Blogging from the Couch

I'm typing this on our new Adesso wireless keyboard. It is advertised as working up to 100 feet. I'm not sure I believe that, but it seems to work fine from 16 feet away. Finding all the control keys like Home and End is proving to be a challenge; they are sort of stuck every which place in order to keep the form factor small. And we lost our beloved 10-key numeric pad. That always seems to be a low priority. But it is certainly more comfortable to use from the couch instead of a dining room chair in the middle of the floor. The keyboard has a built-in trackball plus the usual media buttons. The trackball is a little tricky, but I'm sure it will get easier with some practice.

But, as always seems to be the case with technology, solving one problem just creates another. Our laptop does not support the full resolution of our TV (1920x1080), so I cannot get anything large enough to see from the couch without having to scroll right-left. But that is a "hardship" we can deal with for the time being. I've been looking for something to plug into a USB port that outputs VGA or DVI/HDMI at full resolution and 32-bit color. There doesn't seem to be such a beast without dumping the laptop and buying a new computer. We don't have that much in the tip jar, so we will deal.

Step by step, we set up the ultimate living room PC.