The May keyboard / mouse showdown

[Computer Hope Admin]

With the fairly successful April showdown I thought we'd do another in May. I'm posting this early so everyone who wishes to participate can prepare and to get some feedback on any issues with the free utility I was planning on us using to monitor this information.

The utility is: Mousotron and keeps track of the overall distance you've moved your mouse, how many times you've pressed the left/right buttons, double-clicked, and how many keystrokes you've typed on the keyboard.

I tried locating a Apple computer solution but couldn't find one so if any users know of any please let us know. However, after testing for a day seems to run ok. For those of us who install this early we'll reset this at the beginning of May.

[boo]

already downloaded it.
what a cool app!

[michaewlewis]

Well, I'm out... you have to be logged in as administrator to install it.

[Sidewinder]

I'll pass.

What's the difference between Mousotron and a keylogger? For what it's worth, the program after install, tripped the firewall and requested permission to use the internet. It's bad enough out there without inviting the crapware in.

 

[Computer Hope Admin]

Well, I'm out... you have to be logged in as administrator to install it.

Thanks for posting this, wasn't aware it required admin rights.

What's the difference between Mousotron and a keylogger? For what it's worth, the program after install, tripped the firewall and requested permission to use the internet. It's bad enough out there without inviting the crapware in.

The difference between this program and a keylogger is this program does not log everything typed, it simply monitors how many times a any of the keys on the keyboard has been pressed. As far as I was able to tell it does not contain any spyware, crapware, or any other malware.

[Sidewinder]

I did not mean to imply that the Admin would have members download and use a program full of spyware, crapware, or other malware.

The difference between this program and a keylogger is this program does not log everything typed, it simply monitors how many times any of the keys on the keyboard has been pressed

It just seems strange, that a program that is gathering local machine statistics would have a need to use the internet. The program is probably harmless enough but I'll still pass and have one less thing to worry about.

[boo]

I did not mean to imply that the Admin would have members download and use a program full of spyware, crapware, or other malware.

The difference between this program and a keylogger is this program does not log everything typed, it simply monitors how many times any of the keys on the keyboard has been pressed

It just seems strange, that a program that is gathering local machine statistics would have a need to use the internet. The program is probably harmless enough but I'll still pass and have one less thing to worry about.

the reason it uses the internet is that you can get it to automatically upload your stats to the internet and compare them with other people on their website
if you click on setup mousetron then you will see this option under "data upload"

[KenJackson]

The utility is: Mousotron and keeps track of the overall distance you've moved your mouse, how many times you've pressed the left/right buttons, double-clicked, and how many keystrokes you've typed on the keyboard.

I just downloaded Mousotron under Wine on Linux and it works!

It gets better.  I'm actually sitting at my downstairs PC, but Wine is running on my upstairs PC, so I started the executable in an SSH window (so it executed on my upstairs PC).  The installation boxes popped up on the screen in front of me exactly the same as if I were running windows.  Now the Mousotron bar with time, distance, keystrokes, etc. is displayed here on this PC logging my local mouse movements and clicks (but not keystrokes!) even though it's actually running in the Wine environment on the other PC.

[Computer Hope Admin]

I'm impressed Ken.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Woah. I know this is a bit late but I just noticed this topic. Gonna try it out 

[Kip]

I just noticed Pitaschio has a feature similar to Mousotron.
If you right click the Pitaschio system tray icon and click statistics, you will get something like this:

Total/ hourRatio Moving distance   868715 pixel   385002 pixel    Left click108348086.29 %Wheel click101458.05 %Right click71315.66 %Wheel (up)108047926.55 %Wheel (down)2988132473.45 % A133597.09 %B28121.49 %C49222.61 %D73323.89 %E25211213.43 %F51232.72 %G51232.72 %H71313.78 %I115516.13 %J1780.91 %K1670.85 %L65293.46 %M54242.88 %N123556.56 %O162728.64 %P28121.49 %Q210.11 %R134597.14 %S128576.82 %T165738.80 %U59263.14 %V38172.03 %W1670.85 %X1040.53 %Y33151.76 %Z310.16 %

[Zylstra]

Now I have a reason to flick my mouse around out of boredom.. (even though I have a trackpad)

[Zylstra]

Wow...

in 2 hours, 53 minutes:
Moved the mouse (trackpad) 388 yards, 33 inches.
Made 7558 keystrokes
Clicked the left button 1715 times
Clicked the right button 40 times
Middle button 6 times
254 Double-clicks

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

If you have a try at Pitaschio (the one Kip showed us), you will notice that the letter E is most used in all the letters of the alphabet.

[Zylstra]

Okay... so, I didnt shut down my computer last night and have no idea how the counter works (the clock counter), but:
1 Days, 2 hours, 46 minutes.
Mouse movement:
935 Yards, 10 inches.
4722 left button clicks
101 right button clicks
28 middle button clicks
709 double clicks

28839 keystrokes

I will admit though, I have the habit (and always have) of moving the mouse around and clicking randomly when I am bored or waiting for something to complete.