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3-Button Mice - An Endangered Species?
eschasi asks: "eschasi recently got a new job, which includes a new PC on which to run UNIX and X. After much grovelling through the vendor catalog and the used equipment boxes for a simple 3-button mouse, he finally had to bring one from home. Shortly thereafter he was browsing the local CompUSAs and BestBuys, and saw not a single actual 3-button mouse. Oh yes, there were things which masqueraded as 3-button mice, but they weren't. They were scroll mice where you had to depress the scroll to get a middle click, or where the third button was under the thumb, or where the third button was unreachable because of the scroll. Sun's still come with 3-button mice, so there must be some being made. Are these still in the retail market anywhere? Frankly, they're too small for eschasi's big hands.
The only place a basic 3-button mouse was found for sale was eBay, and they guy selling it called it 'rare.' Is the classic 3-button mouse largely dead? If so, what are you folks moving toward?"
Although they are the same.
Search: large 3 button mouse
Plenty to choose from.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Myself, I'd certainly differentiate between a scroll-wheel mouse and a generic three-button mouse. When I want to press the middle button, I don't want it rolling around under my finger (or tilting, the way some of the track-point style ones do).
That said, I think the poster just isn't doing his homework. I realize that Micro Center is only in about 13 States, but their online store seems to have about a half dozen likely candidates. $1.50 for a white Belkin, or be a big spender and plop down a whole fiver for the same, but in black.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
I don't understand why the story poster differentiates between a "three button mouse" and a scroll wheel mouse in which the wheel is the third button.
Usually the wheel has more tension that a button - it's a bit harder to press, which is noticible if you have RSI. But sometimes that can be fixed by opening up the mouse and removing a spring.
Hop your happy ass over here and get your 3 button mouse.
Don't always just look on the shelf, ask somebody.
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Ohhhh, look at all the pretty shiny things.
I've been using 3-button mice since the PC Paintbrush IV days, and I have to say, I still use them every day. Nothing like that big middle button to slap to pop browser links into new tabs, and paste text.
At first I used to be a fan of Logitech, SGI and Sun's 3-button mice, but now I don't leave home without a Contour Perfit Mouse. It's 3-button, and there are not only left and right handed versions, but multiple sizes for each. It melds into your hand, so you only have to inch forward a bit of muscle in each finger to press a button. Very nice and ergonomic.
I'm dying to try out their new optical mice myself. They were pretty slow to the game there, to be sure. I do like where they've put the scroll button for those.
Long live the *real* middle button.
I have learned.
I can't speak for you, or the freakish condition of your flippers, but for me it is just as easy to use a thin scroll wheel as a fat middle button.
I use a LogiTech Trackman Marble FX.
Left button, middle button and right button AND if I tilt my thumb slightly it hits the fourth button and the 2" (approx) ball becomes a scroll SPHERE. It scrolls both vertically and horizantally. I have had the device for a number of years, it has never needed cleaning and about the only improvement that I could think off would be batteryless IR (which I don't think exists yet).
Every person who has sat at my desk and used it has gone out and bought one. There is simply nothing better in the marketplace that I or anyone I know has ever seen.
It makes any other kind of pointing device look sick.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
I use an AOpen O-35G total-of-five-buttons-including-one-on-a-scroll-wh eel optical mouse. The two scroll-wheels are both fairly broad and positive, but only one of them is clickable. I saw this as a shortcoming when I first bought it (wanted an extra button), but IRL I use the second wheel for scrolling and the first as a button. That way, I don't risk "nervous finger", a disease occasioned by using Microsoft scroll-wheel mice that treat the gentlest caress of the wheel as a click. The AOpen mouse is also lighter than most other mice (except for frail/unreliable brands like Dexxa), which makes it less wearing to use, and more manageable for kids.
Specifically for children, I use and recommend a matchbox-sized optical scroll wheel mouse I get from Big W's stationery department. It is labelled "GO TECH COMPUTERWARE | Keycode: 439 2347 | Model: IA20074B | N433 | Made in China". The red LED in it is easy to change for another colour. The LED's frequency/spectrum doesn't seem to matter, as long as it is high efficiency.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
And many CADD workers are used to the standard button, not a little scroll wheel. I'd guess that many of these people don't care about browsing the web, either.
I actually work at a large corporation where this is the case for many clients of mine, and I've had a lot of trouble finding a simple 3-button mouse for them.
We source our PC's from Dell, and they have 0 3-button mice on their website, and my sales representative could only find 1 that they would resell to us.
I'll agree with the author that this seems like a trend, and not necessarilly a good one.
I like the idea of 4 groups of 3 buttons. If I'm not looking at the screen, feeling for the key I want would be just a little more simple.
As for the center cluster, they've been made more useful. In Windows, the Insert key is almost never used anymore. The Delete key is quite often used, and makes more sense to an inexperienced user than the Backspace key. I, and probably the majority of others, use Home more often than End. In the new arrangement, Page Up and Down are one key-width closer.
I work with Maya all day long and 3 buttons are required by the software (probably because it started on Unix). I can't seem to find a 3 button mouse for my home computer, so I use a scroll, which, with heavy use, hurts my hand. Depressing a scroll button is a lot harder than a regular one. I have to find a mouse with a soft button...