Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Standard 3-button mouse or wheel mouse. And you want the standard 3-button? Hunh?
There's a reason they're not being sold as much. You can click a wheel perfectly well, but you can't scroll a button.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Because the middle button on a wheel mouse is a lame excuse for a real button. My middle button is a big , wide button with a stable feel to it. In other words, it's intended to be a button. The middle button on every wheel mouse I've tried is narrow, awkward, and obviously not intended to be a button in the first place.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
I stand by my IBM Scrollpoint Optical. You get a very nice ambidexterous mouse that happens to have three buttons, and instead of a scroll wheel, you get a pressure sensitive scrollpoint, which is similar to the eraser heads featured on IBM laptops. The scrollpoint even glows blue, contrasting the red LED for the optical sensor.
360 Degree scrolling is very useful.
Michael C. Hollinger
Maya was ported from the SGI platform -- so originally many features were coded to support the 3-button mouse.
/aside
To this day, the Win and Mac ports still rely on the middle mouse button. (ob one-button-Mac jokes commence...)
Any workstation I've worked on, I've been able to map the scroll-wheel-click to middle mouse button features -- no matter the platform.
An aside: Maya has hands-down the best interface I've ever seen for controlling a 3D camera in a window. It relies on the alt-key and all three mouse buttons that you gesture-click. Very, very fast precise and intuitive.
I'd be interested to try something like that with the new MS mice that scroll up down and sideways.
My current favorite Maya/Comfy scroll click mice (many don't feel good) of late are the Logitech MX series and the Click! series corded opticals (for a few reasons -- ie corded vs. wireless for single-pixel precision, more Mac-like weight, clicker 'feels' right as a MMSB).
Hope this helps
Finally somebody who has a clue.
The Trackman Marble FX (the original!) is THE best pointing device. Strangely enough it is widely unknown, and people seem to object to it - without actually trying to use it - because it is different. It's accurate, reliable and has a lot of functions. Great for work, great for FPS. The only thing that is somewhat difficult is right-dragging; but that's something you do not need to do often.
You would have trouble prying my TM FX out of my cold dead hands.
Maybe not the middle bottom, but still pretty cool, if you ask me. Microsoft may suck at a lot of things, but they can usually churn out pretty decent hardware.
What world is the article's author living in? Here in this office I have to bring my own wheel mouse to work because all the lame mice around here are plain 3-button mice (Compaq-rebranded logitech MouseMan mice). You must be on another planet!... How do I get there?? :-D
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I originally had just a regular microsoft optical wheelmouse, the kind that only had one scrollwheel (clickable) and no side buttons or anything. Then when I got my laptop I found that a touchpad was horribly inadequate for any sort of small moter work, so I picked up my Logitech MX500. This is without a doubt the best mouse I have ever used. At school in one of the GIS labs we have 3 button mice but I still like my logitech better, the wheel just begs to be clicked.
When my trusty Microsoft mouse died on my server (Ok its not quite dead but every hour or so it will stop working completely for ten minutes). I went out and picked out another logitech MX500.
They are damn fine mice I don't know why the poster would need a regular 3 button mouse
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
I guess I am giving this mouse a big couple thumbs up. It being optical I've never needed a mouse pad and it's never needed cleaning, and the greatest thing....it's Extremely inexpensive, like in the $10 range (or maybe less, it was like a year ago when I got mine.)
You should check it out and see if you like it!
What's really funny is that I'm sure they rearranged the center cluster to save space. But then, they wasted that space and more with the huge expanse of darker plastic on which they've put five tiny buttons, a rocker, and a wheel.
That's like the epitome of bad design, but it's not just Microsoft. All the "internet keyboards" have similar idiocies. I guess that's why I still use an IBM Model M at home.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
- USB
- USB
- PS/2
- PS/2
Or, if you don't want Belkin to get another dollar of yours due to the recent BS they pulled with their routers, there are many others:- PS/2
- fancy optical
- fancy wireless and optical
- PS/2
That's just what I found during 10 minutes of STFW. And I didn't take all the abuse you did by asking here.sig: file not found
Link
It's feels like you're on a sheet of ice, well, without the coldness. I've had one scotch taped to my desk for several years now, and it's just now needing replacement. Using a regular mousepad feels like slogging through mud compared to the Teflon Sheets.