It doesn’t work.

Okay, that’s a lit­tle bit un­fair; it’s prob­a­bly more ac­cu­rate to say that it doesn’t work as ex­pect­ed. The Tu­niq Sanc­tum hard drive en­clo­sure is a 5.25” bay de­vice that holds a 3.5” (or small­er, I sup­pose) hard drive, and pur­port­ed­ly not on­ly re­duces the noise out­put of the drive but al­so helps to keep it cool. This de­vice, un­for­tu­nate­ly, ex­cels at one aspect of its claimed pur­pose and fails at the other. While it does in­deed keep noise levels down very ac­cept­ably, the Tu­niq Sanc­tum en­clo­sure, due to the lack of air­flow in­side the de­vice, fails to cool the hard drive ad­e­quate­ly. In fact, leav­ing the hard drive in­side the en­clo­sure will prob­a­bly de­crease the hard drive’s life­time due to the 60+ de­grees Cel­sius tem­per­a­tures some­times ex­pe­ri­enced in­side the de­vice.

There are other prob­lems with the Sanc­tum. Ca­bles pass­ing in­to the de­vice to con­nect to the hard drive, as seen here, are ob­struct­ed by a piece of foam at the back of the de­vice. The foam puts pres­sure on the ca­bles, which could be dev­as­tat­ing for weak­er con­nec­tors like SA­TA ca­bles. The in­dents you can see above are caused by the wires push­ing down on the foam.

When in­stalling the hard drive in­to the Sanc­tum, one is sup­posed to at­tach two “ther­mal pads” to the hard drive. (The­se pads can be seen in the first pho­to.) The pads sup­pos­ed­ly con­duct heat away from the drive to the alu­minum fins on the out­side. I didn’t at­tach them dur­ing my in­stal­la­tion, be­cause they would have forced me to con­tin­ue us­ing the Sanc­tum with that drive for all eter­ni­ty - the pads would make the drive thick­er than an or­di­nary 3.5” bay. I don’t think the pads can do much to af­fect the ther­mals any­way, as foam (no mat­ter how “ther­mal”) can nev­er be a re­al­ly good heat con­duc­tor.

To con­clude, the Tu­niq Sanc­tum is prob­a­bly not worth the money. While it keeps the noise of the hard drive down, its in­abil­i­ty to cool the drive ad­e­quate­ly makes it ba­si­cal­ly use­less to any­one want­ing high per­for­mance or longevi­ty from their drive. For new builders, the money spent on this en­clo­sure would be bet­ter put to­ward a qui­eter or cool­er-run­ning hard drive.

Kens­ing­ton Ex­pert Mouse 7.0

Why a Track­ball?

I’ve been us­ing a track­ball (first my friend’s Kens­ing­ton, and now my own) for over a year now, and I’ve found two very good rea­sons to use a track­ball over a nor­mal mouse:

1. First, it is pos­si­ble us­ing a track­ball, un­like with nor­mal mice, to click with­out any chance of mov­ing the cur­sor. This is ex­treme­ly use­ful for pre­ci­sion work.
2. Sec­ond­ly, track­balls do not take up very much desk room, and elim­i­nate the pick­ing-up and re-cen­ter­ing that is very com­mon with nor­mal mice.

It may be ar­gued that track­balls re­duce wrist stress com­pared to nor­mal mice, and my sub­jec­tive eval­u­a­tion con­firms that, although YM­MV of course. It may al­so be ar­gued that track­balls of­fer in­creased pre­ci­sion over nor­mal mice; I’ve al­so found this to be gen­er­al­ly true, as the ball is gen­er­al­ly quite heavy and can be nudged pre­cise­ly with lit­tle ef­fort.

Track­ing and Fea­tures

The non-Ex­pert Mouse Kens­ing­ton I used for a while was based on a me­chan­i­cal track­ing mech­a­nism, in a man­ner sim­i­lar to that of a nor­mal ball mouse (who us­es a ball mouse the­se days?). The track­ing on that Kens­ing­ton was ex­cel­lent: it was pre­cise, fast, and ac­cu­rate, and nev­er re­al­ly gave me any trou­bles. Of course, be­ing me­chan­i­cal, it re­quired fre­quent clean­ing. Mouse man­u­fac­tur­ers saw this prob­lem in ball mice, and op­ti­cal mice be­came quick­ly pop­u­lar. Track­ball mak­ers have been slow­er to catch on though, and so while mice have moved on even to laser track­ing mech­a­nisms, many track­balls sold are still me­chan­i­cal.

Both the Log­itech Op­ti­cal Track­Man and the Ex­pert Mouse have op­ti­cal track­ing mech­a­nisms, but their im­ple­men­ta­tion is quite dif­fer­ent. The Log­itech has an in­frared sen­sor of some sort: it emits no vis­i­ble light, and so ar­guably is less vis­i­ble in dark rooms (say, col­lege dorm rooms at night). The Ex­pert Mouse func­tions just like an up­side-down op­ti­cal mouse, us­ing a red LED. One may ar­gue the var­i­ous fine points of the two im­ple­men­ta­tions (like vis­i­bil­i­ty at night), but by my per­son­al sub­jec­tive judg­ment, the Ex­pert Mouse track­ing is far su­pe­ri­or. When I move the ball in a “straight line” us­ing the Log­itech mouse, the cur­sor doesn’t fol­low that mo­tion: it tries to move in a straight line, but some­times trav­els di­ag­o­nal­ly and is gen­er­al­ly quite inac­cu­rate. There is al­so a slight but no­tice­able amount of lag pre­sent us­ing the Log­itech track­ball. Ob­vi­ous­ly this is a dis­ap­point­ment from a $50 track­ball from a pe­riph­er­al com­pa­ny that makes some of the world’s best in­put de­vices.

Some other re­views indi­cate that the Ex­pert Mouse is not en­tire­ly ac­cu­rate in track­ing; how­ev­er, I have found that the Ex­pert Mouse tracks ex­treme­ly well: just as well as the old­er me­chan­i­cal Kens­ing­ton.

There are some who mea­sure the ef­fec­tive­ness of a mouse by the num­ber of but­tons it has… I sup­pose it’s some­what im­por­tant in some cas­es, but in my opin­ion not here. I want­ed to up­grade from my friend’s old­er Kens­ing­ton be­cause it lacked a mid­dle but­ton, and a scroll wheel, there­fore mak­ing my com­put­ing life very dif­fi­cult. Both the Ex­pert Mouse and the Op­ti­cal Track­Man have both the­se fea­tures, although the Ex­pert Mouse’s but­ton lay­out is sim­i­lar to that of other Kens­ing­ton track­balls (and the Log­itech Mar­ble), while the Op­ti­cal Track­Man’s is quite unusu­al. Per­son­al­ly, I find the Ex­pert Mouse’s to be more nat­u­ral (the low­er-left and low­er-right but­tons are the left- and right-click), but you may prefer the Log­itech’s. I on­ly use three of the four but­tons pro­vid­ed with my Ex­pert Mouse.

The Ex­pert Mouse’s scroll wheel (or scroll ring, as they call it) is an iPod-like phys­i­cal ring around the track­ball, and the Track­Man’s is just like the scroll wheel on a nor­mal mouse. The Track­Man is cord­less, but since the track­ball doesn’t move on your desk, I can think of no le­git­i­mate rea­son why one would need a cord­less track­ball. It’s ob­vi­ous­ly just a mar­ket­ing gim­mick.

Gam­ing

So we’ve estab­lished that the Ex­pert Mouse is a won­der­ful tool for ev­ery­day mous­ing. Let us then ex­plore the other side of mous­ing, then: gam­ing. I’m ad­mit­ted­ly still a fan of us­ing a tra­di­tion­al mouse for gam­ing, but that doesn’t mean it’s im­pos­si­ble to play games with a track­ball. Strat­e­gy or point-and-click RPGs work espe­cial­ly well with my track­ball, and FPSes are man­age­able. It could cer­tain­ly be used as a de­vice for hand­i­cap­ping good play­ers…

The Kens­ing­ton soft­ware that comes bun­dled with the track­ball does not sup­port dif­fer­ent pro­files for dif­fer­ent games (as far as I know), how­ev­er there are four but­tons on the mouse that you can map to one of many dif­fer­ent in­put events. The scroll wheel is al­so a handy ad­di­tion in games that re­quire one.

Con­clu­sion

The on­ly dis­ad­van­tage to this track­ball mouse is its price: cur­rent­ly selling for $80 on Ama­zon. This is pret­ty ex­pen­sive for any point­ing de­vice, and it will be up to the user to de­ter­mine whether this de­vice is worth that amount of money. For me, it cer­tain­ly was. Per­haps it’s not en­tire­ly op­ti­mal for FPS gam­ing, but the Kens­ing­ton Ex­pert Mouse’s su­pe­ri­or track­ing, ex­cel­lent us­abil­i­ty and the small touch­es such as the scroll ring make it in my opin­ion a must-buy for track­ball users.