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New Joystick Style Ergo Mouse
Mr_Perl writes "For those of us who love to use a mouse to play games, except for the wrist pain after too much of it, 3M has come up with a joystick-mouse type thing that is in my opinion very comfortable to use." I'd love to try one of these out. Not available yet tho. update my bad, it is out. Now I gotta find one.
Anir has been manufacturing these for a while.
http://www.animax.no/anirmousepro.html
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Huh? Not available yet? The article says available form 4th quarter 2000. My sister has been using one of these for several months, as she had to leave her cold fusion programming job 'caus of a severe autonomic nerve condition that developed from computer related RSI. she finds this 3M device to be good, in conjunction with Dragon Naturally Speaking to avoid using the keyboard.
Its not really that joystick like though since it is the whole base that moves.
The reason it is better for RSI is that the thumb nerves are supposed to be far less fragile
My Logitech Mouseman Optical is very nice and light. I find it very comfortable to use and it is symmetrical, so you'd likely have the same experience as me.
Where there's no ball or mechanical parts, the weight is very low, while not feeling 'cheap.' I also like the fact that I can use it on just about any surface, including the cushions on my couch or my pant leg. Not only are mouse pads not required, they are a hinderance as well.
Suncom, a cheap peripherals company (best known for their oh-so-cheap joysticks), was selling joystick-style mice at my local department store back before when we got our first PC clone, which was in 1988. This was even years before mice were standard on computers. (That's right, Virginia, computers didn't always use mice!)
Even back then it looked uncomfortable.
I'm sure 3M was making a mouse exactly like this one that was on the .au market years ago.
Try moving your mouse around by resting your semi closed hand on it. Notice how much more effort that is required and what an uncomfortable method this would be. I don't move my mouse with my arm, I flick it around the entire screen, and have done so for more than 10 years starting with the original MS mouse (the pregnant ergo MS mouse is horrible for this though, the bump gets in the way), with three fingers moving with my wrist stationary on the mouse pad.
This 3M joy-mouse is not even optical! I rather love my Logitech Optical Mouseman Wheel, I don't even wish it were a wireless one, as I have the mouse cable, cable-tied with enough slack in a loop, to my keyboard cable where it enters the keyboard case, this way, it never gets caught or drags on anything (on a keyboard/mouse slide drawer). It may as well be wireless, since the days of feeling the cable rub and catch on things are gone.
I only wish it had a much higher sampling rate, so as to avoid what seems to be phasing effects that cause the opposite movement of what is done, when moved quickly and suddenly. It anoys me in Starcraft games sometimes!
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
And didn't like it at all! The problem is the weight of the hand rests on top of the mouse. In order to move it even on a good mousepad, you need to apply a lot of force. This makes precision clicking much harder to do than with the usual wrist-action mouse. Several other people at the same company tried it too and didn't like it.
:P
And that's so old tech too, it was available last year.
The best mouse wristwise that I've found is the tiny small model from Logitech.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
HardwareZone did a review of this a couple of days ago. They weren't too happy about it.