I really want to get the 4GB version of the Iron Key for my next portable storage solution. I wonder how the encryption would affect performance of virtual machines.


From TFA:

Like you, the US Military wanted portable but secure storage, and the guys at IronKey stepped up. They've developed the perfect solution that's one-part thumb-drive, and two parts Mission: Impossible. Their thumb drives hold up to 4 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password.

Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.

My gadget lust has been activated.

Labels: devices

I've blogged before about my tendency to use the mouse over the keyboard. Currently I have a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I liked my old Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard, but the keys were sticking and the light grey colored plastic was seriously discolored and nasty looking (my sweat is great at discoloring things). My wife didn't like the ergonomic split keyboard of the 4000 I got for home, so I took it with me when I started my new job.

Comparison

Pros

• 5 customizable buttons designed for launching apps
• standard layout of the insert/delete, home/end, pgup/pgdn buttons
• black coloring looks nice and won't show sweat residue
• back/forward buttons (see below) and zoom in/out toggle
• wrist pad feels really nice
  

Cons

• only media buttons - play/pause
• volume up/down/mute controls windows, not media player
• wrist pad is already staining where my wrists rest
• zoom in/out button not customizable
• I don't like how pressing keys feels - not enough tactile feedback
  

Back / Forward

I never really liked the back and forward buttons that tend to end up on mice, and having them on the keyboard is even more useless. When I'm surfing, I'm actively using my mouse, so I don't mind clicking back/forward in my browser's toolbar. I end up mapping the mouse buttons to other things. I also don't surf while at work, so I found a practical re-mapping for these buttons.

Visual Studio shortcuts

LukeH's recent post about the F12 button reminded me of a custom configuration I have set up. The post mentioned the navigate back/forward functionality in Visual Studio. I configured my keyboard's back/forward buttons to the these navigation keystrokes so I can easily move around in code without moving my hand to the mouse. I've found this configuration very useful.

I've actually been trying to learn more keyboard shortcuts lately, and set my own. I've downloaded Roy Osherove's Keyboard Jedi application, but I'm too much of a wimp to turn on the no-mouse feature.

Where's the mouse?

My motivation behind using more keyboard shortcuts is because I moved my keyboard to a keyboard tray that doesn't have any room for the mouse. I was using my mouse on the desktop, but my shoulder really started hurting from having my right arm extended so often. Also, my wrist was resting on the edge of the desk which was sometimes cutting off circulation.

My solution was to get a trackball to fit in the 3.5 inches of space available on the keyboard tray. I tried the Logitech Cordless TrackMan Programmable Optical Mouse, but the thumb buttons were too close to the keyboard and I just couldn't get used to using my fingers to navigate and click. I now use the Logitech Trackman Wheel Scroll Optical Mouse trackball and I'm amazed how quickly I adapted to using it. (why can't Logitech come up with product names that don't all look the same?)

My navigation speed is still a lot slower than with a regular mouse, and when it's getting close to lunch time I sometimes find my thumb starting twitching making accuracy very difficult, so I still have my regular mouse attached. This is also useful when a co-worker stops by and wants to take over to show me something.

It's funny how many people are surprised that you can have multiple I/O devices of the same type attached, but it really doesn't cause a problem unless the configuration applications conflict. Reminds me of a year ago when I was working on virtual keyboard functionality and had three keyboards, all different languages, attached at once in order to do unit testing.

Unfortunately, the trackball doesn't have any thumb buttons, but I did remap the middle click to bring up my Clipboard Recorder floating window, which is occasionally useful.

Labels: devices

I love ThinkGeek. I get their newsletter and get a kick out of checking out what new products they're carrying. I also maintain a wishlist there and occasionally add items that I think are cool. That way, whenever anyone asks me what I want for Christmas or my birthday, I can just tell them to check out my wishlist on ThinkGeek and Amazon (I keep one there too).

I often forget what I added to the wishlist just because I thought it was cool at the time. At Christmas this year, my brother in law surprised me by getting me something from there that I'd forgotten about. The StealthSwitch!

Hiding windows at work is pretty juvenile. When my father saw what I'd gotten, he said that some people at his office had installed a program called "the big cheese" or something like that, which would display a fake spreadsheet when they hit F1. He had the IT department un-install it and limit his employee's rights so they can't install applications now. Of course, he was concerned that I was doing something at work that I wanted to hide. But that's not the case!

I wanted the StealthSwitch foot pedal to play with as a third input device. I'm not a keyboard Nazi, but I am particular about the input devices that I use. I use the Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard and love the over sized Delete key arrangement, but really don't like what they did with the function keys. I am really a mouse guy and I fall back to using the mouse even when I know keyboard shortcuts for some things. For instance, I know that Ctrl+B builds in Visual Studio, but I have a custom toolbar shortcut that I use instead.

I used to have a cheap mouse with a thumb button that I had configured to enter the Alt+Tab keystroke. I found it to be VERY convenient since my right hand is on the mouse so often. When that mouse went bad, I got a Microsoft USB Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 because it has a thumb button and the scroll wheel features the horizontal tilt. While the mouse looks good, the horizontal scrolling isn't useful, and I'm disappointed by it because the Intellipoint software doesn't allow me to enter Alt+Tab as a keystroke for the thumb button. Tab isn't captured by the keystroke form, and I even tried to enter it directly into the registry but the driver didn't recognize it.

Enter the StealthSwitch. The software installed from the CD that came with the device only allowed for hiding windows, and even then it was limited to hiding all windows, the current window, or all but windows with a short list of keywords in the title. Even if I was going for the window hiding functionality, I would want to specify particular windows to hide and this didn't allow that. I figured I was going to have to write some software to use the pedal's input.

Then I found a newer version of the software on the (incredibly bad) StealthSwitch website. The latest version not only allows you to list the windows you do want to hide, but also has a screen to configure custom actions. Eureka!


Now I can have my Alt+Tab functionality again, and I don't have to worry about where my hands are ... I use my foot! Maybe I should look into the specialized foot pedals meant to replace the mouse or augment game play.

Or, I could give the Zero Tension Mouse a try ... nah, never mind.

Labels: devices, tools