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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.
My roommate bought one because it was different, but it's not as easy to use as you'd figure. To get an idea, try writing with a pen like you did when you were in kindergarten (thumb on top).
Incidentally, shortly afterward, it became apparent that I tend to use my fingertips to control a regular mouse with greater precision. Perhaps you may find the same thing.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
I keep wondering why anyone would introduce a new high-end mouse with a ball. The new breed of track-on-any-surface opticals are far superior to anything mechanical, especially if you work in a dirty (or dusty, or cat-infested) environment.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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
Using a mouse has several distinct advantages in gaming. One of which is a nasty little response time that can be accomplished by simply "flicking" your wrist. This becomes an invaluable skill in fast-paced, high action games (Q3). With the Renaissance Mouse, your wrist becomes immobile so the mouse movement will be dictated by moving your arm.
I understand that immobilization the wrist will combat wrist pain, but there will be significant gaming trade-offs... Most hard core gamers I know would rather deal with wrist pain than become considerably slower at their favorite games.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
...only right-handed people get wrist problems or want nice mice. This has been an annoyance to me for quite a while. While I can use the mouse on the right side, it feels more comforatble for me to use it on the left. I cannot find even one nice, three button wheel mouse designed specifically for lefties and yet I find scads of nice ones for righties. I am so tired of this (admittedly minor) discrimination and it's not even just WRT mice. I see it with other products too, but mice seem to hit closest to home.
Everyone needs to make a conscious effort to finding a mouse and mouse usage technique that minimizes the effort and stress on their body.
How I avoid pain when using mice:
Find a mouse that you can move with your fingers alone.
I use the Logitech Mouseman 3-button mouse at work and at home. I grip the mouse body between my thumb and my last two fingers. Usually, my pinky is actually touching the mousepad, and my wrist is resting on the desk. As a result, the majority of my hand and arm never move.
I can move the mouse from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen by simply ensuring my pinky is anchored on the mousepand and flexing my thumb. And I'm usually off a straight vertical from where I started (judging by window borders) by fewer than 10 pixels.
Finally, turn mouse acceleration/speed way up. Smaller movements yield the cross-screen movement I need.
Finding a mouse that requires fingers only and finding the techniques to use with that shape of mouse are the keys in my mind.
I haven't used it, but I suspect I'd really dislike this joystick mouse....way to much muscle required.
My fingers are agile, I'll let them do the walking.
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.
The mouse mentioned in the article is called "the RenMouse".
Does anybody else feel the need to protect his new mouse with a rubber walrus protector?
Of course, when it stops working you can always shout "YOU BLOATED SACK OF PROTOPLASM!" at it.
I also suppose they will be bringing out the StimpyPedals as an accessory.
www.eFax.com are spammers
..looking at the pics, reading text phrases like "Available in two sizes - small/medium or large - for optimal ergonomic fit" and the "Vertical Grips"-bla etc., i thought you link to some kind of pr0n-Shop
;)
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.
Why buy this when there's a hacking solution to the problem? I thought of this years ago.
Case in point: I was suffering from a case of RSI some years ago (before I figured out how the height of my chair and mousepad affected my wrists). My wrists were killing me every time I reached for the mouse.
The solution? A 50-line program written in C that (in Windows, sorry - my OS of choice at the time) polled my joystick, and translated its commands to the mouse pointer. Button 1 became 'click'. Button 2 became the left mouse button, and I linked Button 3 to 'double click'. Took me about an hour to whip up the program, and then I used it for about a month before my injury subsided and I was able to buy a better chair and adjust my desk height properly. It worked well, and it didn't cost me anything other than a smidge of time.
It made everything feel like a video game, though, so that was a bit weird. I've probably still got the program in my archives, but I'm at work and the file's at home somewhere.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.