2006-09-05

New Mac Toys

I was at the TU yesterday so I stopped by Gravis, the Mac shop in Berlin. What a fun store! They have all the Macintoys set up for playing, and a loudspeaker room so you can test all of the iPod loudspeakers. You have to go through a gate, but then you can wander around, picking up stuff, and then head for the cashiers. The Info guys are insufferably arrogant - what does a woman know about computers anyway - but at the checkout the clerk at the next cashier nods to me, seems familiar, must be a student. I'm getting old, can't remember all my students any more....

Anyway, I parted with a lot of cash for some cute, tiny toys. A little USB hub in silver - the mains adapter is bigger than it is! A cute little Bluetooth mouse, a tiny 21-card-reader and a screen wiper. Of course, I grabbed wrong size, although I distinctly remember determining the M was the correct size. Oh well, it will clean, if not protect.

The mouse wouldn't work this morning after charging. Buttons work fine - and I can use it in presentation to click "next" from across the room, that increases its coolness factor - , scroll bar is great, but the mouse pointer does not move. Since there is no light and this is an optical mouse, something is amiss. I call macally's service center, somewhere in the Netherlands.

A guy answers on the first (!) ring. No voice mail hell to manoever. He only speaks a kind of English, but what the heck. He takes my problems, connects me to another guy. He listens, asks some questions (trying to figure out if I charged the batteries and paired the BT). Then he says: okay, take the batteries out. Now press the connect button for 5 seconds. Now press both mouse keys for 20 seconds. Now put the batteries back in. Should work. And it did! I asked him what these magic motions were about, he said that that is the initialization sequence and is published in the FAQ, where ever that is hidden.

I just conducted a test. The mouse is findable on their home page. There is a FAQ. There is nothing about this initialization in there, but a shocking statement to be found: "On the back of the package, in the feaures, we wrongly state that the mouse has 3 fully programmable buttons. We are sorry for the inconvenience this can cause you.". Okay, spelling isn't their strong point, and this is grounds for complaints - truth in advertising, anyone? - but their customer service guys get a gold star.

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