Insanity Part 2.0

As a reminder, Futurama just came out with their new direct-to-DVD movie, “Futurama – Bender’s Big Score“. For a show that thrived and returned off of DVD sales and good ratings, be sure to throw your consumer vote of support by buying your own copy or legally renting it if you intend on seeing it!

With my new install of Mac OS X Leopard, I decided to get my system into a fully updated shape. Most things made the transition fine, some things aren’t going so hot. For instance, Parallels is a lot buggier than I ever remember it being under Tiger.

And then we come to the Logitech drivers. Much-maligned under Windows (MouseWare wasn’t all that hot, and SetPoint is pretty damn bloated), I found the Mac version to be reasonably well done. However, the latest version, 2.3.1, is pretty crappy, at least compared to the old sets.

Logitech bundles (and has bundled) Unsanity’s Application Enhancer without informing the user of doing so. I’ve bitched about this previously, and this has been very well covered elsewhere.

Previously, I could use CMD-CTRL-Eject in order to reboot my computer from within OS X. No more with this new driver set. Couldn’t tell you what changed it, but it doesn’t work anymore. Using it on the built-in laptop keyboard works fine, so it’s not OS X that’s the problem.

Now my biggest complaint: Caps Lock. The S-530 desktop set doesn’t include a light for the Caps Lock key. Somewhat annoying, but not catastrophic. Apparently, somewhere along the way between 2.1 and 2.3.1 Logitech’s decided to put a big notifier on the screen whenever you hit Caps Lock.

Problem is, it’s big, it’s not configurable, and it’s not even all that in-sync with my typing! If you’ve used Growl with the Bezel look, that’s the sort of look that Logitech went with. Except, it’s not actually using Growl – it’s using their own thing and I can’t turn it off or configure it to do something other than take up the middle of my screen for 2 seconds. The same dialog box also comes up if you plug or unplug a Logitech device – as if the Windows XP balloon notifier wasn’t annoying enough.

Thanks Logitech – you make great hardware, but some of your software choices are really awful.