A Pistol Mouse for Your Fragging Pleasure

ErgoSeating writes "In my search for an ergonomic mouse I stumbled upon something called the PistolMouse. This mouse is shaped like a pistol and uses a trigger as the left button but tracks with an optical sensor on the bottom, not the sight or barrel. In a twist of irony, the mouse is ergonomically shaped because the pistol grip alleviates stress on your carpal tunnel-ridden wrist. Its Linux compatible and looks like it could be just the thing to brighten up my desk. Here is a review of the item with some good pictures." Not sure how it's ironic -- the modern handgun reflects hundreds of years of user testing -- but it looks fun, and a hoot to travel with by air.

Comments

ThinkGeek

[LukeTurner]

Been on Think Geek for ages... http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/6e04/

they are ok

[ImTheDarkcyde]

i myself purchased one of these pistolmouses around christmas for 40 bucks, it is a very neat design, but i caution those with little desk space, as its about 2 inches longer than the standard mouse

it is also a very sensitive mouse, you'll find yourself turning down mouse sensitivity in some games (max payne, most noticibly)

my game performance hasnt increased at all, but there are a few games i just cannot play with it, games that rely on alot of scroll wheel usage

which brings me to the final point, the scroll wheel, if you use firefox (of course you do) chances are you are constantly middle clicking, well doing it horizontally lets you mess up and scroll/click instead at the same time, it gets annoying, but its not a big turn off

9/10

Mirror

[winkydink]

here

Article slashdotted - repost

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted anonymously - I'm no Karma whore :-)

Monster Gecko PistolMouse FPS

Every so often you get a chance to play with something that just brings out the inner Geek. This is that product. Designed for the hard core FPS player, the PistolMouse replicates the look and feel of a real pistol in a high resolution 800 DPI optical mouse. The PistolMouse FPS uses a high performance optical sensor that tracks surfaces by sampling an image up to 3400 times every second with a high accuracy of 800 dpi (dots per inch). The PistolMouse FPS responds to any movement in 10.9 milliseconds (1/100 of a second) and can sustain the full 800 dpi capture rate at speeds of 12.75 inches per second over a surface. It all sounds good on paper, but let's test this thing in the real world...

The First thing I noticed about the PistolMouse FPS is the high quality packaging. This box jumps out at you. Monster Gecko has really put together an attractive product in a stunning box.

The Pistol itself looks a lot like a replica Air Soft pistol. The design is ergometric with your hand naturally gripping the trigger and resting on the secondary button. The scroll wheel is always in easy reach of your thumb. The design allows the PistolMouse to be used with equal precision both left and right handed.

Pictures don't do this product justice. The PistolMouse is sturdy without feeling heavy or unresponsive at all. The triggers are crafted from color matched aluminum. Even after several days of twitch gaming it still feels as solid as day one.

All that aside, the real thrill is gripping the pistol and dishing out frags with a vengeance. The feel of a real pistol in your hand brings a new level of immersion to your favorite FPS. It's also a great attention getter; I can only begin to describe the constant stream of friends that want to try it out, even my wife had to try it! And who hasn't taken liberties with those crazy arcade pistols?

I put the PistolMouse through its paces using the latest Microsoft Drivers and my favorite twitch games, PainKiller and Battlefield: 1942. For prolonged testing I ran it through a marathon PlanetSide session. My mouse pad of choice was the EverGlide Giganta and the new XTrac Ripper XL. No driver is needed; the USB plug and play was painless.

There is a bit of a learning curve to the PistolMouse FPS. The most immediate change is the trigger function. Your Trigger acts as the primary fire and will both single and double click. This allows you to hold down the fire button for some nice automatic action. The secondary trigger is tucked under the trigger guard and after a few misfires was pretty easy to use. The scroll wheel is easy to find without looking down and very responsive. Once you get the feel down you notice the natural ergometric design makes your left to right motions much faster than with a traditional mouse. Even after nearly 4 hours of play I felt no wrist strain.

The larger size foot print over whelmed my Giganta at 6 ½" by 3" but worked nicely on the Ripper XL. Motion was fluid and responsive even during high speed play. The only drawback over my regular mouse is the PistolMouse only supports the functions of a traditional 3 button Scroll mouse. This 3 button limitation means my trusty old mouse won't be replaced yet. $69.95 may be a bit pricy for a FPS specialty mouse but with the level of quality Monster Gecko has put into the PistolMouse FPS, this might just put that smile on your face.

Right now Monster Gecko is offering a 30 Day money back Guarantee on the Pistol Mouse FPS through www.monstergecko.com. What have you got to loose?

Club Overclocker Rating

Innovation:
10 out of 10

Performance:
9.0 out of 10

Quality:
9.0 out of 10

Stability:
N/A

Compatibility:
7.5 out of 10

Overclocking:
N/A

Software Pack:
N/A

Used one, didn't like it

[Matimus]

The company that makes these pistol mice sponsored PDXLAN 5.05 in March, which I attended. At first they seemed kind of neat, but everyone pretty much figured out that they they were only nice to look at after only a few minutes. For starters the lever arm on the trigger to 'click' the mouse is big, every time you want to 'click' you are moving your index finger nearly 1 cm. 1 cm doesn't seem like much, untill you figure that a regular mouse only takes about 1mm (or less). Also your wrist rests on the table in a strange position and you end up rubbing the bone on your wrist against the table, and it becomes very uncomfortable. Third, you can elevate your arm above the table so as not to rub your wrist, but then you are actually putting quite a bit of work into your arm, which is definitely not ergonomic. Lastly, most of the fine control that you do with your mouse is via your finger tips, with this mouse all of the control is done via your whole arm. Needless to say, by the end of PDXLAN they were giving these away as raffle prizes, and some of the winners wouldn't even come up to claim their prize!

Oh, and remember what I said about them being nice to look at, that is only the first time you see it, after about a minute the novelty wears off and you realize how dumb looking it really is.

Chances of getting this into Australia?

[B747SP]

Australian Customs are pretty strict on guns, and things that look like guns. Even the Old Namco Gun-Con for the original Playstation wasn't allowed in until the importers/manufacturers put flourescent orange tape up the sides. I wonder how we'll go with this one.

Having said that, one does see obviously illegal-import gaming 'guns' for sale at markets and stuff from time to time, and at least one online store in Australia claims to have stock of this PistolMouse, so some folks are sneaking under the radar.

Vertical mice aren't anything new though. I've been using the 3M 'Renaissance Mouse' for years now - I've got four of them in various places at home and work. A couple of random images courtesy google image search here.

A key point I've found with the 3M mice is that they're pretty hard to control for a few days, and you never really regain the fine control that you have with a regular horizontal mouse. I can't help but wonder if the relative lack of control will be a problem for gamers. Remember, this 'gun' must slide around on the surface of a table, so it's going to operate like a vertical mouse, not a free-moving gun. I often keep two mice plugged into my computers - one of these for long-term comfort, and a regular mouse for when I need fine control, say with photoshop or the Gimp.

Re:Need sign if getting one of these...

[Mskpath3]

Technical note : While their technically is a .45 magnum cartridge (.45 Winchester Magnum), it is an exceedingly rare/exotic cartridge.

You're probably thinking of the venerable .44 magnum which is the gold standard "hand cannon" round. It was also Dirty Harry's cartridge of choice (fired from a S&W model 29).

Also, the common ".45" is the .45 ACP cartridge, which while hugely popular in the shooting community, is significantly less powerful than the .44 magnum (roughly 50% the muzzle energy).