Riding the Flow

I am a professional software developer, who also a gamer. I want a monitor which just does a job of displaying images correctly - I also have background in graphics programming so I have a keen eye. But for some reason it was really hard to get one recently. 10 years ago, I had a Dell Ultrasharp monitor which had no issues whatsoever. However, eventually it got somewhat dated and I thought “its time to upgrade”. So, I’ve tried these new & shiny “gaming monitors” with all these new bells & whistles (and I’ve actually bought 3 different ones, and pricier ones). To cut it short, they all had issues in one form or another – even while all these fancy feature boxes were ticked, but always at expense of something else, or not working quite perfectly all the time.

In discussions with other gadgets users, often the problem of getting extra power comes up. Particularly when you are away from power outlets for prolonged time - e.g. on the nature hike. Two "miracle solutions" always inevitably come up - using muscle power ("wind-up chargers") or using solar power. On first look, they appear to be perfect. However, they have very significant shortcomings in reality:

My PC configuration involves single big SSD to store data (currently 512GB Crucial M4). This provides best performance and convenience of single hard drive. However, for obvious reasons it makes regular backups even more paramount - since SSDs are being generally less reliable than usual magnetic drives. To backup data, I use 2.5" hard drive enclosure, connected with eSATAp(Powered eSATA) interface - this way only single cable is required, while providing maximum speed and transparency. Previously I was using Windows 7 built in backups (System Image), protected with Bitlocker to Go encryption. But recently I was badly burned by this setup, when my SSD developed single faulty bad sector. It wasn't too bad, until Windows Backup failed to properly backup this and didn't indicate a fault - but aborted backup early indicating a "success". Then it became apparent only after I tried to re-image SSD using this corrupt backup - necessitating a roll-back to previous,...

I've bought the Logitech K360 wireless keyboard in addition to K800 just to try, which one I will like more (K800 was the obvious first choice, because of standard full size layout, palmrest, backlit keys and unifying nano-receiver support). I wanted to also try K360, because it has compact layout that I like coming from laptops (dispenses with right-side key duplication), and also it looked much like my laptop chiclet keyboard (that I liked). However, on actually trying the K360 out I've found it to be worse in feel: