Computers: Feedback
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Your support makes all the difference.A small hand for 'house' mouse
MICROSOFT, not content with owning the software industry, has launched a keyboard and mouse. The mouse is more like a house, with a chimney on top from which the cable emerges. It is aimed at children, and others with small hands, writes Andrew Brown.
This might seem a ridiculous gimmick. In fact, the size and comfort of mice make a great difference to the ease with which a graphical user interface can be used. I have large hands, and find a normal mouse gives me cramps, so that I use a Logitech Trackman, which is really a large mouse turned upside down, so that the frame stays still and you roll the ball with your thumb.
My wife, with smaller hands, hates it, and prefers the normal Microsoft Mouse, which is nicely rounded but too big for small children to manage comfortably. They, in turn, seem to like the genuinely mouse-like Logitech Kids' Mouse, which has a long white nose and green ears instead of buttons. That will be the only real competition for the new 'house' mouse.
Microsoft's keyboard is remarkable. Everyone who has seen one has said that, though not quite in those words. It is curved and bulgy, with the alphanumeric keys split into two groups, one for each hand. There are new keys for special Windows functions; a wrist rest built in; and a support at the front to make it lie flat. All this is designed to reduce the risk of typing injuries. It seems to work, too, but you must be a properly trained touch-typist to find it natural. I am not, and find that my home-brewed seven- finger typing system takes no account of the boundaries on the keyboard that one is meant to observe.
Keyboard and mouse come with new software, which is also being shipped with the 'old' Microsoft Mouse. This has one splendid touch: it is possible to disable the Caps Lock key entirely. I will put up with a great deal of ergonomic correctness for that.
One-stop shop
The question seldom asked by boosters of the Internet is 'what is it all for?' One answer is suggested by the Home Shopping Network, the leading US Cable TV shopping company, which has just bought out the Internet Shopping Network, a Californian company which offers computer-related goods over the Internet. Both firms sell the same way: by taking credit card details over the phone. The publicly accessible Internet is not yet secure enough for credit card details to be sent as mail messages.
One of the things holding up the development of secure commercial channels on the Internet is the US relectance to see strong cryptographic methods available to its enemies or potential enemies. But it will come.
The latest purchase is all part of the general merging taking place between television, telephones, and computers. In the end, the idea is that we will be able to buy instantly anything displayed in a commercial. However, that future still seems a long way off. A survey last week suggested that even in California, probably the most wired part of the world, fewer than 10 per cent of computer users take advantage of on-line shopping and banking services. The most popular service was E- mail, which 40 per cent of the 300 respondents surveyed said they used regularly.
Readers curious to know what cybershopping feels like might look in the 'Electronic Mall' on Compuserve. Or they could buy a lobster, at the gopher site marketplace. com or the World Wide Web address: http://marketplace. com
/0/obs/obshome. html
Life on Mars
Another compelling example of the dangers of the Internet is the invitation we received along with the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Post, the BBC, Voice of America, Morgenbladet of Norway, and about 150 others to apply for press passes to a conference being held by two high schools in Cody, Wyoming, about paranormal life on Mars.