The revolution will be scrollable

My trusty MX-Laser mouse has been getting a bit unreliable recently so I went out yesterday and bought an MX-Revolution for £59. I was briefly tempted by the bluetooth Mighty mouse (at £49) because I like the trackball. But I could never figure out how to right-click with the Mighty Mouse and, when you include the price of rechargable batteries, it turned out more expensive so I opted to go Logitech again. So far I find the shape of the MX-R an improvement over the (admittedly still quite good) MX-Laser. The end is much more sculpted making it a more snug fit in the hand. It has a small USB 2.7GHz receiver (the MX-Laser had the receiver in the charging base station) making it portable at last. Tracking is great (it was on the MX-Laser as well). And the scroll-wheel in free mode is just amazing. With some practice I am now able to slow-scroll as well as fast-scroll which turns out to be just dandy in all kinds of situations. It`s really a killer feature. I`m not sorry to lose the rocker buttons on the MX-Laser (I never used them) or the side switches (never used them either). The side-wheel is a disappointment though as the Logitech Control Centre software only allows you to configure it for application switching and it`s really not very good at doing that so I`ve disabled it. I`ve also raised a support query with Logitech hoping to see that improved in a future revision of the software. All in all I really like this mouse. Recommended. Update: It`s really quite spooky when the scroll-wheel changes automatically from the ratcheted mode (e.g. for scrolling through the pages of a PDF) to the free-spin mode (e.g. for scrolling through lists of search results in a Spotlight window). Free-spin mode is very cool and lets you fly gracefully through long documents and lists.

Blair is such a credit-monkey

On Sunday I heard stuff on the Radio about Blair saying there would be new laws on gun-crime. Isn`t that the job of the Home Secretary? Today on the Radio I heard Blair going on about new targets in the NHS. Isnt` that the job of the Health Secretary? I guess if the government is lucky and something good happens Blair can point back and say "It was all my idea."