Another market bargain

[ffutures]

Today's bargain comes from the guy who sells old computer hardware in Bell Street Market, near Edgware Road tube station. I was looking through a box of keyboards to see if I could find anything like an original IBM AT keyboard, which is by far my favourite design, when what did I find but an Apple pro keyboard and optical mouse... for a fiver!

It's in perfect working order, as far as I can tell - don't have a program to check key presses so I couldn't check out the function keys, but typing etc. works fine on my iBook. Not sure if num lock is working - it doesn't light up or appear to do anything - but I'm not actually sure what it's supposed to do on a Mac. Can anyone tell me? Or point me at an OS-X program that'll check if everything is working?

Once I'm sure it's fully operational I've got to decide if I want to keep it - I've already got a Bluetooth keyboard and never seem to use it, and I don't really like the Apple "press the whole top down" single-button mice - I much prefer a two-button and wheel design. eBay is probably the best answer, I suppose, or I could keep it in case I do eventually decide to go Mac completely, but that isn't likely any time soon.

Decisions, decisions...

Comments

[lawbag.livejournal.com]

I have been toying with the whole elitist iBook thing for some time. Whenever Im commuting on the train and someone whips out an Apple (the computer not the fruit) you know for sure this is a discerning computer user - or are they.

Or maybe its just the computer they were given.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The things I like are the "not having to wait for it to boot up" reliable standby mode and the five hours plus battery life, which comes in very handy on long train rides. But I actually bought it because Charlie was selling off some of his old kit at the time I was looking for a laptop and thinking that I ought to have a Mac compatible PC around somewhere for HTML and PDF compatibility checking.