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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."
and that word is......pretentious.
Looks distubingly like a vibrator to me. But maybe that's just me. Back to my one handed surfing...
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Only the maker of antequated operating systems would make a "museum quality" mouse.
Slow news day, I take it?
Who knew Microsoft would turn into Apple?
Actually their hardware division makes products that are as good as their software division's products are bad, and it isn't new.
The Microsoft "natural feel" keyboard (or whatever its name is) is well build and many people I know swear by it. It's unusable to me, but I recognize a good product there. Same for the optical mouse: if memory serves right, Microsoft was the first to introduce that technology, pretty much to go around Logitech's patent on roller-less trackball and mouse balls.
So, hating Microsoft's software is a healthy attitude, hating their hardware product isn't.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This mouse is beautiful, and it actually matches the theme of my most recent system.
BUT -- I won't buy it for one reason. It has a cord.
I'm using the Logitech MX700 Optical Cordless mouse with charging station and I absolutely love it.
I thought I would hate this mouse at first because it's not designed for either right or left hand use but since I normally only use my mouse with my right hand anyway I figured I'd overlook that fact.
While Microsoft's new object is designed for either hand, I just can't go back to a cord. I've gone cordless, I've gone optical, and I've gone rechargable. The only thing that can convince me to replace this mouse is one that has all those features as well as being usable with either the right or left hand.
Maybe Microsoft will release a cordless and recharagable version? Until then it's just a pretty mouse on a cord.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Your posting on Slashdot, how do you know what a vagina looks like?
I don't think I've ever seen a really pretty mouse, though.
I've always thought that Minnie Mouse was kind of hot.
Oh shit, this isn't the furry forum! *NO CARRIER*
CAN'T... LEAVE.. THIS.. ONE.. ALONE... ARRRrRRGGgghh!
Sorry. I had to.Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
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.
Nice post, but your assertions about the MX510 are simply wrong.
MX mice (using the mouseware drivers or the applet under linux) operate at 800dpi, rather than the 400dpi of most other mice (including the entire MS range).
Previous MX series mice had a problem, however: 800dpi, at 125hz with 8bit packets (usb), could generate more movement data that the mouse could send to the host. Thus the sensation of 'negative acceleration' that would be found.
Under linux, it has always been possible to operate the usb mice at 500hz, removing this problom. Under windows however, these was no solution.
The MX510 fixed this by sending 12 bit data packets at 125hz, removing the negative acceleration when moving the mouse quickly, which felt a lot like lag.
In short: The MX series do genuinely operate at a higher resolution than most other mice, and the 510 does fix the problems that this higher resolution made.
On the topic of the MX700, while I can't comment about battery life, it was the first wireless mouse that talked to the computer at faster than 60hz, which is why none of the previous ones, from both logitech and ms, were usable for serious gaming.