WEB EXCLUSIVE: No Choice Mice

Jerry Pournelle

When I sat down to begin selecting the products I think most deserve a Chaos Manor User's Choice Award, it seemed logical to start with the first thing that came to hand. There are plenty of mice and mouse substitutes here at Chaos Manor. I've probably got more pointing devices than I'd care to count.

But after some thought, I decided not to give an award. This isn't because things are so bad; it's because I can't make up my mind. First, there's the Microsoft IntelliMouse (Redmond, WA, http://www.microsoft.com ). This is the one with the wheel in the middle. The wheel acts as a third mouse button. If the program recognizes it, the wheel can be used to scroll text up or down, a very useful thing if it works. Unfortunately, the only software I have that it works with is its own control panel. Nothing else takes advantage of the wheel. Oh, sure, I can program the click part of the wheel to make it double-click, but what's the point? Otherwise, the IntelliMouse is identical in look and feel to the older Microsoft "Big Teardrop" mice I have on most of my machines.

Second, there's Cirque's (Salt Lake City, UT, http://www.glidepoint.com ) GlidePoint touchpads. I used one for a while and went back t o mice, but I know a lot of people who swear by them. I even have the GlidePoint Wave keyboard with the mushpad built in. I haven't tried it, I must confess, but I intend to as soon as I can slow down: changing keyboards is not a good idea when you have tight deadlines. Of course, I have a mushpad on my Nimantics Orion 8X, so I have no choice but to get used to them.

Finally, there are Logitech (Fremont, CA, http://www.logitech.com ) trackballs, particularly the new one with the random-dots marble. These do precision tracking and are easy to use. If you like upside-down mice, you can't do better than to get a Logitech trackball. Once again, I tried one for a month or so and went back to mice; but that's entirely personal preference and probably habit. I've been using mice for a long time.

My mouse wrist g ets tired and my mouse hand hurts after a long day and night. I think that may not have been the case with the trackball and the mushpads, so I'm going to experiment again. This time, I'll keep better records. Until I do, I'm just not giving an award for rodentia this year....

Meanwhile, I have chosen the winners of 1996's Chaos Manor User's Choice Awards in any number of hardware and software categories. If you've read this month's column in the print edition of BYTE or here on the BYTE Web site, you know who the winners are. For more details on why I judged many of these products to be deserving of awards this year, read on.

As I mentioned in the regular column, it was a close race in the video board category. Orchid Technology (Fremont, CA, http://www.orchid.com ), Diamond Multimedia (Sa n Jose, CA, http://www.diamondmm.com ), and STB Systems (Richardson, TX, http://www.stb.com ) all turned out some excellent boards with lots of bang for the buck in 1996. ATI Technologies (Thornhill, Ontario, Canada, http://www.atitech.ca ), the company that made Windows useful by developing video-accelerator boards so that you could rewrite the screen without going out for coffee every time you hit PageDown, continues to make solid and r eliable products. I could probably mention a couple of other boards as well.

However, after some thought and a lot of experience, I conclude that this year the cards to beat were from Matrox Graphics (Dorval, Quebec, Canada, http://www.matrox.com/mga ), which makes video boards ranging from game boards that are more than good enough up to professional-quality boards for high-end systems. Their technical support has been good, they've had less trouble with drivers than most companies, and Matrox Graphics' video-product line gets the 1996 Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for video boards.

I gave the User's Choice Award for monitors to the ViewSonic Professional Series PT-810 (ViewSonic, http://www.viewsonic.com ), but, in fact, all the ViewSonic monitors deserve recognition. If you stare at a screen all day, get one that puts up crisp text with sharp edges and good contrast. ViewSonic monitors do that. If you're going for really high-end graphics and need absolutely perfect color fidelity, you'll want to look at more expensive monitors, particularly the Nanao line; but if your business is text and normal graphics, you can't beat ViewSonic monitors for value for the money, in either the 17- or 21-inch size. I use both, and I like them a lot.

The User's Choice Award for high-end modems went to the U.S. Robotics Courier V.Everything. I prefer the external model because it has an on/off switch, a volume control, flashing lights, and a good summary of the technical manual printed on the bottom of the modem. External modems work with DOS software; some of the so-called Win modems won't without some special software o n top of your Procomm or other DOS communications package.

Having said that, I'm using an internal Courier, and it has been no trouble at all. Both external and internal Couriers lock on through line noise that will kill other modems. USR Courier modems are flash-updatable, so you'll always have the latest version of the software; that includes the new 56-Kbps capabilities.

(Update: since I wrote the April column--and possibly as a result of my complaints--USR has changed their Web site. From the absolutely least useful major site I know of, it has become quite understandable. Congratulations.)

At the medium price level, I prefer the Diamond Multimedia Systems (Vancouver, WA, http://www.diamondmm.com ) Supra modems to USR's Sportster, and for many purposes, a Supra is good enough. However, if you a bsolutely, positively must have reliable modem communications, spring for the USR Courier V.Everything. I also have to report that we've had good success with the newest Hayes (Hayes Microcomputer Products, http://www.hayes.com ) modems.

Updating your software is a lot easier with Cybermedia's Oil Change. It doesn't yet automatically find and retrieve USR updates (that can't come too soon), but it does find and retrieve a lot of applications updates. Just tonight I found updates to EarthLink Total Access, my EarthLink Internet service provider (ISP) Web-access software; two utilities; a Corel quick fix; and a bunch of other stuff, all of which downloaded in the background while I was writing this column. What's neat is that the first thing Oil Change looks for when you invoke it is an updated version of itself. It automatically loads and installs that if it finds one. Oil Change really deserves its User's Choice Award. Highly recommended.

CyberMedia earned a second User's Choice Award for First Aid 95 Deluxe, which is not only more valuable than Norton Utilities for Windows 95, but can be installed on systems that for one reason or another simply can't handle the Norton program. For example, repeated attempts to install Norton Utilities on Old Cow, the Gateway 2000 486DX2 that I keep in my monkish cell (the place where I write fiction) have failed--for no reason I can find. No matter. First Aid 95 Deluxe installed fine and does the job.

Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit retained its User's Choice Award in that category. I was a bit worried that after Alan Solomon sold his interest in the company they wouldn't maintain his standards, but so far, the Toolkit has been quick to find and fix all the new viruses. Most viruses originate in Central Europe and appear first in England and on the Continent before they show up over here. With increasing intercommunication through the Web this will probably change, but being in Europe is an advantage in the antivirus business.

The important thing to look for in antivirus software is not the program's abilities to find viruses, most do that pretty well, but the company's research activities. Most virus infections are from the old tried-and-true programs like Stoned, and any decent antivirus program will find those. The big potential damage comes from new viruses getting loose before anyone has a detector or remedy; historically, the worst financial damage has been from false alarms. It's very expensive to shut down an insurance or brokerage office for an hour, much less a day. I have confidence that Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit will find the new viruses without driving me nuts with false positives.

Back to hardware. Everyone I know says the best high-end laptop is the IBM ThinkPad. It's certainly excellent. However, the Chaos Manor User's Cho ice Award for laptops went to the Nimantics Orion 8X. It isn't as expensive as the ThinkPad, and it has some features the ThinkPad doesn't have. It's also heavier and has lower battery life. You can use it on an airplane: I did on my trip to Spain. The batteries lasted about an hour, but it was great while it lasted. Where the Orion 8X shines is after you get that heavy sucker to a table and wall plug. It's fast, the screen is gorgeous, the built-in CD-ROM drive works, the keyboard is more than adequate, the PC Card slots work: in a word, it's not quite as good as having my main machine with me on a trip, but it's good enough.

The Orion 8X also uses a mushpad (touchpad) rather than the eraserhead pointing device the ThinkPad uses, and I sure like that. I'm undecided about mushpads, but I long ago made up my mind about eraserheads. I'd rather put up with the bother of the discontinued Microsoft Ballpoint trackballs for portables than use an eraserhead.

I've used the Orion 8X for games, novels, colu mns, Web crawling, and communications in general, and it has never failed me. I had a problem with the case cracking on the first unit, an Orion 6X, but that was a problem with a discontinued external battery system. The replacement Orion 8X has been banged around, dropped on the tarmac, and left running in the hot sun. I've used it on the beach as well as in the beach house. I generally won't lug it into meetings, but it was used in the BYTE Best of Comdex Awards meeting. I've run experimental software on it. All told, I like the Nimantics Orion 8X, and it deserves a User's Choice Award.

A Chaos Manor User's Choice Award also went to Visioneer's PaperPort Vx, which may be the most useful gadget in your office. This is a small document scanner with OCR software. It attaches to your PC's serial port, where it sleeps until you need it. You wake it by feeding it a sheet of paper, after which it does its thing, captures what you've scanned, and stores it. It works effortlessly and interfaces nicely with mos t databases. You can also get a PaperPort built into a keyboard, the PaperPort ix. We've had one up and running for months now, and there have been no problems. We were a little worried about gubbage spilling into it--I tend to eat pretzels and crackers when I work--but that hasn't been a problem for us. It might be for you. Keyboard or detached model, if you're drowning in paper, try the PaperPort ix or Vx.

A number of digital cameras came out last year. My favorite is the Olympus D-300L. It has its limits: it will store only 36 high-resolution pictures, and it takes a minute or longer to download a picture. The rival Kodak camera stores its pictures on a PC Card. Not only does that let you carry spare cards, but it makes downloading the image into your computer a great deal faster. That's a great feature, and I could wish the D-300L had it.

What the D-300L does have is good optics, very high resolution, and an on-camera view screen. Since most of the pictures I take aren't any good, I like to be able to look at the shot I really got (as opposed to what I thought I photographed) in time to take another. The D-300L lets me erase a bad picture, thus making room for a new one. The result is that when I used the D-300L, I ended up with at least 30 pictures I really wanted, and they're all in very high resolution. The Olympus D-300L, alone among digital cameras in its class, takes genuine 1024- by 768-pixel pictures in good color.

Downloading the pictures with the supplied serial-port cable is simple, if not fast. The format isn't one I much care for, but it's standard enough that almost all image-processing programs, including Corel's, will read in the pictures, after which you can output them in any format you fancy.

The D-300L looks and feels like a good range-finder automatic camera, and it's easy to use even if you never studied photography (or like me, studied it in the dinosaur age). It's not quite pocket-size, but it's as small as the Pentax IQ I generally pack around. I could wish the camera's battery life was a little longer, but no automatic camera with flash has a satisfactory battery life nowadays. You can run it from an optional 6.5-V DC adapter, but in fact I find it works just fine with a Radio Shack 6-V power supply.

I have no problem giving the Olympus D-300L a Chaos Manor User's Choice Award.

A lot of video art stays on-screen and never sees print, but that's not universally true. The problem with computer art is that it's not permanent. Even if you print it, you're using dyes and inks, and if those are exposed to ordinary light--let alone bright sunlight--they tend to fade. The old masters painted with oil-based pigments, and while there has been some deterioration, particularly in shadow effects, you can still see what they intended after hundreds of years. With a dye-sublimation painting, you'll be lucky to have an image at all after it's been hanging in your living room for a decade.

There aren't any real solutions to this, although some ar e coming. For the moment, if you buy computer-generated fine art, try to get three copies signed by the artist. The first hangs on your wall. The second you'll hang a few years from now after the first fades. Keep the third in a lightproof climate-controlled place as your investment copy.

Another possibility is to get the video image and print another copy when the first fades. The problem here is that printers aren't the same. A good artist will adjust the color balance so that the video image isn't what he or she was after, but the printed copy will be; and since printers go out of fashion, you may not be able to print a new copy that looks like the original.

In any event, for really high-quality printing, you go to the professionals since you aren't likely to own that good a printer. However, if what you want is a pretty good copy, say for a family birthday card or something like Aldo Spidoni's pictures of space battles from stories by me and Larry Niven, the Alps MD-2010 Photo-Realistic Color Printer is as good as you can find in its price range. Marilyn Niven has been using one for a couple of months, and she's quite pleased with it. The picture quality is really good. The MD-2010 will also handle metallic inks for really startling effects.

Unlike some color printers, the MD-2010 uses waterproof inks. Waterproof is a relative term. These don't smear, and when I held a sample copy (printed on slick paper) under the tap for a minute, the paper got wet and wrinkled, but I couldn't detect any change in the colors. Alps says these Micro Dry inks won't fade in sunlight or with age. I hope that's true, but it will take a while to be sure.

The MD-2010 comes bundled with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, a sort of junior-grade Photoshop. It's simple to set up the printer and use the software to produce good color prints. Incidentally, just after the new year, I got an MD-4000, which combines the MD-2010 and a scanner. A full report on that in a later issue.

The printer costs about $500. The inks come i n individual cartridges, so you replace only the colors you use up. The result is pretty competitive in regard to per-page costs, with really high nonsmear quality, and it's a good bit cheaper than going to a print house. If you do much graphics work, you should look into the Alps MD-2010 Photo-Realistic Color Printer, which took the 1996 Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for printers.

The neatest gadget I've seen this year is DeLorme's Tripmate. This package combines DeLorme's Street Atlas USA 4.0 CD-ROM, which has detailed street maps of most of the nation on one CD, and a small--about the size of two packs of cigarettes--Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, which plugs into the serial port of your laptop. The result is an accurate map of where you are and, moreover, an accurate record of where you've been. You can re-create your trip minute by minute if you want to.

GPS was invented years ago by my friend and coauthor Dr. Francis X. Kane (Col., USAF, Retired). He thought it up, got the engineering developed, and helped shepherd it through a then-hostile Congress. GPS satellites broadcast their location. The GPS receiver takes the information from three or more satellites and calculates the location of the receiver.

The original notion of GPS was to locate military ships and aircraft: you can save a lot of money on fuel if you know exactly where you are. You can also use GPS to guide cruise missiles, which is why the U.S. military insists on adding a dither factor to the GPS signal so that it won't be too accurate. (The military can decode the dither so that it doesn't affect their calculations; during the Gulf War, they turned off the dither entirely.) The dither hardly matters. Not only can you hack the dither, but even with the dither on, the system gives instant locations accurate to a few hundred feet. With a stationary receiver integrating information over several minutes, you can get your position to a few centimeters. If you know your altitude, it doesn't take as lo ng.

Anyway, DeLorme's Tripmate is the Gadget of the Year. I love it.

Last, a word about word processors. Some of you may have been surprised to see that Microsoft Word 7.0 got a User's Choice Award.

Consider this: Word 7.0 is a significant improvement over Word 6.0c. I understand those who object to bloatware, and heaven knows Word has become enormous, but the fact is that it works. I use it on really fast systems (e.g., a 200-MHz dual Pentium under NT 4.0) and on Old Cow, an aging Gateway 2000 486DX2 with 20 MB of memory, and it's fine on both.

One reason we went to Word from Q&A Write was Symantec: they abandoned Q&A even though it's still a mainstay product for them in Europe. What Q&A needed and never got was the ability to work with long files: it can't read in any file that it can't hold entirely in memory. Word can deal with files of great length, meaning that I can keep an entire novel in one file.

When I do that, the word processor has to be fast enough that when I work on the beginning of a 90,000-word file, the whole file scrolls down as I add lines, and does that quickly and smoothly. Word 7.0 does that on Old Cow. When I first set up Old Cow as a writing machine, it ran Windows 3.11. I converted it to Win 95 because it is faster and more stable (provided that you have at least 16 MB of memory, but memory is cheap, as are big hard drives). Having converted to Win 95, I left Word 6.0c up and installed Office 97, which contains Word 7.0. After a couple of weeks of using Word 7.0, I erased Word 6.0c, and I'll probably never go back to it again.

Word has always had some great features, including the ability to put up text as white on a blue background. Q&A does that, and I prefer it, not only because I find it easier to see, but there's considerably less light coming out of the screen, and I find my eyes aren't as tired at the end of a day. Word 7.0 handles spelling checking quite well. The thesaurus works. You can get several dictionary programs that p lug into Word. I do miss the Microlytics Word Finder Plus thesaurus, which was much better than Word's, and I really miss Quinton Systems' Definition/Plus dictionary. I had both grafted into Q&A Write. However, it's simple enough to keep Q&A Write running in a DOS window. I cut and paste into that window when I need a more powerful thesaurus or a better dictionary than Word provides. I also find that it doesn't happen very often.

I am very fond of Word's undo feature. Finally, Niven and I have gotten used to being able to work on anything we like in a collaboration, and then get together and use Word to merge the documents.

No, I don't have any problem giving Microsoft Word 7.0 the Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for word processing software.

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Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's senior contributing editor. You can write to Jerry c/o BYTE, 24 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, MA 02173. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope and put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at jerryp@bix.com .