I did some office reconfiguration this week. I'd picked up an HP color laser MFP on the side of the road. After a quick clean, it was streaking badly, but replacing the toner drum solved that.

It's a little slow, but color laser output is wonderful.

Alas, it's a tank and it doesn't fit well in my office cabinet. With it and my inkjet MFP in there, I can't use either scanner well - and I don't need two printers with scanning capabilities.

It's back to my old workhorse Brother black and white laser until I can find somewhere to put the HP.

While I was moving things around, my Logitech MX keys keyboard's space key stopped working. I won't have time to replace it for a while. BestBuy has a 20% recycling discount, so I can get a discount by bringing in my broken keyboard but I'm tied up in meetings all day this week.

In the meantime, I'm using a Dell OEM wired keyboard, and Yuck. It's mushy but stiff, so light that it slips around the desk, and it's Wired.
--- SBBSecho 3.28-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (1337:3/178)

Re: Office Downgrades
By: poindexter FORTRAN to All on Tue Aug 05 2025 10:15 am

While I was moving things around, my Logitech MX keys keyboard's space key stopped working. I won't have time to replace it for a while. BestBuy has a 20% recycling discount, so I can get a discount by bringing in my broken keyboard but I'm tied up in meetings all day this week.

So, I managed to make it to Best Buy and bought a new keyboard. In order to get the discount, you need to open a customer account with them.

Damn, it's all about the data, isn't it.

Luckily, I had an account, so was able to get a 20% discount.

Got it home, and realized that the "S" model looks exactly like the regular keyboard, but it uses a different USB dongle ("bolt") than the unifying receiver that Logitech has used for a decade - and which I have a jar full of dongles to use.

Apparently, Bolt encrypts the data between the dongle and the peripheral, and that was needed for some government contract compatibility.

The keyboards support Bluetooth, but I'm not sure how many devices it'll pair with - I assumed it was 3 devices through the dongle and one bluetooth.

The new dongle is not backwards-compatible, so I'd need an old dongle for my mouse and a new dongle for the keyboard - unless I buy a new mouse.

So, back to BestBuy with it, and I bought an older model keyboard on Amazon.

Their software has been similarly confusing - and now they have a G Gaming hub, Options, Options+, and a bunch of legacy webcam tools people still use because there are some things you can't do with the new software.

Oh, and now they have another dongle system for their headsets. I'm sure it's not backwards compatible with either previous dongle.

I think this is my last Logitech purchase. Time to find a new vendor.
--- SBBSecho 3.28-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (1337:3/178)