Question What's the best peripheral you've ever used, and why?

MMohammed

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Sep 3, 2019
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Like a lot of other people, I've had to do some shopping this year to set up my home office. After a few months, I can honestly say that my Logitech mouse (MX Master) is my favourite part of it. Until purchasing that thing, I'd been settling for some (largely easy to ignore) hand discomfort!

How about you? What's the best peripheral you've ever used and why?
 

Lakhbir Singh

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Nov 1, 2014
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Past 25 years ...i have purchased, used and installed several IT products.....as far as PC is concerned...Logitech & Gigabyte products are highly reliable ....and I am fan of Logitech THX certified speakers....personally I am using Z623 but my favorite is z906
 
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I like playing around with keyboards and audio, both add quite a bit of fun to using the computer. Can't say there is a single model of those that were a huge difference, maybe the first good mechanical keyboard I got which was the Corsair Strafe with MX Silent switches. My favorite mouse that really makes gaming fun is the Steelseries WOW Legionary edition, shape and button placement I think are perfect, have not run in to a mouse I like better. No other mouse I can find has the location and number of buttons places as well for me as that old mouse. Especially the pinky button and the two buttons on the sides of the scroll wheel, it's impossible to find a mouse with those button placements.
 

R_1

Expert
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Logitech Marble mouse/Mouseman Marble.
I have been using the same trackball for over 20 years, games with the best of them, comfy AF and the most accurate input device ever made. every time I loan out one of my spares, I cannot be without one, they buy one for themselves. I cannot recommend this more to anyone.


iu


as a close second I would call out the Klipsch Pro Media 4.1 THX surround speaker system. I am always touching the trackball so it get the win.
 
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caseym54

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I've always thought the Logitech 310 mouse was an excellent no-nonsense mouse. Not for gamers, of course, but for a general office environment it just works, and works for everyone.
 

Wolfshadw

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While I really liked my old Logitech Marble Trackball, I'd have to say. The best peripheral I had was my Windows Media Center Remote Control.

windowsmediacenterremote-283x300.jpg


Back in my HTPC days with a Ceton InfiniTV 4 card installed, this baby made life real easy!

-Wolf sends
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Past 25 years ...i have purchased, used and installed several IT products.....as far as PC is concerned...Logitech & Gigabyte products are highly reliable ....and I am fan of Logitech THX certified speakers....personally I am using Z623 but my favorite is z906

My fav item in last 20 years were a set of Z5500 speakers that I would still use today if they hadn't started causing win 10 to not load at all. I sadly only using those Z906 that you mentioned above.

Why were they my fav? Um, they lasted 15 years and became part of my furniture. I was very sad when I found out I had to replace them, they work fine still as just speakers. They had also been free as I won them in a competition from an old IT magazine.
 

neojack

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Apr 4, 2019
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my eyefinity setup (3x 1920x1200), and my headphones (Philips fidelio X2)

man those headphones ! to me now everything ELSE sounds like el cheapo dollarstore.
lots of times i had to check in the appartment for a noise i heard, while i realized it came from the headphones. just feels real.

about the eyefinity setup, well a picture is worth a million words. it's just awesome :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10PNJBfpiTvuJQPDxAZL6zOqY8lBWauVo/view?usp=sharing
 

last_intel_guy

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Nov 15, 2020
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Corsair Void Pro RGB Wired -- I love hearing my friends curse at how their wireless headsets keep failing them :), also really comfortable and light on the head for a fairly reasonable cost.

Had mine stolen in a B&E a few years ago. First thing I re-purchased out of the loss :) One lucky thief out there... (who left my rig itself in fine condition for some reason)
 

Zerk2012

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A Corsair gaming keyboard I forget the model had all the RGB.

Worked for 3 months sent it in for warranty repairs because of keys not working, lasted 2 weeks so it went back again, lasted couple more weeks went back again, lasted a week.

This time I smashed the crap out of it in front of my house it was the best felling ever!.

Bought a Logitech G510s best keyboard I ever used has 18 G keys that you can map to different games since I use a mouse with no extra buttons I love the G keys.
 
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My favorite peripheral was getting a Corsair Scimitar mouse.
I came back to WoW at the start of legion and quickly realized that I needed a better way to proc abilities.

Bartender4 and binding the buttons 1-9 on the mouse to my num pad 1-9 and putting the abilities on that made WoW a game that I could enjoy!

You know, while it lasted ;)
the game not the mouse. Mouse is doing fine haha
 

R_1

Expert
Ambassador
Logitech Trackman Marble+. I'd still be using it if the ball rests weren't so worn that the stiction makes it almost unusable. Took almost 20 years to get to that point, though.

My trackball has the original beige base that my first one came with, the beige units have steel retention balls instead of the plastic covered nubs. I get a new unit, take the base off the old one and put it in the new trackball. the base of my trackball is over 22 years old.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Another peripheral I would put here was my Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard, it isn't mechanical but it was hard to replace when it stopped working. I tried a razer keyboard after it but it died way too soon, so I swapped to my current Logitech G910

the detachable numbpad was awesome, 10 keyless if you chose to.

I can't live without backlighting ever since i got it.

Why did they stop making gaming keyboards and mice... why

 
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mact

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Zip drive. In 100MB, 250 MB, and eventually 750 MB capacity. A cartridge about the size of a 1.44 floppy, but much thicker,

I still have some of these drives, but not discs, in my boxes of old stuff. Today when a 128GB SSD is about $25 and a short cable to connect that to a USB 3.0 port is about $7...even a USB flash drive is slow let alone what preceeded them by decades.

Long obsoleted today by the USB thumb drive and soon after USB hard drives and SSDs and even portable nVME drives, when the Zip arrived it was wonderful for those of us in the business of producing printed materials, brochures, catalogs, that sort of thing...DTP, if you will. Now it was possible to pass on a 60 MB (and later, 200 and even 600 MB) Postscript files and native file folders using a 250 or 750 Zip drive, connecting to a parallel port or one of the new new USB ports. There were also internal versions that ran as an IDE device on a hard drive connection.

The zip put the troublesome Syquest away. And one could buy a drive for a hundred dollars, and discs for $10 or so, although not at first when they were closer to $20.


And as I was running a small PostScript Service bureau, I loved these things., I don't recall ever having one crash...until the drives got old and then strange things would happen. But by then, the 250 and 750 drives weren't enough.


Not quibbling with the advantages of multiple monitors...my normal set up is and has been 3 monitors for some years now. Or Logitech's assortment of wonderous devices, I'm using a G710+ keyboard and a 510 mouse just now. (I recall when I first used one of their 3 button mouses (mice?) with Wordstar 3 or 4 on an early DOS box, I may still have that old mouse still around somewhere.

Perhaps not a peripheral, but DSL...has anyone been immune to the advantages of that? Formerly this line was used as an alarm circuit and several pioneers discovered you could send something else over this. There used to be a magazine all about this wonderful new thing that was going to happen "Real Soon Now" as the late Jerry Pournelle would say in his Byte column.

Thanks for the opportunity to remember.(GD&R)
 
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ragnarok0274

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Sep 12, 2020
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Zip drive. In 100MB, 250 MB, and eventually 750 MB capacity. A cartridge about the size of a 1.44 floppy, but much thicker,

I still have some of these drives, but not discs, in my boxes of old stuff. Today when a 128GB SSD is about $25 and a short cable to connect that to a USB 3.0 port is about $7...even a USB flash drive is slow let alone what preceeded them by decades.

Long obsoleted today by the USB thumb drive and soon after USB hard drives and SSDs and even portable nVME drives, when the Zip arrived it was wonderful for those of us in the business of producing printed materials, brochures, catalogs, that sort of thing...DTP, if you will. Now it was possible to pass on a 60 MB (and later, 200 and even 600 MB) Postscript files and native file folders using a 250 or 750 Zip drive, connecting to a parallel port or one of the new new USB ports. There were also internal versions that ran as an IDE device on a hard drive connection.

The zip put the troublesome Syquest away. And one could buy a drive for a hundred dollars, and discs for $10 or so, although not at first when they were closer to $20.

Perhaps not a peripheral, but DSL...has anyone been immune to the advantages of that? Formerly this line was used as an alarm circuit and several pioneers discovered you could send something else over this. There used to be a magazine all about this wonderful new thing that was going to happen "Real Soon Now" as the late Jerry Pournelle would say in his Byte column.
Zip drives are fun.
I have 2 250MB internal drives from an attic, and three 750MB USB ones (two have been sold). When I ejected one from the USB drive it startled me...
Also, we have an old house (1940s) and in the laundry room there is a mess of phone line stuff?. There's a DSL alarm filter thing, this square 4-pin jack, what appears to be an old ringer, etc.