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Is Horse the New Mouse?
lopati writes "Europhysics News writes about a new ergonomical mouse called Horse (jpeg) that reduces repetitive stress injuries by allowing 'the three middle fingers to adopt a flexed position to relax the tendons' and including a thumb scrool [sic:] wheel. Just a few simple changes for so much more comfort!"
I looked it up but, found no definitions.
Various companies are always coming out with new hardware designs that they claim will revolutionize how we interface with computers, like those split keyboards, and that keyboard that looked like a video game controller, etc but none of them ever pan out. This will be no different.
Sigs are for the weak.
I can (and do) grip my logitech MX1000 in a way that looks like what they're trying to accomplish... Fingers bent a bit, hand relaxed over the top arch. Its buttons extend quite far along the body of the mouse, it's very comfortable.
vk.
When you use a mouse, do you have your forearm at an angle to the mouse with your index finger on the left button (assuming right-handedness), your middle finger on the right button, and your ring finger on the "forward" button on 5-button mice? I've found that having my forearm parallel to the mouse with my middle finger on the scroll, my ring finger on the right mouse button, and my pinky on the forward button reduces the stress on my wrist since my wrist is no longer twisted at an odd angle. I was wondering if anyone else did this too.
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Wired article as proof
Since it causes the hand to be in a more downward (as opposed to a straighter possition) if you can find a spare baseball or rubber band ball it gives you a good idea of what this would feel like to use. I happen to have a rubber band ball from a conference I went to in September handy and noticed the similarity when looking at the pic.
Personally, I kind of like it, I can kind of tell the difference with the tendons, but I'm not sure how well it would react in uses where your moving your hand a lot now that the center of where your pressing on the input device (no longer can you just call it a mouse...) seems to be more toward the wrist, so forward or side to side movements would require more effort or at least leverage. Would be interesting to try it out though.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
My Logitech ergonomic mouse can't be used by lefties either.
What was your point again?
Personally, I find the problem has almost nothing to do with the shape of my mouse.
The most fatiguing aspect my own mousing is wrist-related. While you're using a mouse, your arm is just sort of hanging out there, putting a lot of stress on your wrist.
Think about it, in order to use your mouse, you MUST hold your elbow above the desk the whole time.
Some work has been done to alleviate wrist strain by adding those gel wrist pads, but I think what we really need to see is another pad further back to support your forearm.
The actual standard mouse shape itself is pretty good.
Try this:
Put your hand on your mouse.
Allow it to rotate to a comfortable angle. (For me about 10 deg CCW.)
Freeze your hand and wrist in that position, lift your hand up and look at it.
For me, the result is a very natural even spacing between all my fingers, almost the same you would see if let your arm go limp at your side.
IMO, workstations need more forearm support, not a different-shaped mouse. Take writing for example, you typically rest not just your wrist, but your whole arm on the paper as you write.
Life is too short to proofread.
I do the same (normal mouse for years without problems). The worst devices regarding wrist-problems are hand-writing ones, I have to use them once every six months for exams and I my hand and wrist ache like hell after the exam-season (and after writing 90 minutes or so of the usually 2 hour exams).
Linux is not Windows
A co-worker has to use that piece of junk. It's not a joystick, it slides around the desktop just like a mouse. Except you have to hold your hand vertically. And the buttons suck. This takes all the fine control out of your hand (where it causes problems for some people) and into your elbow and shoulder. If you want to know what it's like to pick small menu items with this poor excuse for an electronic dildo, try doing calligraphy with your shoulders.
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I have one of these and never liked it. I got one of these and like it much better:
http://store.ergocube.com/evvermous.html
I'm right handed, and I use the mouse on my left hand. Is started this with my first computer because the way it was set up, there was no room for the mouse on the right. It's stuck with me ever since. Putting your mouse on the left allows your right hand to have access to the keyboard, which is the part that requires more precision.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm left handed, and use my mouse with my left hand, even going so far as to reverse the buttons (which is easier than making a hand cursor showing an obscene gesture).
I can use other people's computers reasonably well, but anyone who tries to use mine invariably pulls the mouse to the right side of the keyboard, then gives up after 10 seconds of making the context menu appear wherever they click.
My Kensington Expert Mouse does this somewhat already.
It's a large trackball (the size of a billiard ball), and your three middle fingers do curve over it to reach the buttons during normal use. It does have a thumb scrollwheel, going around the circumference of the trackball! This is a very handy feature, and lets you dial through pages extremely fast (faster than you could wiggle your middle finger using an ordinary mouse wheel). It's optical, so it's precise and doesn't have the sticky-wheels problem older trackballs used to have.
Disadvantages:
* No place to rest a wrist (the provided wrist rest is a small little joke). A folded-up old sock fixes this.
* Dodgy Windows driver. (It's marked as "beta", but really is the only choice, since the officially released driver is absolutely ancient.) It really hates my switchbox, and doesn't have any way of regaining synchronization short of rebooting the machine. Works fine in Linux, though, but all the buttons aren't recognized (there are 4 buttons).
* The trackball doesn't track fast enough when rolled at high speed, making it useless for certain applications.
Still, I like it because it does fit my fingers better, and has some of the advantages of this new "horse" mouse.
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