Silent Mice for Silent PCs?

UnrefinedLayman asks: "In the quest for a silent PC, one item that seems to be consistently overlooked is the mouse: it's one of the more noisy computer components if only by virtue of the fact that it is a staccato noise. I don't notice my fans or hard drives very often, given that they are constant background sounds whose levels don't noticeably change. My mouse, on the other hand, makes a very audible *click* each time I use it, and while providing a pleasant tactile feedback, it keeps my girlfriend awake during my late-night work sessions. So I turn to the Ask Slashdot community: have you found a silent mouse for your silent PC? Numerous Google searches have yielded little. It's not as though it's impossible, as touch pads for laptops have been around for quite some time, and the iPod makes great use of the technology. ThinkGeek also sells a force-free keyboard with a "mouse replacement" built into it, but while the keyboard technology looks very promising, I prefer to stick with a mouse (not to mention something a bit cheaper). Mouse manufacturers have long touted optical mice as being superior to their trackball cousins for having no moving, mechanical parts, but it seems like they're overlooking the most obvious and still mechanical function: the buttons themselves! So what say you Slashdot? Are there force-free, truly non-mechanical and silent mice out there to be had?"

Comments

THE SECRET SLASHDOT FLOWCHART tsarkon reports

[Anonymous Coward]

Top secret Slashdot document flowchart recreated for your viewing pleasure. This was taken with a micro camera like in the mission impossible movie, but I was dangling over a wet heap of smelly socks and unwashed bodies and they had just passed out from eating frozen pizza, they can't afford the real stuff. I took this picture and digitized it. I narrowly escaped this ordeal and am still mixing Chlorine Bleach and Battery Acid to produce Chlorine gas to get the smell of the Slashdot hovel out of my nose. Unwashed clothing, greasy matter hair, fart saturated furniture at every turn. Open cases of crappy K6 based white-box china-hardware strewn about, half ass 4 wire extra cheesy barely twisted CAT3 wire being used as CAT5 because "it works fine" 400 distributions of Linux lying around messily unboxed and documentation strewn about. The smell of feces was in the air, along with rotting food and marinating sweat from the foul underarms of the Slashdot team. Upon obtaining this evidence I now know more about things are done around here. It is a very interesting process that outlines the depravity of the programming here.
DOCUMENT_DISTRIBUTION:
_____________TOP_SECRET___:_(GROUP_SLSH-1)
_____________EYES_ONLY____:_(HARD_COPY_ONLY)
_____________NEED_TO_KNOW_:_(DIRECT_DEV)
_____________DESTROY_INACTIVE_COPIES

SLASHTEAM_FEATURE_PLANNING_FLOW_CHART

_________________START
___________________V
+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+
|Ha_s_the_feature_been_implemented_before|_yes_
|__on_Kuro5hin_or_another_weblog_site?__|_____|
+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+_;___|
___________________|__________________________|
___________________no_________________________V
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____+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+__________|
____|Was_the_feature_implemented_or|______yes_|
____|_suggested_by_a_known_Troll?__|__________|
____+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+__________|
___________________|__________________________V
___________________no_________________________|
___________________V__________________________|
__+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--+________|___ _______________
__|_Have_hundreds_of_users_suggested_|____yes_|___ ___/___________\
__|the_feature_to_CmdrTaco_via_email?|________+-_- ->|_WON'T_SCALE_|_-_--_--+
__+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--+________^___ ___\___________/_________|
___________________|__________________________no__ _________________________|
___________________no_________________________|___ _________________________^
___________________V__________________________^___ _________________________|
____+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+_______+-_--_- -_--_--_---+_____________|
____|Will_the_feature_make_Slashdot|__yes_\|Can_ja mie_or_krow|_____________|
____|___even_more_like_a_game?_____|______/|_hack_ it_for_me?_|_____________|
____+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+_______+-_--_- -_--_--_---+_____________|
___________________|______________________________ ____|____________________|
___________________no_____________________________ ___yes___________________|
___________________V______________________________ ____v____________________|
___+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+______/__THI S_FEATURE_IS_PERFECT_\___|
___|Can_CmdrTaco_use_his_limited_Perl|_yes\/__FOR_ SLASHDOT._IM_SO_GLAD__\__|
___|____knowledge_to_kludge_it_in?___|____/\___I_T HOUGHT_OF_IT!!!_TIME__/__|
___+-_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--_-+______\____F OR_SAILOR_MOON!______/___|
___________________|______________________________ _________________________^
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This must be a joke

[Frequanaut]

Ask Slashdot has just hit a new low.

Or perhaps trolled

I *WANT* my mouse to click

[TheSHAD0W]

Thanks, but I need my mouse and keyboard to both be nice and clicky. Otherwise, how am I going to know whether my son is surfing for pr0n when I'm not in the room?