this value is always one more than the number of keys to be remapped. So because my existing key remaps one key, the value is "02". If you wonder why this is represented as "02000000" instead of "00000002" it's because Microsoft decided to use "little-endian" coding instead of "big-endian" coding. Think of little endian as "backwards".
So I've remapped one key, but the value is 2. Why? That's because the number of entries is always one more than the number of keys you'll remap. In fact, it's there because the final value (all zeros) has to be there to tell the operating system there are no more values coming.
The next component uses 2 bytes to specify what the key should be mapped to and 2 bytes to specify which key is being mapped. That's "00003A00" in this case. The first 2 bytes (0000) identify the key to be mapped to and since the value is zero, it means that key pressed will be discarded. The final 2 bytes (3A00) are in little-endian format and represent the scan code for the key you're mapping.
The value 3A is Caps Lock, so this means that we're mapping the Caps Lock key to nothing. To find out what any key's scan code is, use Google to search for "scan code" or visit http://www.cknow.com/cms/articles/what-is-a-scan-code.html. The value of a byte ranges from 00 (0, decimal) to FF (255, decimal).
The final 2 bytes (00000000) represent a null terminator (in plain English, this says "We're done here.") This is also why you need to specify a number that's one larger than the number of keys being remapped.
To disable the Scroll Lock key, I need to make a few changes. The final version of the key will be:
00000000 00000000 03000000 00003A00 00004600 00000000
When you've made the changes, double-checked your work, and then triple-checked your double check, it's time to reboot the computer. When you do, both Caps Lock and Scroll Lock will be disabled.
Instead of disabling a key, you can map one key to another key. You're probably ahead of me here. Instead of starting the 4-byte mapping segment with 0000, you start with the little-endian representation of the key you want to map the the other key to.
So let's say that for whatever reason you want to enable Caps Lock whenever you press the Scroll Lock key, you'll first want to disable the normal Caps Lock function and then assign Scroll Lock to Caps Lock. That would look like this:
00000000 00000000 03000000 00003A00 3A004600 00000000
Whether you modify the keyboard is up to you, as is the quality of the keyboard, the mouse, and the screen. And shouldn't you really have two screens instead of just one? But if there's one thing I know, this is it: You'll never regret spending a little extra to buy high-quality peripherals.
User experience design has become a big thing in the past few years. You may think that this is a topic for website designers, and it is. But it's also a topic for anyone who designs anything that will be used by people.
It's not exactly a new concept. Wikipedia traces its origins back to the 1940s: "The field of user experience design is a conceptual design discipline and has its roots in human factors and ergonomics, a field that, since the late 1940s, has focused on the interaction between human users, machines, and the contextual environments to design systems that address the user's experience. With the proliferation of workplace computers in the early 1990s, user experience started to become a concern for designers. It was Donald Norman, a user experience architect, who coined the term "user experience", and brought it to a wider audience."
Adobe is heavily involved. The XD (Experience Design) application continues to expand and improve in beta mode. It's not intended to deal with design for kitchens or cars, or course, but to provide a way to design, prototype, and share layouts for websites and mobile apps. Originally available only on Macs, XD can now also be used on Windows systems. Anyone who is a Creative Cloud user already has access to it. Late in February a new version was pushed out to users.
The primary goal is to give designers the ability to create a working prototype of screen-based applications. For the most part, that means websites -- but websites must be usable on devices with screens as small as an index card, as large as a television screen, and everything in between. And devices with screens can run applications, so XD could potentially cover a lot of disparate use cases.
Updates are released monthly and Adobe solicits feedback and recommendations via an on-line forum.
The new features in the current beta include several changes that bring the XD beta on Windows 10 closer to what's available on the Mac:
SVG is an initialism for scalable vector graphics. SVG images will eventually replace many of the graphics that are currently used on websites. All major modern web browsers already have SVG rendering support. Two primary classifications of image files exist: vector and raster (bitmap). Vector images such as SVG remain sharp when scaled to any size. Raster images become unsharp and jagged when they are enlarged. This is important because new devices have extremely high resolution screens.
Several features available on the Mac aren't yet in the Windows version, but are being developed. These include masking and boolean operations, linear gradients, text style enhancements, the zoom tool, layers and symbols, the ability to record video, preview for mobile devices, and the ability to import a PDF document. Windows 10 users will find that pen and touch features are supported in the Property Inspector, the left-side toolbar menu, and in the application’s frame, but the center canvas cannot be handled with touch at this time.
Fortunately XD documents be shared with both Mac and Windows users, but not always with complete success if the document contains features supported by one platform but not yet enabled in the other. For example, if a document from a Mac contains a gradient and the user decides to try a solid color instead, it can't be changed back to a gradient when it's on the Windows machine.
Because experience design is a new concept for many people, the Adobe XD application starts by offering a tutorial. That's good! Although the application is easy to use, the concepts take a little getting used to.
The Windows version is available only for Windows 10 systems because Adobe wants to "leverage the latest touch-enabled hardware, deliver the highest performance possible, and be available to the next generation of Windows-based devices." That makes sense because most portable devices are touch enabled and attempting to develop something for a touch-enabled device on a device that doesn't support touch makes no sense. In fact, XD requires at least the Windows 10 Anniversary Update edition.
Increasingly, new applications don't require users to save their work. XD is like that. If you close a document without explicitly saving it, the document will be there next time you open XD in the Recent Files dialog.
If you develop websites or apps -- particularly those that need to be accessible on devices with differing screen sizes, Adobe XD would be a good application to take a look at even while it's still in beta.
You can probably think of any number of things that are more fun, but more than half of mobile device users, according to a survey, forgot a password in the past two months and had to reset it.
The survey was sponsored by Keeper Security, a password management system provider. The study found that nearly 60% of mobile device users have had to reset a password in the past two months. Some respondents said they had written down their passwords (which, by the way is not a good thing to do) and others just tried to memorize them.
The survey confirmed that another bad practice is still being used despite nearly continuous warnings: 87% of mobile device users between the ages of 18 and 30 reuse passwords across multiple websites and applications. This is dangerous because thieves test a stolen password against multiple accounts including banking, retail, social media, email, and healthcare websites. One stolen password could give a crook access to a person's digital life.
The survey also provides other insights regarding mobile security:
Nearly half (46%) of respondents think their phone is the least secure device that they own, yet 41% use their phone for sensitive applications such as banking and healthcare.
Age and income correlate to the level of security on a phone: Nearly half of those over 45 don't password protect phones while only a quarter of those under 45 don't secure their phone. The correlation is weaker based on income. 34% of those making under $75K annually do not password-protect their phone, compared to 25% of those making $75K or more. So apparently the most secure phones would belong to younger people who make a lot of money.
Few people are worried about social media security, but three quarters of users connect their social media profiles to other websites and applications by using features such as "log in with Facebook".
Keeper Security is one of several companies that provide applications designed to protect passwords. For more information, see the company's website.
Some days it feels like I receive every spam phone call made in the nation. Figures for January show that at least 2.3 billion robocalls were made, but the volume is down slightly.
The numbers are from YouMail, a cloud-based telecommunication service that provides an automated virtual receptionist that replaces the subscriber's voicemail on Apple, Android, and Windows phones -- but not landlines.
The company says Americans received an estimated 2.3 billion robocalls in January, a 3% decrease over the total calls received in December but a slight increase over the same month last year. YouMail bases the estimates on its own Robocall Index, which identifies the worst robocalling hot spots across the country by area code.
January marked the fifth straight month that the nation's robocall volume has fallen slightly month-over-month. The country's monthly robocalling total has dropped by 14.4% over the past half-year since August 2016. This may be an indication, the company says, that robocalling is be stabilizing due to a growing consumer backlash.
YouMail's service for mobile phones identifies automatically dialed calls, blocks them by playing an "out of service" message, and then aggregates that calling data to create the YouMail Robocall Index.
Atlanta topped the YouMail 50 Most Robocalled Cities in America list for the 14th straight month, with nearly 101 million calls received in January. In addition, three Atlanta area codes ranked in the 20 most robocalled area codes for January. Atlanta area code 404 topped the list with 47.5 million calls received. Three Houston area codes are close behind and Texas received the most robocalls of any state for the 8th straight month.
Where are the calls coming from? Dallas unseated Los Angeles to become America's most prolific robocalling city in January, with just under 65 million calls made, followed by 60 million from Los Angeles, about about 50 million each from Chicago and Houston.
Debt collectors made the largest number of robocalls. The company says that one national credit card company has continued to dominate as the nation's most active robocalling phone number for 17 consecutive months. This one phone number has placed roughly 466 million calls, including 20 million calls in January.
For more information about the YouMail Robocall Index or to view the latest report, please visit the Robocall Index website.
