Michaela Sue

I have a fancy new computer now, and am very pleased with it. Adjusting those 10 megapixel photos is quite nice with a 23-inch 1920x1200 pixel LCD and a fast Core 2 Duo processor, and Google Earth (for Linux!) is fantastic. The Viewsonic VP2330wb monitor is beautiful, but there is one little poorly-thought-out feature. It has a built in USB hub, which would seem to be ideal for connecting the keyboard and mouse. The problem is, when the monitor is put to sleep to save power, the hub dies. Since you normally wake the monitor back up by keypress or mouse movement, having the keyboard and mouse disconnected is a bit of a problem. Indeed, I can't think of any useful device I'd want to plug into a hub that will disconnect it ungracefully if I'm away from the computer. Maybe it's fine for the USB snowman, or USB aquarium, or some other toy, but you wouldn't want to put a filesystem out there, or try to charge batteries from it.