Minds out of the gutter, people. I’m talking about the new Microsoft wheel mouse that doesn’t use a ball for tracking movement. It uses a camera to detect movement along a surface. The only limit is that you must use it on a surface that has some sort of detail on it–using it on a blank sheet of paper would be useless.
Has anybody used one of these things yet? I’m pretty tempted to get one since my old two-button ergonomic mouse is acting funky. Anything that keeps me from having to clean the ball or rollers sounds good to me.
Optical Mice have been around for a fairly long time. Was using them on a Sun around 1992 or so.
I never particularly cared for them, they have a tendancy to not slide very well, and are a bit funky. I prefer a good optical trackball like a Trackman Marble.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
I don’t know much about them, but I do have this to add… Every year, I somehow manage to destroy the mouse on my home computer. The current theory is that my sweaty palms (and those of my wife) are fowling things up within the innards/ button comtacts. I’ve tried cleaning the balls, and nothing helps. They just skip or stop working all together. Solution? Buy a new mouse at $5 - $10. These optical deals…well, they are like $70 aren’t they? Not interested…if I will still destroy them at the same rate…
I found out the official product name: Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer. I saw them priced at our local Sam’s Club for either $34.99 or $39.99.
As for myself, I’m pretty easy on mice. I don’t tend to tap heavily on the buttons, and I try to make a habit of cleaning the rollers and the ball regularly. I replace my mouse about every other year, depending on wear. I still like my original Microsoft ergonomic mouse, but I would really like to eliminate the maintenance routines that I do.
I’ve also used the older optical mice too. They seemed to work okay, but you had to have that special mousepad with the grid to be able to use it. The Explorer mouse only needs to use a smooth surface that has visual irregularities.
For some reason, I have always hated to use trackballs–maybe because I was such an inept Missile Command player. In any case, I find i get better control with a mouse as opposed to a track ball. I might consider one of those Glide Point thingies, though.
The reason microsoft optical mice are cooler then the old Sun ones is that they work on any surface, while our Sun mice require a special reflective pad with a black grid on it. I don’t know if they have improved their responsiveness though since I am personally addicted to my Kensington Expert Mouse (customized with an eight-ball) at work and home.
Besides making cleaning easier, the lack of a special pad must make things a lot easier for business travellers, who can stroke their mouse along, say, their legs…
Yeah all older Optical mice required a grid tablet to coordinate the mouse with the grid pattern as applied to the screen.
The new MS mice rule, Very responsice (12k scans per second) and yes you do need to use them on something with a surface texture or pattern, but that’s not too hard to find.
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