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?"

Comments

Let me see

[ttfkam]

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.

IBM -- I have a 3rd Button, and a Scroll*Point*

[Hollinger]

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.

Re:How is a scroll wheel mouse not a three button?

[ShavenYak]

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.

Did you search the web?

[petard]

I was recently wondering about this myself, so I searched a bit. 3-button mice are widely available, and are still being manufactured:

• 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 :-)