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Microsoft Unveils A Designer Mouse
jeckil writes "Today Microsoft unveiled the new Starck mouse; a new shiny mouse designed to take the 'cool' from other mice such as Logitech or Apple. Microsoft is calling it the 'first museum-quality mouse.' Looks shiny enough to be on a museum display along with other succesful Microsoft products."
Slow news day, I take it?
Face it, half the stuff on /. is free advertising.
I do find it amazing that simply being negative about Microsoft will cause a post to magically get moderated +5, Insightful when all it contains is negative opinion and nothing to do with the actual product.
At $25, it seems like a reasonably priced product. Definitely not something you would find in a museum. Mind you, if you will gripe about this products advertising, then it would only be fair to point out how other businesses pitch their mice.
Lets take a look at Logitech's sales pitch on a MX510:
"The Red Mouse for Gamers. Break through with the extreme optical power of the Logitech MX 510, the mouse designed with you in mind. You get the ultimate in mouse precision with no lag, and the gaming-tuned software drivers will help you dominate the competition."
Well, instead of being a museum masterpiece, it touts itself as having no lag. While lag has not been a problem since 1st generation cordless mice (by Logitech), an advertisement for a corded mouse is bringing up the fact that it has no latency issues. Why? Because it will cause people who are not very keen on what "lag" means in a gaming environment. They will be more likely to purchase this product thinking, "Hey, it will help my lag problems". Another thing this mouse comes close to claiming is that it will make you a better gamer and will dominate the game if you buy this product. The "ultimate" precision they claim is also a slight exaggeration since almost all optical mice have similar resolution and precision.
Another fine example of bullshit in advertising is Logitech's product description for the MX700 cordless mouse. It claims "Business never stops, neither should your mouse." In regards to a mouse whose batteries only stay charged about 7-8 hours under continuous use. Once the batteries have been depleted, it takes a solid 20-30 minutes of charge time to get another hour or two of use out of it. For this reason, I had to move mine from my work computer to my game PC since I cannot afford abrupt downtimes while working on projects, not over mouse battery issues anyway.
Is this evil? Perhaps. But this is what marketing departments do. They try to craft a particular product image that will always be more fantasy than reality. Attempting to single one company out for this is rather silly.