Two days wasted thanks to Asus ROG Armoury Crate

I’m recording this in case it happens to others. Yesterday, Windows 11 began to hang. Not in the traditional sense where everything froze. I had about a minute where things worked. I could open Vivaldi and Eudora, and within those I could still do some things. Eudora was pretty stable, which is a sign of […]

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Rare: an Asus product not lasting the distance; awaiting its successor

I see it was only 19 months ago since I bought the Asus ROG Strix Evolve mouse. A mouse that cost several times what a regular one does, claiming the switches would last 50 million clicks. It has now developed a fault, and I wouldn’t even consider myself a heavy user. I’m certainly not a […]

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Can a no-name mouse take the place of a Microsoft Intellimouse?

I’ve occasionally had good luck with ultra-cheap Chinese mice. Years ago, I bought one, with very simple left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, and it proved to be one of the most comfortable I owned. The wheel didn’t run smoothly at first but a quick trim of the plastic, and it’s been fine […]

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Microsoft’s revived Intellimouse isn’t a successor to the old

How I had such high hopes that the Microsoft Intellimouse Pro Special Edition bought at Noël Leeming would be a successor to my Intellimouse 1.1. The short version: it isn’t.    It might be a successor to the Intellimouse Explorer 3 on which the shape is modelled, but for those of us who prefer symmetrical […]

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Twelve things I do to keep balanced while working from home

When I was 13, my father became self-employed after being made redundant at his work. By choice, my mother did the same when I was in my early 20s. They both loved the lifestyle and I imagine it was inevitable I would do the same in my career, beginning at a time when I was […]

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Asus ROG Strix Evolve: a gaming mouse for a non-gamer

My early 2000s Microsoft Intellimouse 1·1 is still the perfect shape for me. After getting the second-hand one into service last year, I thought that I needed a spare. I’ve several other mice, including no-brand ones, that are a decent size, but I got used to having the forward and back buttons on either side. […]

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Work as if it’s 2001

Asus One beauty to having new tech, even if it stretched my budget, is how my use of the desktop and laptop computers is more efficient. I don’t just mean the speed and stability (since the previous computers were both Windows 7 machines that had been upgraded to 10) but the way I use the […]

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The Singer of desktop PCs

I never planned to spend quite this much on computers in the first two months of the year.    The laptop was in dire need of an upgrade, so I had budgeted for it. After getting it, I was impressed, but thought that the desktop PC, which dates from 2012 and upgraded with a Crucial […]

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How to get a perfect 10 in reliability on Windows 10

I’ve had a great week with my new laptop, though it exhibits some of the same traits I’ve frequently seen with Windows 10: settings’ windows vanishing when attempting to load. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, demo PCs I’ve seen at the store have terrible reliability history scores, and mine is no exception. It […]

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The Asus FX504 is far better than reviewers think

Top: The new laptop, just unboxed. Centre: Publicity shots at strange angles. Above: The specs, as told by Windows.   When I think about it, I’ve gone through quite a lot of laptops over the years. The first this century (as there was an Apple II-compatible that I used for some months in the 1980s, […]

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