Alienware TactX Mouse - Replaced

My Alienware TactX mouse has been acting weird lately.  It has been acting erratic.  If I move it slowly to the left, it warps to the left or may not move at all.  I think the cord has a short in it, creating an intermittent connection.  It is not the mousepad, nor the DPI settings.  I used a standard Dell mouse (laser mouse with multiple DPI settings) and it works fine.  Sometimes the TactX mouse works fine, other times it doesn't.

I've e-mailed Alienware support, as there's an entry in their online knowledgebase that directs the user to try certain things and if they're still having issues, to e-mail them with the issue that's being experienced.  The mouse is less than a year old (it is still under warranty).  I was hoping they'd respond and replace the mouse, but they haven't responded.  I'm not sure the issue will even be fixed, as I think it's a design issue that won't be fixed by just replacing the mouse with a new one that still has the faulty part.

The TactX mouse is soooo damned nice, but it needs to live longer than a year for users to be happy.  This isn't an issue that I'm only experiencing, either.  I saw many complaints when searching Google and my favorite Alienware forums.

I replaced the TactX with a Logitech G700 wireless gaming mouse.

The G700 is badass.  It is physically bigger and heavier than the TactX.  It is more configurable, as well.  It is rechargeable, has a AA-sized battery that can be replaced, has 5 DPI settings, up to 5700 dpi, can be used while charging or when the electronic environment is unfriendly toward wireless devices, has internal memory, and each button can be mapped independently.  It has powder-coating on the sides of the mouse, which a really like.  It has performance settings that can dictate how much power is used.

The only thing I'm wary of is the SetPoint software.  I'm installing it now and will play with the mouse tonight and throughout the week...I'll update this post with my thoughts in about a week.

Slamd64

I've installed Slamd64 on my new AMD system. Initially, I had SATA issues that have mysteriously disappeared (no idea why, other than maybe swapping out that SATA cables helped). I installed using Disk 1 only (I didn't download anything else), which has the core system components. I then wanted to boot X, which required me downloading the X and KDE software. In fact, I went ahead and copied a whole mirror site and will continue to rsync the site against my local copy, using the updated local mirror as a upgrade repository.

I had issues getting my mouse recognized. I've a Logitech MX1000 wireless mouse, which is connected to a KVM. Slamd64 detects it as a PS/2 mouse. Slamd64 has PS/2 mice blacklisted, so I had to unblock the psmouse module from /etc/modules.d/blacklist (by uncommenting the module entry). Then I loaded the module and rebooted. The reboot detected the mouse. It took me a while to find this tidbit of info (although, it was recorded on the Slamd64 forums). I'll be adding this to my local knowledgbase (in fact, I need to add a whole Slamd64 category first).

I've also installed phpsysinfo on this machine, so I can see the hardware and how it is detected by this tool. From what I've seen so far, the second CPU core takes the brunt of the load, with the first CPU core assisting when the second is maxed out...I don't know if this is normal or a software issue (maybe phpsysinfo needs to be optimized for dual core usage?), but I only tested this by refreshing the phpsysinfo browser session (it appears to put a quick load on the system...dunno if that's normal or not).

Anyways, if things go well with this distro, I'll be using this machine as my main Linux machine, eventually.