Tag Archives: driver

High Pings

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I’ve been wondering why my ping times have been so high on my laptop, and so low on any other computer I have here. I finally found the culprit.

The Intel 2915 wireless card (part of the whole Centrino package) has a power saving mode with 3 options, High, Medium, and Low (creative eh?). Mine was set to high. Which created pings that varied from 20ms to 400ms. Going to medium brings the average down to 2ms, which I can deal with.

Why this is a separate setting in Access Connections (the utility used on Thinkpads to manage different connection settings) rather than in the Power Manager as part of a profile? I don’t know. Ideally it would switch to high when I unplug, and go medium when I’m plugged in.

Anyway, always good to know why stuff happens. Very good for gaming, VoIP or anything where latency is an issue.

When did Logitech drop the ball

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I’ve been a fan of Logitech products for a while. I’m typing on a Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo right now. My only complaints about this Keyboard/Mouse combo are:

  1. Mouse batteries drain way to fast. Should be rechargeable.
  2. Software for it is extremely buggy. Doesn’t work on my Mac, and causes my PC to blue screen about 3X a day if installed. So I use the built in drivers on both OS’s. Meaning most extra keys don’t work.

I like some of the newer models like the MX 3100 (which you can find cheaper at ZipZoomFly. But no Mac support, and I’ve read it has issues with some KVM’s (which I do have). They also have a Mac Keyboard. Which is listed on Amazon @ $99.

Why the heck are their platform specific keyboards? For a long time keyboards worked well on either platform, then Logitech apparently stopped caring about the Mac drivers, and moved on to their next generation (leaving their PC drivers in the dust too).

Are their best days behind them? Their products have always been nice, but unless they start working on drivers and compatibility, I’ve got to start looking elsewhere.

For now I think I’ve got to get some Radio Shack brand rechargeable batteries, and just forget about all the extra keys on my keyboard. I considered a replacement several months ago. But I don’t see a good alternative to what I have. Mine works pretty well with a KVM and cross platform. Heck mine even has Apple and Alt written on the same key.

Someone should tell Logitech to stop making half assed products. They aren’t the only ones. I’ll be ranting about more in coming months. Some companies seem to intentionally cripple products, and it’s just stupid.