The Legal Janitor

I generally use freeware or opensourced free software for my Mac, but Mori is one app which I paid for a license within 3 days of trying it out.

I’ve tried many apps for the organising and taking of notes during my law classes, all of which seemed to be lacking in some way. I’ve tried Notae, which was great, but did not give me much by way of organising the notes. I tried myNotes, because it produced really great-looking and stlyish printouts when I needed to print out my notes for exams. I tried Voodoopad, which I really liked and even paid a license for because I really liked its wiki-style organisation.

I used Voodoopad for the whole of last semester and it was great for jotting down my notes, but when the time came to integrate and put my notes together thats when its limitations started to show.

For a student of law, even though classes are divided into approximate topics, the final set of notes which we bring with us into the exam hall cannot actually be divided in this way. Every single “topic” is actually related or connected to the others in multiple ways. While a wiki is very helpful to show how different “topics” in a law subject is linked to another through the use of hyperlinks, there is no way that this wiki structure can actually be replicated on hard copy.

The one thing about Mori which stands out for me is that it has smart folders. Normal folders help us organise things by being holders of classes of information. In the screenshot above, you can see that I’ve put my notes into four normal folders, organised by subject. Smart folders however, help us organise information according to conditions.

Say for example, I need all notes with the word “action” in them to be put into a folder. What I do is I create a new smart folder, set the smart folder to contain all notes with the word “action”. The result is that a new folder will appear with all the notes fulfilling that condition. The important thing is that the notes are not actually replicated: the smart folder acts like a filter, so when I delete that smart folder, the notes remain in the normal folders.

The conditions for filtering are numerous. I can select by date, time, location, title, attachments, etc, and I can use Boolean operators to filter those conditions.

This flexibility is very important for me because it helps me filter and organise the notes according to the connections between the various topics. This way, I can see the relationships easily, and note them down along the side of the paper for use during exams.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliations with, nor any financial interests in Razer, nor in any of its subsidiaries or businesses. This product has been sent to me as a review sample. Everything I write in this post is my honest opinion.

Let me just state upfront that if computer mice were cars, then the Razer Pro 1.6 would be a BMW M3. Why an M3 and not some other luxury car? Well for one, a Bugatti or Lambo would be useless in terms of ordinary driving. An M3 however, grants you everyday functionality, and yet still able to enjoy the luxury of driving a beautiful machine. I have been using the Razer Pro for about a week, and I find that it is exactly like that.

The Razer Pro works fine as an ordinary mouse in everyday usage. You move it, then you click, simple as that. Then, there are the additional features, such as 7 configurable mouse buttons, on-the-fly sensitivity adjustments, and 1600 dpi/6400 fps. When you also take into account the fact the design and styling of the mouse closely resembles what one might call “Apple” style, one gets a very strong sense that this Razer Pro is a product targeted at people who specially use the mouse as a tool. For example, photoshop professionals, CAD/CAM engineers, perhaps sound and video engineers as well.

Aesthetics

Let us first talk about looks. Beautiful, is it not? It is a perfect match with any Apple product. I credit the industrial designers at Razer for not trying to reinvent the wheel. It takes skill to adopt a certain style, and yet still retaining its own design identity. The mouse fits into my hand perfectly, and using it feels smooth and natural. Full marks for ergonomics.

Both the ProPad and the Razer Pro are styled in “Apple” white. As you can see, the pad is rather large, and therefore certainly not for mobile users. That aside, its styling is along the same minimalistic lines as the mouse. It has two sides, supposedly each for different purposes, but after trying both I can’t really tell whether there is a difference. Perhaps professionals who use the mouse for work might be better able to discern the difference.

I would assume that the blue glow was intended to have the same purpose as the MacBook Pro keyboard backlight. No fiddling around in the dark for the mouse I suppose. An alternative view would be that the blue light looks cool somehow, but I think that is really more a subjective like or dislike.

Functionality

The great thing about the Razer Pro is that comes with drivers that enhance its functionality on OS X. On top of that, the drivers are Universal Binaries, which means they work on both Intel Macs and PPC Macs. You can see the Razer Pro preference pane at the bottom of the System Preferences.

The preference pane comes with 3 tabs. The first allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the mouse, generally. This includes the sensitivity of the mouse with regards to its control over the cursor, and double click speed. You also get to enable “on-the-fly” sensitivity adjustments. Here I find the first problem with the Razer Pro, and fortunately it is a software driver problem, which should be easily fixable. What happens is that “on-the-fly” simply does not fly, at least not with the current drivers. Even when it is enabled, it does not appear to work at all. So when I want to adjust sensitivity of the mouse, I still have to open up the preference pane.

The second tab lets you adjust the sensitivity of the scroll wheel. Here I find the second software problem. It appears that this particular feature of the software driver is not activated when I start up the MacBook Pro. As you can see in this picture, I have set the wheel to scroll in small steps. If I just proceed with using the mouse normally after turning the MacBook Pro on, I get a wheel that scrolls in massive steps, despite my setting it otherwise. It is only after I go into System Preference and click on the preference pane, then the sensitivity of the scroll wheel is reset to the level I wanted.

Finally, you can set the handedness of the mouse, and allocate functions to the 7 buttons on the mouse. Personally, I think the 4 extra buttons would only be useful to programmers, designers and gamers. I doubt they’d be very much useful in normal situations.

A Little Secret

Here’s something interesting I found out when I started up Parallels Desktop. It recognised the Razer Pro as a Razer Diamondback. This strongly suggests that the underlying hardware is the same as the Razer Diamondback, but design adjusted for the non-gamer market. It would make sense to use existing technology and hardware to power the Razer Pro, as the Razer Diamondback is proven technology with an excellent track record.

Conclusion
There are only 2 minor annoyances with the Razer Pro, both of which are software driver problems. In terms of hardware, this comes as close to flawless as a mouse can get. In terms of design, it is hard to see any other mouse that looks as good. The only thing left to consider is cost. The Razer Store lists the price at USD$59.99. Rounding off the price, it translates approximately to SGD$95.00. The question is, how many people would be able or willing to pay close to a hundred bucks for a mouse?

I think this boils down to who the buyer is. For the average user, it depends on whether you are willing to splurge for the looks and design, because you are probably not going to be using the extra features, nor would you need 1600 dpi for everyday use.
Conversely, if gamers are willing to spend over a hundred dollars for a gaming mouse, then I’m sure professionals who work alot with mice, such as graphic designers, photography lab techs, engineers who do CAD/CAM work etc would find the Razer Pro to be very compelling. A hundred dollars for this precision mouse is not a large amount at all when you engage in work that requires precision and accuracy, not to mention that no other “serious” mouse looks as good as this one.

Razer Pro|Solutions - Professional Precision Peripherals

Oh how can I feel such a sense of accomplishment after doing something that’s just so so wrong???????????