This past holiday I received as one of my ‘big’ presents a new mouse. It’s the Logitech G9x. This little beastie is one of the top gaming mice available. As you probably know, most of my gaming time goes into PC gaming (the only serious gaming platform in my opinion).

Logitech® G9x Laser Mouse

This was a fairly radical departure for me as this mouse has a tail. I’m overly fond of the cordless mice, and my previous choice was Logitech’s G7.

The G9x has proved a good upgrade. The cord is plaited, so it doesn’t tangle up. You can adjust the weight of the mouse by adding or removing tiny… weights. The repsonse time is sick and being able to adjust sensitivity on the fly is always a plus.

Real world (game?) experience speaks for itself though. Too many times I was a millisecond off in performing various actions (headshots, firing off an uber) in TF2 and most of that has gone away with the new mouse. I always suspected there was a slight delay in the wireless mouse activating commands and this new mouse seems to be proving that suspicious correct.

It’s a fairly geeky thing, but it makes my world go round.

Several years ago I received a Harmony 880 universal remote from Logitech. It worked great in tying together my mish mash of home theater equipment.

Moreover, you could program it to do all kinds of things like switching to a specific input and one-button to turn on (or off) a slew of items. A great feature for those in the family who aren’t tech savvy and just want to watch some TV without destroying the set-up by mashing every button on the TV, then every button on the Tuner.

Like many other owners of the 880, one day the remote stopped charging. This happens because the contact material on the handset and the charger wear off. Luckily there is a rather cheap and easy fix.

First up is a trip to your local hardware store to purchase a soldering iron and some electric solder.

Once you’ve acquired those materials set-up a little work area with your newly aquired tools, the Logitech 880 handset and charging station.

Get a nice stripe or blob of electical solder onto each contact

Do the same with the charging station. A nice stripe or blob of electic solder on each contact.

At last what we want to see, a full charge!

Some customers have been able to get Logitech to send them a new charging station. However, I found this method to work just as easily – and there was no wait for shipping! As soon as the solder had set, I had a working charge in 1/2 hour. Now it’s as good as new!