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Kirk
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 - 10:10 am: | 
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Check out this article from Eham. If this is allowed to continue by the FCC, then Part 15 comes back to haunt those who shove it on their neighbors.--73
Just when we all thought the Citizen's Band was a total write-off, Bill Gates has come to its rescue.
This past weekend while visiting a Costco Warehouse, my attention was directed by K2XL to a new 3 button wireless mouse manufactured by Microsoft. They call it the Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse blue. The small b is their spelling. I eyeballed the box and sure enough, for 34 bucks I could purchase a mouse that would leave me un-tethered to my laptop computer and never more would I have to wear out my index finger against the little navigation touch pad.
I checked the small print and saw it came with drivers, a receiver and two Energizer AA batteries. I sort of got blue in the face searching for the other half of the blue's missing tooth! Alas, why not take a chance and so I bought it.
Installation was a snap. You know how that goes, just pop in the CD and let it install itself, who reads manuals anyway? The system had to reboot and upon the final phase of installation it asked me if I wanted to eliminate the existing touch pad software. I said, definitely not, believing there wouldn't be any conflicts as a result. And none occurred.
After connecting the receiver and inserting 2 AA batteries into the underside of the mouse, giving it a nice heft, I fired up my unit for the smoke test. I was delighted to find the little mousie working perfectly. Plenty of software came with it in case I wanted to modify its settings.
Later that evening I decided to read the manual and see what interesting tidbits it might provide. Well, when I got towards the end where the specifications were, I did my patented Gomer Pyle's Golllllllyyy! and Shazzzaaaaaaam! when I saw that the transmitter output was on the CB band. Now I know why the teeth were missing. It's a 2 channel device outputting onto either 27.045 or 27.145 MHz, channels 8 & 15 I believe. A far cry from 2.4GHz!!! The channels are selected by a button on the bottom of the mouse or on top of the receiver just in case the Blue Max or the Psycho Base is QRMing the frequency. The RF output power is given as <54 db uV/m @ 3 m. The mouse goes to sleep after a short period of inactivity, thereby sparing its batteries.
As I sit here and write this little ditty, I am listening to my mousie on 27.145MHz with my 75 meter antenna, which is about 80 feet away putting in some nice S-9 plus bursts with each movement. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the skip is back, Hi Hi!!
Still wondering what the deal was with the Blue Tooth I did a Google search and found some interesting information. It turns out Logitech has been kicking Microsoft's butt in the wireless accessories arena with its own keyboards and mice. So what I purchased was an interim product to compete with Logitech. In November Microsoft is slated to bring out its Blue Tooth devices. In the meantime MS said that originally XP would support Blue Tooth but alas such was not the case and the long awaited for Service Pack #1 is supposed to remedy that situation. Naturally I found the term blue used by Microsoft to be misleading in the end. Like they say, all that glitters is not gold.
The moral of the story is that even the Cb'ers are sharing their frequency allotments with corporate America. So maybe for a short time only, Bill Gates will become the ultimate Channel Master on the CB band in addition to being the richest man in the universe.
de Bill K2ANE/2 |
707
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 - 11:31 am: |
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The Targus PAUM006 wireless mouse is another 27mc (.045 and .145 are "A" channels, reserved for remote control and remote sensing, such as water level monitors at dams, etc., along with .195, also some R/C products frequencies) I bought mine specifically because on the box it noted the frequency and I found it quite amusing, so dropped the $29.95 just for the novelty. As soon as the novelty wears off, I'll probably be installing a larger antenna, perhaps 108" whip to the back of my computer, and maybe a Firestick on the mousie.... Anybody have plans for a Mouse Linear??? I'd like to hack the mouse to work with my cheapo park flyer styrofoam electric glider on 27.195. |
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