—and stand ready to help anybody who’s having trouble. A tip: easiest reader to handle is the Mobipocket reader or the Adobe pdf reader. Either one—just click on a .prc or .mobi file (for Mobipocket) on your computer, and if you have those readers installed on your computer, the reader window will pop up after a brief delay to load the book. Calibre requires a 3-step process, first clicking on an .epub file to bring Calibre up, 2 THEN clicking on the file title that should appear in the white window, 3. then clicking VIEW, and THEN your reader window comes up. I’ve got a walkthrough above, in the Page menu; I’ve got another on the Closed Circle site; and I’ll be online periodically today, happy to help anyone who’s unsure of the process or having trouble.
We had a nice New Year’s Eve; but this afternoon we’ve already had a day. I gave Jane a copy of Dragon Age for her New Year’s gift, and when she attempted to run it, the new HP laptop went dead. Not just froze—lost all its lights and went to a doorstop. Jane was quite rattled, since she has done an immense amount of cover work and text work on CC on that computer, and was not sufficiently backed up when this happened.
Well, I got online on my laptop, read the help files from HP, and it suggested the power source had just died, and to do a power-drain and start, with no battery, plugged into a different power supply: procedure worked. Jane started breathing again. I fed her a nice Captain and Lime, never mind it’s not the hour yet—and she tried the game again. Which froze as before—without taking out the power supply, however. Bummer. I owe her a nicer New Year’s gift. That one has been no fun at all. Score, one dead power supply, and an upset computer, with (now) a backup.
So…I wish that had gone differently. But at least the computer’s all right!
Note: Jane, like any good games-player, has not given up on Dragon Age: she’s got a query in to the company asking for a work-around for that demand for, of all silly things, a mouse-wheel, without which it wants to freeze solid. We’ll see. Does everybody have a mouse wheel? I think not. Sort of like feathers on a fish, in my case, since I have no mouse.
Yikes! A heckuva a way to ring in the new year… glad the lappy’s back up (and backed-up!) Warm wishes to you both!
On Mice.. The small wireless kind. I use such with the laptop(s), and quite prefer that to relying upon a touchpad. The Microsoft branded ones actually work very well, surprisingly (well, to Me).
I also have an HP branded wireless, with a Tiny micro USB receiver/antenna. It Works OK, but something about the antenna prevents the laptop (itself a Compaq/Hp model – with the latest BIOS flashed..) from booting – it simply freezes up. Unplug the USB antenna and the problem goes away. Weird. It’s a shame, since that tiny antenna is great for a machine that gets carried around all day long..
Back in the old days we’d think that was a conflict of assigned ports. I think modern computers are supposed to do that automatically—but it does sound like a resources fuss.
Since it is appears to really, really want a mouse, and USB mice are cheap, why not get one and try it? I have found track-pads not very good for that kind of game.
The problem is where to set it, in our normal working arrangements. Neither of us has a worksurface. But if that is the only way it’s going to work, we may haul out one—we have kind of a collection over the years, including USBs…What’s so bizarre is that usually we can finesse around any games maneuvering with our laptops,just with trackpad and trackpoint—never have been stymied until this one. But we’re not totally sure the mouse glitch is all that’s going on, since something that was happening also fried a power-unit and made the DVD drive race.
I do note that there are 4 patches for Dragon Age already, some of them regarding Vista—which is always suspect.
Welcome aboard, by the way!
I’m going to take a stab in the dark and guess that the game is very heavy on playing by pointer device. Jane’d get the mouse only for the game and be busy with the mouse for large stretches of time without needing the second hand on the keyboard or the need to lay the mouse aside for some time. Therefore, my suggestion, should Jane go with a mouse to play Dragon Age, would be to use herself as a mouse pad. Optical mouses work quite well on clothed body parts, as long as the body parts are sufficiently large. An arm might be problematic, but legs generally work well. Depending upon sitting position, the section above the breasts is a good mousing area, too.
On the mouse wheel affair, I love my mouse wheel. Not only is it good for scrolling, but it also serves as a third button (and potentially a fourth and fifth). Meaning: maximum usage of fingers -> thumb and pinky hold the mouse and the other three lay on their respective button, making for fast and convenient mousing.
I generally don’t like the reach of the pads, they are just too small for my taste. But then, I also dislike those flat laptop keyboards and prefer keyboards with raised keys.
Mice with wheels aren’t a problem – I have a trackball with one – if you don’t accidentally spin the wheel with software that recognizes it. (Usually all it does is make the page scroll, which can be useful.)
I went to get a new keyboard, and found out after getting it that the one corded keyboard I like is USB, and it’s not compatible with the KVM switch.
Hopeless with mouse,frustration level 10! Love the
pad. Gave mouse to cats. They don’t like it either. (upside down yellow circle)
I do use a mouse, usually, and when I am on the sofa I put a cushion next to me with the mouse pad and mouse on it – that works quite well.
Trackpoint I can manage. One bolted to the chair arm, maybe, because I’m a klutz. But I’ll stick to my favorite device, my little trackpoint joystick-thingie, the eraserhead mouse.
I won’t load that game, however, until Jane has gotten some kind of fix on its computer-killer problem!
Yikes and et cetera! Glad to hear the computer is alive and kicking… and backed up now, now, shame on you (her)!
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Laser mice (the current most-common flavor of optical mouse) will operate on durned near any surface, even a mirror, they claim–I often use mine on the arm of the sofa, for example. Which ain’t all that helpful for those who don’t, won’t or can’t use a mouse!
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I wonder if the software-glitch issue might be the 64-bit OS…? Might try (cautiously!) the compatibility wizard?
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The USB mouse-puck hang thing is probably USB enumeration, essentially the parcelling out of system resource labels at bootup. My home desktop (32b XP) only boots about 1/3 of the time if the external USB drive is plugged in when I turn on the system box. Obnoxious. My work laptop, running 32b Vista, used to have the same problem with my laser-mouse USB puck until one of the M$ updates happened along, which cured it. Go figure…
I am a Mac user, and will be getting my nook from B&N in early February. If I download several books to my MacBook Pro, will it transfer easily to my new e-reader? Or am I going to download a bunch of stuff to the Mac after I have the stupid thing in my hand?
And will I have to pay you through a PayPal account? I haven’t worked with them for years and am not really happy about renewing my acquaintance with. I am not looking forward to having that fun work environment in my life again.
There are options for paying by credit card: just follow the Paypal link and if you persist, the option for paying directly by credit card is there.
And as usual, I am forgetting the most important thing–how can I put up my kitty’s picture instead of the amusingly creature that you seem to have given me? This is not probably the right forum for this question, but I want you to send it to the right place so others can follow my trail?
BarbieA,
There are instructions below the “REGISTER to comment” line on the right side of the page. Essentially, you go to gravatar and load it there. Hope this helps!