• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

SYBEX Sample Chapter Upgrading Your Home PC Glenn Weadock Chapter 9: Of Mice and Multimedia Copyright © 2001 SYBEX Inc., 1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA 94501. World rights reserved. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or reproduced in any way, including but not limited to photocopy, photograph, magnetic or other record, without the prior agreement and written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 0-7821-2960-9 SYBEX and the SYBEX logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SYBEX Inc. in the USA and other countries. TRADEMARKS: Sybex has attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by following the capitalization style used by the manufacturer. Copyrights and trademarks of all products and services listed or described herein are property of their respective owners and companies. All rules and laws pertaining to said copyrights and trademarks are inferred. This document may contain images, text, trademarks, logos, and/or other material owned by third parties. All rights reserved. Such material may not be copied, distributed, transmitted, or stored without the express, prior, written consent of the owner. The author and publisher have made their best efforts to prepare this book, and the content is based upon final release software whenever possible. Portions of the manuscript may be based upon pre-release versions supplied by software manufacturers. The author and the publisher make no representation or warranties of any kind with regard to the completeness or accuracy of the contents herein and accept no liability of any kind including but not limited to performance, merchantability, fitness for any particular purpose, or any losses or damages of any kind caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly from this book. SYBEX Inc. 1151 Marina Village Pkwy. Alameda, CA 94501 USA Phone: 510-523-8233 www.sybex.com Chapter 9 Of Mice and Multimedia 192 CHAPTER 9 • Of Mice and Multimedia obody doesn’t like multimedia. Graphics, sound, video—these are all big fun, and a big part of why home computing is well on its way to replacing baseball as the American N national pastime. (There’s the designated hitter rule, too, of course.) How does one take advantage of all the cool multimedia software that’s available? One must add cool hardware, and this chapter shows one a few ways to do just that. Mice, keyboards, and their relatives may not seem nearly as sexy as multimedia gizmos like webcams and video grabbers. However, when you pay them a wee bit of attention, they’re just liable to take off their glasses, let down their hair, and make you wonder what you’ve been over- looking all this time. You’ll also find that upgrading your input devices (as with a graphics tablet, for example) opens up your PC’s multimedia possibilities, so that’s where this chapter will begin. Intro to Input Devices Before you think about delving into games or other multimedia pursuits, you may want to upgrade your input devices so that they’re as fast, accurate, and comfortable as they can be. For example, mouse quality may not matter a huge amount if you use the PC primarily to send and receive e-mail, but it’s a big factor if you intend on playing fast-action multimedia games. Although at last count there were thirty zillion PC input devices on the market, here I’ll focus on mice, trackballs, joysticks, and keyboards. Mice, Trackballs, and Joysticks Mice have come a long way since Doug Englebart built his now-famous wooden contraption at Stanford Research Institute back in 1964. However, the mouse you get with a typical home or small office PC is usually an “el cheapo” model that neither works nor feels as good as it could. Given the amount of time you spend using the mouse, it’s a prime candidate for a hardware upgrade. To make the best choice, you should know a bit about these high-tech rodents. First off, mice can be corded or cordless. You’re probably already familiar with corded mice, or you probably wouldn’t be reading this book. Cordless mice generally have batteries inside the mouse enclosure and transmit a radio signal to a receiver that connects to your PC’s mouse or USB port. Cordless mice are becoming more popular as manufacturers have improved signal range and battery life, although the sampling rate—how often the mouse signals its position—is usually less than the best corded USB mice. (Mice that connect to your PC’s PS/2 style mouse port typically use a sample rate of 40 to 60Hz, or samples per second; USB mice typically boost that to 125Hz for smoother line drawing and better gaming. You can check your mouse’s sample rate with the MouseRate utility, which you can get free from various Internet locations, and if Intro to Input Devices 193 you have a PS/2 style mouse you can boost the rate with the PS2RatePlus utility, also a Web freebie.) If you categorize mice by their inner workings, you see three types: mechanical, opto- mechanical, and optical. • Mechanical mice use a rolling ball to move two plastic rods, one indicating horizontal movement and the other indicating vertical movement. These mice are rare nowadays but they have the virtue of working on practically any surface. Many people don’t realize that you must clean them periodically, as dust builds up on the rods (see Figure 9.1) and the rubber ball gets dusty, too. Figure 9.1 Dust buildup in a mechanical mouse • Most modern mice are opto-mechanical: A rolling ball moves slotted wheels, and photo- cells watch the direction and speed of those wheels. You have to clean the rolling ball periodically, and blow out dust. • Purely optical mice generally use a camera pointing at the mouse pad (or other surface) to detect motion and direction, and they use a light to illuminate the surface. These don’t need much cleaning; an occasional wipe around the light and lens will do. 194 CHAPTER 9 • Of Mice and Multimedia Yet another way to evaluate mice is by their resolution, usually given in dots per inch (dpi). This measurement indicates how many pulses the mouse sends when you move it one inch. Higher resolutions mean you can make smaller mouse movements to move the cursor the same distance on the screen. Beyond 600 or 800dpi, the benefit of additional resolution is debatable for most users. Mice for PCs generally have two buttons and some have more, whose action you can pro- gram with the mouse setup utility. Many mice also have a thumbwheel that sits between the two main buttons and lets you scroll up or down without using a program’s scroll bars. Some folks prefer trackballs (see Figure 9.2) to traditional mice. With a trackball device, you move a ball with your thumb or finger instead of moving the mouse over a pad. You can think of a trackball as an upside-down mouse. Personally, I’ve never been able to adjust to trackballs, but you may want to give one a try, especially if a traditional mouse is uncomfortable to you for some reason, or if you don’t have enough room on your desk for a mouse pad. Figure 9.2 A typical trackball input device Finally, you may want to look at a joystick device, especially if you’re a game player. Joysticks send X-position, Y-position, and firing button signals to your PC. Early joysticks were analog and were known for occupying a lot of CPU time; newer models are digital, with their own micro- processors, and they bother the PC’s CPU much less often. These devices have become pretty sophisticated, and so-called force-feedback joysticks even provide tactile resistance at the direc- tion of the game software. Intro to Input Devices 195 Joysticks typically connect to their own special 15-pin female game port on the back of the PC or sound card (see Figure 9.3), a port that you can also use to connect a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) device like a synthesizer. I’ll have more to say about MIDI devices later in the chapter. You can generally connect either two two-button joysticks or one four-button joystick to a standard PC game port, but check the spec sheet before you buy. Many joysticks have more than four buttons, and the additional ones are usually programmable. Joystick port Figure 9.3 A joystick port TIP Note that force-feedback joysticks tend to use the MIDI-out line to send data to the joystick, so you won’t be able to use the joystick and a MIDI musical instru- ment at the same time. You can’t play the electronic tuba while flying a virtual plane anyway, so this should be no great loss. Keyboards Ever write with one of those fancy $150 Mont Blanc rollerball pens? They glide over the page so smoothly that the two-dollar disposable rollerballs you’d been perfectly happy with all your life now seem scratchy, flimsy, and just plain crude. Using a great keyboard is a lot like using one of those fine pens; it’s a revelation. (I firmly believe it makes you write better, too.) I have yet to find the perfect keyboard, which is a matter of taste anyway; but I can tell you about two keyboard characteristics that will probably make you want to throw the flimsy stock one you’re probably using right now into the “delete” can along with those scratchy pens: switch type and key layout.

Load more

  33

Copy Link