Whatever happened to the trackball I asked myself this morning. It's a bit of stupid question to be thinking about, but I do have my reasons.

Recently I got rid of my desktop computer. I'm sick fed up of them, but that's for another post. So I'm left at the moment with my laptop. Right now I am using the Microsoft Presenter 8000 mouse with it and you can see my review below, but I've found using it as a main mouse for several hours is a terrible experience as it's not designed to replace your main desktop counterpart. So digging around I find my old Microsoft Trackball mouse.

The Microsoft Trackball I have is about 5 years old. I picked it up when it first came out and I love it. Though I stopped using it sometime ago now. It wasn't any particular reason, maybe it was because I started to play online games more and got tired changing mice every time. So anyway out it comes and I plug it in. It still works and though it's not the smoothest it's still pretty good.

Now the mouse is a little old, dirty, eh... old. So I started to look to see if I could buy a new one. Surely they've updated the trackball since I bought this.... eh... No.

No? What the hell, it's been 5 years since this came out and though there have been some, they are mainly for forefinger control and not using your thumb to control the pointer. I was pretty upset about this. This leads me on to the question, whatever happened to the trackball? It would appear to me that the major companies gave up developing the mice, probably due to poor sales. So where does that leave me.

Microsoft and Logitech have not released any new trackball's and I can't find any other company that has made ones of any great quality so... guess I'm buggered then.

Microsoft, Logitech if you're reading this... please make a new trackball with the following features.

• Laser accuracy, with a higher response. The current trackman and trackball are pretty poor.
• Side scrolling wheel
• Cordless/ Wireless... though the idea of a trackball doesn't move, but would be useful for say laptop usage.
• Back/ Forward buttons... Microsoft has this on theirs, but the sole reason I won't by the Logitech Trackman is the lack of them.
• More comfortable. Where the Microsoft one nails t pretty much, I would love one with that leather texture they have on their natural 4000 keyboard palm rest.

Oh well, I'll see how long this last, but might end of buying a Wacom tablet or the new natural ergonomic mouse from Microsoft.

So I posted my first review on Amazon.co.uk and it was mainly in response to a reviewer who didn't really understand what he had bought. The product was the Microsoft Presenter Mouse 8000 and you can read the review here or I've copied it below also.

You have to realise that before you buy this mouse that this is for a laptop. It's designed not to be used 100% of the time, but when you take it to meetings and when you need to make presentations.

For those two tasks there is no better mouse.

A previous post talked about problems with the mouse not being accurate, but if you install the software that comes with the mouse you are able to adjust this information as it helps with battery life. Not everyone needs a perfect, accurate, fast feedback mouse all the time, so you can trade up between that and battery life. Personally I have mine on highest accuracy and it works perfect.

The mouse does however come with its own USB Bluetooth adaptor which is fantastic for those that don't already have such a device and also included is a great travel box that is just slightly larger than the mouse itself. The mouse fits perfectly into the case.

The mouse has a button that switches it from mouse mode to presentation mode that stops the normal mouse buttons from working. This is great as you need to flip the mouse upside down to access the presentation options.

Included in the presentation options you have a Play/Pause button, a next page & previous page button, volume up & volume down buttons and of course the laser button.

These buttons are fantastic. There have been times where I sit on my couch with my laptop on my table with headphones plugged in reading a book and I use the mouse to control windows media player. Then of course are the presentation options which mean you can sit back from your laptop and feel more in control. These buttons also work at 10meter distance, while the mouse might start losing accuracy at half a meter (it's for a laptop, you don't to use it further away), the buttons do work at a greater distance. So you can have your laptop on a table and stand up and run your presentation.

All in all, this is one of the best mice I have ever used. Ideal for a laptops and if you ever run a presentation off one, then this mouse is a must.

So you probably realise by now that I'm studying for my MCP's. They are not so hard with the right material and that's what I have in acres of.

One of the problems with just studying this type of stuff is that it pretty much goes straight out your head when you read the next line. There is however a fantastic way of stopping this from happening and that's to use what you learn!

So that brings me to XNA. XNA is a games framework that sits on top of C# using .Net and Direct X. One of the sweet things about it is that you can buy an XNA add on for your Xbox and you can develop your own games for the Xbox 360!!! Pretty cool indeed.

You can read more about XNA here http://www.xna.com/

Over the coming months I will put up some samples and examples on what I've been working on and there might be a few surprises too.

I've added a book list to my space. It's down the side of the page or following the link.

Right now I've only added the books that are helping me on way to my MCPD certifications.

Some of the books are also great programming ones, such as Code Complete, Practical Guidelines and Best Practices for Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C# and Programming Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library.

Later on I'll be adding some other books and keeping it up to date with various other books that I buy.

But all is fine now!

So I was over in Scotland the other week driving around. It's great having a car in Edinburgh. I lived there for 20 years and then left for Ireland. I only learned to drive once I moved away, so going back home and having a car is great.

I got back the other week and two days back into the commute to work I noticed that the steering was strange. When I got home in the evening I checked out my tires and it was really messed up. There was a bulge on the sidewall and after a quick search I found out that it was due to the metal tension cables in the sidewall had snapped, probably due to hitting a bump, but I can't remember doing that. After further reading I found out I was lucky to have not blown the tire.

Quick trip to the local tire shop and had my 5 month old back tires put on the front and my two front tires replaced with new rubber and placed on the back. So new on the back. This caused quite a stir in the place as they wanted to put them onto the front. But a quote from: S60 Owners Manual - Wheels & Tires states that:

        When replacing tires, the tires with the most tread should be mounted on the rear wheels to reduce the chance of oversteer during hard braking.

Great, so I was right, I love being right. They still though wanted to put on the tires to the front so I told the guy I wanted to wear out my old tires faster so I could change them sooner, hahaha, that got them to change it. So back on the road and it already felt better, but still my tracking was way off.

So up to Dublin and to a better tire and wheel centre. Here I got them to run a 4 wheel alignment and well worth it too. The back wheel was out and I have a feeling I did this when parking in Dundrum shopping centre. There is one turn that has a huge number of scuff marks and I guess I added too it also, but that was a long time ago. You can see the tracking details in the two images below.

Before:

After:

So it's now aligned and feeling pretty good. Due to the rear wheel being out of alignment I still get a little vibrate, but once the rubber sorts itself out in a week or so it should be feeling as good as new.