Logitech K820 wireless keyboard and touchpad in linux Mint

SUMMARY
The Logitech K820 runs on Linux Mint 17 and the standard gestures function.


K820 ON LINUX MINT 17
I wanted to try a new wireless keyboard to give my tendinitis a rest, and i wanted to try something different from my old Logitech K400 with the built-in (but tiny) touchpad.

I had seen the K820 on Amazon, but didn't have a chance to try it until I was at Staples one evening grabbing some vinyl letters. The keys were an improvement over the K400 - they were typical island keys, and it has that gorgeous large touchpad. The only downside was that there was no HOME and END key. However, a quick Google informed me that the FUNC/Arrow keys did that.

I had a gift card from Best Buy for turning in an old tablet (my venerable Viewsonic G-Tablet), so I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it worked on Linux.

Here's my setup:
HP Pavilion dv6000
Linux Mint 17

I plugged in the K820, hit the little power switch on the keyboard and I was immediately able to use the keyboard and touchpad.

Here are the gestures that I have discovered so far:
single finger tap - left click
double finger tap - right click
single finger swipe - regular cursor movement
double finger up/down scroll window
three finger up/down - open the application/"start" menu

It also has the standard left and right click by pressing on the bottom corners of the touchpad.

I was unable to turn on/off any of these using the standard touchpad driver in Linux Mint, but that's OK. I think I'll try and learn these.

Oh, and my tendinitis feels better already.

My Elementary OS / Craigslist laptop challenge

As you know, I finally got a working installation of Elementary OS, the new Linux operating system distribution, after a few false starts installing it.

After reading the back to school advertisements, chock full of fancy quad core laptops running Windows 8, I decided to see how cheaply I could get online.

So here's my challenge to myself:

Can I use my $80 Craigslist laptop and the no cost operating system Elementary OS for a week?

Now I can't use it for my work, because currently our VPN doesn't support Linux, but they supply me with a computer anyway. But when you think about it, pretty much everything that one does online, besides gaming, runs in a browser... Gmail - browser; Facebook - browser; YouTube videos - you got it... browser. Even if you want to write a document and print it, you can use Google Documents and Google Drive and do it all online.

Here is what an $80 craigslist laptop is... first a confession, I am a bit of a craigslist junkie - I scan the computer section nightly to see if any interesting (and cheap) equipment has been posted. I particularly like computers with weird features or sizes. I have an early Dell all-in-one that is still chugging along after 5 years or more of Lymie's homework and "other stuff." I am looking at a Dell Duo - a netbook with a rotating touch screen, and I am looking for a used Raspberry Pi to run as a digital photo frame on steroids. My name is Lyman - I have a computer problem.

Laptop specs - this was purchased from someone closing a business. This was a training laptop with a gimpy WiFi card. I decided to give it a shot (she was asking an absurdly reasonable $80 for this laptop), thinking at the worst I would add a WiFi dongle to it to get it online. It turned out it was a firewall issue - it took me 10 minutes to sort that out. The CPU is a dual core 1.6 GHz with 1.9 GB RAM and a 150 GB hard drive. Screen size is a common 15.6 inches at 1366 x 768. It connects via Ethernet or 802.11 G. Noting fancy but it works.

Elementary OS has all the stuff you need to get online - a browser, wifi software, a few basic applications and an app-store to get more. After installing Google Chrome and logging in (I do all my online stuff with Google) within 3 minutes I had all my bookmarks, my preferences and my extensions at my fingertips - auto-magically!

I put my regular laptop in  the corner of my office, booted the Dell Vostro and started creating this blog entry.

Check back in a week and see how I  did!

Thanks.

ZVOX and my tale of losing wires

RATS
Recently, my receiver’s HDMI board croaked and I had to replace it (sending it to my son at college - those kids need to listen to music on REAL SPEAKERS). As I was looking at the rats' nest of wires running back there, I started dreading the upcoming receiver swap. I ended up purchasing an Oppo Blu-Ray player (refurb/outlet - but these things are built like a tank!) that allowed me to get a few items out of the cabinet, I replaced the receiver, and I ordered some new HDMI cables from MonoPrice (great prices and quality) that were shorter and reduced the length of cables hanging back there and that eased my dread. I will talk about the choices I made there in another post.

WHAT’S THAT (HORRIBLE) NOISE?

You would think there is an alternative, and there is - consolidating your speakers into a soundbar. If you have replaced your TV with a flatscreen, you were probably shocked at how bad are their speakers. Yes, we thought the speakers on our old tube TVs were bad, but nothing prepared me for flat panels. It’s really just a matter of physics - if you can’t move the air, you can’t make the sounds. And with today’s panels that are skinnier than a fashion model with a tapeworm, there is barely room for connectors, much less decent speakers.

BARS AND BOXES
Hence the popularity of soundbars. They usually have 3 speakers and many have an amplifier, and they are made to complement your TV, especially if hung on the wall, but in their quest for fashion, most sound bars begin to limit themselves in the same way as skinny TVs - they get too thin. In my bedroom, I had an old set of Cambridge Soundworks PC speakers (satellites and a bass module that powers everything) that I had hooked up to the cable box and the DVD player via the headphone outputs, but they were getting a terrible humming noise that I couldn’t get rid of no matter where I hooked things up and placed the bass module. Plus, I missed the center channel speaker, which would allow me separate the dialogue from the effects - and my ears are not getting any younger.

So I started listing my options:

• Purchase a really nice set of amplified speakers, like something from Audio Engine
• Purchase a receiver and a 2.0, 2.1, 3.1 set of speakers (the .1 is the bassmodule/subwoofer)
• Purchase a receiver and an passive sound bar or an active soundbar with or without a bass module

OR...

• Purchase one of those new fangled ZVOX speaker thingies I’d been reading about in my audio magazine.

I didn’t want to go with the Audio Engine speakers because I wanted a center channel.
I didn’t want to go with the receiver and speakers because of the cost, the mess of wires, and the number of boxes.
I didn’t want to go with the Soundbar because that was getting me too close to the original problem - skinny speakers and I didn’t want to get a bass module for those lower octaves.

MY SOLUTION
That left me looking at the ZVOX speakers. What can I say, I like the underdog. ZVOX is a small New England company (and I respect the old New England speaker builders) that have if not invented, then at least popularized the all-in-one speaker pedestal. This is like a soundbar, except that it’s much deeper - deep enough for the unit to act as a TV stand, and deep enough to include a 6 inch speaker to act as a bass module. It is also clever enough to learn your volume commands from most remotes, so if you have a simple setup and are using your cable remote to control everything, you don’t have to add to the remote clutter in this setup.

I ended up purchasing their ZVOX 555 on a decent sale, and was able to send the audio from my BR player, TV and media box via optical and coax, and hook the video up to the TV for each box via HDMI. Yes, I have a few extra connection cables, but no speaker cables and no receiver!

So how does it sound? Well, it sounds pretty good. The sound is balanced - without the treble or bass being too prominent. I appreciate the center speaker and the Dialogue Enhancement feature that emphasizes the center (dialogue) channel, especially when the volume is low - perfect for the bedroom.  I even use it to listen to streaming audio from Pandora, Music Choice (from my cable company) and my own music via UPNP/DLNA through the BR player. It sounds so good that when I was reviewing my setup in the living room (where I have a full 5.1 setup), I seriously considered chucking it all and replacing it with the top of the line ZVOX box.

I ended up sticking with the status quo 5.1 system because on weekends and some evenings (if no one else is home and the windows are closed), I’ve been known to cue up some Mahler, Gershwin, or my favorite - Hilary Hahn (Hilary Hahn's website, Hilary Hahn on YouTube) and crank it up to Symphony Hall levels - and that takes a decent amp and some big, efficient speakers. I’ve also been known to crank some Stones or the Who on occasion.

I’d be curious to know what kind of setup other people have done in their main viewing/listening space, or in their bedroom - especially if it is creative or new.

Comments are open below.

(while writing this I was listening to “Abby Road - the mono masters” in FLAC. The Beatles ROCK!)

Recession Tech: Dell XPS One

I have already discussed the installation of Ubuntu on my Dell Laptop E1505:
Intro to Ubuntu
Ubuntu Installation on Dell E1505
Living with Ubuntu - likes and dislikes

I also have a DELL XPS One - it is an all in one PC with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse that I picked up at the DELL Outlet for the living room. Like an iMac, it is a big screen with laptop parts stashed behind it. I know that I could have gotten a laptop and had the same or similar performance, but I wanted something that would look nice in the family room, not a big white box, and I wanted a nice screen. This fit the bill.

Son #1 had been complaining that the Dell ONE was slow to boot and application opened slowly. I had looked online a few months back about installing Ubuntu 9.04 on it. The dell has some touch sensitive controls on the screen that people were saying would not be useful, so I had put it off. However, I decided to test the live CD of Ubuntu 10.10 (newest release) on it.

This was a result of my observing Son #1 viewing videos on a sketchy looking site. The videos were not bad, but they were not available on Hulu or the network site. However, like many kids nowadays, he has no sense of security on the Web, and he has recently started online banking, so I wanted things to be secure.

Well what do you know, Ubuntu 10.10 picked up everything - the proximity sensitive buttons, the video card, the network card, the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, EVERYTHING! It also installed the latest updates for Firefox and it installed OpenOffice. I brought over his bookmarks, installed a little eyecandy for him and he is happy as a pig in slop.

He even neededt write a paper and could not find Microsoft Office, but he saw something that said "office" in it so he opened it up, it looked like a word processor and away he went.

The performance is snappy, it installed like a breeze and it is more secure. What more do I need?

Very pleased.

Recession Tech: Ubuntu 10.04 install

Hey all!

Continuation of the Ubuntu investigation as part of my recession tech phase.

I wanted to install Ubuntu 10.04 on my Dell E1505 laptop. The last time I wanted to try Ubuntu on this laptop, I had problems with getting the Dell wireless minicard working (Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN MiniCard). Using the Ubuntu Live CD for 10.04, it looked like this was going to work better.

So Ubuntu released 10.04 a couple of weeks ago. I have waited for a few weeks to let things shake out and reduce some of the traffic on the server.

I plugged my laptop into my network using a cable - I wanted to make sure that I if anything went wrong, I could download what I needed without having to worry about drivers for the wireless card. Then I went to the Ubuntu site.

I downloaded the 10.04 .iso file and burned it to a CD.

I popped it into my CD drive and made sure my BIOS was set to boot off the CDROM drive, and I hit reboot.

After a few seconds of churning on the CD drive, I was presented with a few options from which I selected the default and then let it rip.

After a few minutes, I got to a Ubuntu screen and miracle of miracles, it found the Dell wireless card and offered to install the Broadcom wireless drivers and I was online!

This version of Ubuntu is sweet. It comes with Open Office, Firefox and a number of other standard application installed. I popped my SD card into the slot on the side of my computer, and it found the card instantly.

I had it check for updated drivers and it even installed some drivers for the ATI video chipset on the machine.

I launched my iGoogle applications and I was instantly checking my Gmail, visiting my usual sites and even watching a few videos on the Hulu website.

Next post will tell what I like, what I don't like and what is missing.

Recession Tech: Ubuntu

I kind of have a gadget addiction. I like electronics and technology more the the average bear. But, I have to save for retirement and kids college, so I have challenged myself to come up with more uses for my existing tech.

Challenge #1: Older PCs.

Technology moves quickly, and things seem older faster. Many of us have a PC with an older OS that may seem more than a little long in the tooth. And maybe you feel less secure about it safety wise.

So what to do.

I decided to try Linux - specifically Ubuntu - on it. Ubuntu is cool because it has a Live CD version that you can burn to a CD and then boot off of it for a test drive and not make any changes to the original computer.

I had an oldish laptop still running around that looked like a good candidate. Its a Dell. The last time I gave it a shot, the linux versioncould not pick up the wirelss card, leaving me in the lurch. But I decided togive the Ubuntu 9.04 (?) version a shot. It looked like it was going to find the wireless card no problem, but the next version 10.04 was coming out in a week or so, so I decided to wait it out and install the latest one.

More to come.

JetMan - A real Buck Rogers

Have you heard about Jet Man? The guy who flew across the English Channel with wings and a jet-pack strapped to his back? The guy is amazing. He literally soars through the air and steers with his head and shoulders!

I guess Buck Rogers is showing my age... for you kiddies out there, he is a real life Buzz Lightyear - with wings that pop open and jets on his back and little flashing lights. He is only missing the wrist-mounted laser (little blinky light thingie).

Anyway, this former pilot has built a jet pack that burns kerosene and has these carbon fiber wings on his back that lets him fly like a superhero. He has flown over the Alps (great video on his site) and recently flew across the English channel in under 10 minutes. I watched it on TV and it was incredible.

The called him a real-life Daedalus (thank goodness he was not Icarus), and he was amazing. Now I don't think this is ready for prime-time, as he has to jump out of a plane to get started and use a parachute to get on the ground, but it is a very interesting and inspiring feat.

I don't think we will be seeing people flying to work anytime soon - and the result of a collision would usually be fatal, but I would not be surprised to see this in a Bond movie soon.

Man, this was just too cool!

The Simple things - radio?

There is a lot of talk about this being the digital generation. I'm not so sure. I think that the generation that grew up in the 80's is the real digital generation - they built the thing - the current group only consumes it. But that is a topic for another blog. I want to talk about the importance of analog media.

Like radio...

...and I am not talking about internet radio, or satellite radio or HD Radio. Just plain old Marconi radio.

I did 2 things recently that relate to that. I wanted to listen to the radio on my big stereo, and I wanted to listen to radio in the dining area and kitchen where I occasionally work. So I went to Radio Shack and bought one of their radio/TV antennas and attached it to the home stereo. It sounds pretty good! I can even pick up the local commercial classical music station that is rather weak. But the really impressive occurrence is that my kids have started listening to the radio stations and discovering new music.

Now my kids mostly listen to CDs/MP3s, or their Mp3 Player, or Internet radio or even tunes on YouTube, but this was new for them again and somewhat exciting.

You would have thought that we had gotten cable, the way they spent time in the family room. The only thing that they complained about is the number of commercials. Who doesn't? Except for listening to NPR, I guess commercials are the norm. But they have discovered music and groups that they never would have heard.

The other thing I did was buy one of those table radios from Cambridge Soundworks. It sounds really good, has a decent antenna, and even has a little remote. Not sure if it sounds better than Bose, but it does the trick for a lot less. Again, it is great to listen to music while I work, and we even have a little nice music while we eat dinner.

All in all, adding music to the home environment has been a pleasant improvement to the TV, or kids walking around with phones on their ears or whatever.

I recommend trying to add some nice music to your environment and seeing what happens.

Let me know your experiences.

Birthday Activity - Rug Doctor?

So this week is my birthday, and when my wife asked me if there was anything special that I wanted to do, I said I wanted to clean the carpets in the family room and dining room. I know, pretty exciting, but the new dog and the old dog and the yucky cat have all contributed to creating ugly stains on the carpet and it was getting a little embarrassing to have people come over - and have to apologize for the stains.

Besides, I paid good money for that carpeting, and I did not want it ruined in 1 year.

So my son and I went over to the Stop and Shop and rented the Rug Doctor - pretty cheap - $25. Then we got the cleaner - not so cheap, $20 bottle for about 4 rooms (we were only doing 2), plus some pretreatment for about $9. In total, about $50.

It fit in the back of the minivan and we lugged it inside, mixed the soap with the hot water, read the directions, did a little play acting and let it rip.

UGH! The stuff that was sucked out of the carpet was nasty... N-A-S-T-Y! The water that was sucked out was just BLACK! We were grossed out, but also kind of happy that it was coming out and also pretty impressed with how it was all working. I mean, c'mon... it's kind of a guy thing. You got to use a noisy machine, mix all sorts of potions and in the end, things are even clean!

So, did it get all the pet stains (pee and cat gak)? Yes. Would we rent it again? Yes. Was it expensive? Not really?

It worked well, it just took a long time because in order to keep it small and light, the unit only holds about 2 gallons of water, so you have to keep emptying it and refilling it. About an hour for a regular sized room.

They have a wider Rug Doctor that covers more space at any one time, but because we were going around table legs and bookcases, the narrow one was better. If we were emptying out a large room that was pretty regularly shaped, I would probably use the wider unit to make it a little faster.

Unusual present, but worth it.