This is exactly the desk accessory you need if you’re bored at work on a Thursday and want to waste a little bit of time pretending to pilot your own futuristic fighter jet, the FF-22 (that would be the “FRaptor,” I guess). Vrrrrmmmmm PEW PEW PEW! Why on earth this thing isn’t a wireless mouse, I’ll never know. It’s $17 in a bunch of different colors from who else but Brando.
No matter how many controls you try to stuff into a mouse, there are a finite amount of things you can easily and intuitively do with one hand. The Orbita mouse take a stab at a unique axis of control by turning the entire mouse into one big giant scroll wheel. It works just like a normal wireless optical mouse (it’s got a laser in the bottom, etc.), except to left click, you push the whole thing down, and to right click you squeeze it. To scroll, the top half of the mouse can be rotated around on ball bearings.
The key difference here is that you can scroll endlessly and smoothly, with a nice big physical wheel. Does it offer you any additional functionality over a traditional scroll wheel? Not really, but if you do a lot of audio or video editing, it could make your life more convenient. At $98.50, though, if I were you I might consider getting yourself a Space Navigator to use as a secondary input device instead.
The Orbita mouse should be available in January of next year.
Logitech has to be one of my favorite peripheral companies ever, and it’s not just because of their Space Navigator and MX Air mouse. Well, fine, it’s partially because of those things. But overall, they just make functional, reliable, sexy, and generally well thought out stuff, and just recently they shipped their billionth (with a b) mouse.
Now, when I say “well thought out,” the implication is that they thought through some things that just didn’t make it into production, and sure enough, they did:
There’s a limited amount of stuff that you’re generally able to… stuff… into a laptop, which is why you can buy laptop docks with more room to add peripherals. And generally if you’re the type to try to overperipheralize your laptop, you also have the type of laptop that’s hot enough to sterilize you, your pets, and if you’re lucky, your dirty laundry.
Brando’s laptop pad will solve some of these problems in a mediocre way, as it includes two cooling fans and three USB ports. The interesting bit is that it also includes an integrated interface for a bare 2.5″ SATA hard drive, which have a lot of storage and cost a dime a dozen nowadays. The size limit for the HD dock is only 250 gigs, but you can find drives of that size for about $50, which works out to be what, $0.20 a gig? Not bad at all.
The Brando USB Notebook Cooling Pad costs about $33.
Kids, listen closely: just because you’ve mashed the caps lock key down when typing something on the internet doesn’t mean that your comments have any more relevance, or that anyone is more likely to pay attention to you. It’s just really, really, REALLY ANNOYING.
SEE?
If you can’t help yourself, here’s a gentle suggestion: bolt a couple fourteen-gauge 10mm lebret spikes onto the caps lock key, and see how long it takes for you to cure yourself of your affliction. Not recommended for laptops.
With someexceptions, laptops make horrible pillows. I mean, what were they thinking, designing them out of plastic and metal with no soft squishy bits for you to rest your head on? But have no fear: the iSleep pillow computer, um, peripheral (I guess) can give some practical purpose to that pile of circuit boards you’re lugging around.
The iSleep pillow attaches to your computer’s exhaust vent, and uses the warm air to both inflate and heat itself. A valve lets you adjust firmness. There’s some kind of integrated speaker that plays a selection of your music for as long as you’d like to nap for, and then plays an increasingly annoying tone when it’s time to wake up. I think it would be more effective for the pillow to rapidly deflate itself and slam your head down onto your laptop to wake you up, but I suppose something could get cracked that way.
iSleep is currently just a concept, and was designed by Ivonne Dippmann.
The Furutech Powerflux “may be the most sophisticated power cord and connectors in the world.” Their words, not mine. What’s so great about it that justifies the pricetag that’s alarmingly close to two grand? I’m not sure I can answer that question, but here’s what Furutech has to say:
Powerflux conductors are 68-strand α (Alpha) OCC twisted around μ–conductor strands with a special-grade PE insulation or dielectric. (Alpha conductors are fine OCC wire treated with Furutech’s Alpha Cryogenic and Demagnetizing process.) The dielectric is surrounded by an inner sheath of RoHS-compliant PVC incorporating carbon powder that enhances damping, and that in turn is covered by a full α (Alpha) conductor wire braid shield. Another flexible PVC outer sheath and a Nylon braid jacket finish the job.
The extraordinary FI-50 series connectors are a result of the meticulous way that Furutech engineers examine and improve each and every element of signal transfer using breakthrough technologies to reach their Pure Transmission Technology goal.
Furutech’s beautifully-finished FI-50(R) IEC and FI-50M(R) Piezo Ceramic series connector housings are made of multiple layers of carbon fiber in a damping and insulating acetal copolymer, surrounded by nonmagnetic stainless steel bands. The connector bodies combine two “active” materials: Nano-sized ceramic particles and powdered carbon. Nylon and fiberglass are incorporated as well forming an extremely effective, mechanically and electrically nonresonant connector body that may just be the most sophisticated in the world.
Oh, now it all makes sense… It’s the cryogenic dielectric piezo nano ceramic acetal nonresonant copolymer! That’s where my money is going! Totally worth it, I’d say.
I have a bit of a thing for gyro mice. Sexy ones, anyway. Movea’s Gyration mouse may not be as drop dead gorgeous as Logitech’s MX Air, but it does incorporate some of the same sort of futuristic technology that allows the mouse to be used conventionally on a flat surface or by waving it around in midair like a loony. The wireless RF mouse weighs only 4 ounces and has a USB receiver that hides in its butt. It’ll work up to 100 ft away from the computer (not that you can see that far), and comes with software that lets you use mouse gestures. There’s no info about battery life (which could be kinda important), and it doesn’t look like you get a whole lot of buttonage to play with. At $100 it’s a little bit cheaper than the MX Air, and it’s certainly smaller, but not a peripheral whose curves you’re likely to get lost in. Look for it early next month.
If you have an ounce of sense and haven’t blown $1.5k on an Optimus Maximus keyboard, you can (eventually) satisfy your craving for bite-sized OLED buttons with the Optimus Pultius, a 15 key programmable OLED keyboard accessory and the latest promised offering from Art Lebedev. It’s functionally no different from the fullsize 113 OLED Maximus, using the same key hardware with the same configuration software and a USB port on the back. There’s no price announced yet, and the Pultius should be showing up by the end of this year.
It sort of seems like Art Lebedev is trying to milk their OLED keys for a little extra scratch, perhaps because the cost of the Optimus Maximus is so prohibitively high that I can’t imagine they’re flying off the shelves, despite the hype. But heck, what do I know… I do know that personally, if I want an OLED key fix, I’d just stick with the currently available and presumably cheaper Optimus Mini Three. Or better yet, some Siftables.
Related Tags: Mouse, Peripherals
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