As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been getting tired of the keyboard that I have at home. I’ve had it since December 2004, and it’s well past its use-by date. I bought it while living in the UK and hence it has the UK keyboard layout. This was fine while I lived in the UK, but has been a nuisance since being back in Australia. Every other keyboard that I use has the US layout. So every time I come home I end up making mistakes while typing because keys aren’t where my head thinks they are! Aside from the layout issue, some keys were starting to get a bit dodgey and were failing to recognise keypresses.

Today I finally replaced it. I invested in a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard which feels really comfortable. In the past I’ve avoided these funky shaped keyboards as they haven’t really felt right, but this one really does feel good. It has a stack of extra features and buttons, and I think it’ll have a well-deserved existence on my desktop. The keys are nice and quiet, and they don’t seem to struggle to register like the old one did (a good sign for a new keyboard I know ;)).

There is but one small issue - the space bar. While the other keys are just fine, the space bar is one noisy key. It dishes out quite a clunk each time it’s pushed. The reason for this is that if I don’t push it hard enough the bugger won’t godown (see, there’s a classic example of it). To get it to push down, I have to hit it quite hard and that’s where the noise is coming from. Right now I’m a little concerned about it, and I’m hoping that it’ll get quieter and less noisy as it “wears in”.

While I was shopping I thought I may as well fix a couple of other issues that I have mentioned in my other post about activation.

First of all I now have a new stick of RAM, so I’m back up to 1GB. Unfortunately I can’t go any higher due to my borked motherboard, but it’ll do for now. There is a noticable difference in speed now that I’m back up to that amount.

Next up I bought some more Artic Silver thermal grease. I was informed a while back by a mate (Marc) that I’d botched the grease job on my GPU and hence the temps were stupidly high. So I’ve grabbed some more of this stuff to fix it up. I’ll get to that over the weekend, and hopefully we’ll see an improvement in GPU temperatures.

Lastly, I bought a new webcam. I did have a Logitech QuickCam Messenger, but it was basically a pile of shit because:

1. The image quality was awful.
2. It didn’t work on Vista.
3. It didn’t work on x64.
4. It didn’t work on Linux.

I did a bit of research, and ended up buying a Creative WebCam Vista, which has nothing to do with Microsoft’s Vista. For AUD $20 you seriously can’t go wrong. The camera is a fantastic purchase and does everything I need it to!

On the whole I’m happy with my purchases. I just hope this damned space bar doesn’t ruin it all!